Why Look at Animals? John Berger

Their surplus of curiosity, their research (every animal searches, only apes research) make them suffer in two evident ways - and probably also in others, invisibly.  Their bodies, forgotten, suddenly nag, twinge, and irritate.  They become impatient with their own skin - like Marat suffering from eczema.

And then too, starved of events, they suffer boredom.  Baudelaire's l'ennui.  Not at the same level of self-doubt, but nevertheless with pain, apathy.  The signs of boredom may resemble those of simple drowsiness.  But l'ennui has its unmistakable lassitude.  the body, instead of relaxing, huddles, the eyes stare painfully without focus, the hands, finding nothing new to touch or do, become like gloves worn by a creature drowning.

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The act of creation implies a separation.  Something that remains attached to the creator is only half-created.  To create is to let take over something which did not exist before, and is therefore new.  And the new is inseparable from pain, for it is alone.

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The peasant way of eating is centred on the act of eating itself and on the food eaten: it is centrifugal and cultural.  The first can complete itself in satisfaction; the second is never complete and gives rise to an appetite which, in essence, is insatiable.

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What does the lover choose?  He chooses to stake the world (the whole of his life) against the beloved.  The beloved concentrates all the possibilities of the world within her and thus offers the realization of all his own potentialities.  The beloved for the lover empties the world of hope (the world that does not include her).  Strictly speaking, being in love is a mood in so far as it is infinitely extensive - it reaches beyond the stars; but it cannot develop without changing its nature, and so it cannot endure.

The equivalence between the beloved and the world is confirmed by the sex.  To make love with the beloved is, subjectively, to possess and be possessed by the world.  Ideally, what remains outside the experience is - nothing.  Death of course is within it.

This provokes the imagination to its very depths.  One wants to use the world in the act of love.  One wants to make love with fish, with fruit, with hills, with forests, in the sea.