Jeffrey Carduner, Aesthetic Realism consultant, writes:

Why love so often changes to something else is truly explained, and the beautiful solution is given, in “What Marriage Is Really For,” the new issue of The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known.

The commentary by editor Ellen Reiss begins:

Dear Unknown Friends:

It is an honor to begin serializing the lecture Eli Siegel gave on April 3, 1964, on the tremendous and everyday subject of marriage. He explains, with ease and might, definitively and gracefully, what marriage means, what people hope for in relation to it, and what interferes with love. In the lecture, he discusses his 1930 poem “A Marriage.”

There are probably more poems on the subject of love than on any other, and I consider “A Marriage” one of the greatest of all. I’ll be commenting on why as our serialization continues; but the reason is in the relation of what is said, and the music, the sound, of how it is said. The poem is in 20 sections. Eli Siegel wrote it on the occasion of a particular marriage, but, as he describes in the lecture, it is not about that marriage and those people: it’s about what love truly is.

“A Marriage” was published in this journal 26 years ago—in issue 873 (December 27, 1989). Now, as we present Mr. Siegel’s discussion, we include it again here. The poem has in it the way of seeing people and the world which became Aesthetic Realism, the philosophy he would begin to teach in 1941, a decade after “A Marriage” was written.

What Love Is For

The purpose of love, Aesthetic Realism explains, is to like the world—the wide, inclusive world of things and people—through knowing a particular person. The big mistake, the ever so frequent and ordinary crime against love, is to use a chosen person to put aside the world, feel superior to it and other human beings. This mistake is a phase of contempt; and Aesthetic Realism identifies contempt as “the greatest danger or temptation” of everyone. Contempt is the getting “a false importance or glory from the lessening of things not oneself.”

These principles are taught now, with beautiful success, in consultations at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation and via Skype throughout the world. They are taught in seminars, and in the Foundation’s Understanding Marriage! class. They are present as poetry in the great poem printed here. >> Read more