Does beauty give birth to love or does love give birth to beauty? Did I love Chloe because she was beautiful or was she beautiful because I loved her? Surrounded by an infinite number of people, we may ask (staring at our lover while s/he talks on the phone or lies opposite us in the bath) why our desire has chosen to settle on this particular face, this particular mouth or nose or ear, why this curve of the neck or dimple in the cheek has come to answer so precisely to our criteria of perfection? Every one of our lovers offers different solutions to the problem of beauty, and yet succeeds in
...more
