Holly's Secret Garden

Prologue

Flowers, candle lights, fragrance, feast---Yea, it’s Valentine’s Day. To its sacredness, people grow numb. To its overtone to sex, people grow ecstatic. Katherine Anne Porter’s essay, “The Necessary Enemy” tolls a warning sound to those passionate, naive, and gullible young maids! The following is its excerpt:

Summary: 愛與憎是生命的底蘊，兩者互相激盪交融，共存於生命中。人性之惡讓愛無法真正落實，卻讓憎不斷生起。有愛必有憎，似乎是人無法逃脫之宿命。憎由愛起，和愛的關係亦敵亦友。婚姻洽是滋養這兩種情緒的最佳溫床。 

Love is taught, always by precept, some times by example. Then hate, which no one meant to teach us, comes of itself. It is true that if we say I love you, it may be received with doubt, for there are times that it is hard to believe. Say I hate you, and the one spoken to believes it instantly, once for all. Say I love you a thousand of times to a person afterward and mean it every time, and still it does not change the fact that once we said I hate you, and meant that too, it leaves a mark on that surface love had worn so smooth with its eternal caresses. Love needs to be taught again and again. Hate needs no instruction, but waits only to be provoked

愛須要以規勸或仿效的方式，不停歇的來教導。而恨卻不請自來，不須人教，等在那而一觸即發。愛人們說再多次我愛你，彼此還是會存疑不信。但只要說一次我恨你，這句話立刻會烙印心中，在愛永恆輕撫所磨平的光滑表面上，留下不滅的汙點。

If it is not perfect, it is not love, and if it is not love, it is bound to be hate sooner or later. This is perhaps a not too exaggerated statement of the extreme position of Romantic Love, more especially in America, where we are all brought up on it, whether we know it or not. Romantic love is changeless, faithful, passionate, and its sole end is to render the two lovers happy. It has no obstacles save those provided by the hazards of fate (that is to say, society), and such sufferings as the lovers may cause each other are only another word for delight: exciting jealousies, thrilling uncertainties, the ritual dance of courtship within the charmed closed circle of their secret alliance; all real troubles come from without, they face them united in perfect confidence. Marriage is not the end but only the beginning of true happiness, cloudless, changeless to the end. That the candidates for this blissful condition have never seen an example of it, nor ever known anyone who had, makes no difference. That is the ideal and they will achieve it.

愛的本質是完美，不完美就不是愛。如果不是愛，它終將轉變為憎恨。情愛(Romantic Love)是美國人從小在淺移默化下，不自覺被內化的觀念。情愛本質是永恆不變的、忠實的、熱情澎湃的，唯一的目的是讓相愛的雙方快樂。它唯一的障礙來自外界的阻撓，而戀人們帶給彼此的磨難卻是歡愉的代名詞: 此磨難包括激揚的醋意、刺激緊張的不確定感、及兩人私密空間中的鳳求凰戲碼。真正的障礙都來自兩人以外的世界，但他們總能聯手從容以對。以情愛為基礎的婚姻是真正快樂的開端而非結束，到最後一直會無風無雨且永恆不變。到底誰真正見過這種理想婚姻倒是無關緊要，反正這高遠的理想終究會被達成。

How did Romantic Love manage to get into marriage at last, where it was most certainly never intended to be? At its highest it was tragic: the love of Heloise and Abelard. At its most graceful, it was the homage of the trouvere for his lady. In its most popular form, the adulterous strayings of solidly married couples who meant to stray for their own good reasons, but at the same time do nothing to upset the property settlement or the line of legitimacy; at its most trivial, the pretty trifling of shepherd and shepherdess.

到底情愛如何滲透到婚姻這非其歸屬之處呢?最悲壯的婚姻非Heloise和 Abelard莫屬；(*Heloise是法國12世紀卓越的女學者，曾經是Abelard的學生。兩人暗通款取秘密結婚並生下一子。但這樁婚姻以悲劇收場，男方遭暴力被閹割後，雙方遁入空門，只能以書信往返)；最優雅的婚姻有如吟唱詩人對其景仰女性之頌歌；最普遍的婚姻形式是擁抱婚約的夫妻雙方各自以正當的理由偷情，但同時不鬧到財產分配或逾越法律界線的程度；婚姻最微不足道之狀態，恰如牧童牧女生活中的瑣瑣碎碎、乏善可陳。

The refusal to acknowledge the evils in ourselves which therefore are implicit in any human situation is an extreme and unworkable a proposition as the doctrine of total depravity; but somewhere between them, or maybe beyond them, there does exist a possibility for reconciliation between our desires for impossible satisfactions and the simple unalterable fact that we also desire to be unhappy and that we create our own sufferings; and out of these sufferings we salvage our fragments of happiness.

人性之惡潛藏於世間各種情境中，拒絕承認這個事實，和相信人性是無可救藥的墮落，同樣是極端且不能被認同的思維。存在於全然善與惡之間的，或者超越此二者的狀態，總有妥協融合的空間存在，我們經常處於此兩極端之間，像是想要追求不可能實現的滿足，或創造自己的苦難，讓自己墮入不快樂中，然後從痛苦的廢墟中，搶救零星微少的快樂。

Hatred is natural in a sense that love is not natural at all. It is the very imperfect expression of the need of the human imagination to create beauty and harmony out of chaos, no matter how mistaken its notion of these things may be, nor how clumsy its methods. It has conjured love out of the air, and seeks to preserve by incantations; when she spoke a vow to love and honor her husband until dead, she did a very reckless thing, for it is not possible by an act of will to fulfill such an engagement. But it was the necessary act of faith performed in defense of a mode of feeling, the statement of honorable intention to practice as well as she is able the noble, acquired faculty of love, that very mysterious overtone to sex which is the best thing in it. Her hatred is part of it, the necessary enemy and ally.

憎會自然生起，但愛絕非自然。它是我們奢望從混亂中創造美感和諧的不完美表現，儘管我們對它認知錯誤，追求方式笨拙。我們的幻覺，讓我們從虛無中召喚出愛，試著用各種咒語保存它。當女人發誓要永遠敬愛其夫婿時，她做了一件輕率之舉，因這樣的承諾不可能靠意志力就可兌現。但這樣的承諾卻是崇高信念的表現，它在捍衛一種感覺，相信自己可以盡所能的付出高貴的愛，說穿了呢，愛是性神祕難解的弦外之音，性是潛藏於愛中最美妙的事。憎是愛的一部份，是其必要的敵人及盟友。

Epilogue:

Women, beware of the notion of Romantic Love! It’s a futile attempt to create beauty out of our chaotic existence. The evil in human nature makes eternal love impossible. Romantic love, after all, is doomed to be eroded by hatred. In other words, hatred is a natural product of love; the two are inseparable, intertwined entities of human life. Aye, love moderately for fear that the fierce flame of hatred coming from intense love engulfs the lovers!

Happy Valentine’s Day for all lovers!