Steven Moore Quote

Esme discovers the earrings and dons them, but Wyatt has already spurned her by that point. Not until the last page on which he appears does he realize the importance of the earrings; by intending to pass them along to his daughter, he demonstrates his recognition of the emotions and especially the strongest, most liberating emotion of all, love.46 Not the sentimental love of romantics, nor the lust of sensualists: the kind of love Wyatt embraces is less eros than agapē—charity, attentiveness, caring. —Charity’s the challenge Wyatt had admitted earlier (383), but not until the end of the novel is he psychologically prepared to commit himself to this challenge. It is crucial to note that the Augustinian motto Wyatt chooses reads Dilige et quod vis fac (Love, and do what you want to [899]), not the more popular form Amo et fac quod vis—that is, Wyatt prefers the verb meaning to esteem and care for over that meaning to love passionately.47 This is the kind of love recommended in Eliot’s Four Quartets; for Wyatt it represents a new beginning, not an end, for as Eliot argues, this form of love never ceases to be a challenge.