Shirley Hazzard, the eminent Australian author
discusses the difference between love and
"relationships".
Love is, I suggest, a very unfashionable subject. “Yes, I know that. People don’t love each other any more, it’s too much trouble... In my books, they have to suffer. They’re not calculating, ‘Is it worth it?’ It’s inevitable. And they know that if they’re ever going to get deeply into something, it will be this. It’s a kind of inevitability. You can’t cold-bloodedly say, ‘I’m not getting into that.’ Well, a million times it might be like that, but if we are talking about somebody really living, and having to weigh their impossible circumstances against that or think about their future, then it becomes very serious.”
She hates the contemporary word used to cover all such matters. “That word ‘relationships’ – these ships, we have to sink a few of these ships. A relationship is an abstraction, it’s something everybody has, it’s a common denominator – ‘Oh, we have a relationship.’” She waves her hand, impatiently dismissive.It's not about connection, it's about connectedness.
