The History of Love

The History of Love

The History of Love is a novel in the form of a homage to things lost, as well as to unsolved mysteries. The novel within the novel, also named The History of Love is the basis for all these questions.

Leo Gursky is an old locksmith who feels as though he is disappearing. He tries at all costs to draw attention to himself, but he still feels he has a void in his life. Eventually, he goes on a quest to find his long-lost son and the novel that he wrote as a young man, now published in Chile under the name of Zvi Litvinoff. Alma Singer is a teenage girl who is trying to keep her family together after the loss of her father. Named after the heroine of The History of Love, Alma tries to console her widowed mother (who has recently been requested to translate the novel from Spanish) as well as keep her younger brother Bird (who believes he is a lamed vovnik) from becoming a social pariah.
In The History of Love by Nicole Krauss, photography is sometimes presented as proof of existence. However, this idea is troubled when Leo cannot get any photo of himself to develop properly, whereas photos of his cousin taken at the same time develop normally (81-82). It is important to consider how Leo overcomes this difficulty in his own mind: “I took a photograph of him, and as we watched the paper in the developing pan his face appeared…It was me who’d taken the picture, and if it was proof of his existence, it was also proof of my own…Whenever I took it out of my wallet and looked at him, I knew I was really looking at me” (82).

Photography is also used as a substitute for human contact, as a way of knowing others, as in the case when Leo admits that he has studied all known photographs of his son and when wants to yell at the photograph of his dead son, pictured in a newspaper at Starbucks: Isaac! Here I am! Can you hear me? (77).

Photography is a way of knowing the world that we see. Note the distinction between knowing and seeing. This is best illustrated by the blind man who has been to Antarctica and who takes a photo of Charlotte Singer so that, when he recovers his sight, he can know what he has been seeing (39).

Photography is also the conceit of a perfect memory, and of the promise of memorializing change, as in when Leo wishes he could photograph Alma every day of her life, trying to capture her growth and change over time (90). (In fact a man tried to do this, photograph himself every day of his life, and produced a poignant record of it, right up until the moment he died of cancer: full collection here; overview account here).
Photography is also the illusion of clarity, as when Alma refers to vivid memory as a photograph. But faded memories are also photographs, just photographs of other photographs (192).

And yet... to use Leo’s favorite expression, in all of these examples of photography, the novel undermines the authority of photography. Photography is supposed to do those things. The characters want it to do those things, but photography fails. As an act of representation that is supposedly authoritative and complete, never lying, always transparent and self-evident, photography is peculiarly insufficient in this novel.

Some Notes on the ‘Love’ in The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

The University of Texas Arlington First Year Reading Experience Program, known as the OneBook Program, has selected The History of Love by Nicole Krauss as the book for 2008-2009. As faculty co-chair of OneBook I’ve had a lot of fun assisting in the development of study guides and such materials to help students as they begin reading. (The online resources we’ve gathered are listed here.) In what follows, I present some thoughts on the meanings of love in The History of Love. I have already posted a short essay about the novel on the OneBook Blog titled “Some Thoughts on Photography in The History of Love”, as well as a video of Nicole Krauss, so I hope students at UT Arlington and other web surfers will find those resources useful as conversation starters. (UTA students are also welcome to join our OneBook Facebook page for more useful tips on The History of Love and to network with each other, faculty, librarians and staff who have read the book. Currently, there is an open thread on the facebook onebook group titled “English 1301 Students Ask Your Questions Here”. We’ll do our best to give answers or provide some food for thought at least.)

Some Notes on the ‘Love’ in The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

What does love got to do with it? In the section “Until the Writing Hand Hurts” (119-134) we learn of Leo’s reaction to his uncle’s death. “Suddenly I felt the need to beg God to spare me as long as possible…I was terrified that I or one of my parents were going to die…The fear of death haunted me for a year…I was left with a sadness that couldn’t be rubbed off” (125). But meeting Alma brought that all-permeating sadness to an end. Leo puts a wall around those thoughts of mortality as he loves Alma. “Only after my heart attack, when the stones of the wall that separated me from childhood began to crumble at last, did the fear of death return to me” (129).

It is the power of love that keeps the manuscript of The History of Love alive and brings it into print. In speaking for Leo, whom Zvi believes to be dead, Zvi brings a magical book into the orbit of people’s lives. The book results in the naming of Alma Singer and her subsequent quest to know her origins. The book memorializes Leo Gursky’s name as proof of his existence fades away. It connects Isaac to Charlotte. It becomes a pretext for Bird to do something loving for his sister. The linchpin of all of these possibilities is the fact that Alma’s name remains intact at the center of the book. Without that clue, all might have been forgotten and The History of Love would not have had the impact it had.

Is sentimental love successful in this novel? As in the case of photography, sentimental love is loaded with the promise of meaning and transcendence, but it is continually troubled because Leo loses Alma, Zvi is closed off from Rosa emotionally, Charlotte does not fall in love with another man in spite of Alma’s efforts, and Misha and Alma’s budding love in interrupted.

There are other kinds of love, however, that are successful: Leo’s love of Bruno and of writing; Alma’s love for her mother and absent father which provides her with an impetus to explore her origins and ‘connect’; Bird’s love for Goldstein, who mentors him and helps him come up with strategies for survival.

So what does the title mean? The History of Love is a book within a book, but it is also a phrase that calls up a progression in time, beginning in childhood and culminating in old age and death. The title may be read as referencing the pathways of memory and creation that are driven by one man’s love for one woman.