Gilles A. Tiberghien's 'Aimer. Une histoire sans fin' Published by Flammarion

Gilles A. Tiberghien's essay 'Aimer. Une histoire sans fin' (Flammarion) redefines love not as a feeling but as an endless story constructed through correspondence. The book adopts the 18th-century epistolary novel form, from Rousseau's 'Julie ou la Nouvelle Héloïse' to Laclos's 'Les Liaisons dangereuses', to explore love as a proliferating narrative structured by seasons: winter (latency), spring (renewal), summer (joyful discovery), and autumn (disaffection, jealousy). Tiberghien argues that love stories are endless because they belong to aesthetic judgment—a sensitivity to the other without finality—yet eroticism and the couple impose an ethical limit. Correspondence is both the literary form and the definition of love: a surprising discovery of accord, a physical, spiritual, and cultural correspondence. References to Stendhal, Breton, Barthes, Plato, Kierkegaard, Sartre, and Derrida enrich the exchange without weighing it down. The essay refuses to reduce love to psychic determinism, leading naturally to philosophical reflections anchored in existence. Reviewed by Claire Margat.