Nice little fantasy romp, but ultimately unsatisfying. Nehring claims that passion is missing from our lives -- but is it? The case studies she presents certainly illustrate her points, but only in the way that J.P. Morgan and Warren Buffett would illustrate a "Personal Finance for Beginners" book: as extremes, even caricatures. In comparison to Diego and Frida, yes, most of us have tame love lives. But how is that a bad thing? Most of us aren't -- and don't want to be -- fiery temperamental rich artist types. Kudos to Nehring for her insightful breakdown of the elements of ardor: power inequality, taboos, challenges. Most of us can take something home from that. But what is she really trying to accomplish with this book, with her over-the-top examples? Who among her readers will tell their spouse "see, honey, it's perfectly fine and even necessary for me to have an affaire de coeur"? It seems almost like she's defending her own needs.Ultimately, though, I enjoyed this book. It's engaging, entertaining, educational, even inspiring. ( )

A Vindication of Love
Christina Nehring

This is an impassioned piece of social commentary, arguing for the return of intense and passionate loving between men and women, love that takes risks. The author argues that feminism, and the need for safety and predictability has squeezed the romance out of relations between the sexes. The feminists argue that creativity and passion in love are not fit subjects for a woman and serve only to keep her subservient to men. The author presents many literary and historical models of loves that were daring, and un-apologetic. Her command of literature finds many gems, and her writing style is clear and brisk. It is refreshing to have a definite point of view, argued forcefully
Quotes:

“It never troubles the sun,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson in one of his later essays, “that some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the reflecting planet. Let your greatness educate the cold and crude companion. If he is unequal, he will presently pass away; but thou, thou art enlarged by thy own shining.”

What Socrates is saying above all else in Symposium is that love makes us think. Love makes us explore. Love makes us blaze through new subjects and new cultures; it makes us hatch new visions.

Youth and beauty is a form of power‚ as anyone knows who has read a Philip Roth novel in which the decrepit celebrity intellectual is awestruck by an unknown young shiksa whom he perceives as omnipotent; as anyone knows who has ever loved a person of lesser years or greater physical attractiveness.

German poet Rainer Maria Rilke: ‘In all things except love, nature herself enjoins men to collect themselves‚ while in the heightening of love, the impulse is to give oneself wholly away.” The problem is that ‚ “When a person abandons himself, he is no longer anything, and when two people both give themselves up in order to come close to each other, there is no longer any ground beneath them and their being together is a continual falling.”

Emerson challenges us to choose what it is we most wish to befriend in our companions‚ for we cannot have everything. “Are you’” he demands, “the friend of your friend’s buttons, or of his thought? To a great heart, he will be a stranger in a thousand particulars, that he may come near in the holiest ground.”

“There are some theories which are much weakened by the unfortunate presence of facts”

“It is impossible,” declared the Countess of Champagne in the thirteenth century, “for true love to exert its powers between two people married to each other.”

“For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of our tasks, the ultimate, the work for which all other work is but preparation.” Rainer Maria Rilke

It was your manner of telling me about [the doctor] Pagello‚ of his caring for you and your affection for him‚ and the frankness with which you let me read your heart. Always treat me so; it makes me proud. My dear, the woman who speaks thus of her new lover to the one she has just left, and who still loves her, accords him the greatest proof of esteem that a man may receive from a woman. ( )