Intermezzo

by Sally Rooney

She said that she would like to play chess again sometime, out of interest, not having played since she was a child, and for some reason this made him very happy, and he kept saying how much fun it would be for them to play together, even though he had just been talking before about how chess no longer gave him any pleasure.

A different kind of love, obviously, completely different, and yet the words are the same, with something of the same meaning. As if Ivan feels inside himself a moving force, coming from inside himself but directed outward, wanting to find a home for itself elsewhere.

Ugh what a heart wrenching depiction of grief 🩷

This is what you get, Bridget seemed to be saying, for being different. Well, it’s true, after all, Margaret thinks. This is what you get. To work in a nice place with a few interesting people, to have friends with whom to discuss life and ideas. To attend the theatre, to hear live music, to arrange the use of the studio room on Monday nights for the local philosophy reading group. Oh, Kierkegaard, that’ll be interesting. To exercise once again, for a little time, who knows how long, the power to charm and fascinate, to be the object of an intense and searching desire. And to feel inside herself the reciprocating force of desire, this is what she gets, a life of her own.

“This is what she gets, a life of her own” UGH!!!!! Margaret I love you!!!!!

There is no such life, slipping free: life is itself the netting, holding people in place, making sense of things. It is not possible to tear away the constraints and simply carry on a senseless existence. People, other people, make it impossible. But without other people, there would be no life at all. Judgement, reproval, disappointment, conflict: these are the means by which people remain connected to one another.