Love implies the evaluation of possibility,
belief in possibility
(can you fall in love with someone who's never noticed you?
like a movie star?)
It needs only a very small quantity of hope to give birth to love.
Stendhal (48)
Cupid's arrow, love at first sight, thunderstruck, coup de foudre
kettledrumroll, cymbals clash
That strong person you were, that wall you built
has been breached
She's stolen your heart
[your pituitary? John Money]
the solid floor of your smug self-image has been pulled out from under
you
It's chemistry
bonding
Before you met her you didn't realize
what a dry well you had inside you
but then she touched something
and you realize how thirsty you were
(What do we fall into
when we fall in love?)
You've given your heart to her, to him
(you'd been able in part to give it freely,
but now it's all hers)
This is serious... (very serious, kind of serious)
Love wakes men, once a lifetime each;
They lift their heavy lids, and look...
Coventry Patmore (England 1823-96) "The Revelation"
How has my bird-like soul been stricken low,
Pierced to the very heart!
My love has used instead of bolt and bow
A deadlier dart.
Nasikh (India d.1838) (tr. Khan and Westbrook)
I ne'er was struck before that hour
With love so sudden and so sweet
Her face it bloomed like a sweet flower
And stole my heart away complete...
John Clare (England 1793-1864) "First Love"
I've just seen a face
I can't forget the time or place
Where we just met...
John Lennon-Paul McCartney (England b.1942)
Whoever lov'd, that lov'd not at first sight?
Christopher Marlowe (England 1564-93)
"Hero and Leander" 1598?
Behold a god more powerful than I, who comes to rule over me.
Dante "Vita Nuova"
Incipit vita nova: here begins a new life.
Dante "Vita Nuova"
Falling in love is, in fact, an enchantment; Tristan's magic potion has always symbolized with suggestive plasticity the psychological process of love.
Ortega (61)
[Cf other sorts of crisis-- deaths]
The face of love
[paintings, photos, movies]
Your eyes widen, pupils dilate
The beloved is (consequently) bathed in light
eyes fixed, mouth gaping
Your heart pounds, sinks to your stomach like a reaction of fear
you're ready for an emergency
your skin flushes... or pales
you're weak in the knees
The moment I saw her I say in all truth that the vital spirit, which dwells in the inmost depths of the heart, began to tremble so violently that I felt the vibration alarmingly in all my pulses, even the weakest of them.
Dante "Vita Nuova"
I felt as if my stomach had ben shot away, leaving a gaping hole.
Murdoch (Black Prince 212)
Lovesick eyes
eyebrows just barely rise (symbolising weakened state)
long, slack face
sighs, lungs remaining exhaled
lingering looks
[winning lottery, seeing beautiful car
"You'll love our low prescription prices!"]
Something's happening inside you,
but you're not doing it on purpose
maybe it's against your will
How strange the turns of Love's unending game,
For neither Lover nor Beloved lit
The ever-burning flame:
Whence was the spirit that enkindled it?
Zahir () (tr. Khan and Westbrook)
It is not mere feeling, but a sort of force outside me which has taken possession of me.
Tolstoy [Anna Karenin 54]
Love is like a fever which comes and goes quite independently of the will.
Stendhal (51)
...the fundamental surrender is not carried out on the plane of will, but occurs more deeply within the person.
Ortega (188)
Love does not ask
when it seizes a man.
Swahili lyric
Even so it's truly an answer to your deepest prayers
...whoever falls in love does so because he wants to fall in love.
Ortega (59)
If you're not ready for this, maybe you turn and run,
put up a scornful front
like running from an avalanche
putting your finger in a dike
[losing your balance, beyond your capabilities, lack of preparation,
losing your cool
addictions]
I dare not ope the door.
To hear the sweet birds sing
Oft proves a dangerous thing.
(27) from Peerson's Private Musicke (1620)
The weak individual... fears the unexpected, which life may hold enveloped in the folds of her billowing skirt...
Ortega (198)
...we are as deeply afraid to live and to love as we are to die.
R.D. Laing (Scotland b.1927)
The Politics of Experience (196x)
The only victory over love is flight.
Napoleon Bonaparte (Sicilian 1769-1821) [BQAO]
Maybe your eyes meet, but one of you looks away
[eyes window of soul, flickers betray heart]
I dare not gaze upon her face
John Clare (17) "I Hid My Love"
He went down, trying not to look long at her, as though she were the sun, but he saw her, as one sees the sun, without looking.
Tolstoy (Anna Karenin 44)
All I remember is I saw you look at me
And I couldn't breathe and I hurt so bad I couldn't see.
Edwin Denby (xx 1903-83) "A Girl" [Cole]
(it's her, speaking)
...looks back
...overwhelmed and dead, almost
I stumbled on your secret door
Which saves the live man from the ghost.
Robert Graves "Sullen Moods"
O, my heart...!
When love walks in the room
Everybody stand up!
Oooooh, it's good! good! good!
Say Iloveyou!Iloveyou!Iloveyou!Iloveyou!Iloveyou!!!
Chryssie Hynde (Ohio b.1951)
You surrender to it, you dive in
you want it to sweep you away, you will it
Now you've committed, chosen to push the wheel
Give all to love;
Obey thy heart;
[...]
Nothing refuse.
'Tis a brave master;
Let it have scope:
Follow it utterly...
Ralph Waldo Emerson (USA 1803-82) "Give All to Love"
Love, for the deadly sins are seven,
Only through love will you enter heaven.
Sara Teasdale "Child, Child"
Love is the proudest of despots: it is either everything or nothing.
Stendhal (205)
You're the one that I want! (Oooh, hooo hooo...!)
"Grease"
...one must be faithful to one's destiny.
Stendhal (312)
...the irreproachable secret
Of love, which is: never to turn back.
Robert Graves "Dancing Flame"
Don't push your foot on the heartbrake!
Kate Bush (England b.1958)
Things explode inside you, effervesce, fireworks
pressure in your spine
hormones? adrenaline? ATP?
(glands, nerve connections)
[cf winning lottery]
The heart symbol
has spread worldwide
deep, intuitive
Doors open (chakras, telepathic links)
you're falling down towards your own deepest core
your shallow self-- role playing, vanity, self-image, habit
is giving way to a deep self-- self-expression, art
your feet are no longer firmly on the ground, [imbalanced]
You came upon me like a landslide
Once in a while I can take it like that
And I like it...
Robert Palmer (England? b.1949?)
It was as if stars were exploding in front of my eyes so that I literally could not see.
Murdoch (Black Prince 245)
'Ecstasy of Chaos'
When the immense drugged universe explodes
In a cascade of unendurable colour
And leaves us gasping naked,
This is no more than ecstasy of chaos:
Hold fast, with both hands, to the royal love
Which alone, as we know certainly, restores
Fragmentation into true being.
Robert Graves
Last night, when some one spoke his name,
From my swift blood that went and came
A thousand little shafts of flame
Were shiver'd in my narrow frame.
Alfred Tennyson (182) (England 1809-92) "Fatima" (1833)
I am all on fire with new-wakened love...
the Carmina Burana (c1200)
(tr. from the Latin by Peter Dronke)
These are her gifts:
The world is suddenly
intensely bright
with beautiful, vivid detail
(we're normally partially numb)
the world's become a dream
(we're normally burdened by reality)
...give light sweet light to me, & lett me shyne by thee...
17th C. Lyrics (286)
Everything became bright in her presence.
Tolstoy [Anna Karenin]
Love, the bright atmosphere, the vital air,
Of youth; without it life and death are one.
Walter Savage Landor (54) (England 1775-1864)
What life is there, what delight, without golden Aphrodite?
Mimnermos (Greece 600 BPE) (tr. ?)
I tell thee Love is Nature's second sun,
Causing a spring of virtues where he shines.
George Chapman (England? c1560-1634)
This shifting House of Mirrors
where we dwell
Under Thy charm a fairy palace seems...
Asif (India d.1911) (speaking of God)
(tr. Khan and Westbrook)
And every sound that meets the ear is Love.
John Clare (6) "A Spring Morning"
And there I asked...
What change you'd wrought in graveyard, rock and sea,
This new wild paradise to wake for me...
John Millington Synge (Ireland 1871-1909) "In Kerry"
Tonight, the world looks like a different place...
T-Bone Burnett () "The Trap Door"
Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread.
