Romantic Love in Literature: the case of Plato,
Dante and Shakespeare
Plato, 428-347 b.C., Greek philosopher,
Symposium
When a lover is fortunate enough to meet his other half, they
are both so intoxicated with affection, with friendship, and
with love, that they cannot bear to let each other out of sight
for a single instant.
Love sleeps on the naked earth, in partaking of his mother’s
poverty…. In the space of a day he will be now, when all goes
well with him, alive and blooming, and now dying, to be born
again by virtue of his father’s nature, while what he gains will
always ebb away as fast.
Love is always poor, and anything but tender and fair, as the
many imagine him; and he is rough and squalid, and has no shoes,
nor a house to dwell in; on the bare earth exposed he lies under
the open heaven, in-the streets, or at the doors of houses,
taking his rest; and like his mother he is always in distress.
Like his father too, whom he also partly resembles, love is
always plotting against the fair and good; love is bold,
enterprising, strong, a mighty hunter, always weaving some
intrigue or other, keen in the pursuit of wisdom, fertile in
resources; a philosopher at all times, terrible as an enchanter,
sorcerer, sophist. Love is by nature neither mortal nor
immortal, but alive and flourishing at one moment when he is in
plenty, and dead at another moment, and again alive by reason of
his father's nature.
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Dante’s Platonic Love
Dante Alighieri, 1265 - 1321, Italian Poet,
Vitta Nuova
Nine times already since my birth the heaven of light had
almost revolved to the self-same point when my mind’s
glorious lady first appeared to my eyes, she who was called
by many Beatrice (‘she who confers blessing’), by
those who did not know what it meant to so name her.
(…) She appeared dressed in noblest
colour, restrained and pure, in crimson, tied and
adorned in the style that then suited her very tender age.
(…) At that moment I say truly that the vital spirit, that
which lives in the most secret chamber of the heart began to
tremble so violently that I felt it fiercely in the least
pulsation, and, trembling, it uttered these words: ‘Ecce
deus fortior me, qui
veniens
dominabitur michi:
Behold a god more powerful than I, who, coming, will rule
over me.’
(…) From then on I say that Amor
governed my soul, which was so soon wedded to him, and began
to acquire over me such certainty and command, through the
power my imagination gave him, that I was forced to carry
out his wishes fully. He commanded me many times to discover
whether I might catch sight of this most tender of angels,
so that in my boyhood I many times went searching, and saw
her to be of such noble and praiseworthy manners, that
certainly might be said of her those words of the poet
Homer: ‘She did not seem to be the daughter of a mortal man,
but of a god’.
(…) When so many days had passed that exactly nine years
were completed since the appearance of this most gracious
being I have written of above, it happened, on the last of
these days, that this marvellous lady appeared to me,
dressed in the whitest of white, between two gracious ladies
who were of greater age: and passing through a street she
turned her eyes to the place where I stood greatly fearful,
and, with her ineffable courtesy, that is now rewarded in a
greater sphere, she greeted me so virtuously, so much so
that I saw then to the very end of grace. The hour at which
her so sweet greeting welcomed me was exactly the ninth of
that day, and because it was the first time that her words
deigned to come to my ears, I found such sweetness that I
left the crowd as if intoxicated, and I returned to the
solitude of my own room, and fell to thinking of this most
gracious one.
(…) From that vision onwards my natural spirit began to be
obstructed in its operation, because my spirit was
completely dedicated to thoughts of that most graceful one:
so that in a little while I reached so frail and debilitated
a condition, that many friends were anxious about my
appearance: and many full of malice put themselves about to
know about me things that I wished above all to hide from
others.
For an extensive online version of Dante’s New Life:
http://www.adkline.freeuk.com/TheNewLifeI.htm
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Shakespeare
William Shakespeare, 1564-1616, English poet and
playwright
Romeo:
Just as a pilgrim might kiss the statue of a saint in hopes of
receiving forgiveness for sins, so your acceptance of my kiss
undoes any sin I committed by holding your hand.
Juliet:
So you claim to have gotten rid of your sin by kissing my lips.
Now I've got the sin. What are you going to do about
that?
Romeo:
"You want me to kiss you again? Great!"
'Tis torture, and not mercy: heaven is here,
Where Juliet lives; and every cat and dog
And little mouse, every unworthy thing,
Live here in heaven and may look on her;
But Romeo may not.
Did my heart love till now?
Forswear it sight,
For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.
Romeo and Juliet
For you in my respect are all the world:
Then how can it be said I am alone,
When all the world is here to look on me?
Midsummers’s Night Dream
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Romantic Love? See also:
Love is madness
Beauty and love
Love is a game
Big and small loves
Love and fidelity
Abelard
and Heloise
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