A Postscript For St Valentine's Day
Studying, socialising, romantic love
Dear friends,
In my mind, February is usually connected to balls and the start of Lent, which is undoubtedly a leftover from my years in Austria. I would like to have elegantly glided into the new semester like I waltzed into ballroom’s in Vienna in the past, but the start of the semester can best be likened to the manner in which I crashed into a ball here in St Andrews last week: I was late and I was probably too busy to be there anyway. But my outfit was magnificent and of course I had the most glorious time.
I’ve (un)fortunately reached the level of social life in St Andrews where I have to learn how to say “no” to invitations again to finish my readings. I am very bad at this, as I usually prefer talking to someone about Plato than actually reading Plato. Ironically of course, Plato would think that I would learn more via conversation than reading, so maybe this is not a bad thing.
The balancing act of studies & socializing reached a peak this week since my parents came for a visit and I had a deadline for a bibliography due. Miraculously, the work was finished and my family was entertained and the only thing that really suffered was my sleep schedule.
Lent does make me ponder if it might be time to give up on some of my more free-spirited ways to be slightly more penitentially studious in the coming weeks. Next week’s spring break should be a good start: whilst my peers jaunter off to London or Paris to recuperate from these past few weeks, I’m looking forward to spending a relaxing spring break in the library, researching Jacques Maritain’s views on creative intuition.
Ideas I’m pondering this month…
Like any self-respecting 22 year-old, I am of course obsessed with the idea of romantic love. Luckily, I’ve had the opportunity to tie this into my research over the past few weeks, which was especially fitting since it coalesced with Valentine’s Day.
I’ve been researching Charles Williams, an editor at Oxford University Press during the ‘30s and ‘40s, a successful writer in his own right and perhaps the strangest of the Inklings. His novel The Place of the Lion (it does not require further recommendation except that it involves Platonic archetypes taking over a town) sparked C.S. Lewis’ interest, and they struck up a friendship. Williams often joined the Inklings in Oxford during WWII, when the offices of OUP were temporarily moved from London to Oxford.
The theology of romantic love is a theme Charles Williams worked on throughout his life and developed in numerous theoretical and fictional works. He is specifically pushing back against a Christian view of love which diminishes eros in favour of agape. According to Williams, romantic love can be just as valuable or dangerous as any other type of love: “The division is not between the eros of the flesh and the agape of the soul; it is between the moment of love which sinks in to hell and the moment which rises to the in-Godding.”
In his ideas on romantic love, Williams drew heavily from Dante and his relationship with Beatrice. Of special interest is the initial encounter Dante has with Beatrice in La Vita Nuova, in which he finds her the image of perfection. Lovers are often laughed at for their rose-coloured glasses view of the beloved, and we all know the saying love is blind. But Williams argues the exact opposite, that only the lover sees correctly. When Dante views in Beatrice the image of perfection, he sees the perfection which is implicit in every human being, if only we had the eyes to see. This vision of perfection arises independently of the lover’s imperfections: “It shines through her body whatever she makes of her body … Her lover’s testimony told her what, in fact, the image of her was; it was for her to make haste to become it.”
Thus this vision impels the beloved to change her life to become worthy of the lover’s vision. Likewise, the lover finds himself urged to change his life since he finds himself unworthy of the perfection he encounters in the beloved. Hopefully then, in love one encounters a virtuous cycle, with each act of love moving the other forward in charity as well. This then is the positive potential of eros.
Williams’ discusses much more in his work: falling in love is after all only the beginning of any romance, and the real work is yet to begin. We haven’t even made it to the Divine Comedy yet. Still, it is worth reflecting on the connection between love of neighbour and love of God, especially in preparation for Lent, in which charitable works have always played a key role. God reveals himself to us through our love of neighbour (it might be good to remind ourselves that our closest neighbour is often our spouse or lover.) Benedict XVI’s Deus Caritas Est says it best:
If I have no contact whatsoever with God in my life, then I cannot see in the other anything more than the other, and I am incapable of seeing in him the image of God. But if in my life I fail completely to heed others, solely out of a desire to be “devout” and to perform my “religious duties”, then my relationship with God will also grow arid … Only my readiness to encounter my neighbour and to show him love makes me sensitive to God as well. Only if I serve my neighbour can my eyes be opened to what God does for me and how much he loves me.