Conrad Aiken (USA 1889-1973) "Discordants"
And when I thought how my dear friend my lover was on his way coming, O then I was happy,
O then each breath tasted sweeter, and all that day my food nourish'd me more, and the beautiful day pass'd well
Walt Whitman (248) (USA 1819-92)
"When I Heard at the Close of the Day"
...his first impulse was to thank Heaven for rendering him again the being of thought, imagination, and keenest sensibility that he had long ceased to be.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (USA 1804-64)
"The Artist of the Beautiful" ()
Love a` la Werther opens the mind to all the arts, to all sweet and romantic impressions, moonlight, the beauty of the woods and of painting, in a word, to the feeling and enjoyment of the beautiful, in whatever form it presents itself, even the humblest. It shows the way to happiness even without riches.
Stendhal (204)
Passionate love spreads all Nature in her sublimity before a man's eyes, like something invented only yesterday. He is surprised never to have noticed the strange sights he now perceives.
Stendhal (209)
If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free;
Angels alone that soar above
Enjoy such liberty.
Richard Lovelace (275) (England? 1618-58)
"To Althea, from Prison"
Yea, to such freshness, fairness, fulness, fineness, freeness,
Love lures life on.
Thomas Hardy (England 1840-1928) [Cole]
"Lines to a movement in Mozart's E-flat symphony"
The weather turns sunny
Nature is bursting with energy
shouting Yes!
In love, realities obligingly rearrange themselves to conform with desire.
Stendhal (60)
O happy race of men, if love, which rules Heaven, rule your minds!
Boe:thius (xx 470?-525) Consolations of Philosophy
Energy!
you run and dance
giddy, carefree, euphoric
[metabolism]
you feel like singing!
your sleep is extraordinarily sound
full of hope, full of strength, full of forgiveness
I get no kick from champagne,
Mere alcohol doesn't thrill me at all
So tell me why should it be true
That I get a kick out of you?
Cole Porter (USA 1893-1964) (1934)
The woman in love... renews herself by becoming, once again, as the young are, a person who sees in another rare virtues and graces.
Jessamyn West
Love in its essence is spiritual fire.
Emanuel Swedenborg (Sweden 1688-1772)
"True Christian Religion"
The heart that loves is always young.
Greek proverb [L'A]
If I were a bell
I'd go ding dong ding dong ding!
"Guys and Dolls"
Your body is weightless, fills space
the clouds, even the stars shout Yes
you've a spring in your step
your burdens have become light
like you've sprouted wings
[gravity & depression]
There seemed to be no gravity in the park that morning.
Murdoch [Word Child]
I could have danced all night
I could have danced all night
And still have begged for more...
Alan Jay Lerner (USA 1918-86) "My Fair Lady"
He moved without any effort of his muscles and felt that he could do anything. He was sure that, if necessary, he could fly upward or lift the corner of a house.
Tolstoy (Anna Karenin 405)
I-- I am going to be a storm-- a flame--
I need to fight whole armies all alone;
I have ten hearts; I have a hundred arms; I feel
Too strong to war with mortals-- BRING ME GIANTS!
Edmond Rostand "Cyrano"
...passion gives a strength above nature, we see it in mad people...
Dorothy Osborne (England 1627-95) (letter, 1653)
Your happiness makes you beautiful
makes those around you happy
it awakens an expanded personal repertoire
Love teaches even asses to dance.
French proverb [L'A]
'Grace Notes'
It was not the words, nor the melody,
Not the beat, nor the pace;
It was that slow suspension of our breathing
As we watched your face,
And the grace-notes, unrecordable on the clef,
Sung only by a spirit in grace.
Robert Graves
"Brad, what is it, you look extraordinary, something's happened to you, you're beautiful, you look like a saint or something, you look like some goddamn picture, you look all young again--"
Murdoch (Black Prince 233)
All mankind love a lover.
R.W. Emerson "Love"
The attachment grin
uncontrollable
lip-corners pulled high on face
There is a sense of one's own face as stretched, as thinned, which goes with extreme joy. I felt as if my face were simply a stretched skin, the features vanished, the pure radiance blazing through.
Murdoch [Word Child]
You're happy
like you've gotten a wonderful compliment
When I was small I was gay, but it has taken me nearly all the years in between to recover it, because no one allowed me to believe it until you gave it back to me.
Jill Furse (xx 1915-45) to Laurence Whistler (1944)
Dear joy, how I do love thee!
Henry Constable (England 1562-1613)
"Diaphenia" (1600) [Ault1]
Love is the perfect sum
Of all delight.
(197) in Hume Musical Humors (1605) [Ault1]
You're content, complete
enlightened, a Buddha, a saint, a christ
(Love makes mystics of us all)
(if god is love, is love god?)
Love is enough: though the World be a-waning...
William Morris (England 1834-1896)
"Love is Enough" [Cole]
I felt as if I should never need to eat again, but could live indefinitely simply by breathing.
Murdoch (Black Prince 218)
...love makes one calmer about many things...
Vincent van Gogh (Holland 1853-91)
...I gazed out with wide peaceful eyes at a world devoid of evil.
Murdoch (Black Prince 219)
And when love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.
Shakespeare "Love's Harmony"
I was purged of resentment and of hate, purged of all the mean anxious fears that compose the vile ego.
Murdoch (Black Prince 239)
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear.
I John 4:18
I glowed with a flame of charity which moved me to forgive all who had ever injured me...
Dante "Vita Nuova"
I had to load somebody with presents.
Murdoch (Black Prince 221)
The here and now becomes the whole universe
Time had already become eternity. There was a huge warm globe of conscious being within which I moved with extreme slowness...
Murdoch (Black Prince 213)
A common though not invariable early phase of this madness... is a false loss of self, which can be so extreme that all fear of pain, all sense of time (time is anxiety, is fear) is utterly blotted out.
Murdoch (Black Prince 250)
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room, an everywhere.
John Donne (England 1572?-1631)
"The Good-Morrow" (before 1602) [Ault1]
Space is reshaped by your feeling for her
a cord has grown that links you
(Batman has tossed his grappling hook)
your center is now outside yourself
she's your second home, your second heart
you've become huge, without boundaries
when you're far from him, you're less yourself
you're in a city with millions of people
but just one of them makes all the difference
everywhere you look, you look for her
for signs of her presence
like the mystics' "Presence of God"
I have often walked
Down this street before
But the pavement always stayed beneath my feet before
All at once am I
Several storeys high
Knowing I'm on the street where you live...
Alan Jay Lerner "My Fair Lady"
Love is where the glory falls
Of Thy face-- on convent walls
Or on the tavern floors, the same
Unextinguishable flame.
Hafiz (Persia 1320-1389) [ILWL]
We are with [our friend] in a symbolic union-- our soul seems to expand miraculously, to clear the distance, and no matter where he is, we feel that we are in essential communion with him.
Ortega ()
...the supreme sign of true love: being close to what is loved, in a more profound contact and proximity than that of space.
Ortega (35)
...her presence gave the house what none of the other houses that he visited seemed to possess: a sort of nervous system, a sensory network which ramified into each of its rooms and sent a constant stimulus to his heart.
Proust [SiL]
Love is space and time made directly perceptible to the heart.
Proust
...where her heart beats, there is my home.
Nizami () Layla and Majnun (1188)
My beloved
Must be coming this evening.
For the behavior
Of the spiders on the bamboo grass
Is striking this evening.
princess So-to_shi (xx 5th C.)
(incroyable! spiders!!)
You see reflections of her in all things
[metaphor, anthropomorphism]
she is the measure of all things
web of Indra: every part reflecting every other
sky, birdsong, flower, fruit
Tree you are,
Moss you are,
You are violets with wind above them.
Ezra Pound (USA 1885-1972) "A Girl" [Cole]
If I look on a wildflower I see her face there...
John Clare "I Pass In Silence"
The sight of everything that is extremely beautiful, in Nature and in the arts, calls up the image of your beloved like a flash of lightning.
Stendhal (62)
'Song'
Not from the whole wide world I chose thee--
Sweetheart, light of the land and the sea!
The wide, wide world could not inclose thee,
For thou art the whole wide world to me.
Richard Watson Gilder [OOtH]
A lover sees the woman he loves in every skyline, and as he travels a hundred leagues to catch a momentary glimpse of her each tree, each rock speaks to him in a different way and teaches him something new about her.
