Love StinksJuly 22, 2011 by Michael Kneeland

When you study the Western conception of Love throughout theages, you quickly realize that the loving feeling is usuallydepicted as painful. Consider Cupid: he causes people tofall in love by piercing them with arrows. The Greeks usedthis explanation to account for the “piercing” feeling onefeels when falling in love: it is sharp and not at allhappy.

I.

Ecce deus fortior me

Dante Alighieri, world-renowned poet and stalker

One of the earliest writers outside of the ancient world todepict love as painful is Dante Alighieri (c. 1265-1321),best known as the composer of the epic Divine Comedy. What most fail to realize — mainly because they havenever bothered to read the poem — is that Dante embarks onhis journey through Hell, Purgatory, and eventually Paradise just to see the woman he had lovedhopelessly for decades. Hence, the splendidly snarky “Book-A-Minute” version of the Inferno:

Some woman puts Dante through Hell. THE END.

Dante first introduces us to his anguishing unrequited lovein La Vita Nuova, or The New Life, in which he mingles poetry andprose to describe the exhilaration of first meetingBeatrice, the pain of her arranged marriage to another man,and the devastation of the news of her early death.Apparently, Dante and Beatrice met when he was nine and sheeight, and for Dante it was love at first sight; but theylived apart and in different social spheres, so Beatriceeventually married someone else, a banker named Simone deiBardi, in 1287. She died three years later at the age oftwenty-four. According to Dante, they crossed paths onlyonce after childhood, in the streets of Florenceapproximately eight years before her death. During thispurported meeting, Beatrice merely greeted Dante, afterwhich Dante went home and dreamed of her. This dream becamethe basis for the first sonnet in La Vita Nuova.

'Dante Meets Beatrice at Ponte Santa Trinita,' by Henry Holliday (1883). You can almost hear the ladies accompanying Beatrice saying, "Oh look -- there's that

Alighieri creep staring at you again."

Dante describes the “pain” of this obsessive love forBeatrice beginning at their first meeting:

At that moment I say truly that the vital spirit, thatwhich lives in the most secret chamber of the heartbegan to tremble so violently that I felt it fiercelyin the least pulsation, and, trembling, it utteredthese words: ‘Ecce deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur michi:Behold a god more powerful than I, who, coming, willrule over me.’ At that moment the animal spirit, thatwhich lives in the high chamber to which all thespirits of the senses carry their perceptions, began towonder deeply at it, and, speaking especially to thespirit of sight, spoke these words: ‘Apparuit iam beatitudovestra: Now your blessedness appears.’ At that moment

the natural spirit, that which lives in the part whereour food is delivered, began to weep, and weeping saidthese words: ‘Heu miser, quia frequenter impeditus ero deinceps!: Ohmisery, since I will often be troubled from now on!’(La Vita Nuova, Chapter II; translated by A.S Kline)

Notice the word choices here: his “heart began to tremble soviolently that [he] felt it fiercely in the least pulsation”; hewas trembling; his natural spirit “began to weep“; and headdresses misery directly at the end. Certainly, this is notwhat love has come to mean for our contemporary pop culture.Dante’s Love (capital “L”) is a god that dominates his souland brings him only suffering. Not merely an extension ofthe Greeks’ mythology, this god is a figuration used byDante to depict the brutality of Love. He never conqueredthis dominating god in his lifetime, though he did marryanother woman, Gemma di Manetto Donati. Unfortunately forGemma, however, Dante only wrote about Beatrice: he does notonce mention his lawful wife in any of his poems. You canunderstand, therefore, why Gemma did not accompany herhusband when he was exiled from Florence for politicalreasons in 1302. Indeed, I cannot imagine, with Dante’sobsession of Beatrice, that the Alighieri-Donati union wasan altogether happy one, though it did yield four children.

***

II.

Undone by sorrow

"I come to you expressing my love. But don't tell your husband -- okay?"

