Something that caught my interest from the piece, "Isabella," by John Keats is the relationship between Isabelle and Lorenzo. Their passion and love is so strong that it is obvious that nothing can break it. It reminded me of all the stories that we have been taught over the years. Its all about LOVE. Whether a childhood story about princesses and magic carpets, movies with notebooks, or songs on the radio that "bleed love," this idea of timeless love is universal and unwavering. Regardless of generation or artistic outlet, we are as a race, obsessed with love.
We use it as a reason to live- in hopes that we will have the perfect family, to do certain things- like going out to a bar seeking a connection, we concentrate on it as if it will solve all of our problems, fears, and doubts. But will it really do all of that? Certainly Isabella didn't get the perfect family or have her problems solved.
So what did Isabella and Lorenzo have that could possibly make up for all their pain? They lived a passionate life which consumed their souls until and beyond death. As "nice" as that all sounds, its not exactly what dreams are made of . Even "Romeo and Juliet," that's not the real title. Its called, "The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet." People want to be in this romantic state where they find someone who they can't bear to live without, but in the end, it always destroys. This is because along with passion and love is obsession and rage and destruction.
Although we know this we still want it. We focus on all the goodness of the story, on the maybe two scenes where the lovers were happy and hope that we could have that one day. But what we really want it to have that and have the happy ending as well. We want to have the story of Romeo and Juliet and be strong enough to fix the ending- to get Romeo the letter before its too late. Theres always little factors we think we could fix if it was us. Isabelle should have stopped Lorenzo from going out with her brothers; she should have seen something. But love isn't this ever powerful essence that we can control or conform to our will.
Love is hard. Love is painful. I'm no literary character, but that much I know. In real life love is almost always confused with lust, love can seem clinging to the other party, or love can destroy the good that was already there. In real life someone if not both parties loose.
Call me pessimistic or a Debbie Downer, but art imitates life and vice versa and art has been telling us a message. Maybe we should pay attention.
I find Cait's admittedly pessimistic post full of many painful, but true insights into romantic love. Love is full of joy and passion, but it is equally full of pain, confusion and loss. Our culture sells us so many illusions about love: love at first sight, fairy tales about lovers living happily ever after with much feeling, but without any real work put into their relationships, ideas about the "perfect person" coming and sweeping us off of our feet. Probably over ninety percent of popular songs on the radio are about romantic love. It is as basic a human longing as any, but as hard as any to achieve.
ReplyDeleteYet, I'm going to be more optimistic than Kate and say that is it worth striving for. I've often found myself depressed when relationships among my friends that I was so sure would work out don't. And the divorce rate in our country is fifty percent at least. But some relationships do go the distance. My parents are still together and, while not happy in the same dream-like way that Romeo and Juliet would have been had the letter only arrived on time, they both tell me that their lives are significantly better for having each other in them. Their marriage was not made in heaven. It was tested and fought for hundreds of times. Ultimately it is will power and sacrifice and "true love" - selflessly caring for the well being of another - that keeps them together. Sometimes relationships just don't work out, but without those things its hopeless.
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ReplyDeleteThis post made me a bit sad. Although I am aware of the different sides of love, the beautiful, happy one and the painful side I still believe in love. I don't want to give up that belief, resigned and deflated by reality and all the illusions about love. Again, I am confronted with duality, the different kinds of love which let me think about Blake and the idea that without contraries there is no progression. It is said that one has to know pain in order to appreciate happiness...
ReplyDeleteYesterday evening, I read "The Clod & the Pebble" from Songs of Innocence and Experience and it really fits to the discussion about the duality of love although it has a different focus.
"Love seeketh not Itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any cafe;
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair."
So sang a little Clod of Clay,
Trodden with the cattle's feet;
But a Pebble of the brook,
Warbled out these metres meet:
"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."
I also say that it is worth striving for love. In our class we said that love itself does not change but changes the form. Thinking about this I say that love itself changes as well. Look at a couple that is married for a long time: I don't expect that their love is as it was on the first day, passionate and somehow uncontrollable. After years, this changes into something deeper, calmer and... I don't really know how to describe it, there is still love but different.
Maybe I'm too optimistic; maybe my expectations and belief are even unrealistic. But I try to make it reality. This thought suddenly brings me back to the very beginning of our class: it is the individual that constructs everything that exists. And so do I create my world as well, a world in which it is worth believing in love.
I’m going to have to side with Cait on this one. From every angle in our society “LOVE” is thrown at us. I could never really understand why the likes of Romeo and Juliet and Cathy and Heathcliff were so “romantic.” Whenever this conversation comes up, I am always told that LOVE is their only redeeming quality. If this is so, then LOVE is selfish, an excuse to wallow in self pity and make everybody around you miserable. This is obsession, not LOVE.
ReplyDeletePain is inevitable; misery is a choice. All these characters choose to be miserable instead of doing something constructive. Isabella conflates the choice to be miserable and doing something productive. At least there’s a plant somewhere at the end, but she could have done something better with her tears, like grow a garden to feed the poor or something similar…
I think that romantic love and the Romantic idea of LOVE is being conflated here. Keats isn't just writing about two individuals that have such a strong love for one another that even death can not part it, he using their cycles of love and death as a metaphor for the connectedness of humanity, our reliance upon one another, our connectedness with the natural world, and the fact that of course love, like everything else that it REAL can not always be a pretty picture of perfection. It isn't about choosing to be miserable or not choosing to feed the poor, it is about the necessary ugliness that accompanies every aspect of life. I keep going back to this image of the duality of the human condition that the romantics seem to harp on. Not to sound like Janelle, but the whole worm thing. From destruction comes creation. The waste of one becomes the sustenance of another. The existence of the tiller of the earth, the tiller of human emotion unearthed by man's relationship to that which is REAL, Blake's creation of something original like nature. LOVE is the manifestation of that originality, that REAL, that which is both beautiful at times and ugly at times, that which can not be imitated by anyone else.
ReplyDeleteYour description of Love as “painful” and “hard” should be translated into the “decay,” which we see in the poem. Remember, for Keats, Love depicts decay, the dirty underbelly. Since our imagination is born out of decay, we need the matter of decay to give us the immateriality of Love. Isabella and Lorenzo’s Love is never destroyed because of the beauty of “Love” with an uppercase “L,” which projects into the sublime. Love must connect to the material and the negative things you mention in your post, which are representations of the lower case “l” love in order to achieve this.
ReplyDeleteA question I have then is:
ReplyDeleteWhen is it worth the pain of decay?
And do you think we can feel the uppercase Love? Or is this a unrealistic concept the romantics focus on?