Stendhal (209)
Why did the fragrance of the flowers outflow
If not to breathe with benediction sweet
Across her path? Why did the soft wind blow
If not to kiss the ground before her feet?
Ghalib (India 1797-1869) (tr. Khan and Westbrook)
O my dove, thou art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs...
Song of Solomon (Hebrew c250 BCE) [OLR]
Everything in the world was Julian.
Murdoch (Black Prince 213)
Her name is so beautiful you say it over and over
his first initial is the Capital of Love
it is her: saying it bridges the distances separating you
[He went to a certain restaurant] only for one of those reasons, at once mystical and absurd, which people call 'romantic'; because this restaurant bore the same name as the street in which Odette lived: La Pe'rouse.
Proust [SiL 151]
...my heart was beating Kitty tomorrow, Kitty tomorrow.
Murdoch [Word Child]
There's a hammer in my heart
Pounding out your name...!
Todd Rundgren
There's no turning back, no escape, this is forever
commitment, melodramatic exaggeration
(no perception of temporariness,
not noticeably non-permanent)
(it's bad luck to doubt, sounds wrong)
you're hooked, entrapped
"for I will love her till I die"
The foreverness of real love is one of the reasons why even unrequited love is a source of joy.
Murdoch (Black Prince 216)
On thee, dainty dear life, my love is fixed.
(88) in Yonge, Musica Transalpina 1588
My heart has left its dwelling-place
And can return no more.
John Clare (76) "First Love"
I love thee, I love but thee,
With a love that cannot die
Till the sun grows cold,
And the stars are old,
And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold!
Bayard Taylor (xx 1825-78) "Bedouin Song"
"Nothing can ever extinguish the love for you in my heart. It is a riddle without a solution, a code which none can decipher..."
Nizami "Layla"
"Not one word, not one gesture of yours will I ever forget, nor can I ever forget."
Tolstoy (Anna Karenin 117)
If I love thee not, chaos is come again.
Shakespeare, Othello
Bright are the stars that shine
Dark is the sky
I know this love of mine
Will never die...
(And I love her)
Lennon-McCartney
Impulses seize you
you're intoxicated, drunk
excitement, nerves
the impulses you feel _feel_ right,
but it's ill-considered
insane with love
you can't concentrate
you flunk math
...then my spirits were so routed by the power which Love acquired on finding himself so close to this most gracious being that none survived except the spirits of vision... A number of the women present, observing my transformation, began to be astonished and, talking about it, they mocked at me in company with the most gracious one herself.
Dante "Vita Nuova" (even she!)
Strange is the journey that my soul by wanton Love was led,
Two steps were straight and clear, and four forgotten
were instead.
Dagh (India 1831-1905) (tr. Khan and Westbrook)
Beauty the god of wisdome can confound,
not one of all the Gods, hath scapt that wound.
17th C. lyric (277)
His senses are confused, because for him this jewel is the eye of the world.
Nizami "Layla"
I watch the red buds turn to green leaves.
My thoughts are many and tumultuous,
As troubled as the tossing branches,
All for thinking of you.
empress Wu Tse>-t'ien (China 624-705) [OB]
A sensitive man, once his heart is stirred, loses all memory of habit as a guide to action; how can he keep on the track when he has lost the scent?
Stendhal (107)
O my stars how you undo me!
O my stars...
Michael Hurley (USA b. 19xx)
O, love, love, love!
Love is like a dizziness;
It winna let a poor body
Gang about his business!
James Hogg (Scotland 1770-1835)
She smiled contemptuously and took up her book again, but this time she could not understand a word of what she was reading.... The tension... reached such a point that she was afraid every minute that something would snap within her under the intolerable strain.
Tolstoy (Anna Karenin 114, 117)
Sleep with her one night and you're mixed up
seven days after.
(from the Tanezo_shi, a medieval song-cycle,
trans Frank Hoff)
...I noticed he often spoke without knowing what he was saying or to whom he was saying it.
Stendhal (205)
"Have you got softening of the brain?"
Murdoch (Black Prince 243)
And what was our disease we could not tell.
Samuel Daniel (xx 1562-1619) "First Flame" [Cole]
I had just uttered Julian's name aloud.
Murdoch (Black Prince 234) (she's not there, others are,
their conversation was unrelated)
Are the stars out tonight?
xxx xxxx
The mistress of a house knows that her maid has fallen in love when she begins to notice that the maid is distracted.
Ortega (60)
Let us cease believing that the measure of a man's love lies in how stupid he has become or is willing to be.
Ortega (192)
You've a wonderful sense that your passion is unique
...love is an infrequent occurrence, a sentiment which only certain souls can hope to experience: in fact, a specific talent which some individuals possess... Almost all men and women live submerged in the sphere of their own interests (some without doubt, beautiful and respectable), and are incapable of feeling the migratory urge toward what is outside themslves.
Ortega (195, 199)
...it is one of the peculiarities, perhaps one of the blessings, of this planet that anyone can experience this transformation of the world. Also, anyone can be its object.
Murdoch (Black Prince 213)
There are no age limits for love. (L'amour est de tous les a>ges.)
Stendhal (51)
Terrible and sublime thought, that every moment is supreme for some man and woman, every hour the apotheosis of some passion!
William McFee (xx 1881-1966) Casuals of the Sea
You're in love with the drama of love, the stimulation of it
you feel realer than your neighbors
[I am happy therefore I am noble. ego, self-esteem]
The pleasure of love lies in loving; we are happier in the passion we feel than in that we inspire.
La Rochefoucauld, Maxim 267
...my marvellous achievement of absolute love.
Murdoch (Black Prince 214)
...the impression she had made on him filled him with happiness and pride.
Tolstoy (Anna Karenin 118)
Love cannot be anything but egotistical.
Sigmund Freud (Austria 1856-1939) (1882)
"Oh don't be so gay and flippant, you look so horribly pleased with yourself, what's the matter?"
Murdoch (Black Prince 224)
The love of the wife for the husband is not for the sake of the husband but for the sake of the self; the love of the husband for the wife is not for the sake of the wife but for the sake of the self.
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4.V.1 (India)
In her first passion woman loves her lover,
In all the others all she loves is love.
lord Byron "Don Juan" (1821)
It should be remembered that a person under the stress of strong emotions seldom has time to notice the emotions of whoever is causing them.
Stendhal (80)
...when a man really loves he rejoices or trembles no matter what he thinks about... Now rejoicing and trembling are interesting activities beside which all others pale. ...Nothing is so interesting as passion; everything about it is unexpected, and its agent is also its victim.
Stendhal (128, 219)
In Geneva and France, ...girls fall in love at sixteen in order to make a novel out of life, and at each step, almost at each tear, they ask themselves: 'Am I not just like Julie d'Etanges?'
Stendhal (227) (Fr 56)
The woman may not yet love... the man or boy who has elicited these feelings; but she does love the person she has become: a woman purified by love's focusing... No woman, if given a choice of inscriptions for her tombstone, would choose "Mary Jones, a greatly loved woman" rather than "Mary Jones, a greatly loving woman."
Jessamyn West ("James Brown, a greatly loving man"?)
When the state of "being in love"... is sought for itself, or prolonged for itself, or valued for itself, there is an autoeroticism of the emotions more arid and damaging than any physical autoeroticism.
Jessamyn West
Women generally admit to more intensity than men in these areas.
Love, an episode in the life of man, is the entire story of the life of woman.
Mme. de Stael (France 1766-1817)
A man completes a woman in a way, alas for him-- and for her-- in which she cannot complete him. He arises from her arms, his hunger for joint-stock companies, turbo jets, and plantations on the moon unappeased. While she has him, her sun. What does the moon and outer space mean to her?
Jessamyn West
Man's love is of man's life a thing apart,
'Tis a woman's whole existence.
lord Byron "Don Juan"
She's so beautiful, he's so handsome
[a confection for your hungry eyes]
you open yourself to his image
imprint on it, cherish it
minimize his defects
exaggerate her strengths
She lilts a low soft language, and I hear
Down long sea-chambers of the inner ear.
Theodore Roethke (USA 1908-64) "She"
...the perfume I adore
That clings to thee
Theodore Wratislaw (229) (xx 1871-1933) [Epos D'ayte]
So light is my mistress, so graceful is she,
I tremble lest the breath of the evening
woo her from me...
