2023-04-25 21:26:48
Menander loves Glycerion, and Glycerion loves Menander. That could be the end of it, nothing is more beautiful and at the same time nothing less productive in terms of literature than such a constellation. But Menander, the famous, just young comedy writer, doesn’t really know what he wants. Before he met Glycerion, the seller of wreaths of flowers, he longed for a girl as he saw her: “an artless, open, free and cheerful soul, aware of her innocence”. Now that he’s been dating the sixteen-year-old, after a while it makes him uneasy. He disappoints Glycerion’s expectations, knowing that he can return to her after every escapade.
In the end the poet is alone, but Glycerion, who is now in her early twenties, writes calmly to her friend how surprised she is at the memory of the time with Menander and dissects what was going through her mind when she thought she was falling in love. She tells how she was already familiar with Menander’s texts even before she met her for the first time, how she came to feel attracted to him and how she was able to overlook the first sign that not only Menander’s feelings, but above all hers own would not suffice for a lasting relationship: “One can call these feelings and dispositions love,” writes Glycerion, “how many kinds of love are there not? But that it wasn’t love to which this name in the truest meaning belongs, I should have seen from the indifference in which his first infidelity left me, if one could have an idea of it before one really experiences it.”
#Wieland #biography #Jan #Philipp #Reemtsma