قصة الكتاب :
\"The Double Flame: Love and Eroticism\" is an in-depth critical literary study of love and eroticism written by the Mexican poet, literary figure and politician Octavio Paz who was awarded Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990 for his body of work. Paz passed away in 1998. Paz has five poetry collections in addition to \"The Labyrinth of Solitude\" a book on Mexican personality.
\"The Double Flame: Love and Eroticism\" was initially written as a short essay. It has then been developed into a study of one hundred pages. This was again elaborated into a full book that is now considered the most comprehensive study of love and its dynamics since ancient civilizations up to the present day, where material power and technological barbarism destroy love- the very essence of humanity- and put out its flame.
A summary of Paz\'s study would unavoidably compromise its richness; however, a book review aiming at expansion of readability justifies such a summary. The richness, rigor and poetics of the book make it one of the most prominent books of the twentieth century that is yet penned by one of its most prominent poets.
Sex is the first spark that has ignited humanity. As humanity evolves, this fire acquired a red flame; eroticism, as love of the body inscribed in arts and literature, up to love as an elevation of human sentiments expressed in the form of a faint blue flame, off the red flame, to mix together forming the double flame; eroticism and love.
This definition tends to reduce the rigor of the book since it leaves out the cognitive significations of mankind\'s evolution from primitive historical stages up to the religious civilizations of the orient where sex is restricted, codified and regulated. This had ushered in a subsequent stage of intellectual and philosophical development proceeding from Alexandrian era that has shed the restrictions of the misogynistic Hellenistic philosophy, and up to the Islamic civilization that honors women. The Islamic civilization inspired European literature and Provence poets. This is traceable in the influences of Andalusian gacels and Muwashshah form in the work of some prominent poets such as Petrarch, Dante and Shakespeare.

The underlying configuration of eroticism and love binary is language. It is impossible to express the meanings of this passionate unity without spiritual language that is principally religious. The Arabic Sufi poetry tradition signifies, quite elegantly, this binary bringing together sensuous literature that revolves around the beloved, and devout, subtle love poetry. What language, other than the religious, would internalize the ambiguity of such human binary, the study inquires. The author, then, arrives at investigating the factors that had led to the destruction of passion and extinction of the double flame; the deeds of brutal capitalism, oppressive political regimes, and technology that turns humans into machines.