On Freedom, Love, and Happiness in Literature

THE SEARCH FOR LOVE AND HAPPINESS

According to J.P. Sartre, man is destined to be free. His beautiful intellectual essays compiled in L'Être et le Néant (Being and Nothingness) affirm so, and he challenges the human being as being the nothingness, which allows that philosophical concept into any dimension. He had also talked about liberty and freedom in his The Roads to Freedom (Les Chemins de la Liberté), a trilogy where he exhibits society in search for freedom through its enormous social complexity. Le Diable et le Bon Dieu is one that juxtaposes good and evil in search for true freedom. And so do La Mort dans L'Âme and L'Âge de Raison, where the latter has an enormous and controversial existentialist social focus. Sartre's straight perception of mankind's freedom is truly natural, and in some aspect conceptually equal to Rousseau's perception of man's freedom in contact with nature, as depicted, in his short essay Dialogues et Rêveries du Promeneur Solitaire, a principle highly opposed and critized by Voltaire.

On the other hand, we encountered ways to happiness with a different perspective. In Manon Lescaut, Abbé Prévost describes happiness not in the sense and essence of happiness itself but in a controversial friction with reality and society, as “passing through a tissue” transparently like in the poem Allegro by 2011 Noble Prize winner T. Transtromer. This is likely to match Nietzsche's approach to dealing with public relations and approaching life in general. Perhaps Lou Salomé would certainly disagree with her alienated admirer. Manon Lescaut had a particular impact in my adolescence perception of happiness and that of my early adult years, after a loud in-class reading drill of the entire novel in French at the Alliance Française.

Bertrand Russell has depicted happiness and freedom in many aspects, especially in relation to loving and being afraid to love. Russell suggested that being afraid to love was also being afraid of living, and therefore being dead in the soul.

1982 Nobel Prize Winner, Gabriel García Márquez, despicts a life long novel of love and happiness in his Love in Times of Cholera, where love survives over decades of distance and loneliness and it is found when finally the characters encounter themselves in the mood for love, after a first marriage. In contrast, for Flaubert, Madame Bovary represents the love of opportunity, the chance to cheat, escape reality and enjoy passion, a joie de vivre, that finally translates into tragedy, so happiness is brief and futile.

For others happiness and love intersect one another. In Colombian romanticism, María by Jorge Isaacs, and La Voragine by José Eustasio Rivera, love takes a dual dimension. In the former novel, Isaacs reveals María's unattained love through a restrained libido, disease, depression, and finally death, which creates a myth of inner platonic happiness on the one hand and a constrained taboo on the other one; the latter novel foresees a taste of violence in the feelings of passions over love and happiness, where the main character starts narrating his emotions and passions over his love for Alicia. That story is somewhat comparable to the The Count of Montecristo by Alexandre Dumas, which highlights the need for revenge to attain free happiness and resilient love.

In Latin American literature, Julio Cortazar exemplifies the art of writing a novel by disarranging chapters in any way in time, following many paths, to finally enjoy some freedom and happiness. La Maga is an essential “Frenchy” character depicting the feminine touch needed in any reading tour of his novel.

Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío analyzes love in many of his poems like Palomas Blancas, Garzas Morenas and Sonatina in his poetry book Azul (Blue) with a sense of hope and despair. This is conceptually similar to Neruda's love poetry.

Love and religion mix in historic novels such as Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, and in Frederic Lenoire's L'Oracle della Luna, and many others of similar content and nature.

German Poet Reiner Maria Rylke (another man interested in Lou Salomé and possibly her true lover) discovers the beauty of love in sensuality and naiveness. A similar approach is in the trend of Spaniard Federico García Lorca who enhances love with a great Spanish folkloric taste. For others like Marquis of Sade, love encompasses passion and pain. Sadism shows critically that love bites and hurts, and his life was probably the worst example and evidence that certain minds needed to contemplate pain to attain pleasure, which resulted in the concept of sadomasochism, as it implies both parties complementing and accepting one another. Indeed, there are certainly Freudian implications to repression and abuse in that mentality and perception. 

In contrast, in the Bible, the sense of love is usually highlighted by an act of forgiveness to attain happiness. It is probably the way to the Christian Nirvana. In particular, Psalm 119 shows the essence of Christian belief in having no inequity to those who hurt us and follow the way of the Lord. This is emphasized by Jesus teaching when he suggests: “I am the way, the true, and life. He who believes in me will not die forever.” John further enhances this belief in chapter 3 verse 16, in the New Testament. I personally believe that forgiveness is the most significant and important act of love, since it implies letting go what hurt us. It is possible to be good and love, yet forgiving is the most truthful act of love, beyond physical or integral love, possibly, as described by Paul Jagot in his Psychology of Love (Psychologie de l'Amour.)

Finally, when Jesus forgives our trangressions, we become clean and clear, new creatures to live happily ever after. This is the greatest gift of Christian belief and philosophy to attain salvation.