Marriages, Famous and Ordinary
January 17, 2010
Hannon writes:
Your portraits of marriages are always singular and moving. They seem to cast a special light on the fact that two different people, two souls, inhabit a marriage. This is a special notion that deserves more reflection. The idea that they all end– husband, wife and bond– often seems haunting to me, in a strange nostalgic way. (But then you do not write about prosaic couples!). My being a middle-aged newlywed may have something to do with it.
Your essay about Guy Waterman (via Kristor’s recent entry) was powerful and had me thinking about many things. The way two of his sons died is almost otherworldly when added to his own suicide. You write about the relationship of a couple to the Other (nature,) the one that does not feel back. As I wrote you earlier, I do have a reverence for tropical forests in particular but in my experience they are places that are not welcoming to humans. Certainly they are fantastic to experience, but we don’t belong there. Small scattered tribes are the lonely, thin exceptions. Life for men is not easy in any forest, even over the short term. It is difficult enough on the fruited plain or manicured cull-de-sac.
It seems strange that people live in isolation in the desert or Alaska or a Vermont wood. Chalk it up to eccentricity or perhaps some medical disorder. But a couple in that position must be weighted heavily by one partner or the other.
Laura writes:
Thank you for your comments. How the White Mountains could lead someone to nihilism is intriguing and disturbing. If you follow a love of nature step-by-step to its logical conclusion, you have two possible end points: hopelessness or adoration. But not adoration of nature itself.
As far as marriage stories, I’ve never known a dull marriage. I’ve also never known anyone, man or woman, who wasn’t in some way radically different from his or her spouse or a couple who didn’t have grounds for divorce if they chose to look for them. That’s not to say some don’t have much more serious grounds for divorce. I agree with Dietrich von Hildebrand who said the purpose of marriage is procreation (and an orderly society.) But its meaning is love. This is an important point for traditionalist conservatives to keep in mind in their panic over the decline of marriage as an institution. They risk over-emphasizing its pragmatic benefits. It’s not possible for all marriages to reach the highest forms of love. But even those who fall short work in the same basic medium. I will be featuring more marriage profiles as part of my Famous Couples series soon. (Some are couples who were not married.) People of talent or genius have a way of intensifying the marital problems of ordinary people and besides there’s lots of interesting gossip, I mean, history floating around about them.
I once knew a man and woman who got married in their 60s after a courtship of about 40 years. It’s a fascinating story and I won’t go into it all here. They were married for more than 20 years. He died in the living room and she died in the bedroom within about two months of each other. She died first and he never made it to the funeral. It was too much for him. They can’t be part of my series because they weren’t famous. Their marriage was a work of genius by two ordinary people.
