“What should I do?
Enjoy myself. Plunge into the
vortex of pleasure and drown there.
Pleasure! Free and aimless I must
flutter from pleasure to pleasure, skimming the surface of life’s primrose
path.”
“Love is the pulse of the whole world… Oh, love!”
-Verdi, La Traviata
These two sections of lyrics from Verdi’s opera powerfully
illustrate the battle between carnal pleasure and true, charitable love. It is a battle shared by every human being,
fought on the private fronts of each individual’s heart.
In this scene, Violetta is wrestling with her own
passion. For much of the song, she
represents the voice of carnality. She
decries love as “madness” and insists on living an aimlessly pleasurable
lifestyle.
Alfredo’s voice interrupts her, however. He represents the more powerful draw of true,
unconditional love. Despite her
questionable lifestyle and her physical illness, Alfredo loves Violetta and
wants deeply to care for her.
In the end, Violetta allows this stronger love to overcome
her frivolity. She repents of her former
life, abandoning it for the more godlike expression of commitment to
another. Despite what Alfredo is later
led to believe, Violetta remains faithful to this love for the duration of her
life. She closes the opera with a
promise that she will maintain her true love throughout eternity.