Burmese lyric (tr. H. Fielding-Hall)
Beautie's the soule of humane Excellence,
the Eyes blest object, rapture of the sence,
Vertue's most glorious Garment, lov's rich shryne,
Earths onely Phoenix, natures worke divine,
the Common Idoll of All harts, o then,
beauty that masters gods must Conquer Men.
17th C. lyric (278)
When she a little smiles, her aspect then
No tongue can tell, no memory can hold,
So rare and strange a miracle is she.
Dante "Vita Nuova"
A thousand Cupids fly
About her gentle eye.
From which each throws a dart
that kindleth soft sweet fire
Within my sighing heart
Possessed by desire...
Edward de Vere, earl of Oxford (England 1550-1604)
"What Cunning Can Express" (1593) [Ault1]
More than most fair, full of that heavenly fire
Kindled above to show the Maker's glory
Beauty's first born, in whom all powers conspire
to write the Graces' life, and Muses' story!
Fulke Greville "More Than Most Fair" (c1586) [Ault1]
As soft as down: and were she down
Jove might come down and kiss
A love so fresh, so sweet, so white,
So smooth, so soft, as this.
William Warner (England 1558?-1609)
"My Mistress" (1592) [Ault1]
...what I feel,
Here in this room, desiring you,
Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk
is music.
W. Stevens "Peter Quince at the Clavier" (1915)
...When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
Shakespeare "Romeo and Juliet"
She soothes your soul, balms you
"beauty is that which is pleasing to the eye" Aquinas
For your sweet beauty, daintily transfused
With due proportion throughout every part,
What is it but a dance where Love hath used
His finer cunning and more curious art;
Where all the elements themselves impart,
And turn, and wind, and mingle with such measure,
That th'eye that sees it, surfeits with the pleasure?
sir John Davies (England 1569-1626)
"The Dance of Love" (1594) [Ault1]
...perfect music has the same effect on the heart as the presence of the beloved.
Stendhal (65)
He makes my eyes cool with his smile.
Evelyn Scott (xx 1893-1963) Diary (c1914)
When I look at you with my eyes,
be the coolness of my eye.
Swahili lyric
He makes you sigh
(the physiology of the sigh?)
Appearances, they're not deceptive!
you can see through him, straight down to the core
"the character implied by that Raphaelesque face" (Stendhal 291)
Love as admiration
she's uphill from you
noble, aristocratic, brilliant
the sovereign of my heart
"a person who deserves the empire of all hearts" (Manon)
(the etymology of the word 'courting' lies in paying court to the nobles
of the court)
If all, so much as I, your music love
The whole world would at your devotion move...
Samuel Pordage (England 1633-1691?)
"To Lucia Playing on her Lute" (1660) [Ault2]
Her lips' remark was: "Oh, you kid!"
Her soul spoke thus (I know it did):
"O king of realms of endless joy,
My own, my golden grocer's boy."
Joyce Kilmer (USA 1886-1918)
"Servant Girl and Grocer's Boy"
Noble implies holy
ultimate value
She's your holy goddess in heaven above
you're nothing
the love of mystic for god
maker of your rules and laws: obedience
myths in every country speak of gods descending,
of humans falling in love with them
The moon wooed the lotus in the night
The lotus was wooed by the moon
And my sweetheart is their child
The blossom opened in the night
And she came forth
The petals moved and she was born.
Burmese lovesong (tr. H. Fielding-Hall) (see JJCW 94)
Her breath is life, her eyes are day,
And all mankind her creatures are.
Charles Cotton (England 1630-87)
"Laura Sleeping" (1659) [Ault2]
Yet enlisting hope doth woe me
To think one woman may be true
And in your Angells shape comes to me
Oh God what power then rests in you.
17th C. lyric (272)
If in your face, divine effects I view,
Ah, who can blame me, if I worship you?
Joshua Sylvester (England 1563-1618) [ELP]
I'm glad that it was not my chance to live
Till as that heavenly creature first was born,
Who as an angel doth the earth adorn
And buried virtue in the tomb revive:
For vice overflows the world with such a flood,
That in it all, save she, there is no good.
Wm. Alexander, earl of Stirling (England 1567?-1640)
"Sonnet" (1604) [Ault1]
Serene and serious, still and quaint,
She's partly woman, partly saint,
This Presbyterian beauty.
Ellen Mackay Hutchinson () "Priscilla"
No man could think base thoughts who looked on her...
Dante "Vita Nuova"
I cannot rise to follow her,
Here in the dust is my abode,
For I am but her foot-print left
Lying forgotten in the road.
Allah Khan Insha (India 1756-1818)
(tr. Khan and Westbrook)
You know everything which lies open to the light of day, but you also know what is hidden, for you have created both the rock and the precious stone within it. Yours is the firmament with all the constellations. You change the darkness of the night into the light of day, and the hidden chambers of the human heart lie open to your eyes. You cause the sap to rise in the joyous days of spring and lend a willing ear to the prayer of the unhappy man longing for consolation.
Nizami "Layla"
'More Than Most Fair'
More than most fair, full of the living fire
Kindled above unto the Maker near:
No eyes, but joys, in which all powers conspire,
That to the world naught else be counted dear;
Through your bright beams doth not the blinded guest
Shoot out his darts to base affections wound;
But angels come, to lead frail minds to rest
In chaste desires, on heavenly beauty bound.
You frame my thoughts and fashion me within;
You stop my tongue and teach my heart to speak;
You calm the storm that passion did begin;
Strong through your cause, but by your virtue weak.
Dark is the world where your light shine'd never;
Well is he born that may behold you ever.
Edmund Spenser (England 1552?-99)
Dearest Mary pure and holey meek and loly lovely Rose of Sharon...
A farm laborer quoted by William de Morgan, 1887
Paradise is your abode,
on earth you are suffering.
Swahili lyric
Our friend with the great soul...
Edmond Rostand "Cyrano"
Yes, it's hyperbole,
but I can't seem to wake myself from this wonderful dream...
I don't want to be wakened...
(Is being in love making a mistake? Stendhal- yes, Ortega- no.)
Love is the state in which man sees things most decidedly as they are not.
Friedrich Nietzsche [L'A]
But love is blind and lovers cannot see
The pretty follies that themselves commit.
Shakespeare "The Merchant of Venice"
"...it was not unlike me to imbue other people, on occasion, with qualities that I desperately wanted them to have."
Ralph Pape "Soap Opera"
...there was a truth somewhere which denied Kitty, only I loved Kitty more than that truth...
Murdoch [Word Child 295]
By the angel effect she's gained a halo
she's without sin
he's perfection-- she is Love
it would be bad luck to take notice of any fault
ignoring them may keep them at bay
you have a continuous movement of available energy for divinitizing /
idolizing him
Love generates, or rather reveals, something which may be called absolute charm.
Murdoch [Black Prince 212]
O Queen of queens! how far dost thou excel,
No thought can think, nor tongue of mortal tell.
Shakespeare "Love's Labours Lost" (1598)
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desir'd, and got, 'twas but a dreame of thee.
John Donne "The Good-Morrow" (before 1602)
...yet you will saye, theres nought can be
whyte, softe or sweet that is not she.
17th C. lyric (366)
Only once in our lives do we love with our whole heart[s] a being whom we cannot do without: a gaping abyss separates that being from the rest of mankind.
Diane de Poitiers [L'A] ()
O brave new world,
That has such people in't!
W. Shakespeare "Miranda's Wonder" [?CLWM]
Before the nature of an object can produce its proper sensation in them, they have blindly invested it from afar with imaginary charm which they conjure up inexhaustibly within themselves.
Stendhal (73)
...for Levin all the girls in the world were divided into two classes: one class included all the girls in the world except her and all of them had all the human weaknesses, and all of them were very ordinary; the other class contained Kitty alone, a girl who had no weaknesses of any kind and who was above the rest of humanity.
Tolstoy [Anna Karenin 53]
"...from the first moment I became your servant no thought has entered my heart but that you are the best that ever was born, and the truest in words and seeming."
Stendhal (170)
...beauty can only suggest probabilities about a woman and about her self-possession (sang-froid). But the eyes of your pockmarked mistress are a wonderful reality which makes nonsense of all possible probabilities.
Stendhal (68)
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind.
Shakespeare
Once you begin to examine your lover, it is no longer a case of passionate but of mannered love.
Stendhal (69)
Love is the only passion which rewards itself in a coin of its own manufacture.
