"Yes, there is something repugnant and repellant about me."

            Tolstoy (Anna Karenin 98) (Levin speaking)

"You can't imagine what disgusting thoughts I have about everything."

            Tolstoy (Anna Karenin 138) (Kitty speaking)

My heart is as black as the blackness of the sloe,
Or as the black coal that is on the smith's forge;
Or as the sole of a shoe left in white halls;
It was you that put that darkness over my life.
You have taken the east from me; you have taken the
west from me;
You have taken what is before me and what is behind me;
You have taken the moon, you have taken the sun from me;
And my fear is great that you have taken God from me!

            "The Grief of a Girl's Heart" (Ireland ballad,
            tr. lady Augusta Gregory) [OLR]

'Gnomic Verses'
The best of all things it were, never to be born,
Never to know the light of the strong sharp sun;
But being born,
The best of all is to pass as soon as may be
To Hades' gate,
there to lie dead,
Lost, locked close beneath the world's huge weight.

            Theognis (Greece 570?-490? BPE)
            (tr. D. Fitts, not in context here)

My lodgings, this sitting-room where I lived during the first days of our acquaintence when I used to see her every day, have now become unbearable. Every print on the wall, every stick of furniture, reproaches me for the happiness I dreamed of in this room, and which is now lost for ever.

            Stendhal (99)

It is no use seeking consolation in pleasures of another sort; they turn to dust and ashes.

            Stendhal (52)

From the highest to the humblest scene of my life, from the brilliant world of fame to my own domestic hearth, you have poisoned all. I have no place of refuge: home is odious, the world oppressive.

            Benjamin Disraeli (England 1804-81)
            (letter to Mary Ann Lewis, Feb. 7, 1839.
            They married in August.)

Crying, keening, primal screaming
reminded of other rejections, failures of love
[tears as draining-off hormones]
face puffy with self-pity
calling out her name
make her feel guilty
singing the blues, harmonic intervals
eating, getting drunk
[blood sugar, hormones]
stupid, self-destructive acts
risk-taking
wasting away
misery loves company- reassurance
hunger for attention
guilt, depression (depression and anger)
bathtub catatonia
escape: novels, soaps

...no sooner, in preparing himself for sleep, did he relax the self-control of which he was not even conscious so habitual had it become, than an icy shudder convulsed him and he began to sob.

            Proust [SiL 179]

...Thou shinest in every tear that I do weep;
No drop but as a coach doth carry thee,
So ridest thou triumphing in my woe...

            W. Shakespeare "Love's Labour's Lost" (1598)

...mine Eyes and Hart [must]
outflow the Rivers, and out sigh the winde.

            17th C. lyric (314)

Sometimes unto the mountain peaks he goes
Driven by his woes,
Sometimes within the barren wilderness
Hides his distress.

            Fighan (tr. Khan and Westbrook)

O wherefore shou'd I busk my heid?
Or wherefore shou'd I kame my hair?
For my true love has me forsook,
And says he'll never love me mair.

            Anonymous (16th C.) [ELP]

Woman of beauty,
Since you avoid me,
great is the listlessness
that seizes me.
Even when lying in bed,
I am restless...
my food is not digested.
From dusk to dawn I cry,
my heart has nothing to hold onto.

            Swahili lyric

Bitterness is in my heart
causing my brain to flee

            Swahili lyric

'You Benou-Azra [an Arabian tribe] think that to die of love is a sweet and noble death, but that is clearly weakness and stupidity; and those whom you regard as great-hearted are no more than senseless weaklings.' 'You would not say so,' replied the Arab of the tribe of Azra, 'if you had seen our women with their great dark eyes flashing half-hidden beneath their long lashes, if you had seen them smile, and the shine of their teeth between brown lips.'

            Stendhal (178) (quoting an Arabic source)

"Oh, I can't stand these condolences-- they're unbearable!"

            Tolstoy (Anna Karenin 137.  Kitty speaking.)

None alive will pity me.

            Richard Barnfield (143) (England 1574-1627) (1598)

It helps to watch movies about people whose lives are more wrecked than your own.

            Jean Gonick (USA b.1950) [MTC]

Catharsis of poetry, of art
poems of lovepain more deeply cathartic than
poems of lovepleasure
pain as an urge to express
the fine intelligence of pain

It's a wound from a merciless knife,
Bring your drugs, Art of Poetry--
they do relieve the pain at least for a while.

