I want to love first, and live incidentally…

“…. as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes — a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an æsthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

And as I sat there, brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning — -

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

It will soon be Valentine’s Day and so this weeks’ Reflection is on declarations of love.

Valentine’s day prompts many to write such declarations. Some recipients of those efforts may know of that love, while some may be innocent of that knowledge. The challenge of the declarant being to avoid the trite and cliched — an ever-tricky challenge.

There are many loving exchanges in letters of the past. Beethoven’s ‘Immortal Beloved’ letters. Those of John Keats to his love, Fanny Brown. And those of Oscar Wilde to Lord Alfred Douglas are but a few. But one that always strikes me is a letter written in 1919 by the then Zelda Sayre to F Scott Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald’s, ‘The Great Gatsby’ is one of my favourite novels. A brilliantly conveyed tragedy of class difference, unattainable ‘acceptance’ and lost love. Of hope over reality. Gatsby the idealist. The “gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover”, who flies too high in pursuit of, what he believes to be, his destiny, then crashing to earth.

Fitzgerald offers little in terms of a physical description of Gatsby,

“He smiled understandingly — much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced — or seemed to face — the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favour…. Precisely at that point it vanished — and I was looking at an elegant young rough-neck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd.

His tanned skin was drawn attractively tight on his face and his short hair looked as though it were trimmed every day”

The movies tend to cast Gatsby as blond, good looking, educated, and refined. Yet Gatsby (“Mr Nobody from Nowhere”) is a guy on the make who comes from humble beginnings. Making his money through nefarious means. Films of the book, of which there’s been many, fail to get to Gatsby’s darker heart. Fitzgerald once wrote that he saw Clark Gable as an actor who could play the part. Charming but with a sinister edge and interestingly dark-haired. Any thoughts on modern-day actors for the role?

The casting of Gatsby’s great love, Daisy tends to be of someone blond, slim, and ethereally attractive. Again, Fitzgerald offers little physical description,

“Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget”

There we have our two main characters. A smile and a voice. Their physical appearance left to our individual imaginations. Characters in a story that is not character driven. Nor plot driven. This is a story that is language driven. Fitzgerald’s writing is poetic prose. It’s that writing that makes the book a classic, rather than its straightforward story or thinly drawn characters. No wonder that no film ever quite captures the novel.

Anyway, as ever I digress. Back to Zelda’s letter written before her marriage to F Scott.

A marriage that proved stormy, to say the least, but at least they ‘lived’ their love and at the end of any relationship shouldn’t we at least be able to say that? Surely true love must never be comfortable complacency? To both give and receive love is to challenge ourselves and our beloved to be the best we can be.

When Zelda wrote her letter, she and F Scott were still in the ‘honeymoon’ period of fledgeling love. Yet I, now thrice married; still recognise, understand, and most importantly appreciate, all that Zelda wrote, over a hundred years ago. I, an aged romantic, will always wish to love first, and live incidentally.

Here’s a portion of Zelda’s letter followed by this week’s music, composed four years later, used as the theme music for the 1974 Gatsby film. It’s Irving Berlin’s ‘What’ll I do’. ….

Sweetheart,

Please, please don’t be so depressed. We’ll be married soon, and then these lonesome nights will be over forever, and until we are, I am loving, loving every tiny minute of the day and night…

You’re so sweet when you’re melancholy. I love your sad tenderness when I’ve hurt you. That’s one of the reasons I could never be sorry for our quarrels and they bothered you so. Those dear, dear little fusses, when I always tried so hard to make you kiss and forget…

Scott, there’s nothing in all the world I want but you and your precious love. All the material things are nothing. I’d just hate to live a sordid, colourless existence because you’d soon love me less and less and I’d do anything anything to keep your heart for my own. I don’t want to live. I want to love first, and live incidentally. Why don’t you feel that I’m waiting. I’ll come to you, Lover, when you’re ready.”