Stendhal (262) (Fr. 145)
Stendhal- crystallization
you imagine the most wonderful possibilities to fill the blanks
Leave a lover with his thoughts for twenty-four hours, and this is what will happen: At the salt mines of Salzburg, they throw a leafless wintry bough into one of the abandoned workings. Two or three months later they draw it out covered with a shining deposit of crystals. The smallest twig, no bigger than a tom-tit's claw, is studded with a galaxy of scintillating diamonds. The original branch is no longer recognizable.
Stendhal (45)
Each step your imagination takes brings a new delight. Little wonder that this state of mind is enticing.
Stendhal (112)
La Ghita is certainly no more than a pretext for all the raptures of this poor German...
Stendhal (286)
The projection of imaginary qualities upon a real object is a constant phenomenon. In man, to see things-- moreover, to appreciate them!-- always means to complete them.
Ortega (42)
It is enough if there is some perfection in him...
Ortega (38)
You forgive his weaknesses
With all thy faults, I love thee still.
William Cowper (England 1731-1800) The Task
So true a fool is love that in your will,
Though you do any thing, he thinks no ill.
Shakespeare "Sonnet LVII"
Something in her is enriching you
he makes you feel so feminine
she makes you feel like a real man
There is no doubt that love is continually being fed; it derives nourishment from the beloved's charms, which it beholds either in reality or in imagination.
Ortega (96)
A person
in love
lives not off himself
but off the other,
as a child,
before birth,
lives bodily off its mother...
Ortega (190, reformatted)
To see her among others, straying like a divine form among mortals, is to become faint with secret knowledge.
Murdoch (Black Prince 245)
Now your source of joy has been revealed.
Dante "Vita Nuova"
You're grateful
"I am simply happy that you exist... proud to live with you in the same city, in the same century..."
Murdoch [Black Prince 243]
My only need-- you ask me, and I tell you--
Is that henceforth forever you exist.
Mark Van Doren (USA 1894-1972) "Sonnet XXXIII" [MLP]
He holds out to me a promise of forgiveness, of heaven
my place in life, finally defined
her love will make me noble
cure my guilt, my self-doubt
with you by my side...
[teacher, guru-- non-romantic faith]
Let Phyllis be mine, and but ever be kind,
I could to a desert with her be confined,
And envy no monarch his reign.
John Dryden (England 1631-1700?)
"Phyllis" (1670) [Ault2]
I am come to her wonder
Like a boy finding a star in a haymow
And there is nothing cruel or mad or evil
Anywhere.
Kenneth Patchen (USA 1911-72) "For Miriam" [MW]
It was like being seen by God. She bathed my hurt soul in a reviving dew.
Murdoch [Word Child 122]
Your hand was honey-comb to heal,
Your voice a web to bind.
You were a Mending flower to me
To cure my heart and mind.
Vachel Lindsay (USA 1879-1931)
"The Flower of Mending" [OBAV]
...my love, the medicine of my heart...
Swahili lyric
When a'body's thochts is set on his ain salvation,
Mine's set on you.
Violet Jacob (69) (Scotland 1863-1946) "Tam i'the Kirk"
[He] persisted in connecting all his dreams of artistical success with Annie's image...
N. Hawthorne "The Artist of the Beautiful"
My salvation lay in her because I saw that she was filled with the joy of living...
Henrik Ibsen (Norway 1828-1906) "Ghosts" (1881)
The sense of being absolutely in the right and longed-for place.
Murdoch (Black Prince 245)
The woman in love has the conviction, for which we all long, that her life is unified, that it has direction and meaning, that its direction is toward, and its meaning suffused with, the truth, that in love she transcends time and makes herself one with forces which are eternal.
Jessamyn West
An air of coolness plays upon his face,
And an unwonted calm pervades his breast.
And then he thinks he knows,
The hills where his life rose,
And the sea where it goes.
Matthew Arnold (England 1822-88) "When a Beloved Hand"
You're inspired
you have to put it into words, only a poem will do
the urgency of expression
(antithesis of writer's block)
when you're in love, you always have something to say
great poetry comes only from deep feeling
(there's no feeling deeper than love)
a love poem is a totally sympathetic judgment
poetry is love
you sense a melody
[Vico-- ancient ease in versifying, modern labor. Jaynes.]
[any happiness is poetic]
Tune on my pipe the praises of my Love,
And, midst thy oaten harmony, recount
How fair she is that makes thy music mount
And every string of thy heart's harp to move.
Robert Greene (England 1560?-1592) [Ault1]
"Of His Mistress" (1589)
(the 'pipe' is a flute made from an oatstem)
[A friend inquired] "We ask you to tell us in what this joy of yours resides!" And I, in reply to her, said this: "In words which praise my lady."
Dante "Vita Nuova"
At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.
Plato (Greek 428-347 BPE) [L'A]
She had filled me with a previously unimaginable power which I knew that I would and could use in my art.
Murdoch [Black Prince 215]
Love was glowing in him. When it burst into flames it also took hold of his tongue...
Nizami "Layla"
The nightingale
cannot help singing,
for she sparkles with love in her whole being...
Mechthild of Magdeburg (German 1210-85) (tr. P. Dronke)
For a great painter or a great poet love is divine because it multiplies a hundredfold the scope and the pleasures of the art which gives his soul its daily bread.
Stendhal (253) (Fr. 124)
In-love poems
you've got the immediate experience
of the shape
of the deep feeling of love
it [automatically] suggests harmonious words
notes
colors
gestures
this catharsis of light feels stupendous
I know love
not from books,
nor have I got it from hearsay,
from others who have experienced it.
Love has been granted
in its wonderful sweetness.
Swahili lyric
No man ever forgot the visitations of that power to his heart and brain, which created all things new; which was the dawn in him of music, poetry, and art.
R.W. Emerson "Love"
Your feelings come to focus
you squeeze them out, ex-press
peel the words off them
(in this light, shallow choices are obviously, self-evidently
shallow)
and you feel freer
The urge to make a record of this overwhelmingly intense, unexpected
phenomenon
(lovepoem theory of the origins of writing)
'Sonnet XXXIV'
Long after both of us are scattered dust
And alien souls, perchance, shall read of thee,
Guessing the passions that have crushed from me
These poor confessions of my love and trust,
Ah, well I know how heartless they will be,
For some will laugh, and others, more unjust,
Whose minds know not of love, but only lust,
Will stain the vesture of our memory.And yet a few there may be who will feel
My true devotion and my deep desires,
And know that these unhappy lines reveal
Only new images in changeless fires;
And they, indeed, will linger with a sigh
To think that beauty such as thine must die.
Albert Hillyer () [OBAV]
...in black ink my love may still shine bright.
Shakespeare (Sonnet)
You're proud of your creation
(now it's a hit, everyone's singing it!)
Of these songs you yourself well know how some have become widely known and have been sung in many lands...
Peter Abelard (France 1079-1142)
"The Story of My Misfortune" (1135)
Every child from the bazaar was singing his verses; every passer-by was humming one of his love-songs, bringing Layla a message from her beloved, whether they knew it or not.
Nizami "Layla"
I love you more than words can say
...I sometimes hold my tongue,
Because I would not dull you with my song.
Shakespeare
All measure, and all language, I should pass,
Should I tell what a miracle she was.
John Donne "The Relic" (before 1602) [Ault1]
And more, much more, than in my verse can sit,
Your own glass shows you when you look at it.
Shakespeare (Sonnet)
Other women don't exist for you now
other plans lose their appeal
[peripheral inhibition]
there's other things you could be thinking about
should be thinking about
but they've gone flat
dedication of resources, don't spread yourself thin
putting all your eggs in one basket
worry focuses the attention
(not unlike the focussing of attention in meditation (OyG))
"Falling in love" is a phenomenon of attention.
Ortega (48)
...falling in love burns away conflicting emotions...
Jessamyn West
A sign of love has just struck me; it is when all the pleasures and all the pains attributable to all the other passions and all the other needs of a man cease abruptly to affect him.
Stendhal (217)
There was only one being in the world who was able to concentrate for him the whole world and the meaning of life.
Tolstoy [Anna Karenin 286]
The man whose heart has leapt at the glimpse of his beloved's white satin hat in the distance is surprised at his own indifference to the greatest society beauty...
Stendhal (70)
He will prefer to dream of the slenderest chance of pleasing her, rather than to receive all the favours of any femme vulgaire.
Stendhal (48)
When one has just seen the woman one loves, the sight of every other woman damages the vision and physically hurts the eyes...
