Saturday, July 1, 2017
The Loves of Achilles
A single sentence survives from Sophocles' play The Loves of Achilles, preserved in a grammar book after the play was lost. In Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love, it's given as love is like ice in the hands of children. The full version is when ice appears out of doors, and boys seize it up while it is solid, at first they experience new pleasures. But in the end their pride will not agree to let it go, but their acquisition is not good for them if it stays in their hands. In the same way an identical desire drives lovers to act and not to act. It's all we have. It's enough.
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