            C.P. Cavafy (xx 1863-1933)
            "Melancholy of Jason Kleander"
            (tr. Edmund Keeley & Philip Sherrard)

I am two fools, I know,
For loving, and for saying so
In whining poetry;
But where's that wise man, that would not be I,
If she would not deny?
Then as th'earth's inward narrow crooked lanes
Do purge sea water's fretful salt away,
I thought, if I could draw my pains
Through rhyme's vexations, I should them allay,
Grief brought to numbers cannot be so fierce
For, he tames it, that fetters it in verse.

            John Donne (148) "The Triple Fool"

Pale Inke, thou art not black Enough of hew,
t'express a Mournfull sadnes & a true...

            17th C. lyric (269)

Letters written in the dust
which evry breath doth move
are pure steel to womens trust
& live worlds beyond their Love.

            17th C. lyric (272)

'Sometimes with One I Love'
Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I effuse unreturned love,
But now I think there is no unreturn'd love, the pay is certain one way or another,
(I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not return'd,
Yet out of that I have written these songs.)

            Walt Whitman (249)

This is something I have often thought to see in love, this tendency to draw more misery from unhappy things than joy from happy ones.

            Stendhal (101)

Sending him your poems of pain
rubbing her nose in it

Restles streame thy self persuinge,
And yet from thy self still flyinge,
staye thy Course, and waves renewinge
heer A sorrow like to dyinge,
which when thou shalt have knowne,
goe tell the Sea, that all her store,
of bitternes Affordes noe more.

            17th C. lyric (276)

...silently to beare his woe
Shall bee your Martyrs glory,
If by one pittying look you show
You understand his story.

            17th C. lyric (232)

'Sonnet'
Ponder thy cares, and sum them all in one,
Get the account of all thy heart's disease;
Reckon the torments do thy mind displease,
Write up each sigh, each plaint, each tear, each groan;
Remember on thy grief conceived by day,
And call to mind thy night's disturbe'd rest;
Think on those visions did thy soul molest
While as thy wearied corpse a-sleeping lay;
And when all those thou hast enrolled aright
Into the count-book of thy daily care,
Extract them truly; then present the sight
With them of flinty Caelia, the fair,
That she may see if yet moe ills remains
For to be paid to her unjust disdains.

            sir David Murray (England 1569-1629) (1611) [Ault1]

Proud of your suffering

...I felt... that my embroiled heart was furthering [love's] history.

            Murdoch (Black Prince 385)

...from forth the urne
where my tormented ashes burne
take thou a part
gently strew them on hir Heart...

            17th C lyric (320) (a spell for lovers)

I have wept nearly every day (precious words of 10th June).

            Stendhal (129)

Letting go of poetry

For when this song is sung and past,
My lute be still, for I have done.

            sir Thomas Wyatt (175)
            "The Lover Complaineth the Unkindness of his Love"

Long time I told my friends my bitter grief,
And in the telling sought to find relief;
In silence now instead I take my rest,
And find that peace and loneliness are best.

            Mir Taqi Mir (India 1722-1810)
            (tr. from Urdu by Khan and Westbrook)

Throw not away thy darts
On impenetrable hearts.

            Thomas Stanley (England 1625-1678) [ELP]

Denying [/\]

...my heart from her I'll take.
I will not subject be to her disdain:
The world shall never say I love in vain.

            sir Aston Bartholomew Cokayne (England 1608-84)
            "Of a Mistress" (1658) [Ault2]

"I've enough pride never to let myself love a man who does not love me."

            Tolstoy (Anna Karenin 137)

...if she be not for me,
What care I for whom she be?

            George Wither (England 1588-1667)
            "The Author's Resolution in a Sonnet" [Cole]

If my heart were base enough to love without being loved in return I would tear it into pieces.

            Napoleon to Josephine, 1796

You wake up in a good mood, you think you're cured
(but the next moment...)

[monkey of love \/]
you see her every day
the feeling won't let go
sticks like glue, like a piece of tape on the end of your finger
(what can you pry it off with?)
you hold onto images of the past
continue to dream of the future

He remembered those moonlit evenings, when, leaning back in the victoria that was taking him to the Rue La Pe'rouse he would wallow voluptuously in the emotions of a man in love, oblivious of the poisoned fruit that such emotions must inevitably bear.

