Elpis
Elpis
This chapter argues that love is, in a sense, always hopeless, and yet hope belongs only to it. This is the ultimate meaning of the myth of Pandora. The fact that hope, as the final gift, remains in the box means that it does not expect its factual accomplishment in the world—not because it postpones its fulfillment to an invisible beyond but because somehow it has always already been satisfied. Here, love is stronger than the adventure. But precisely for this reason, in love, we experience at each turn our inability to love and go beyond the adventure and events. Yet, this very inability is the drive that leads us to love.
Keywords: love, hope, Elpis, adventure, Pandora, demon, poetry
MIT Press Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