Stendhal (265) (Fr. 158)
It was as if there was no one in the universe except me and Kitty.
Murdoch [Word Child]
...nothing in this wide universe I call,
Save thou, my rose; in it thou art my all.
Shakespeare (Sonnet)
Now Since an Object I have gain'd
Whereon to sett & fix my heart
My wandringe thoughts are all restrain'd
I feele no Rack of doubtfull Smart
I would not for a Kingdome be
Redeem'd from this Captivitye Of loveing thee
17th C. lyric (344)
I wanna be loved by you
Just you and nobody else but you
I wanna be loved by you alone
(Poo poo pa doop!)
Bert Kalmer (USA 1884-1947) (1928)
With single Love Ile feed my breast
That so on double it may feast
When you love mee mee best.
17th C. lyric (345) [OLR]***?
"Ambition? Society? The Court?" There was nothing that interested him there. They had all had a meaning for him once, but now he no longer cared for any of it.
Tolstoy [Anna Karenin 423]
And all is dross that is not Helena.
Christopher Marlowe (England 1564-1593?)
"Doctor Faustus" (1604)
You've gotten a taste of bliss
Now you're magnetized, addicted, hypnotised
you can't stop thinking of him
mystical meditation
A man does not have the stamina
to put love aside.
Swahili lyric
The lover's every action ends with the thought of the beloved... A person in love is unremittingly and uninterruptedly occupied with the image of the beloved.
12th C Code of Love
At about half past three I went to bed and to sleep, and the thought of Kitty spread a tent of quietness above my dreaming head.
Murdoch [Word Child]
Throughout all these absurdities... I had not for a second stopped thinking about Kitty. The thought of her now filled out about me like a great vibrating sphere.
Murdoch [Word Child 322]
The dawning of morn, the daylight's sinking,
The night's long hours still find me thinking
Of thee, thee, only thee.
Thomas Moore (119) "Thee, Thee, Only Thee"
I love her more than skies bright with the wind and sun
and all my thoughts arise
to travel, one by one,
into her lips and eyes.
Horace Gregory (xx 1898-1982) "Prisoner's Song" [OLR]
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (England 1792-1822)
"Music, When Soft Voices Die" [MW]
In all the novels I read, his idea accompanied me & I did little else from morning to night but read novels.
Margaret Bayard (USA c1800) [HH]
She was [for him] the amorous heroine of all novels and plays, the vague 'she' of all poetry.
Flaubert [MB 229]
...the thought of his absent mistress was incessantly, indissolubly blended with all the simple actions of Swann's daily life-- when he took his meals, opened his letters, went for a walk or to bed-- by the very sadness he felt at having to perform those actions without her; like those initials of Philibert the Fair which, in the church of Brou, because of her grief and longing for him, Margaret of Austria intertwined everywhere with her own.
Proust [SiL 150-51]
My thoughts seek you as waves that seek the shore,
And when I think of you, I am at rest.
Sara Teasdale "To E."
My thought is like the stream; and flows and follows you on forever.
Li Po "I am a Peach Tree" (trans. Shigeyoshi Obata)
My dear Nora, It has just struck me. I came in at half past eleven. Since then I have been sitting in an easy chair like a fool. I could do nothing. I hear nothing but your voice. I am like a fool hearing you call me 'Dear.' I offended two men today by leaving them coolly. I wanted to hear your voice, not theirs.
James Joyce (letter of August 15, 1904.
Nora Barnacle lived with Joyce until his death.
They married finally in 1931.)
Because your voice was at my side
I gave him pain.
Because within my hand I held
Your hand again.There is no word nor any sign
Can make amend--
He is a stranger to me now
Who was a friend.
James Joyce (1904) Chamber Music 17
Once I had friends, now none are left to me;
I see none else but you, because my heart Has wholly fled to you,
And thus I walk the ways of Earth apart.
Asif () (tr. Khan and Westbrook)
It's become a time of pain and wanting, waiting
homesickness, depression, sighs
sad songs of longing
(the drug-addiction metaphor: where's my love-fix?)
don't wander off, love
let me tag along, love
let me into your heart
he'll be here any minute,
I can't stand the wait...
you lose your appetite, you can't eat
I'm dying with love
Now Love that dissolves the limbs shakes me,
Sweetly bitter unvanquishable creeping thing.
Sappho (Greek c1600 BPE) 40
Love in my bosom like a bee
Doth suck his sweet...
Thomas Lodge (England 1558?-1625)
"Rosalind's Madrigal" (1550) [Ault1]
Many a time she made me die...
Thomas Flatman (England 1637-88)
"The Slight" (1666) [Ault2]
The night is unbearable,
Oh, let me go to you
For there is no one,
There is nothing
To comfort me but you.
Sara Teasdale "When I Am Not with You" [Cole]
"[Why does love have to make you feel weak?]"
Hite report III
Symptoms of true love
Are leanness, jealousy,
Laggard dawns;Are omens and nightmares--
Listening for a knock,
Waiting for a sign.
Robert Graves "Symptoms of Love"
Love is always pictured as naked.
Jessamyn West
The green sickness of love.
Graves "The Country Dance"
When you are to meet your beloved in the evening, the anticipation of such immense happiness makes the intervening minutes quite unbearable (rend insupportable).
Stendhal (77)
...the tension of waiting... so ravished and stripped bare the intervening moments that he could find nothing, not one idea, not one memory in his mind behind which his troubled spirit might take shelter and repose...
Proust [SiL ]
He who is not impatient is not in love.
Pietro Aretino (Italy 1492-1556)
...my natural spirit began to be impeded in its functioning, for my soul was wholly given to thoughts of this most gracious person. In a short time I grew so frail and weak that many of my friends felt concern at my appearance.
Dante "Vita Nuova"
The soul of a man in love smells of the closed-up room of a sick man-- its confined atmosphere is filled with stale breath.
Ortega (57)
"When I see a man being sad I believe he is falling in love."
Stendhal (289)
(But even these pains are a pleasure)
...to the Don Juans I will say this, that a man in fear and trembling is never bored. The pleasures of love are always in proportion to the fear.
Stendhal (211) ("Werther and Don Juan")
Thou sweet kindler of desires
John Fletcher (126) (England 1579-1625)
You want him, want to see him, to touch him, need to
to be with her
Te quiero
homesickness
to be one with her, accept her into you, be accepted into her
send out messages, waiting for reply, never received
emptiness
(incompletion, hunger, tension in skin)
She's calling to you, somehow
temperature of desire (Ortega y Gasset)
[Plato]
desire implies potential for pain, failure, loss
For heaven itself I should not care
Unless I saw Clorinda there.
Thomas Rymer (England 1641-1713)
"On Her Absence" (1683) [Ault2]
Ne joy of aught that under heaven doth hove,
Can comfort me, but her own joyous sight
Edmund Spenser (274)
To see you, little one,
that is my need,
my heart presses inside me,
I cannot wait.
Swahili lyric
Fog clings
To the high mountain
My eye clings
to him.
Japanese folk song
...all the happiness of his life, the sole meaning of his life, he now found in seeing and hearing her.
Tolstoy (Anna Karenin 118)
Mine Eyes the Glasse, the Needle is my Soule,
Love is the Loadstone, My beloved the Pole.
17th C. lyric (289)
Love and insanity, obsession, manias
It's like being under the influence of drugs (Murdoch)
What is done from love is always beyond good and evil.
Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil 153)
I was dreadfully in love with the sort of black certain metaphysical love that cuts deeper than anything, and thus seems its own absolute justification.
Murdoch [Word Child 125]
He no longer admits an element of chance in things and loses his sense of the probable... whatever he imagines becomes reality... An alarming indication that you are losing your head is that you observe some hardly distinguishable object as white, and interpret this as favourable to your love. A moment later you realize that the object is really black, and you now regard this as a good omen for your love.
Stendhal (60)
The ecstatic is more or less a madman. He lacks moderation and mental clarity.
Ortega (63)
Being in love has its own self-certifying universality, it informs and glorifies the world with an energy which, like a drug, becomes a necessity of consciousness. Without it, the scene is dark, without that throbbing communication, dead. A mad state, perhaps an undesirable one, inimical to justice, benevolence, common sense. But, for its slaves, it justifies itself as, for the ordinary unsaintly man, nothing else ever does.