            Proust [SiL 243]

By sad experience I have found
That her perfection is my wound.

            Henry King, bishop of Chicester
            (England 1592-1669) [ELP]

I never laie me downe to rest
but my deerest love I see
and laughing then she doth me feede
with what shee waking keepes from me.
Walkinge waking alasse shee doth me pine
lett me but sleepe and all is myne.

            17th C. lyric (179)

The difficulty of forgetting a woman with whom you have been happy is that the imagination tirelessly continues to evoke and embellish moments of the past.

            Stendhal (129)

I am a miser of my memories of you
And will not spend them.

            Witter Bynner "Coins"

Can't get used to losin' you
No matter what I try to do
Gonna live my whole life through
(flump, flump) lovin' you...!

            Doc Pomus and Mort Schuman

Though I'm scolded
"Foolishness! Nonsense!"
I can't get over
Love's darkness.

            Japanese folk song

Or you, or I, Nature did wronge!
you made too fare, & I too true,
Most beautious you Near heard my Songe,
yet was it Ever framde to you,
& I can never turne the leafe,
though I singe still, and you are deafe.

            17th C. lyric (266)

But why speake I of chang as though my will
which she hath long commanded yet were free
her hate may raigne but not alter me
And therefore let me dying love her still.

            17th C. lyric (414)

He was waiting impatiently for the news that she was married or just about to be married, hoping that, like the extraction of a tooth, such news would cure him completely.

            Tolstoy (Anna Karenin 163)

He was awake a long time before he remembered that his heart was broken.

            Ernest Hemingway (USA 1898-1961)

"...he's read a Chicago paper for years just on the chance of catching a glimpse of Daisy's name."

            Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Love a' la Werther holds strange pleasures; after a year or two the lover's soul is, as it were, merged with that of his beloved. And strangely enough this happens quite regardless of the success of his love, and despite the harshness of his mistress. At this stage, whatever he does or notices, he asks himself: 'What would she say if she were here with me? What would I say to her about this view of Casa Lecchio*?' He talks to her, listens to her replies, and laughs at the jokes she tells him. A hundred leagues away from her, in the shadow of her displeasure (sous le poids de sa cole`re), he catches himself thinking: 'Le'onore was very gay this evening.' He rouses himself. 'Ye gods,' he sighs, 'there are madmen in Bedlam less crazy than I!'

            Stendhal (210)

But the truth was that in the depths of his morbid condition he feared death itself no more than such a recovery, which would in fact amount to the death of all that he now was.

            Proust [SiL 156]

'The Appeal' [or "Why Canst Thou Not"]
Why should mine eyes see more in you
Than they can see in all the rest?
For I can others' beauties view,
And not find my heart opprest.
O be as others are to me,
Or let me be more to thee.

            Samuel Daniel (1606)
            [or Anon. in Danyel's Songs for the Lute] [Ault1]

How often has Salviati not heard Le'onore telling him... with her bewitching smile, 'Well, yes; I do love you!' Now these are illusions a prudent man never has.

            Stendhal (252) (Fr. 121)

Keep busy, distraction from worrying, from morbid self-pity
leave town, quit your job- avoid reminders
join Foreign Legion
get religion, join a church, join a convent
back to the singles bars
take up with that guy who's been after you for years
Ortega-- "cures for one's attention"
Wm Blake and Catherine

...his deep, secret wound, which tormented him day and night, and whenever he felt that his thoughts were straying too near it, he would quickly turn them into another channel for fear of suffering too much...

            Proust [SiL 185]

I thought that, leaving thee, rest would be mine,
My lost tranquility I might regain,
But separation brings no anodyne,
And kills me with its pain.

            Dagh (tr. Khan and Westbrook)

Then I will seeke some beauty that is just
who though she love not shall not Tyronnize
but shall at least confesse that in these eyes
there are such passions as her heart may trust.

            17th C. lyric (414)

Give God thy broken heart, He whole will make it:
Give woman thy whole heart, and she will break it.

