Why Every Great Love Story Needs A Good Fight
More than two thousand years ago, the Roman comic playwright Terence wrote a line that’s still quoted today: amantium irae amoris integratio est, or “The quarrels of lovers are the renewal of love.”
Novelists have been proving him right ever since.
Yesterday’s translation post had another one of these fights: Baoyu and Daiyu, a visit to Baochai’s rooms, and a screaming match about death in the first month of the New Year. It’s the second big blow-up in just a few chapters. Back in Chapter 17, Daiyu cut up a half-finished sachet in a rage.
Now, when a book stages the same kind of scene twice, it’s worth asking what the scene is for.
