77-78 The Power of Love

After a brief essay on Arnheim as "the darling of the press," we see the effects on Diotima of her growing love for Arnheim. The narrator begins by making clear that "Diotima's feelings did not develop in quite the same straight ascending line as Arnheim's success."

Diotima compares Arnheim, "the New Man," with her husband and "was deeply impressed with the superiority of a new breed of men over the methods of an obsolete diplomacy." But at the same time she's "plagued by an undefinable, general, indescribable sense of well-being that made her want to do things, do something, anything, though she couldn't imagine what."

The power of love also affects her thinking: "At this point Diotima's striving toward the ideal underwent a significant change."  She begins to suffer from "a noble idealism, a decorous high-mindedness, a disciplined exaltation."  The narrator goes on to explain in detail:

This idealism had nothing to do with realities, because reality always involves working at something, which means getting your hands dirty. It was more like the flower paintings done by the archduchess, for whom flowers were the only seemly choice of life study . . . it was . . . a sound and pure idealism, the kind that distinguishes most carefully between conflicts worthy of its concern and those that aren't, and which . . . does not share the conviction of the saints (along with doctors and engineers) that even moral garbage may contain unused heavenly links.

Under the influence of love Diotima begins to "read responsibly, with a view of extracting from what she called culture whatever might help her in the none too easy social situation in which she found herself."

The complexity of Diotima's new condition inevitably causes problems for her husband:

. . . Diotima's soul, temporarily unsupervised by the higher faculties, behaved like a truant schoolboy boisterously careening around until he is overcome by the sadness of his pointless liberty; and owing to this curious situation something briefly entered into her relations with her husband . . . that bore a strange resemblance, if not to a late springtime of love, then at least to a potpourri of all love's seasons.

Poor Section Chief Tuzzi:

Such unscheduled affection was not to his taste . . . But whenever he felt like taking her in his arms, or had actually done so, which made it even worse, she hotly accused him of never having loved her, of only pouncing on her like an animal. . . . All of a sudden he was supposed to see the difference between Eros, the free spirit of love unburdened by lust, and mechanical sex. It was all, of course, stuff she had read somewhere, and comical at that, but when a woman lectures a man in this fashion as she is undressing in front of him! --- Tuzzi thought --- it becomes downright insulting. For he could not fail to notice that Diotima's underwear had evolved in the direction of certain worldly frivolity.

So Tuzzi also finds himself thinking about Arnheim:

For this was the question to which the main question --- why was Arnheim frequenting his house? --- sometimes reduced itself: Why did Arnheim write? Writing is a particular form of chatter, and Tuzzi couldn't stand men who chatter.

The chapter ends with perhaps some jealousy budding in Tuzzi as he ponders the question, "why a man like Arnheim, who had no need whatsoever to write, should write so much."