A Wife in France Learns How to Have True Warmth; Or, Aesthetic Realism Consultations!

THE MIX-UP IN MARRIAGE ABOUT COLDNESS AND WARMTH By Barbara Allen

Part 3 A Wife in France Learns How to Have True Warmth; Or, Aesthetic Realism Consultations!

As her consultation trio spoke to Felice DeChamp across the Atlantic Ocean, we heard a wife of twenty years complaining in a beautiful lyrical language about her husband being cold to her. "He is orderly and keeps his emotions hidden," she told us, "while I express mine." But when we asked her what she had most against herself, she said "I feel guilty--maybe I am not doing enough for others." And we asked "Is one of these others--your husband?" We told Mme. DeChamp Aesthetic Realism understands why we feel guilty, and we read to her these words from Self and World by Eli Siegel: "In every instance of a guilt feeling, there is evidence pointing to the fact that the cause is a feeling of separation of oneself from reality as a whole." And this we told her can definitely change. "That is beautiful," she said.

Mrs. DeChamp, like many wives on both sides of the Atlantic, felt when she married Maurice that he should make her feel warm, and safe. We asked: Was she enough interested in the outside world, in other people--and she told us sadly that it is hard to look outside when you do not feel good. Mme DeChamp did not see marriage as a time for her to try to know what a man deserves.

When we asked her: "Do you like thinking about your husband?", she answered, "No, I don't. I feel my life is like a clock that runs down." "Do you think your husband is lonely in his own house?" we asked. And she told us he wants to be. We asked:

Do you want to see him as a tyrant who worships you?...If your husband felt his wife wanted more to know him, than find reasons to complain, do you think he would be so separate and angry? "I am very preoccupied with myself." she said. Yes, and we asked was she aware that each time we asked her to give thought or describe something her husband felt, she changed the subject and centered on herself. We asked: Did she want to be displeased with her husband in order to go back to the warm kingdom of herself?" "In this world, men and women often find refuge in coldness," writes Eli Siegel in The Right Of, Coldness, quite clearly is allied to contempt; and contempt has been seen often as a protector of the distressed or uncertain self. With all her intensity, her seeming "warmth," Mme DeChamp began to see she stubbornly preferred coldness to asking what does the world deserve from her, how can I have a good, strengthening effect on my husband?

She was learning a very great deal in her consultations, becoming happier and honestly warmer. We asked: "Do you think you and he could both spend these coming days and months finding out more about the whole world together? "Mais oui, certainment!" she said. "Can you say: 'I Felice DeChamp have a new, living, vital desire to like the world and that is what I am going to go for with you dear Maurice?'" "Yes," she said, "thanks to Aesthetic Realism, I can say this--I do have a stronger desire to like the world and I will tell my husband this."

Part 4 In Music Is the Oneness of Opposites We Are Hoping For

Ellen Reiss writes in TRO: Coldness and warmth are... ethical opposites: what we are warm to and what we are cool to determine how just a person we are. And on the oneness of coolness and warmth depends the quality of any instance of art; because for something to be art, there must be, working as one in it, that severity or coolness which is structure and that warmth which is feeling. In Wagner's Die Meistersinger there is a passionate song, which has the relation of warmth and precision that every wife needs to have. Here a young man, Walther, wins the hand of his beloved Eva, by singing in front of the whole town a song that he had composed. It is about his desire to have his love for a woman and his love for art be the same thing. It is so sincere and beautiful, he is chosen to become the next Meistersinger. The melody is a beautiful relation of yearning and joyousness, structure and emotion. It has those opposites Mr. Siegel spoke to me about: intimacy and remoteness. You it is constantly reaching for new heights--while it is ever so warmly the feeling of one person. And structurally, the song is in the key of C, but Wagner never lets you rest on the tonic until the final syllable of the final words "im Paradies," in paradise. Here is Placido Domingo singing this opening verse:

[Play "The Prize Song"]

This great melody and Placido Domingo's voice embody tenderness and warmth that are the same as respect, feeling that is not possessive or based on narrow approval of oneself, but a celebration of a person's relation to everything. Yes, the true warmth marriages are looking for is here--in the study of Aesthetic Realism--and we are very glad each week husbands and wives are meeting this great knowledge which teaches: the purpose of marriage is to like the world!