A firmament in the midst of the waters: Dimensions of love in The English Patient

Chekhov wrote in "About Love," "I realized that when you love you must either, in your reasoning about that love, start from what is higher, more important than happiness or unhappiness, sin or virtue in their usual meaning, or you must not love at all" (395). Likewise, happiness and virtue in The English Patient yield to the catalysts of human frailty and passion which echo history and the natural world. What is more, one message offered by The English Patient is that art, beauty, and love may emerge from the most incongruous sources. The real Count Lazlo de Almasy "was an intrepid explorer, but he was also a homosexual who wrote passionate letters to a young German officer he tried to help avoid going to the Russian front. He was also a monarchist" (Perlez C 17) who worked for Rommel. Ondaatje was aware that "the Count never had an affair with another man's wife" (Perlez C22). Furthermore, Minghella responded on CBS Sunday Morning to a question regarding "films that are being turned out now in Hollywood [having] a clear morality and . . . a neatly tied up ending" with the statement: "I never see in life any clarity. There is no moral clarity in life." Thus, Katharine tells Almasy that she hates "a lie" although she has just lied to her husband over the phone before their first wedding anniversary in order to be with her lover. Moreover, Almasy jots down several sentences before making love to Katharine during a Christmas party where Clifton plays Santa Claus to the sounds of "Silent Night" and "God Save the King": "Betrayals in war are childlike compared with our betrayals during peace. New lovers are nervous and tender, but smash everything. For the heart is an organ of fire." And despite the wonders and vagaries of her affair, Katharine never denies her love for Clifton. In fact, she walks away from Almasy. Through this spirit of ambiguity, Michael Ondaatje concludes, "A book could be secret as a canoe trip, the making of a film more the voyage of Lord Jim's Patna-uncertain of ever reaching its destination with a thousand pilgrims on board and led by a morally dubious crew. But somehow magically it now and then got to a safe harbor" ("About Anthony Minghella's Screenplay" 19).

For in the end, if we allow ourselves to plunge into the uncharted flow of The English Patient, we may follow Minghella's hope "of shifting, of redefining an image and making [us] reconsider it from another point of view" (CBS Sunday Morning). As readers and viewers, we must also embrace, as the central characters do, the sweep of love that uncovers worlds and reveals dimensions across time, space, and history itself. Unquestionably, Ondaatje and Minghella ask a great deal of their audience. Nevertheless, the shared experience with this art promises illumination.

Douglas Stenberg

Works Cited

Chekhov, Anton. The Portable Chekhov. New York: The Viking Press, 1972.

Hatza, George. "`The English Patient' extraordinary romance." Reading Eagle/Reading Times 4 December 1996: A9.