Ok, so what about Bettina?
You know, I think that if Goethe would have had it in him to love her she would have uncovered her own greatness. I don't think she had the capacity to realize it on her own like some women can. A few of us need mirroring from a creative male to start to grow in the direction of our own creative independence.
I was asking a friend this morning about her younger child being in her dreams. As I have been integrating what Jung called the "animus," and working through the levels of it's development, it is like that for me now with my youngest child Steven as an ever-present image of the young growing masculine who so often is in my dreams, either beside me or who wanders off away from me to play in the sand or build with toys in another room or place. In my dreams, as I am confronted with other images, I will often come upon him quietly constructing something or merely playing in solitude. And as I come awake from my dreams, the other images may be hard to recognize, but I always understand that he represents something that continually is at work in me, or playful in me, but that consistently grows in me.
While reading about Bettina in Milan Kundera's "Immortality," I harken back to my own experience in regard to what I have been seeking throughout my own life. There is a certain idea of an ideal male who has I felt always fit the kind of person I have been most attracted to to share friendship and other kinds of experiences. The man I am drawn to is almost always much older and highly intelligent, creative and dynamic; a kind of "man's man," but with the qualities one would find maybe in a brother or a father ~ And for that reason, I always assumed that this person represented some aspect of the father that I missed in childhood; and while it could be related to that, I'm not certain how it works, what I found ultimately is that this ideal was unattainable. Most often the activity around it left me fraught with disappointment, or befriending some person I would discover as an inherently unforgiving and/or frightened man, or someone who simply did not have the ability to sense the deeper purpose of my inquiry.
And this pattern throughout my life... and I mean my whole life... has kept me on this search for this man, a nurturing man to somehow lift me into my own power. I never realized exactly what it was because so often I was ashamed of the compulsion and I repressed it; or shamed by others, as we all often are, when our repressions lead to acting out; or there were times I was even ashamed that as a modern thinking woman I would actually consider, much less admit to, requiring the assistance of a male counterpart as a guide.
But at some point I scattered all of those perceptions to wind realizing that this "compulsion" was more or less my signal to lead me to a potentially greater and more productive personhood as an individual.
It's really a great paradox, though common so not often a revelation: The finding of ONEself through the bond with another...
And in my searching, I have been lucky enough, after a truly heartwrenching situation, to have found a man in the world, more than one now, who willingly companioned with me to represent to me, not an ideal, but rather a very human image of what I've always sought. To mirror, reassure, befriend, bestow adoration, give advice, playfully or seriously question, respond, consistently and willingly reveal, and offer fearless devotion. To understand. To emulate and admire. And in some strange way it can work in creating an internal support that a woman can acquire from having been loved well, and can be deeply significant in helping her move in the world in a more confident way.
Because of this, as I was reading about Bettina and her lifelong attachment to Goethe, how she finagled their correspondence and recreated him as a lover, but how he has been revealed as one who merely tolerated her, and often times didn't. I couldn't help but think, what would it have been like for her, for her legacy and her individuality, her own immortality, if he had simply found inside himself the compassion to love her?
I was asking a friend this morning about her younger child being in her dreams. As I have been integrating what Jung called the "animus," and working through the levels of it's development, it is like that for me now with my youngest child Steven as an ever-present image of the young growing masculine who so often is in my dreams, either beside me or who wanders off away from me to play in the sand or build with toys in another room or place. In my dreams, as I am confronted with other images, I will often come upon him quietly constructing something or merely playing in solitude. And as I come awake from my dreams, the other images may be hard to recognize, but I always understand that he represents something that continually is at work in me, or playful in me, but that consistently grows in me.
While reading about Bettina in Milan Kundera's "Immortality," I harken back to my own experience in regard to what I have been seeking throughout my own life. There is a certain idea of an ideal male who has I felt always fit the kind of person I have been most attracted to to share friendship and other kinds of experiences. The man I am drawn to is almost always much older and highly intelligent, creative and dynamic; a kind of "man's man," but with the qualities one would find maybe in a brother or a father ~ And for that reason, I always assumed that this person represented some aspect of the father that I missed in childhood; and while it could be related to that, I'm not certain how it works, what I found ultimately is that this ideal was unattainable. Most often the activity around it left me fraught with disappointment, or befriending some person I would discover as an inherently unforgiving and/or frightened man, or someone who simply did not have the ability to sense the deeper purpose of my inquiry.
And this pattern throughout my life... and I mean my whole life... has kept me on this search for this man, a nurturing man to somehow lift me into my own power. I never realized exactly what it was because so often I was ashamed of the compulsion and I repressed it; or shamed by others, as we all often are, when our repressions lead to acting out; or there were times I was even ashamed that as a modern thinking woman I would actually consider, much less admit to, requiring the assistance of a male counterpart as a guide.
But at some point I scattered all of those perceptions to wind realizing that this "compulsion" was more or less my signal to lead me to a potentially greater and more productive personhood as an individual.
It's really a great paradox, though common so not often a revelation: The finding of ONEself through the bond with another...
And in my searching, I have been lucky enough, after a truly heartwrenching situation, to have found a man in the world, more than one now, who willingly companioned with me to represent to me, not an ideal, but rather a very human image of what I've always sought. To mirror, reassure, befriend, bestow adoration, give advice, playfully or seriously question, respond, consistently and willingly reveal, and offer fearless devotion. To understand. To emulate and admire. And in some strange way it can work in creating an internal support that a woman can acquire from having been loved well, and can be deeply significant in helping her move in the world in a more confident way.
Because of this, as I was reading about Bettina and her lifelong attachment to Goethe, how she finagled their correspondence and recreated him as a lover, but how he has been revealed as one who merely tolerated her, and often times didn't. I couldn't help but think, what would it have been like for her, for her legacy and her individuality, her own immortality, if he had simply found inside himself the compassion to love her?
posted by SPOA | 4:22 PM
2 Comments:
good piece of fantasy writing w/ regard to Bettina
Thanks margaret, it's been a great book for me. In many ways. How goes it with MLVF?
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