The Eyes, the Heart, and Perfect Love
Dante and Beatrice. Petrarch and Laura.
We had just finished a unit on Medieval and Renaissance literature, and my students found themselves swept away by love stories such as those mentioned above. At this, I began to wonder though…
Why do we not speak of Tommy and Maggie? Or Joey and Maria?
Have we become too jaded to believe in love at first sight any more?
There’s no doubt that young people today are still struck when they lock eyes with another and the hormones start percolating. More often than not, however, such momentary encounters don’t lead to lifelong allegiance and veneration. Rather, such experiences are cheapened and categorized to fall under the cynical label of lust or infatuation.
Gone is the time when love was measured by painful sighs and unfulfilled yearning. We’ve traded pure, spiritual adoration of another for physical possession and gratification. Love has become mere exercise, a workout of sorts, demanding brief, vigorous effort, leaving in its wake excess bodily fluids. And once those muscles have been exhausted and satisfied, we cast a roving eye in search of our next training partner.
We live in a time when we can press a button or click a tab to change a picture in milliseconds, and we bring that same impatience to our relationships. What can’t be grasped with minimal effort is disregarded or discarded. We move on. Why wait the few minutes for the server to replace the empty tub of mint chocolate chip with more of the same when there are 31+ other flavors we can sample? We have no patience to endure anything…even the wait required for a single ice cream cone.
It’s the endurance that I speak of when it comes to love. The benefits we’ve gained from technology and abundance seem to have chiseled away at our fortitude, especially when it comes to the perseverance that intimacy demands. Without experiencing the tears and suffering that often accompany passion, we cannot scale the heights of its ecstasy. Instead, we wallow in the safety that complacency and mediocrity offer and shun all forms of risk and danger that come when we willingly choose vulnerability over comfort.
I’m not pretending that taking such risks always pays off; rarely does the world adhere to a formulaic fairy tale. Take the couples listed above. Indeed, both Laura and Beatrice “said” no to their respective suitors, but their denial (primarily because of economic and social constraints) seemed only to fan the flames of passion even stronger in their men as devotion morphed from the physical to the spiritual. Dante’s and Petrarch’s adoration—like the Latin derivative of spiritus—became the very “breath of life” upon which their existence depended; thus, their verses were infused, directed, and dominated by a longing to which they remained steadfast until their lips could draw no more. Only then were their hearts silenced.
When Medieval troubadour, Giraut de Bornelh, sang, “So through the eyes love attains the heart / For the eyes are the scouts of the heart,” he wasn’t pointing to a single encounter that could be extinguished as quickly as one snuffs out a lighted candle (or sends a command to Alexa). No, Giraut was talking about an internal incandescence that burns unceasingly when the eyes, the heart, and love “are in full accord / And firm, all three, in one resolve.”
Can we ever reach that unified trinity again in this fast-paced world that offers unlimited opportunities but leaves only emptiness in exchange? Maybe if we train ourselves to wait patiently for that mint chocolate chip cone we can someday build the stamina required to endure both the peaks and valleys that true love demands. I’ve heard (and read) that the journey may be grueling, but the view is sublime.
Pages of Yore
Comments