"But here there is no light"

It came as no surprise to me that the original title of Tender is the night was Richard Diver, a Romance. Granted, Keat's beautiful words do justice to the human conflicts so hauntingly painted by Fitzgerald,

"...tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light"

Yet the fact remains that it was his conflict. Dick Diver's.

I have to be honest, i was not enamored by the first part of the novel. Pas vraiment. It seemed like a rigmarole of loosely wound characters and the insight was lost in the details. Between Rosemary's childish advances, McKisco's self-pity, Abe North's death wish and Collis Clay's banal existence, i was beginning to summon up my reading mode à la feuielleter. Tommy Barban on the other hand was noteworthy with his almost naive courage and french aloofness and piqued my interest. Indeed he proved me right in the end with his assessment of Nicole's diagnosis as he looked down upon the profession of psychiatry as "bullying" or "taming of women".

"Why wouldn't they leave you in your natural state?" Barban demanded. "You are the most dramatic person i have ever known". This statement gave me pause. A real long one. And i wondered if Dick Diver ever understood Nicole the way Tommy Barban did.

Dick did love Nicole in his own way, yet at the same time dissecting her and lamenting her schizophrénie equally with a clinical dexterity and despair. "A wave of agony went over him. It was awful that such a fine tower should not be erected, only suspended, suspended from him". He guarded her from herself and the world, guarded the children and the world from her, even made some attempts at guarding his intelligence and professional equanimity, but he could not guard himself.

"But here there is no light."

I read the second and the third part with much amazement as i watched his beautiful character disintegrate at the alter of Nicole. The weight of the fine tower took its toll. Divorced at the end of the ten year long ordeal of love, hope and despair, he and his brilliant possibilities petered out into obscurity. Into the smaller and smaller towns of New York resembling a nested encapsulation of wells with increasing depths and diminishing radii.

Which left me with this question. Is it indeed possible to love someone who is tearing you apart? I suppose one can try. One always tries.

Until they are torn apart.