            Edmund Prestwich (n.dd.)
            "The Broken Heart" (1651) [PBQ]

She who hath felt a real pain
By Cupid's dart
Finds that all absence is in vain
To cure her heart.
Though from my lover cast
Far as from Pole to Pole,
Still the pure flame must last,
For love is of the Soul.

            John Gay [ELP]

Painful peace-- next lifetime
letting go (not quite completely) your grip on that dreamed future
renouncing claim
admitting no hope, no possibility of fantasies' coming true
no longer afraid of offending her
(still secretly believing she really cares)

Tell me no more how fair she is;
I have no mind to hear
The story of that distant bliss
I never shall come near:
By sad experience I have found
That her perfection is my wound.

            Henry King "Tell Me No More" (1623) [Ault2]

From that evening onwards, Swann understood that the feeling which Odette had once had for him would never revive, that his hopes of happiness would not be realised now.

            Proust [SiL 227]

Like to the court she is unconstant and unkind,
But from the court differs in this alone,
That in the court men hope reward to find,
But following her such hope remaineth none.

            sir Arthur Gorges (157) (xx 1577-1625)

Oh fie, oh fie, oh fie,
Let the mill, let the mill go round.

            John Fletcher (40)

...he decided that from that day on he would stop looking for any extraordinary happiness such as marriage was to have given him...

            Tolstoy (Anna Karenin 106)

Heart, do not bruise the breast
That sheltered you so long;
Beat quietly, strange guest.
...You do not know for whom
These tears drip through my hands.
You thud in the bright room
Darkly*. This pain demands
No action on your part
Who never saw that face.
...sweet blindness, now begin.

            Millay "Theme and Variations"

Is love not dead? yet I hear that tune if I lie
Dreaming awake in the night on my lonely bed...

            Arthur Symons (xx 1865-1945) "A Tune" [Cole]

Farewell, unkissed!

            sir Thomas Wyatt (173)

Being grateful for fate

One of these days I might be in your town
And I guess I owe it all to Pamela Brown.

            Tom T. Hall (USA b.1936)

You realise that what you've been seeking in your beloved
is within you

Cease then, mine eyes, to seek her self to see;
And let my thoughts behold her self in me.

            Edmund Spenser "Sonnet" [Ault1]
            (1595, not exactly in context)

Admitting you're just not good enough
(admitting it right away-- of course she's above me)
you can't escape from what you are
seeing it clearly: I'm like him, that pathetic creature
you look in the mirror, in your heart
and see your flaws clearly for the first time
focusing on the self-deluding side of your love
realizing it's just a burden to her

For thee, against myself I'll vow debate,
For I must ne'er love him whom thou dost hate.

            Shakespeare (Sonnet)

'Sonnet LXXXVIII'
When thou shalt be disposed to set me light
And place my merit in the eye of scorn,
Upon thy side against myself I'll fight
And prove thee virtuous, though thou art forsworn.
With mine own weakness being best acquainted,
Upon thy part I can set down a story
Of faults conceal'd, wherein I am attainted,
That thou in losing me shalt win much glory:
And I by this will be a gainer too;
For bending all my loving thoughts on thee,
The injuries that to myself I do,
Doing thee vantage, double-vantage me.
Such is my love, to thee I so belong,
That for thy right myself will bear all wrong.

            W. Shakespeare

If he felt that she had been in any way at fault in ill-treating him, this made him unhappy...

            Stendhal (101)

For him, she was now divested of those bodily attributes (qualite's charnelles) from which he could obtain nothing, and in his heart she rose higher and higher, soaring away from him in a glorious apotheosis.

            Flaubert [MB 93]

Rationalizing that you're just different

Hoping detachment will make her finally start liking you
(fantasies: he'll just turn up at my door one of these days)

'Here I Am'
Look at me:
I no longer speak French to impress,
Wear innocence on my face by mistake
Or sophisticated sneers on purpose;
I keep scalp and fingernails clean
And wear whole underwear,
Am not tongue-tied by royalty
Nor do I spit on it.
Workers do not bring tears to my eyes,
But I can talk with them like any other;
I can speak seriously without too much earnestness,
Satirically without too much callousness,
Absurdly without too much foolishness.
I do not envy youth or fear old age,
I can love without butterflies or agony,
But with passion, faithfulness, and good humor.
And now where are you?

