MURIEL SPARK
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tions, but there is always something left over, mysteriously hovering
between music and meaning.
It is said that love is blind. I don't agree. I think that, on the
contrary, love sharpens the perceptions. The lovers see especially
clearly, but often irrationally; they like what they perceive even if, in
anyone else, they wouldn't. They see the reality and something ex–
tra. Proust, one of the greatest writers on the subject of love, shows
in his love story of Swann and Odette how Swann, civilized, well–
bred and artistic, saw perfectly clearly that Odette was vulgar, pro–
miscuous, and not at all a suitable partner for him in the Parisian
world of his time. Right at the end of a section of the book, Swann
even resigned himself to the loss of Odette: "After all, she was not my
style." Nevertheless, at the beginning of the next chapter, Swann is
already married to Odette, because he adored her and couldn't resist
her, even while unhappily knowing and loving the worst about her.
Falling in love is by nature an unforeseen and chance affair, but
it is limited by the factor of opportunity. The number of people in
the world any one person can meet is comparatively few, and this is
usually further limited by occasions of meeting. In
The Tempest,
Miranda exclaims when she first sees Ferdinand:
I might call him
A thing divine, for nothing natural
I ever saw so noble.
But if she had never seen Ferdinand-ifthere had been no storm, no
shipwreck, to bring him into her life? Undoubtedly this nubile
maiden would eventually have become infatuated with Caliban.
Even though she has said of him:
'Tis a villain, sir,
I do not love to look on .
Miranda would inevitably have become enamored of the monster,
knowing him, by comparison with her father (who was taboo), to be
hideous, because Caliban was the only available male within her
range of opportunity. Prospero, of course, was aware of this danger.
Today there is an English aristocratic family, of which the four
daughters have all married dukes and earls. And, goes the apochry–
phal story, when the mother is asked how she managed to marry her
