Archive > 2009 > Jan · Feb · Mar · Apr · May · Jun · Jul · Aug

March 2009 · Letters · Previous · Next   PDF

Letters

Love Match

I believe the word Zadie Smith is searching for in her eulogy of David Foster Wallace [“Always Another Word,” Readings, January] is not “prayer” but “agape.” The writers of the New Testament, likely cribbing from Semitic concepts of love, redefined the Greek word to describe a particular kind of love that was self-sacrificing and unconditional, as distinct from other more common Greek words for love such as philia and eros. And so the writer of First John writes (in Greek): Theos ein agape, an emphatic statement that means “God is love.” It’s an unusual phrase, especially because there are no qualifiers in the text around it. The writer does not say God is like love, or that when you love unconditionally and selflessly God will appear to anoint your heads with oil. The writer says only that God is Love, which in logic would be expressed as God = Love, or Love = God. Zadie Smith offers a definition of agape when she describes Wallace’s “literary preoccupation”: “The moment when the ego disappears and you’re able to offer up your love as a gift without expectation of reward. At this moment the gift hangs, like Federer’s brilliant serve, between the one who sends and the one who receives, and reveals itself as belonging to neither.” (My emphasis.)

4 5 6

Previous · Next