            Ann Morrissett (xx b.1925) [Cole]

[***market value]
practicing to be better anyway
using the pain constructively
in pain is truth
in angusta veritas?

...I taste
At first the very worst of fortune's might;
And other strains of woe, which now seem woe,
Compar'd with loss of thee will not seem so.

            Shakespeare (Sonnets)

There isn't a woman in the world the possession of whom is as precious as that of the truth which she reveals to us by causing us to suffer.

            Marcel Proust

The high ambition of the drop of rain
Is to be merged in the unfettered sea;
My sorrow when it passed all bounds of pain,
Changing, became itself the remedy.

            Ghalib (19th C.) (tr. Khan and Westbrook)

Who gives away his soul
Forgets his petty self and wins the whole,
Losing himself outright
He finds himself in the Eternal Light.

            Amir (tr. Khan and Westbrook)

...Make soft her heart, dissolve her lours;
Then Will I prise thy deity.
But if thou do not, Love, I'll truly serve her
In spite of thee, and by firm faith deserve her.

            xx Lodge "Love Guards the Roses of thy Lips" (1593)[A1]

Learning humility: didn't deserve
swelling heart
ready for next time
chalk this one up to experience
thinking what were your mistakes
correcting anything, everything it might have been
minuscule DPROX's towards ideal
be yourself
be the best you can be
sources of love, and sinks
how to stop being a sink

But my mistake
--and nothing else is to blame
was that I gave my love
without pressing for love in return.

            Swahili lyric

All he wanted now was to be better than he had been before.

            Tolstoy (Anna Karenin 106)

'To My Inconstant Mistress'
When thou, poor excommunicate
From all the joys of love, shalt see
The full reward and glorious fate,
Which my strong faith shall purchase me
Then curse thine own inconstancy

A fairer hand than thine shall cure
That heart, which thy false oaths did wound;
And to my soul, a soul more pure
Than thine, shall by Love's hand be bound,
And both with equal glory crowned.

Then shalt thou weep, entreat, complain
To Love, as I did once to thee;
When all thy tears shall be as vain
As mine were then, for thou shalt be
Damned for thy false apostasy.

            Thomas Carew (1639? nyah,nyahnya, nyah, nyah!) [Ault2]

The more cause the girl finds to regret that she did not marry you, the more comfortable you will feel over it.

            Samuel Clemens [L'A]

"Tell me, have you found any since as tender and as submissive? No, no. Nature will hardly have made another of the same temper."

             Abbe Prevost "Manon Lescaut"
             (Ch 4 of 13-- still a long row to hoe ahead)

Love is ever the beginning of Knowledge, as fire is of light.

            Thomas Carlyle

Hearing she was with him, what they did
[jealousy, compare, pain]
seeing her with him
with your best friend whom you trusted
with your worst enemy
with a jerk, an asshole, his smug smile, her happy greeting
she throws herself at his feet (Laura Riding)
(if he were only clearly my better
that might be some consolation)
(reopening the wound)
what's he got that I ain't got?
(he's got you, that's what he's got)
compare
(O, I see...)

Who on your breast pillows his head now,
Jubilant to have won
The heart beneath on fire for him alone...?

            Robert Graves "A Lost Jewel"

The angel of his life had been snatched away and given to a rude man of earth and iron, who could neither need nor appreciate her ministrations.

            N Hawthorne "The A of the B"

...that inner future, that colourless, free-flowing stream, was suddenly convulsed by a single remark from Odette which, penetrating Swann's defenses, immobilised it like a block of ice, congealed its fluidity, froze it altogether; and Swann felt himself suddenly filled with an enormous and infrangible mass which pressed on the inner walls of his being until it almost burst asunder...

            Proust [SiL 231]

...certain detailed sentences (as, for instance, "I saw Mme de Cre'cy yesterday with a man I didn't know"), sentences which dropped into his heart and turned at once into a solid state, grew hard as stalagmites, and seared and tore him as they lay there, irremovable...

            Proust [SiL 178]

What is so terrible about [jealousy] is the sense that a part of oneself has been irrecoverably alienated and stolen.

            Murdoch (Black Prince 254)

Of all the plagues a lover bears,
Sure rivals are the worst...
I can endure my own despair,
But not another's hope.

            William Walsh (xx 1663-1708)

Is she really going out with him?
Is she really gonna take him home tonight?

