Othello: A Novel, 1995.From p. 140: Othello did not know how long he sat in the garden after Desdemona left. It could have been an hour or an eon. Grief had substituted itself for time. While the stars and the moon moved across the night sky, grief held him suspended outside time where there was no forward or backward. In grief he was more alone than he had ever thought possible. No one had warned him that to love meant to risk an aloneness so deep and so vast that death would appear convivial. He thought he understood now why, in his country, a man had many wives. There was no danger he would give his soul away to one. Among his people marriage was not so personal. There was affection between a man and his wives, but there was not the concentration of spirit when two focused only on each other. It was a dangerous way for two people to be. All meaning and significance was lodged in the other. What if that other should decide the meaning of yesterday was of no consequence today? That was where his people were very wise. "Guard your spirit," they said. He remembered the old ones reciting legends about women who stole men's spirits. Without his spirit, a man died. |
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