The Metamorphosis of Love, by Pablo Irizar, is a new work; not an abstract novelty that ignores the past, but a novelty rooted in tradition that teaches us how to think today. One can only make something new from the old. However, the old would remain forever buried in the past unless it were questioned otherwise. Such is probably the masterful character of the work published here. For a long time, Bernard of Clairvaux’s work has been confined either to a mysticism deracinated from any anthropological support, or to a simple biblical commentary without any philosophical consequence. This is what Pablo Irizar’s work does not do, and does not want to do. Supporting a thesis of his own, even if inspired by others, “the metamorphosis of love” has a bright future ahead, and we can only hope that the author will continue on this path, that has been so well begun. For there is a “proper way of love” that Bernard of Clairvaux had once pioneered, and that we have, if not seen too little, at least forgotten. It is thus in the light of contemporary philosophy that we must question the Cistercian, and apprise him for our contemporaries: an “actualizing” of the Cistercian On the Song of Songs which is not simply an “updating” of an ancient author, but the “deployment of all its unsuspected possibilities” (putting into action or actualizing).
The Greek and Christian traditions have indeed never ceased to intersect – and the demonstration here shows it better than ever. “Metamorphosis of love” certainly, but also “metamorphosis of the tradition,” which Saint Bernard himself executes. Such double metamorphosis is shown in this œuvre. Eros is Greek, as we know, and agape is Christian. However, it would be a mistake either to merge or to separate the terms as well as the cultural heritages. Some have maintained the “equivocity” of eros and agape (Nygren), others have claimed their “univocity” (Marion), while in the past “analogy” was preferred (Thomas Aquinas). With regard to these three models, the work of Pablo Irizar does not want to reject them, but to show, on the contrary, that they only find meaning, and are completed, in the “transformation” or “metamorphosis” of eros by agape. There is the “metamorphosis of finitude” certainly by the resurrection, but it produces at the same time a “metamorphosis of love” in the union of the soul with God. “Love changes everything” in theology, just as the “incarnation changes everything”, said Merleau-Ponty, in philosophy this time. This is the “change” that makes the encounter with God not a simple metanoia or conversion, but a true incorporation of man into God, by which the resurrection will no longer be thought of as an ontic event in (dans) the world, but as an ontological transformation of (du) the world. God did not come into the world to love us, but it is by loving us, and because he already loved us, that he came to be incarnated. Love is never a result but a principle. Love as a “force”, as the second part of the book so well indicates, produces the world rather than discover itself as a dimension of the world. This is what Bernard of Clairvaux knows and sees, or rather, what Pablo Irizar’s work makes us see, in case we have forgotten.
Does the Cistersian anticipate Nietzsche or, rather, does Bernard address, from a Christian perspective, the concepts of “metamorphosis” and “force”? Must these concepts not be inserted in the body, or rather, must they not produce “body”, to truly give themselves and incorporate? This is, after the transformation of eros by agape, the second novelty of the work by Pablo Irizar. For love is not only a dimension of God, but also of man. Better still, and Bernard of Clairvaux showed this perfectly, it is only by passing through the experience of man (eros) that one reaches and understands the experience of God (agape), knowing that it is up to divine love to transform human love and incorporate it into itself. Hodie legimus in libro experientiae – “today we read from the book of experience.” This formula in sermon 3 of the Cistercian’s commentary on Song of Songs fully justifies that the metamorphosis of love begins (commencer), and originates (débuter), with experience. For it is not enough to abstract, in matters of love more than anywhere else is. The concreteness of the act of loving is the best way to be incarnated, for man as for God. “Love makes the body” rather than “the body makes love”. Bernard of Clairvaux understood this absolutely, and Pablo Irizar demonstrates it perfectly; no eros without desired agape, and no agape without transformed eros.
Hence the dimension of desire – the third great originality of The Metamorphosis of Love. The “desire of the body” must be thought of as the “hermeneutical key” of the whole reading of On the Song of Songs, as this work so well shows and underlines. The body in love, of course, but also the sick body or the hungry body, belong to desire by awaiting it or by generating it. “I have longed to eat this Easter with you” (Lk 22.15). The doubling of desire here (the desire of desire) extracts it from simple need (simple desire). This is true of human desire, which not only desires the other, but also desires the desire of the other (anthropogenic desire). It is thus with God also – who does not desire man in the sense of a lack, but of a partner to fulfill himself (theogenic desire). “Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth” (Sg 1.2). The magnificent formula that opens the Song of Songs serves for Bernard of Clairvaux as the opening of his commentary, and for Pablo Irizar it becomes the foundation of his interpretation of Saint Bernard.
There is indeed not only the philosophical, but also the mystical, in The Metamorphosis of Love. Whoever reads it gradually will finally see the fields crossed, rather than opposed. Boundaries are never barriers, and crossing them is not overstepping boundaries that are forever fixed, but rather being bold and newly creative. A “contemporary reading” of Bernard of Clairvaux’s On the Song of Songs was waiting to be done. Pablo Irizar has done it perfectly. It is not enough to historicize, it is also necessary to think for today. The ancients question the moderns because the latter are themselves never so “modern” than when they send us back to the most ancient problems. Love is one of them. “Philo-sophy” – “love of wisdom”, or rather “wisdom of love”, such as Saint Bernard comes to teach us. With neither eros on the one hand, nor agape on the other, we await for the “metamorphosis of eros by agape” to take charge of the human being as such, and to convert “into God” what is deepest in him – passions less dominated by reason than inhabited by the divine in order to consider them differently: o emos eros estaurotai – “it is my love (eros) that they have crucified,” it is appropriate here to exclaim following Ignatius of Antioch (quoted and commented by Dionysius the Areopagite [Divine Names, ch. II, 12, 709 a-b]).
We would have missed The Metamorphosis of Love if it had not been so well produced and written. Here it is today published. For the one who has the honor of prefacing the work it is also a joy to have been able to welcome the author in Paris to direct him in his research. Dialogue is never as fruitful as when it is lived and experienced “in the flesh”. To renew the tradition, of course, but also to question our present – such is the task of philosophy, especially when it accepts to “cross the Rubicon”, and to assess the “backlash of theology on phenomenology”. Pablo Irizar has been able to do this, and it is sure that this work will lead to other essays, because one never stops on such good path when one has begun so well: “He who climbs never stops going from beginning to beginning through beginnings that have no end” (Gregory of Nyssa [Homilies on the Song of Songs, ch. VIII, 941 c]).