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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How is the heart described in the section entitled "The Heart?"
(a) As a tired metaphor for romance.
(b) As a symbol of fertility.
(c) As a pretext for intimacy.
(d) As a gift-object and an organ of desire.

2. The lover associates atopia in the other with which of the following qualities?
(a) Innocence.
(b) Indolence.
(c) Intelligence.
(d) Secrecy.

3. "Connivance" describes a situation of connivance that occurs between which two people?
(a) The amorous subject and his rival.
(b) The amorous subject and his mother.
(c) The object of love and the lover's rival.
(d) The amorous subject and the object of love.

4. In Dark Glasses/To Hide, what main subject does the author address?
(a) The lover wonders to what degree he should conceal the turbulence of his passions.
(b) The lover derides the other's secretiveness.
(c) The lover disguises his distrust of the other.
(d) The lover wonders whether he should declare his love.

5. In the section entitled "Waiting," which of the following processes is described?
(a) A growing anxiety and loss of all sense of proportion while waiting for the other.
(b) An increasing apathy regarding the other's absence.
(c) Making lists of the other's faults while waiting for him.
(d) A growing fear of the death of the beloved during his absence.

6. The term "atopos" is associated with which of the following figures?
(a) Plato.
(b) Socrates.
(c) Meno.
(d) Nietzsche.

7. In "The Tip of the Nose/Alteration," what does "the tip of the nose" refer to?
(a) A photograph of the author's mother.
(b) A figure in a Flemish painting.
(c) The nose of a German poet.
(d) The slightly decayed nose of a disinterred corpse.

8. In "To Be Ascetic," the term "askesis" is associated with which of the following acts?
(a) Self-punishment and gentle retreat.
(b) Foreign travel.
(c) Complete rejection of society.
(d) Meditation.

9. How does the lover come to perceive the contingencies that affect him?
(a) As hallucinations.
(b) As a kind of fate.
(c) As signs of love.
(d) As random unrelated events.

10. What does the "fulfillment" or comblement of the title refer to?
(a) Feelings of sadness over the impossibility of fulfillment.
(b) Self-actualization that bypasses the need for the other.
(c) Fulfilling one's childhood dreams.
(d) The will to complete fulfillment in love that exceeds language.

11. What does the lover seek to "read" on the other's body?
(a) Unexpressed thoughts.
(b) The meaning of beauty.
(c) Evidence of imperfection.
(d) The cause of his desire.

12. What does the term "alteration" refer to in this section of the text?
(a) To the production of a counter-image of the loved object.
(b) To the rejection of perfection by the lover.
(c) To a sewing procedure, which is a metaphor in the text.
(d) To the missing tip of a nose, and nothing else.

13. In the section titled "I want to understand," what is the subject trying to understand?
(a) The nature of trust.
(b) Himself and what it means to be "in love."
(c) What it means to feel secure.
(d) The meaning of life.

14. To whom is the narrator's asceticism addressed?
(a) To those friends who doubt the depth of his feelings.
(b) To the mother.
(c) To society.
(d) To the other (the one who is loved).

15. What effect does the other's atopia have on language?
(a) It makes language indecisive and false; the other cannot be qualified.
(b) It does not have any effect on language.
(c) It inspires the lover to new and better descriptions of the other.
(d) It makes the lover take refuge in falsehoods.

Short Answer Questions

1. What three things can shatter the ideal and protected Image of the lover according to the author?

2. According to this section in the text, what is the best reaction to the other's suffering?

3. In the section on absence, to what early experience does the author link the subject's feelings about the absent lover?

4. When does this desire affect the subject?

5. In Dark Glasses/To Hide, what paradox is revealed in the act of concealment?

(see the answer keys)

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