On romance

Sometime in life we turn from romance to reality. Is this turn permanent?

Two days ago I saw the recent movie version of Pride and Prejudice. While still preferring the BBC version as a rendition of Jane Austin's text, I was very taken with this movie and found it lingered with me. In my opinion, it carried off its goal to make the story steamy despite the restraint that characterized interaction in those days. With the exception of the spurned-proposal scene, in which Darcy and Elizabeth seem barely to avoid ripping one another's clothes off, the the means used to convey their physical passion are rather small (if pointedly made.)

For instance, we see Darcy's hand and know that he is feeling invigorated from the contact from when he handed her up into the carriage -- we see his hand and know he is feeling helpless as she leaves him rejected. We hear how Elizabeth feels because she tells us; we see how Darcy feels by reading small physical signs. How like life this is, no?

Darcy himself is a more sympathetic, if less complex, character in this movie: he has not the arrogance of Colin Firth's portrayal, but rather a more commonly-found ill-ease with self-expression. He's just a guy who doesn't express himself easily, especially with strangers; and he's struggling against strong emotions. In short, he's a person we're much more likely to meet, know, or be today than the excessively honor-bound and caste-conscious stuffed-shirt who inhabits more faithful renditions of Austin's text. This Darcy, while appealing less to my literary side, rather spoke to the me who deals with real people, and made me think about what I myself want, romantically, in this real world.

I tried to sum up to my partner the essence of romance, which I was thinking about post-movie, as I had seen the movie alone.

Why had the movie made me feel, along with the satisfaction of seeing the characters' romance fulfilled, a feeling of unfulfillment about my own life? I am in a loving relationship that will encircle me until death. I do not lack for love, and my partner and I take good care of each other, complement one another, and experience joy and tenderness in one another.

I felt rather silly trying to explain what romance means, apart from beautiful backdrops and dramatic declarations, apart from the triumph of love over strife, apart from the movies and fiction. The way I put it -- and I'm still struggling about whether this touches the heart of the matter -- is that romance in a moment comes from the participants' intensity of feeling. What makes a meal romantic is not the restaurant. A candle-lit dinner, a bottle of champagne in bed, an impromptu picnic -- all these meals can be romantic or mundane depending on the intensity of regard coming from those involved and directed purely at each other and the moment. It seems to me to be the undivided attention of your lover directed at you, and the returning of that attention, and surrounding circumstances which either feed or just don't detract from that attention, which make the moment a romantic one.

And that, not a view of mountains or a $200 meal or a bouquet of roses, is what I need to share. It is what I'm asking for. And damn me, but I'm not sure how to get it -- or whether it's even a valid thing to want.