            Joe Jackson (USA? b.19xx)

Like an obscene puny familiar [I imagined] I would sit in the corners of bedrooms where she kissed and loved.

            Murdoch (Black Prince 254)

Must I look on, in hope time coming may
With change bring back my turn again to play?

            Fulke Greville (158)

By all thy Gloryes willingly I goe,
yet could have wishd thee Constant in thy love,
but since, thou Needes must prove,
uncertaine as is thy beautye,
or as the glass that showes it thee,
my hopes thus soone to Overthrow,
showes thee more fickle, but my flames by this,
are easier quencht then his,
whom flatt'ringe Smyles betraye?
'tis Tyrranous delaye
breeds all the Harme,
and makes that fyre Consume which should but warme.

Till Tyme distroye those blossomes of thy youthe
thou art our Idoll worshipt at that Rate,
but whoe can tell thy fate
& saye that when this beauties done
this Lovers Torch shall still burne On,
I could have serv'de thee with such truth
devoutest Pilgrims to their Saincts doe show
departed longe agoe,
And at thy Ebbinge tyde
have used thee as a Bryde
whose only true
whilst you are fayre he loves himselfe, not you.

            17th C. lyrics (44)

Seeing him with a stunning beauty

She's wearing his ring
today's their wedding day
tonight he's making love to her
she's letting him do unspeakable things
to her perfect body
[cx jealousy over possessions, achievements]

And he will go with another
through eternity.

            Gabriela Mistral (xx 1899-1957)
            "Ballad" (tr. Doris Dana)

Don Juans... do not see that what they obtain, even if it be granted by the same woman, is not the same thing.

            Stendhal (210) "Werther and Don Juan"

The ultimate gentility, generosity
feeling pity, mercy
praying truly for her well-being

Give, ask for nothing, hope for nothing,
Subsist on crumbs, though scattered casually
Not for you (she smiles) but for the birds.

            Robert Graves "Expect Nothing"

And so it is that with my lute unstrung,
Lady, I come to greet thy wedding-day;
But once, methinks, I heard a poet say
The sweetest songs remain for aye unsung.
So mine, unsung, at thy dear feet I lay,
And with a "Peace be with thee!" go my way.

            John W. Chadwick "A Wedding Song" {OOTH]

Yet O that Fate would let her see
One of some worthier race than we,--
One for whose sake she once might prove
How deeply she who scorns can love!

            Matthew Arnold "Excuse" [OOTH}

"Annie, it is for your bridal gift that I have wrought this."

            NH, AofB  (Owen giving her the sole product
            of his life's work)

Yet she my love and music both doth fly,
The music that her echo is and beauty's sympathy,
Then let my notes pursue her scornful flight:
It shall suffice that they were breathed and died for
her delight.

              Thomas Campion (1601) [Ault1]
              "Follow Your Saint, Follow with Accents Sweet"

I doe confess I love thee,
though thou wouldst requite with scorne,
best I am if thou undoo-me
that of heavenly powers art borne,
life I'le give thee, yet I know
that I gave, I still should owe.

When the blessed powers shall call
and complaine thy beinge heere
thinke but of my wofull fall
that of all thinges held thee deare
yeild me but this poore releife
I am paid for all my greife.

            17th C. lyric (168)

Love is never the measure of the person loved, but of the person loving.

            Jessamyn West

I loved you; even now I may confess,
Some embers of that love their fires retain;
But do not let it cause you more distress,
I do not wish to sadden you again.
Tonguetied and hopeless, still I loved you dearly
With pangs the jealous and the timid know;
So tenderly I loved you, so sincerely,
I pray God grant another love you so.

            Alexander Pushkin (Russian 1799-1837)
            (tr. Reginald M. Hewitt, slightly amended)

Well, I will pray to God on high,
That thou my constancy may'st see
And that yet once before I die,
Thou wilt vouchsafe to love me.
Greensleeves now farewell, adieu,
God I pray to prosper thee:
For I am still thy lover true,
Come once again and love me.

            	(154) (c1580) "Lady Greensleeves"

Venerusa, I implore you, love him well!

            Pompeian graffiti (c79) (tr. P. Dronke)

"Will you tell her just-- Arthur will always be there?"