Murdoch [Word Child 335]
Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, desires a dark house and a whip as madmen do: and the reason why they are not so punished and cured is that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love too.
Shakespeare
Were it not reasonably common, men could surely be locked up for such a change of consciousness.
Murdoch (Black Prince 213)
Crazy you call me
Sure I'm crazy
Crazy in love with you.
xx xxx
But even if a man or a woman were so fine and so wise that their claim to be such could be denied by no one, it would still be a form of madness to direct upon him or upon her the kind of exclusive worshipping attention in which being in love consists.
Murdoch (Black Prince 250)
...not to flatter ourselves, ours is but a refined degree of madness. What can it be else to be lost to all things in the world but that single object that takes up one's fancy, to lose all the quiet and repose of one's life in hunting after it, when there is so little likelihood of ever gaining it...?
Dorothy Osborne (letter of 1653 to William Temple.
They married the next year.)
There may be a terrible selfishness in this
"I love you" = "I need you to give yourself to me"
You don't maybe care how it affects her
You serve her only because you want her to be in your debt
Love is nothing save an insatiate thirst to enjoy a greedily desired object.
Michel de Montaigne (France 1533-92)
Self-love, my love, no farther goes than this,
that when we kiss, it is ourselves we kiss.
Conrad Aiken "The Lovers" [MW]
The plain English of the politest address of a gentleman to a lady, is, I am now, dear madam, the humblest of your servants: Be so good as to allow me to be your Lord and Master.
Samuel Richardson (England 1689-1761)
Love seeketh only self to please,
To bind another to Its delight,
Joys in another's loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite.
Wm. Blake "The Clod and the Pebble" (but see below)
This selfishness may be necessary and good
Ideally, there should be no kindness in the role of either the man or the woman. Self-seeking, in one of the paradoxes with which love abounds, they find each other.
Jessamyn West
You want to stand closer to him
magnetism
moth and flame
you lean towards her, take another tiny step, incline your head
steal peeks in church, stare when no one's looking
gape in foolish wonder
spying
consuming her beauty
you choose your paths in the hope they will cross hers
I do not feel ashamed
to follow you wherever you are.
Swahili lyric
Merely to run toward you is cool water
For a man who is thirsty.
(Egypt c1200 BPE) (tr. E. Pound & N. Stock)
...even the thought of leaving Florence [Italy] makes him feel he is dying.
Stendhal (158)
'Of the Moon'
Look how the pale queen of the silent night
Doth cause the ocean to attend upon her,
And he, as long as she is in his sight,
With his full tide is ready her to honor:
But when the silver wagon of the moon
Is mounted up so high he cannot follow,
The sea calls home his crystal waves to moan,
And with low ebb doth manifest his sorrow.
So you, that are the sovereign of my heart,
Have all my joys attending on your will:
My joys low ebbing when you do depart,
When you return, their tide my heart doth fill.
So as you come, and as you do depart,
Joys ebb and flow within my tender heart.
Charles Best (England n.dd.) (1602) [Ault1]
Just like an angel,
beautiful without blemish,
how can I stay away from you?
Swahili lyric
I wish I were close
To you as the wet skirt of
A salt girl to her body.
I think of you always.
Yambe No Akahito (Japan 8th C)(tr. Kenneth Rexroth)
I want to be the Moon
And shine
On the bed
Where he sleeps.
Japanese folk song
If I could share this old moondance with you, my love
Van Morrison (Ireland b.1945)
Ah, my pretty jewel
I love you as a pig loves the mud.
Louisiana Creole song [L'A]
Her presence electrifies you
And if perchance by me there pass
She unto whom I sue for grace,
The cold blood forsaketh my face...
sir Thomas Wyatt (284) (1503-42)
He knew she was there by the joy and terror that gripped his heart.
Tolstoy [Anna Karenin]
A thrilling current of sheer joy came from the woman beside me and warmed my whole body and made it tingle with well-being.
Murdoch [Word Child 238]
If you come to me
Moonbeams fill my room.
Gonnoske' Komai (xx 20th C.)
The mere thought of him jolts you
the thought of running into her
Forget the rest: my heart is true
And in its waking thought of you
Gives the same wild and sudden leap
That jerks it from the brink of sleep.
Robert Graves "The Leap"
...he would feel all around him the thrilling possibility of her sudden apparition...
Proust [SiL]
And oh, the towering feel-ing!
Just to know, somehow you are near!
The o-verpowering feel-ing
That any moment, you may suddenly, appear!
Alan Jay Lerner "My Fair Lady"
You listen for his footsteps
...my heart suddenly nearly fell out of me because the telephone rang and I thought it might be her. [Then] the front doorbell rang. My heart performed the same swoop into emptiness.
Murdoch (Black Prince 219)
When, far down the street, he saw a white satin hat that looked like the one Mme ... wore, his heart missed a beat, and he had to lean against the wall for support.
Stendhal (103)
(Or-- you see her
and for some reason you feel nothing)
You want to possess him, to be possessed by her
so he'll obey only you
Youself-- your soul-- in pity give me all,
Withhold no atom's atom or I die...
John Keats (England 1795-1821) "To Fanny" ()
A lady doesn't wander all over the room
And blow on some other guy's dice
"Guys and Dolls" (of Lady Luck)
I wish I was an apple
A-hangin on a tree
And every time my true love passed
She'd take a bite of me!
Southern Appalachian folktune
She seems to be your property, because you alone can make her happy.
Stendhal (60)
Appetite [as opposed to love] ...does not result in surrender of oneself, but, on the contrary, in the capture of the object.
Ortega (191)
You want to touch her, electric touch, kiss her
make love with her
erotic magnetism, lust
'The Wine-Cup'
This cup has touched
Zenophila's teasing mouth, sweet snare of love.
Oh happiness, if she
Would press her lips to my lips, and in one
Deep draught drink down my soul!
Meleagros (Greek c140-c70 BPE) (tr. D. Fitts)
One day I will kiss you so
that the flowers tremble.
Swahili lyric
The most genuine lovers will truthfully admit that they did not feel-- at least, initially-- a desire for physical union.
Ortega (39)?139
...genuine sexual love, that is, ardor for another being, his body and soul in indissoluble union, is in itself primarily a gigantic force entrusted with improving the species.
Ortega (40) (cf. Graves, 'At First Sight', above)
You want to share your inner self with him
"...I was also aware of myself filling up with all kinds of things I wanted to tell her."
Ralph Pape "Soap Opera"
"...lots and lots of things weren't real to me at all until I'd told you about them."
Murdoch (Black Prince 277)
You want to give her a baby
You want to have his baby
women have baby-fantasies about the men they love
You want to know everything about him
(possession through knowledge, research manias)
...once you have set yourself a goal, for instance to reach a clear understanding of the Freschi Conspiracy in Genoa in 1547, the most insipid book becomes interesting, rather as, when in love, one meets a person of no consequence who has just seen one's beloved; the interest is redoubled month by month until study of the Freschi Conspiracy is done with.
Stendhal (188)
Union
...inherent in all love is a desire of the one in love to unite with another being who appears endowed with a certain perfection. ...the lover experiences a strange urgency to dissolve his own individuality in that of the other, and, vice versa, to absorb the individuality of his beloved into his own. ...The rapture of love consists in feeling ourselves so metaphysically porous to another person that only in the fusion of both, only in an "individuality of two," can it find fulfillment.
Ortega (38- paraphrasing Plato, 40, 41)
...a feeling of being absorbed by him to the core of our being, as if he had torn us from our own vital depths and we were living trees transplanted, our vital roots within him.
Ortega (188)
...an untiring instinct for migration, a wild urge to depart from oneself to the other. ...this constant state of migration is what it is to be in love.
Ortega (199, ?)
As if two wax candles were so close together that the light were all one.
st. Theresa () (quoted in OyG)
The things she's touched become sacred objects
[holy?]
her blessings flow to you through them
'Pebbles'
Where the Chikuma flows through Shinama,
If but on the pebbles you tread,
I will gather them up, like precious gems
From the river bed.
(Japan 8th C.)
Thou more than most sweet glove,
Unto my more sweet love,
Suffer me to store with kisses
This empty lodging that now misses
The pure rosy hand that ware thee...
Ben Jonson "The Glove" (1600) [Ault1]
...I was sitting on the floor hugging the chair which she had sat in.
Murdoch (Black Prince 214)
I have kept your churi [stole] under my pillow so that I have your flavour all the time with me.
