Christian Oster: From Courtly Love to Modern Malaise

Even a cursory glance at Christian Oster’s work shows an author hard at work drafting a new lover’s map. From Volley-ball (1989) to Mon grand appartement (1999), Oster aimed to redefine the landscape of desire for a postmodern and post-romantic environment. If anything, his most recent production has not deviated from this goal. Indeed, Une femme de ménage [A Maid] (2001), Dans le train [In the Train] (2002), Les rendez-vous (2003), and L’imprévu [The Unforeseen] (2005), set the stage for an even more rigorous investigation of love, its vagaries, and modus operandi.1 Of course, the type of love that Oster investigates is a far cry from the fatuous sentimentality of Hallmark cards and contemporary telenovellas. Rather, it is a love anchored in the domestic and the trivial. It is a minimal love, more concerned with the mundane inner workings of the human heart (ludus), and remarkably unconcerned with pathos (mania). It is a love tempered by stoicism; this love does not amount to indifference, but seeks freedom from passion, which, etymologically, incorporates “anguish” and “suffering.”