            Murdoch [Word Child 287]

Pang on seeing even her first name
catching glimpses, hallucinating her in the corner of your eye
visiting places where you'd spent time with her

In his innermost depth the person who has once loved continues to feel that he is part of his beloved.

            Ortega (35)

[won't let go /\]
you think you'll never get over it:
the monkey of love, on my back
(the 'return my heart' theme

Tears, sighs, prayers fail, but true love lasteth ever.

            Walter Davison (n.dd.) "At Her Fair Hands" (1602) [A1]

I only wish I could profess
The dark Art of forgetfulness.

            T. Beaumont (n.dd.) "His Despair" (c1650) [Ault2]

The idea that one recovers from being in love is, of course, by definition... excluded from the state of love.

            Murdoch (Black Prince 254)

The hawthorn hedge puts forth its buds,
And my heart puts forth its pain.

            Rupert Brooke (England 1887-1915) "Song" [MW]

I cannot tear the Loved One from my soul,
Nor can I leave my heart that clings to her.

            Asif (tr. Khan and Westbrook)

"They tell me: abandon love, that is the path to recovery-- but I can gain strength only through love. If love dies, so shall I..."

            Nizami "Layla"

It is... almost impossible to find a cure for love. Not only must there be danger, to remind a man forcibly of the need for self-preservation, but, and this is much more difficult to find, it must be a continually pressing danger, yet one which a man can skilfully avoid for long enough to re-acquire the habit of thinking about the need for survival.

            Stendhal 

One day you find yourself finally, mysteriously free
(the prison metaphor)
(you feel each of the moments when her net entangled you,
spontaneously abreacting one by one)
(quantized retreat)
(...is she reflecting, unknotting too?)
the cord is severed (did she finally choose?)
you're back in the prison of yourself
the bliss of self-escape is gone
becoming complete?
the pleasure of independence
feeling above it all
(missing your pain-- any passion is better than none)

Her passion will die like a lamp for want of what the flame should feed upon.

            sir Walter Scott
            The Bride of Lammermoor, II (in Stendhal, 130)

But now, to the diminution of his love there corresponded a simultaneous diminution in his desire to remain in love.

            Proust [SiL 260]

Sweet is true love tho' given in vain, in vain.

            Alfred Tennyson "Idylls of the King"

'Tis better to have loved and lost,
Than never to have loved at all.

            Alfred Tennyson "Flower in the Crannied Wall"

I... longed to have two hearts that she might pierce them,
That I might suffer more.

            Amir (tr. Khan and Westbrook)

My soul has fallen into the fire,
and even if it hurts to lie there,
no matter; it was good to fall.

            Nizami "Layla"

Make me to say when all my griefs are gone,
Happy the heart that sighed for such a one!

            Samuel Daniel "Sonnet: I Must Not Grieve"

I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the desperation you cause me, and I detest the tranquility in which I lived before I knew you.

            A Portuguese nun, Mariana Alcoforado (1640-1723),
            to her seducer (in Ortega y Gassett On Love)

Cease not thou heavnly voiced glorious Creature
of Divinest feature
though chilnesse damps my soule sent from thine eyes
yet quickening flames arise
Let sweetly mix't cold poisning aire still sound
through my benumed heart
whil'st those fire shooting starres againe it wound
with a 2 forked dart
Ah! Let me live in such well temp'red anguish
& never dy but so for ever Languish.

            17th C. lyric (49)

Let no one who lives be called altogether unhappy. Even love unreturned has its rainbow.

            sir James Barrie (England 1860-1937?)
            "The Little Minister"

...the desires of love are not pains, because the lover will forgo the most pleasant company in order to dream at his leisure.

            Stendhal (258) (Fr. 140)

Pains of love be sweeter far
Than all other pleasures are

            John Dryden 1669 Tyrannic Love

Reflecting on it afterwards
pride/ shame
you now see what he was, what you'd blanked out
bafflement
affection

You don't really recover until you fall in love again
with someone else

Rejecting love-- a luxury one should indulge in cautiously

'First Snow'
The first snow
Is very white
Like first love.
My maid asks from the doorstep:
"Where shall I throw
The tea-leaves?"

            from "Songs of the Geishas" (context imposed)

If he's hungry enough to chase you
he's too hungry to let catch you
not enough of a challenge (puzzles, goals)

Signal "don't even try"
disappearing act, be elusive
"Do you mind if I spend the night on my own tonight?" (David Cale)

...say you are fully booked up for the moment, but you are sure you will be able to arrange something in the future. When the future arrives, you say the same thing. He would be very thick-skinned if after two or three calls he was not aware that you had no desire to see him.