Gopal Puri () (letter of 8-15-1942 to his wife Kailash)
...she lingers
There, like sunshine over the ground...
Robert Browning "Garden-Fancies"
You want to preserve them from change, from others' touch
others will break the connection
I had put Julian's chair well out of the way.
Murdoch (Black Prince 226)
One evening at a party he kissed her hand; and you will observe that since then she has been careful, even at the risk of appearing odd, to allow no one else to kiss her hand.
Stendhal (56)
I won't wash it--
The dress he gave me;
Love's past
would fade.
Japanese folk song
She was filled with indignation when she saw that big red hand, its fingers as soft as slugs, touching those pages that had once made her heart pound with emotion.
Flaubert [MB 256]
You want her approval
You are sensitized to his moods, to her gestures
you study her body language
...she searched his face for signs of the impression she was making on him.
Tolstoy (Anna Karenin 515)
"...did you... think of nothing but to read in her eyes what she thought of you at that moment, so that you had no thought of conveying your love for her through your own glances?"
Stendhal (28)
(When she's present you may feel anxious,
when he's away you may feel blissful relief, dreaming of how things
could be)
Mouse, why do you whisper love in your heart all day?
Why do you talk about her, incessantly,
All the time, any time
Except when she is present in the flesh?
(Egypt c1200 BPE) (tr. Pound and Stock)
'Lightning'
There is a solitude in seeing you,
Followed by your presence when you are gone.
You are like heaven's veins of lightning.
I cannot see till afterward
How beautiful you are.
There is a blindness in seeing you,
Followed by the sight of you when you are gone.
Witter Bynner (xx 1881-1968) [MLP]
His actual presence disturbed the voluptuous pleasure of her reveries.
Flaubert [MB 93]
Any neutral or positive gesture she makes towards you thrills you
Saying your name
There was, it would seem, nothing extraordinary in what she had said, but what unutterable meaning there was in every sound of her words, in every movement of her lips, eyes, and hands as she said it!
Tolstoy (Anna Karenin 391)
Le Bret: You are not quite so gloomy.
Cyrano: After all, she knows that I exist-- no matter why!
Edmond Rostand "Cyrano"
...her smile, which always transported Levin into an enchanted world where he felt softened, and overflowing with tenderness, as he remembered feeling on rare occasions in his early childhood.
Tolstoy [Anna Karenin 45] (softened!)
...but for an instant, as she glanced at [Vronsky], her eyes lit up and though the fire was at once extinguished, that one instant made him happy.
Tolstoy (Anna Karenin 120)
He looked at me when I passed
and my heart was in jubilee.
(Egypt c1200 BPE) (tr. Pound & Stock)
...she said to me
Jack, Jack, different than I had ever heard,
Because she wasn't calling me, I think,
Or telling me. She used my name to
Talk in another way I wanted to know.
John Logan (USA b.1923) "The Picnic"
As they walked down the street she turned her eyes towards me where I stood in fear and trembling, and with her ineffable courtesy, which is now rewarded in eternal life, she greeted me! and such was the virtue of her greeting that I seemed to experience the height of bliss.
Dante "Vita Nuova"
Her use of my name nearly sent me spinning off into the water. I wanted suddenly to turn right round like someone in a dance. I think I gave a sort of gasp.
Murdoch [Word Child 239]
...if you are truly in love and your lover says things which make you happy, you will lose the power of speech.
Stendhal (106)
While her breath, speaking, kindled Nature's fire...
Fulke Greville (158)
Any negative gesture he makes terrifies you
(even if it's not clearly aimed your way)
self-consciousness
your defenses are gone
If you dart forth disdainful rays,
To your own dye you turn my days.
James Howell (England 1594?-1666) [Ault2]
"Upon Black Eyes and Becoming Frowns" (1645)
...I think he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from her well-loved eyes.
F.S. Fitzgerald "The Great Gatsby"
Before falling in love, I was defined.
Now I am undefined, weeds are growing between my ribs.
Joyce Carol Oates (USA b.1937)
"I Was in Love" (1970)
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
W.B. Yeats "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven" [OLR]
It seems he must feel your attention at every moment
even across the city
[telepathy- illusion/error-- emotion (is that her? no)
Blow there, sweet Zephyrus!
...and in soft language spoken low,
Thou gentle air, in secret make her know
How, like the phoenix, I do sacrifice
My heart to her, inflame'd by her eyes.
(England c1640) [Ault2]
An' she'd blush scarlet, right in prayer,
When her new meetin'-bonnet
Felt somehow thru' its crown a pair
O' blue eyes sot upon it.
James Russell Lowell (USA 1819-91)
"The Courtin'" [OBAV]
You feel you are impelling her to come to you
[nam yoho renge kyo]
I drew her like a magnet and she had to come to me.
Murdoch (WC)
Even more:
...simply to think her, as a mystic thinks God with a thought which goes beyond thinking and becomes being.
Murdoch [Word Child 293]
I felt that I was, at every instant, creating Julian and supporting her being with my own.
Murdoch (Black Prince 214)
...I am the veil. The face underneath is hers.
Nizami "Layla"
Visions of her appear to your inner eye, unbidden
(is she thinking of me, at this moment?)
The lama's face, in meditation,
Won't seem to come to mind;
But the lover's face unbidden
Floats clearly through my mind.
the 6th Dalai Lama (Tibet 1683-1706) (tr. Mark Tatz)
I stared ahead of me through the warm silvery veil of my tears and saw Julian's face... hanging there in space, like a vision of the Savior...
Murdoch (Black Prince 233)
She rose up in clouds of brilliant light in his head whenever he came across certain words in his reading. ("Mistress" was one, "beautiful" another...)
Brodkey "Sentimental Education"
When you are gone, I stand apart
And whisper to your image in my heart.
Anna Wickham (xx 1884-1947) "Silence"
You express it first in the privacy of your thoughts
listening to the sound of the idea
inner conversations
you dare to have fantasies, for the first time
wide, detached fantasies (other desire-objects)
narrow, attached fantasies
dreams of glory
"a tender, solitary, unassuming reverie" (Stendhal)
you try scrawling your paired initials
(what would your name be if you married him?
what would her name be if she married me?)
What a man imagines is, apparently, more important to him than what his flesh experiences.
Jessamyn West
Each step your imagination takes brings a new delight (un moment de de'lices). Little wonder that this state of mind is enticing.
Stendhal (112)
...as soon as she thought of her future with Vronsky, a dazzling perspective of happiness rose before her...
Tolstoy [Anna Karenin 62]
...the love which pervades the whole consciousness and fills it with pictures, some wildly happy, some hopeless, but all sublime...
Stendhal (96)
She has touched your heart
(have you touched hers?)
she's in your dreams at night
I arise from dreaming of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright.
P.B. Shelley "The Indian Serenade"
Good night! Good night! Ah, good the night
That wraps thee in its silver light,
Good night! No night is good for me
That does not hold a thought of thee. Good night!
Anonymous [TAV]*?
Although my feet
Never cease running to you
On the path of dreams
Such nights of love are never worth
One glimpse of you in your reality.
Ono no Komachi (Japan 9th C.)
He's become real for your imagination
your fantasies are now accepted by your soul as possible
this might really happen!
This time, I'm gonna get the girl!
The idea of her life shall sweetly creep
Into his study of imagination,
And every lovely organ of her life,
Shall come apparell'd in more precious habit,
More moving-- delicate and full of life
Into the eye and prospect of his soul.
Shakespeare "Much Ado About Nothing"
...the most trivial remarks that he uttered now, even to people who had never heard of her, always somehow related to Odette...
Proust [SiL 184]
Let Nature, if she please, disperse
My atoms over all the universe,
At the last they easily shall
Themselves know, and together call;
For thy love, like a mark, is stamped on all.
Abraham Cowley (1618-67) "All-Over Love" (1647) [Ault2]
Dare I enjoy a sexual fantasy?
violating the purity of the bond
A burning soul does not imagine the ultimate favour, but the nearest one. For example, with a mistress who treats you severely you dream of holding her hand. Imagination does not naturally reach beyond the first step, and if it is forced it will very soon retreat for fear of profaning what it adores.
Stendhal (260) (Fr. 140)
That spring night I spent
Pillowed on your arm
Never really happened
Except in a dream.
Unfortunately I am
Talked about anyway.
lady Suo (xx 11th C.)