Studia Islandica - 01.06.1986, Síða 289

287
break for some reason. Then man perceives his selfhood, while the immedi-
ate environment appears to recede; he wakes up, as it were, like a foreigner
in a big city: A sea of humanity flows by in heavy swells; you just glimpse
thousands of passive faces as they move on, strangers to you, and words un-
known to you flit through the air, while your own words are stripped of their
magic - rendered meaningless. In that moment, you perceive your separate-
ness: You perceive all the others as your opponents, sense your vulnerabil-
ity and draw a circle around you to avoid being sucked into the maelstrom.
But at the same time, you look into the circle from the outside; you virtually
become the gaze of the others; you are without individuality - in fact, just
part of the environment. Yesterday and the day before that, you were nei-
ther a distinct self nor an object, but in their relation; now you are a distinct
entity and an object at the same time; you are both you and the other, with-
out any bridging of the gap between the two — a paradoxical and intolerable
condition.
The paradox oútlined above is the root of anguish, which more often than
not forces the sufferer to come to terms with his life, to connect the anti-
thetical polarities, unless he chooses to be destroyed. Staying inside the
circle leads to insanity: a total retreat from the external world in the hope
of escaping from the sense of loneliness. On the other hand, a static exis-
tence outside the circle implies an inner death: you become a passive sensor
without any identity of your own. In both cases, the proposed remedy is an
illusion, for it severs links which make you a “living” human being in the
world of man.
Many of the “living” seek a solution through love - a condition where the
other person is the external world and part of you at the same time; you are
yourself as well as part of the environment; in other words, you preserve
your distinct identity by means of a union with another human being.
Love and anguish are mutually dependent. Many love affairs, however,
develop in such a way that one of the partners is pulled into the other’s
circle and loses the claim to a separate identity - a process which inevitably
results in imbalance and dishonesty. That, in turn, spells doom for both
partners. Nothing but constant anguish can sustain love, as a repetition of
the original experience is forever being demanded: you are separate and
united with another person, who is also alone but still part of you. Only such
repetition, which is always a fresh experience, can prevent love from falling
victim to paralyzing habit. Psychoanalyst Erich Fromm has remarked that
love entails a miracle in that two persons become one but, nevertheless,
remain two. Or, rather: in love, two persons are in the process of becoming
one - something which must continue for the duration of the relationship;
it is both a state and a constantly repeated action; it is not a fact or an
object, but a reality which is always being created. Love enables people to
preserve and nurture their sense of loneliness and separateness, while also