Dante’s obsessive poeticism of Beatrice was not unique: infact, it comes as part of a tradition that precedes Dante byabout two hundred years. Though the term “courtly love” wasnot used popularly until the 19th century, the practice hadbeen acknowledged, performed, and upheld since at least the11th century. The Dante-Beatrice model exemplifies theideals of courtly love: a man expresses deep, yearning lovefor a woman whom he cannot attain physically. Generally, butnot always, the woman was a higher social rank than the man:she might be, for instance, the wife of the male lover’sfeudal lord. I should stress that the “love” shared betweenthe courtly lovers was not physical, but simply emotional,for this type of love was rare in the arranged marriagesamong nobility in the medieval period. (Case in point: theAlighieri-Donati union.) Expressions of this semi-adulterous

emotional love usually took the form of poetry and music,especially with the appearance of troubadours in the HighMiddle Ages.

These troubadours were poets and musicians who wroteand sang about a variety of topics, among them courtly love.The earliest troubadour we know of is William IX, Duke ofAquitaine (1071-1126), who was excommunicated by the Churchtwice: once for tax fraud and another time for abducting aViscountess named Dangereuse, the wife of one of his vassalsin the Aquitanian feudal system. Understandably, Mrs.William IX, Philippa of Toulouse, was as upset as the Churchabout this abduction; but when ordered by a representativeof the pope to return the aptly-named Viscountess to herhusband, William allegedly responded, “Curls will grow onyour pate before I part with the Viscountess.” (The papalrepresentative, it seems, was bald. Touché, MonsieurGuillaume!) Humiliated, Philippa moved out and died alone atFontevraud Abbey two years later. Women in the medievalperiod just couldn’t catch a break.

Despite William’s disrepute, he composed a body ofcourtly love-poetry that has been remembered more than hislascivious actions. Glancing at his poems, you can see thefoundations of courtly love beginning to cement, as here in“Farai chansoneta nueva”:

Her skin is white as ivory;no other’s in my history:an urgent show of love for meis needed to remove all doubt.I’ll die now, by St. Gregory,without a kiss, indoors or out.What good, fair lady, will be doneif with your love you’d up and run?

perhaps you want to be a nun?I tell you now, that I love you:by sorrow I will be undoneunless my claim appeals to you.(Translated by James H. Donalson)

Though the word choice is not as sophisticated or brutal asDante’s, the idea of love being painful persists: he claims,for instance, that he will die without a kiss from hissecret love, and later says that he will be “undone” bysorrow if his lady does not accept his “appeals”. In allfairness, William blatantly broke the rules of courtly loveby straightforwardly kidnapping his lady fair, but laterpoets hardly paid attention to mundane history; the emotionsof the poetry were much more memorable to them.

III.

Noli me tangere

Thomas Wyatt, failed hunter

Dante was not the only famous Italian poet of the medievalperiod: his approximate contemporaries Petrarch (1304-1374)and Boccaccio (1313-1375) influenced later writers as well,though to a slightly lesser extent. Petrarch’s sonnets, forinstance, were imitated by early English sonneteers likeThomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, and Boccaccio had a profoundinfluence upon Chaucer. Like Dante, Petrarch had his ownBeatrice, a woman named Laura, whom he loved but could notattain because she was married to another man. Petrarch’spainful loving experience was apparently as excruciating asDante’s, for of his first seeing Laura he writes:

It was on that day when the sun’s raywas darkened in pity for its Maker,that I was captured, and did not defend myself,because your lovely eyes had bound me, Lady.It did not seem to me to be a time to guard myselfagainst Love’s blows: so I went onconfident, unsuspecting; from that, my troublesstarted, amongst the public sorrows.Love discovered me all weaponless,and opened the way to the heart through the eyes,which are made the passageways and doors of tears:so that it seems to me it does him little honourto wound me with his arrow, in that state,he not showing his bow at all to you who are armed.(Canzoniere III; translated by A.S. Kline)