            Barbara Cartland

When it became clear [she had fallen in love with him], Clifford did what I suppose was the only thing he could do, and doubtless also the right thing, he withdrew completely.

            Murdoch [Word Child 77]

Lady Jingly answered sadly,
And her tears began to flow,--
'Your proposal comes too late,
Mr. Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo!
I would be your wife most gladly!'
(Here she twirled her fingers madly)
'But in England I've a mate!...'

            Edward Lear (England 1812-1888)
            "The Courtship of Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo" [ELP]

Joe was the kind of man you take home to your parents and leave there.

            The 100th Boyfriend

Stupid reasons

...But he wears a shabby hat, and she notices that he does not ride well. She tells herself with a sigh that she could never marry a man like that.

            Stendhal (57)

Sadistic pleasure
rub it in

...a woman who wishes to crush her lover's hopes should do so [at the earliest stage and do so] cruelly, and heap on his head, in public, insults which will make it quite impossible for him ever to see her again.

            Stendhal (48)

Calm and cold

...in a moment she would have to humiliate a man she was fond of. And humiliate him cruelly...

            Tolstoy [Anna Karenin 62]

"Suddenly, there was this voice inside me, whispering: But he loves you, Lucy. Johnny loves you... I looked back at myself in the ladies' room mirror and I said: Look, that is his problem and not mine... Well... of course."

            Ralph Pape "Soap Opera"

Under her heel
the crunch of breaking glass

Therefore depart, you shall not kiss me.

            (27) in Peerson Private Musicke 1620.

She was deeply sorry for him, particularly since she was herself responsible for his unhappiness. "If you can forgive me," her look pleaded, "then please forgive me. I'm so happy."

            Tolstoy [Anna Karenin 68]

Can we still be friends?
the penis between equals
being seen by one you rejected
your pity, malice towards him

His forgiveness
his love's endurance: years, a lifetime

Fatal Attraction

Later regretting your decision-- I didn't realize who he was, who he was soon to become

Back when we were friends, he was kind to me. Patient and tender. He wanted me to be his girl and I blamed him for that. I couldn't understand how a friend could also be a lover. Instead of sleeping with him, I slept with his friends, boys I didn't even like. He was sad when he found out. It seems incredible that I felt no remorse as I watched him cry and then leave. I didn't hold him or touch his face the way I do when I replay that night in my thoughts.

            The 100th Boyfriend

Saving loveletters, returning loveletters, destroying loveletters, refusing loveletters
[Barbara Cartland]

Handling friends who've been rejected
awaken their instinct for self-preservation
trying to reach them
trying to think of a friend for him

To counterbalance the morbid feelings that Swann cherished for Odette, Mme Cottard, a wiser physician, in this case, than ever her husband would have been, had grafted on to them others more normal, feelings of gratitude, of friendship, which in Swann's mind would make Odette seem more human (more like other women, since other women could inspire the same feelings in him)...

            Proust [SiL 260]

A friend who wishes to cure lovesickness must in the first place always be on the side of the beloved woman. ...to do the opposite is simply to attack, with ludicrously inadequate forces, that pattern of exquisite illusion which we have previously called crystallization.

            Stendhal (128, "Cures for Love")

The unkind woman may be accused of some embarrassing physical defect which it is impossible to verify; if the calumny could be verified and found true it would very soon be disposed of by the imagination, and forgotten.

            Stendhal (131)

Seeing rejection coming
trying to warn him
keeping silent

"...I do feel it's absurd that a man of his intelligence should let himself suffer for a woman of that sort, and one who isn't even interesting, for they tell me she's an absolute idiot!" she added with the wisdom invariably shown by people who, not being in love themselves, feel that a clever man should only be unhappy about a person who is worth his while; which is rather like being astonished that anyone should condescend to die of cholera at the bidding of so insignificant a creature as the comma bacillus.

            Proust [SiL 214]



[Next: Loving]