Lose the world for a glance
May 27, 2016, Literature
Yet I had quite underestimated Orfeo, the opera most immaculately targeted at the griefstruck; and in the cinema the miraculous trickery of art happened again. Of course Orfeo would turn to look at the pleading Euridice – how could he not? Because, while 'no one in his senses' would do so, he is quite out of his senses with love and grief and hope. You lose the world for a glance? Of course you do. That is what the world is for: to lose under the right circumstances. How could anyone hold to their vow with Euridice's voice at their back?
Julian Barnes, Levels of Life, 2013, p. 93.