Again, the writer speaks of being attacked by Love (againcapitalized), and the word choice conjures the familiarmelancholic effect: the sunshine darkens “in pity,” and theeyes are described as being “the passageways and doors oftears.” Thomas Wyatt, whose Beatrice-figure was

unfortunately the ill-fated Anne Boleyn, learned much fromPetrarch’s sonnets and adapted them to English, as in hisfamous “Whoso List to Hunt”:

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,But as for me, helas! I may no more.The vain travail hath worried me so sore,I am of them that furthest come behind.Yet may I by no means, my worried mindDraw from the deer; but as she fleeth aforeFainting I follow. I leave off therefore,Since in a net I seek to hold the wind.Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,As well as I, may spend his time in vain;And graven in diamonds in letters plainThere is written, her fair neck round about,“Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I am,And wild to hold, though I seem tame.”

Wyatt proclaims that he knows where a beautiful doe may behunted, but also that the hunt itself is ever in vain sincethe deer cannot be caught. What is more intriguing is thereference to the diamond necklace around the hind’s neck,which reads, “Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I am” — that is,“Touch me not, for the King’s I am.” Given this surmise, it isquite clear that Wyatt was writing rather directly about hisunrequitable love for Anne Boleyn, the short-term wife ofHenry VIII, especially when you consider in addition thefact that Wyatt was imprisoned in the Tower of London forsupposed adultery with Anne. Tradition has it, in fact, thatwhile Wyatt was imprisoned, he witnessed through his prisonwindow Anne’s execution. That cannot have been a goodfeeling for him (or, for that matter, for Anne).

Boccaccio, the third major poet to come out of medievalItaly, composed, among other things, two lengthy poemscalled Il Filostrato and Teseida, both of which left an impressionon a certain 12th-century diplomat and part-time writer,Geoffrey Chaucer. The former gave Chaucer Troilus andCriseyde and the latter, the story of Arcite and Palamonfrom The Knight’s Tale. In that story, those two characters viefor the love of Emily, a girl in the court of Theseus, theDuke of Athens. Not surprisingly, their feelings of love arepainful. The two have been imprisoned by Theseus asprisoners of war, and it is in their cells that they firstglimpse the girl:

Through a deep window set with many barsOf mighty iron squared with massive spears,[Palamon] chanced on Emily to cast his eyeAnd, as he did, he blenched and gave a cryAs though he had been stabbed, and to the heart.

And soon after:

                                          Arcita chanced to seeThis lady as she roamed there to and fro,And, at the sight, her beauty hurt him soThat if [Palamon] had felt the wound before,Arcite was hurt as much as he, or more,And with a deep and piteous sigh he said:“The freshness of her beauty strikes me dead,Hers that I see, roaming in yonder place!”(Translated by Nevill Coghill)

Like so many other literary personages before him, Palamonsees the girl he loves and instantly feels as though he has

“been stabbed, and to the heart.” Similarly, Arcite feels asthough her beauty kills him on the spot. Chaucer’sdescriptions of the piercing sensation are no doubt residualthrough Boccaccio from the Greek myths of Cupid shootinglovers with arrows.

IV.

My love is a fever

Love sick

The Greek myths (via Ovid), Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio,Chaucer, and likely even Wyatt all influenced the arablemind of young Will Shakespeare. From this poetic, love-as-pain tradition, Shakespeare took us to levels of unhappyloving emotion like never before, as in Sonnet 129:

The expense of spirit in a waste of shameIs lust in action; and till action, lustIs perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,Enjoy’d no sooner but despised straight,Past reason hunted, and no sooner had

Past reason hated, as a swallow’d baitOn purpose laid to make the taker mad;Mad in pursuit and in possession so;Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.All this the world well knows; yet none knows wellTo shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

First, some anatomical definitions: the “expense of spirit”is male ejaculation, as “spirit” in Shakespeare’s timereferred to, among other things, seminal fluid. That thisoccurs “in a waste of shame” only solidifies this surmise.Also: the last word, “hell”, is here a pun, for it refers tothe torment the speaker is going through, but also to thevagina, as “hell” was slang for that organ in Elizabethantimes. Thus, it makes sense to say that the “dream” ofsexual satisfaction “leads men to this hell.”

