Well, here we are, the survivors of yet another Valentine’s Day. And Lapham’s Quarterly has decided to bless us with a splendid essay on the symbolism of the heart through history, which coincidentally ends up being a history of the genesis of “romantic love”. Personally, I was struck by how love in Galenic theory is tied to the liver (also the seat of fortitude) while the rest of the emotions gets to occupy the heart: How much courage does it take to love?
Another can of worms, unopened, is the question of how Love-Then could be understood by us (lovers all?) now, or if at all.
That small rain down can rain?
Christ, that my love were in my arms,
And I in my bed again.
While these Middle English lines may sound comfortably familiar, I suspect it is their shortness that suggests easy compatibility to our notions. As soon as poets become more elaborate, “love” emerges as very historically specific and idiosyncratic indeed:
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,Except that you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
It might not be quite fair to resort to Donne to dispel that comfortably squishy feeling of fake understanding that “Western wind” has conjured up. Then again, who but Donne with his blend of sex, faith, and violence in the Holy Sonnets can make us postmoderns understand that to the 17th century love may easily be spiritual & lofty (divine literally, in this case, with “you” being God) as well as downright creepy. No problem there, it seems. And, lest I should be accused of being too hard on Donne, here’s Boswell’s Dr. Johnson for you:
In a man whom religious education has secured from licentious indulgences, the passion of love, when once it has seized him, is exceedingly strong; being unimpaired by dissipation, and totally concentrated in one object. This was experienced by Johnson, when he became the fervent admirer of Mrs. Porter, after her first husband’s death. Miss Porter told me that when he was first introduced to her mother, his appearance was very forbidding: he was then lean and lank, so that his immense structure of bones was hideously striking to the eye, and the scars of the scrofula were deeply visible. He also wore his hair [i.e. no wig], which was straight and stiff, and separated behind: and he often had, seemingly, convulsive starts and odd gesticulations, which tended to excite at once surprise and ridicule. Mrs. Porter was so much engaged by his conversation that she overlooked all these external disadvantages, and said to her daughter, “This is the most sensible man that I ever saw in my life.” […] But though Mr. Topham Beaucleark used archly to mention Johnson’s having told him, with much gravity, “Sir, it was a love marriage on both sides,” I have from my illustrous friend the following curious account of their journey to church upon the nuptial morn: “Sir, she had read the old romances, and had got into her head the fantastical notion that a woman of spirit should use her lover like a dog. So, Sir, at first she told me that I rode too fast, and she could not keep up with me; and, when I rode a little slower, she passed me, and complained that I lagged behind. I was not to be made the slave of caprice; and I resolved to begin as I meant to end.”Of which Romantic error Johnson, that “most sensible man,” speedily liberated his love by riding up alone next, leaving the future Mrs. Johnson to catch up with him if she could, reduced to tears.
Elizabeth “Tatty” Johnson, widowed Porter
A slightly callous sensibility goes easily hand in hand with passionate devotion and fervent admiration, it seems, and surely, the foremost responsibility of a husband is the moral education of his wife: The woman must know her place! “I resolved to begin as I meant to end.”
I have decided to include the full description of Johnson’s splendid physique above to give you an idea of who it is who does the snubbing, erm, education. Note the widow Porter’s not unsubstantial charms, by comparison. This wedding party was not to be the stuff of old romances, indeed, nor, however, of more modern equivalents either.
Love comes in many guises, and some of them are thankfully historically obsolete.
