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Love and Garbage by Ivan Klima, An Essay Review

Kien Lai | Phil. 465 | 11/17/00 | California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

Love and Garbage

It seems as though love is a lost cause for what we have we do not want and what we want we cannot have. We live our lives in search of meaning and purpose only to find that what we are left with is a better understanding of how we can never be fully complete no matter how far or wide we search. Klima, nonetheless, attempts to find the answers to what many of us have failed to put into words. In doing so, he only erects more unanswered questions that are left open in the novel Love and Garbage.

This enigma we hope to find through love is a mirage, a fairy tale, an illusion or trickery that we, unfortunately, use as a standard in our attempts at finding what we are made to believe to be love. It is as if we are all walking in the dark with our arms extended in hopes of finding what we lack most in ourselves.

We try to purge our void through the act of intercourse, but it only makes us realize how the emptiness within ourselves can never be fulfilled. No matter how we try to substitute this longing, we only make it worse by piling on more garbage within and around us (p. 163/164). All good things must come to an end and Klima finds himself detached from his lover.

Klima comes to understand that garbage is immortal. It stays with us and even liters our thoughts (p. 8). And because of this, we lose our way in the piles of rubbish that surrounds us. The state in which we put ourselves through when in love projects onto the world trash that we bring into being. Klima proclaims, "...so we love each other with all our strength and passion, out of uneasiness and out of loneliness, out of love, out of longing and out of despair." (p. 131) Why put oneself through such a state of grief?

It is interesting that Klima states on page 11 that the most numerous items of garbage were cigarette butts. Tis could be an analogy to love in many ways. Like how it brings us pleasure, and yet kills us slowly. We crave love like a smoker craves cigarettes and without it he is nothing more than blank. However, in the end we are only left with ashes or useless garbage. So either way we lose. If we receive pleasure through love, we are left with disappointment and even a deeper longing to become whole. On the other hand, if we are without it, we crave it in hopes of compensating for our empty space that consumes us, leaving us with an unbearable struggle to find what never existed in the first place.

What Klima was after he did not want to find through the words of another, but through self-enlightenment first hand (p. 17). To discover and experience what one can only attempt to communicate. If all there was to life was living one day to the next in the state of oblivion.

Klima touches upon the idea that we look for love as a substitute for our mothers (p. 26). How we tend to look for signs of caring, comfort, and minute similarities of physical appearance in our lovers. We are greeted by sadness, however, because nothing can ever take the place of our mothers.

One finds love in the most unexpected places. Klima finds love in the concentration camp that gave him a sense of hope. He now had something to look forward to.

Klima speaks of an interesting view of love on page 36. He states "...there is little that comes so close to death as fulfilled love." Were does one go once love is obtained? Life, according to Klima, comes to a conclusion. In his case, his love is sealed by the vows of marriage and ended the possibility of ever finding the one true love that awaits him. The obligation of having to conform to the role of being a husband and not be able to act freely in areas of external love other than his own wife.

The assign of time does not fade...

Love

The failure to enjoy the present by anticipating the future is one source of our garbage. The present is we can do the most good for ourselves and yet we look to tomorrow and what it will bring.

Klima feels as though he is merely living out the duration of his life and not experiencing it. It occurs to him that regardless of whether he gets up in the morning, life will go on with or without him. If so, than what is the purpose of living? What is his reason for being? The feeling of being needed is something Klima desires. The thought of being important and wanted floods him with happiness (p. 65) giving him a reason to continue existing.

There is no guide to lead us in the direction of love. It is a random occurrence that...

Love and insecurity go hand in hand. The fear of losing someone who we hold dear to our hearts sends chills up our back. It is something we try to not think about, but is always in the back of our minds. Klima's lover is just as lost as he when it comes to their insecurities. She keeps busy by being involved with art, but art can never fill the void of emptiness that exists within her. That is why she attaches herself to Klima. By being with Klima, she passes on her garbage onto him. For her, Klima distracts her from the sadness that lies deep down within her. And to ensure that the sorrow is suppressed, she wants from Klima guarantees that he will never leave her; only to find that she does not have him fully to herself for his heart belongs to another. In turn, she accumulates more garbage in the form of resentment, reminders of her loneliness, and how incomplete her life truly is.

Klima was in a sense reborn when he meets his lover. She made him feel alive again and, for a time, detached him from the many impurities of life. Her embrace made him forget about all the trash that co9nsumed him. Although, the aftermath brings him to terms with what can never be. That the temporary feeling of ecstasy will only remind him of what his soul ultimately lacks.

What we lack in ourselves we look for in others. Klima knows this first hand. He is lost in an endless abyss of despair and searches for answers through his lover. She solves his displacement for a while, but the extra garbage that flows from the relationship soon creates an internal struggle because of his commitment to his wife.

MOTHER COMMMENT PAGE 92

In many respects, love is in fact garbage. If we are not satisfied with what we have, is replaced or tossed by another. What Klima's wife lacked, his lover compensated for.

There is no cure to our missing self. That is not to say that there are no remedies to ease our pain and suffering.