But this poem’s intent is not merely to be bawdy andscandalize; pay attention to the speaker’s word choice: hegoes beyond simple pain-imagery, though that is present, andin fact he bypasses mere love for the more base andimmediate sensation of lust. Take together the lengthyprogression of adjectives that describe this sensation:“perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame, / Savage,extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust” — and those are just themodifiers of three words or fewer! This tormented languagereveals that the speaker is guilty for having “meaningless”sex on the one hand, and yet desiring it still on the other.This is a complexity only glimpsed in writers before, andone only imitated since.

Shakespeare’s sonnets are far from all lust, however,and he certainly showcases the love-as-pain idea asmasterfully as his predecessors in Sonnet 147 — one of thefamous “Dark Lady” sonnets:

My love is as a fever, longing stillFor that which longer nurseth the disease,Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,The uncertain sickly appetite to please.My reason, the physician to my love,Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,Hath left me, and I desperate now approveDesire is death, which physic did except.Past cure I am, now reason is past care,And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;My thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are,At random from the truth vainly express’d;For I have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright,Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

Desire, here, is beyond a mere piercing: Cupid’s arrow hasstruck its mark and festered into a disease; in short, touse Shakespeare’s own words, “Desire is death.” He alsopoints out that reason does not — cannot — coexist with lovein the splendid analogy of reason as his physician with theunwelcome and yet passionately longed for cure for his love-sickness. This physician, it seems, has had enough of hispatient’s self-destructiveness and so “hath left.” Alone,longing for his love, and sick without aid, the speaker isexperiencing the same turmoil as each of his love-sickpredecessors. For him, love is not a warm and happy feeling;for him, love is hell.

***

V.

Straight to my heart

Sting, contemporary troubadour

Let us jump ahead a few hundred years, to the late 20thcentury. Sting, singing as the front-man of the Police,moans,

Do I have to tell the storyOf the thousand rainy days since we first met?It’s a big enough umbrella,But it’s always me that ends up getting wet.

Though he finds that “every little she does is magic,” hislove for her nevertheless brings only tears and melancholy.

This story may be about a thousand days’ time — a thousanddays, I should point out, not of sunshine, but of rain — butit is a story that has been told more than a thousand timesbefore. This hardly renders Sting’s writing trite orunoriginal, however, for what these poets, from ancienttimes through even today, continue to pinpoint is auniversal truth: to be in love is to be in pain.

So why do we all strive so wildly for love? It is, asShakespeare says, because we long “For that which longernurseth the disease” — we hope for those happy moments ofbeing in love that cause us to forget the pain andsubsequent melancholy that otherwise pervades our being inlove. In essence, we love because we hope.

In the meantime, love is pain. Perfect romantic matchesare few and far in between. Even Romeo and Juliet, thecouple that popular culture wrongfully cites as ourarchetypal romantic pair, are a match made in lust, notlove: their romance is based entirely on the other’s goodlooks. Harold Bloom points out, with a mixture of humor andhorror, that the only happy marriage anywhere in Shakespeareis the Macbeths’, and certainly, married couples do not wantto end up like them. Ultimately, poets obsess so much aboutthe pain of love because happiness is boring and pain isinteresting: a sad statement, but a true one. We learn bestfrom sadness, after all, and thus the poetry of pain speaksmuch more clearly to us than the poetry of happiness.

And so, the love-as-pain tradition will continue onlong after we have all passed. There will always be loversthat will always be smitten by someone else who may or maynot share their feelings. The pain will flow and thehappiness will be hoped for. Elsewhere in his repertoire,Sting created a battle cry for these lovers-in-pain, past,present, and future:

There are arrows in the airFormed by lovers’ ancient artThat go straight to my heart.