De Amicitia, a Short Story by Somerset Maugham 

I suspect the eternal difficulty of love is the expectation that it is such a grand thing it must be eternal, pure and unchanging in its power and intensity. This state may exist but I think it exceedingly rare. The ethereal and the carnal must be in exactly the correct proportions for it to endure. Otherwise it is a volatile state that requires a powerful passion and the right luck and discipline to last. Who knows what lies in store for Maugham’s young lovers? Or as the artist “Papa” calls them, “imbeciles.”

I love how all these comments analyze a story written 100 years ago as if the story was just written...

Lovely❤

This story really struck a chord with me. Twice I had friends declaring they were in love with me. I reacted like Valentia - angry because it ruined the friendships. Everything is just awkward afterwards. You can be fond of - and care for - friends without being in love with them. If they feel more, its very unfortunate. I was friends with my husband first and then fell in love with him - you can't make that happen - the connection is simply something a lot deeper.

Every time I fall asleep with these lovely stories I'm woken back up with that incessant music at the end

Perfect story to have students read about the European morality before the sexual revolution! Fabulous!

Thankful for a happy ending! ♥️

I love the music... perfect for the story.

Besides the story the artwork on this chanel is great

Thinking of a time not that long ago, where passions acted upon resulted not long after in pregnancy - which changed everything!

Thank you 🙏

Very enjoyable and perfectly narrated!

Excellent.

Thanks so much for sharing ❤❤❤

Thank You! 💙💙💙💙💙🦩⚜️✨

Beautiful

Thank you 😊

I had no idea S. Maugham wrote so many short stories. The song is lovely- where can I find it?

Thank you..

*Hi just some thoughts after finishing listening to this lovely story.* Imagine if love was allowed to be that one truly sacred feeling, free to flourish and grow as the lovers go?! Love just happens, but seldom is truly allowed to unfold in a natural fashion. Love is the source of everything, a lovely, yet sheer but also a powerful force people are willing to fight for.. And yet for whatever reason, in every century & season, love has been used as a weapon against the lovers, meaning societal norms & expectations manage to hold lovers own love against them, as if love is something that only exists in fairytales and myths, and as soon as love finds its way & begins to blossom, there it’s, a the norms that exist in every society makes it impossible for the lovers to keep experiencing a very natural thing and their love is suddenly figuratively speaking put in chains until the lovers perform as they are expected to in accordance with the norms of their community. And these thoughts takes me back to the story about the 9 princesses who each got a parrot who all got their own golden designed cage, the cage so beautiful that the princesses father the King had to k*ll the person who had made the cages so no one else could ever have cages so beautiful as the ones the 9 princesses parrots had. And all was well, until it wasn’t. One morning the youngest princess, September found her parrot dead in the beautiful golden cage. She’d been taught the cage was a necessity to keep the most precious one safe and to protect the parrot from potentially flying away. Instead later on in the story the youngest princess learned another lesson by a beautiful little singing bird who too was locked inside the golden cage, & only when she found the beautiful bird and thought him to be dead did she give in and gave him his freedom back and the bird was able to again be free and he visited the princess many times afterwards.. Quote by Richard Bach: *”If you love someone, set them free. If they come back they're yours; if they don't they never were.!”* Respectfully, Grace 🩰

They aptly called it, "love sickness" for a reason..

Oh what an interesting ending! 😊😂😊 Great music at the end ❤

The Music at the beginning and end of your stories is very appealing I particularly love - Under The Paris Sky and have tried to write the lyrics but have been unsuccessful This is such an evocative song with hauntingly beautiful Lyrics/Music - Sung by ? Regardless - Thank you for a thought provoking story🙏

🙏🙏🙏🙏👏👏👏👏💕

lovely story , who sings at the end please ?

The narrator sounds like Herbert Marshall. Anyone agree?

This is a very strange story. It is an example of two young intellectuals rejecting their basic humanity in favor of their art. Thank God, they both sobered up in time. At the end of the day we humans are homo sapiens with animalistic needs.

Does anyone know what the end music is?

Valentia seems to be extraordinarily backward emotionally, as though she's so childlike she wants to live life as a child for ever. How can she possibly develop as a painter if she's that backward as a human being? Ferdinand is more normal even though rather slow and idealistic. It's unusual for me not to like a Maugham short story, but I find this one so odd that I keep wondering what asylum Valentia has escaped from.

Pen+Si+on...

Valentia was EFF'd up big time. I think she was waiting for a woman to love. She couldn't handle the sweetness, the richness, the rightness, of a man...

I do like Maughams writing. But I am getting tired of theme of romance. At 79 I know that romance only exists in patriarchal cultures...that is cultures that espouse the masculine outer-directed paradigm. ( Every culture, these days.) And the romances are almost always disappointing after the first flush of lust or delerium. Thats because we have forgotten our Inner Being. One needs the vaster Feminine mind to know ones IB. The Feminine is inner directed. Ego-mind Romance projects our Divine Self outward onto another human...and we fall in love with our self...out tgere...on them. Our ego mind thinks that the qualities we adore in the other are theirs...but thats delusional. We have projected our IB out onto the human-other and have fallen in love with our own projection. Thats why they seem so different after a while. But the human beloved can never be all that our IB is, who is our TRUE Beloved. And so disappointment and longing for Love arises again...and our eye wanders. We think just havent found the right human yet. And after years of sex addiction, or loneliness we die disappointed...never knowing the completion we are seeking...in all the wrong places.