'Never seek to tell thy love' : Hannah Arendt and the secret

In a section of The Human Condition titled 'The Public Realm: The Common', Hannah Arendt makes a fleeting, seemingly inconsequential reference to a poem by William Blake called 'Love's Secret'. Discussing what she believes to be the essentially private, fragile character of love, or the sense in which love must be protected from the 'implacable, bright light of the public scene', Arendt directly quotes the poem's first two lines. 'Love', she submits, 'in distinction from friendship, is killed, or rather extinguished, the moment it is displayed in public ("Never seek to tell thy love/Love that never told can be"). Because of its inherent worldlessness,' she continues, 'love can only become false or perverted when it is used for political purposes' (Arendt 1998: 52-3). On face value, Arendt's point here borders on the prosaic: Whereas friendship is a public phenomenon, having a tendency to strengthen and grow when observed by others, love, or some aspect of love, must remain private in order to survive.