Sex hostility in marriage : its origin, prevention and treatment / by Th. H. Van de Velde. Trans. by Hamilton Marr.

  • Theodoor Hendrik van de Velde
Date:
1931
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Sex hostility in marriage : its origin, prevention and treatment / by Th. H. Van de Velde. Trans. by Hamilton Marr. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    not worry, after I have read it I shall destroy the manu- script/ ' We sat down as we used to do previously, but what we heard filled us with increasing dismay. It was a short monodrama1 entitled The Twilight of Love, in which a man, partly in monologue and partly talking with his dog, becomes fully aware of the waning of the love that had united him to his wife. While he is reflecting on the charged atmosphere, the friction, slowly but surely increasing, and the absence of any trace, both in great and small things, of the erstwhile harmony, he admits to him- self, Even against our will our minds unfailingly think of those things that separate us ; just as unfailingly as they formerly bathed everything in radiance and brought everything to the foreground that could bind us more closely to one another. He continues : Is it my fault ? Hers ? Neither, and yet both of us are to blame. Quite right! We were fools—we did not wish to have children so as always to remain lovers, even in marriage. Illusion is short and repentance. . . . When the end of our love began to come there was nothing to replace it. Blame ? Is a flower to blame because it fades ? And can men alter the fact that satiation follows the satisfaction of their desires—(in a halting, then bitter, ironical tone) and bore- dom ? that, like every living thing love too contains in it the seeds of disease, death and decay ? It is simple and happens daily, the old story of growing and perishing. But to those who experience it. . . . In his despair at the end of this love on which both he and his wife have built their whole lives, the man in the drama decides to die together with her. He shoots her dead while she is asleep and then takes poison. His state of mind is shown in the closing lines of the play : (his head buried in his hands, he gazes at the portrait of his wife) : Without you ! and yet with you. But in this way ! (he covers his eyes with his hand) oh ! why are we not together . . . long ago, when all was fair. ... 1 Monodrama is the Greek term for a drama acted by one person alone. B 2
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