Further reading on the theology of romantic love:
Charles Williams: Outlines of Romantic Theology, The Theology of Romantic Love: Love and Religion in Dante, The Figure of Beatrice.
Background reading: C. S. Lewis’ chapter on Eros in The Four Loves, Josef Pieper’s chapter on Eros in Divine Madness: Plato’s Case against Secular Humanism, the first part of Benedict XVI’s Deus Caritas Est, Vladimir Soloviev’s Transformations of Eros.
Still looking for: specific works on the relationship between the Incarnation and the redemption of sexual love. Looking to move beyond John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. Anyone have any sources?
Completely Unrelated Recommendations:
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
Two weeks ago some classmates and I went to Edinburgh to watch a performance of The Merchant of Venice. The story is well-known: a Venetian merchant takes out a loan provided by a Jewish moneylender and is unable to pay it back, with seemingly fatal consequences. It was especially illuminating to see this play with a Jewish friend, who shed new light on the antisemitism in the play. The play is Shakespeare at his best, with the viewer swayed between sympathy and antipathy for Shylock (who would not be moved during Shylock’s “Hath not a Jew eyes?” speech?) I’m rather partial to Portia as well, who is one of Shakespeare’s more brilliant heroines, and as is often the case, really too good for the man she’ll marry. I’d heartily recommend reading the play if you haven’t yet, but this is more general advice as well: check out your local theatre out and see which performances they have planned that you might like to attend. You might just stumble onto a classic.
“Schicksalslied,” music by Johannes Brahms, text by Friedrich Hölderlin
I don’t listen to Romantic composers like Brahms most days, but we recently had a Brahmsiade (think Schubertiade, but then for Brahms) led by a professor who analysed this work with us. The piece is set to a poem by the German poet Hölderlin, “Das Schicksalslied,” a rather despairing poem contrasting the blissful life of the gods to our mortal life of suffering. The first movement is all soft and heavenly like the poem, and then it descends into despair. The crashing sounds of “Wie Wasser von Klippe / Zu Klippe geworfen” is especially astonishing. The poem ends in this sadness, but Brahms added a more hopeful ending, returning to the initial movement transposed into a different key. Perhaps there is hope for us mortals after all?
I’m just about to finish writing and go to bed. A new week awaits with much to read, and with Ash-Wednesday just right through the middle of it.
Have a blessed start of Lent!
Greetings from St Andrews,
Maria
So far as the relation between the Incarnation and sexual love goes, we can at least see how the material world can be ordered to God and used to God's glory. Of course it is a glorious thing to cooperate with God in creating new life. And so long as the proper order is maintained, it would not at all be sinful to enjoy this act, and I would argue would even please God: precisely because we are enjoying His gifts to us as He desires us to enjoy them, referring all good things to Him as the Author. (Gosh, I really need to stop writing like an academic, this is awful.) Anyway, this isn't anything new to you, I'm sure. All I can point to in terms of sources is just deeper meditation on Ephesians 5, understanding the husband and wife as a sign of Christ and the Church, and the immense joy that comes from this: participating with God so directly, but also participating with another human, on the same level of ourselves, one that we can support and be supported by throughout all our difficulties, someone we can embrace (the importance of hugs is seriously underestimated by some) in times of joy and sorrow.
That's it. I've got it now. The Incarnation redeemed sexual love by showing how exactly Christ revealed His love to the Church. Philippians 2:5-11 shows the extreme and radical humility Christ has, that He would condescend so far to take on human nature, and love us in this way, as one of us, so that He might conform us to Himself, thus bringing about an incredibly close union. Now the difference between man and woman is far less than the difference between Man and God, certainly. But through the Incarnation, we could argue, God revealed how man and woman ought to love each other. Not by forgetting what the other is; God's love is immensely personal, and we would all immediately recognize it to be less beautiful if it was less personal. But rather aiming for union. There can be no dominance where there is union (that's St. Paul again, but I need to wrap this up and get back to studying, so I'm not going to check exactly where, but I'm nearly certain it's in the Canticle of Love which I think is in 1 Corinthians). So in the relation between husband and wife, the identity of husband and wife remains abundantly clear, just as we don't lose our identity by being Christian. But the union should stem from the union between Christ and the Church. Now, of course, this all has to be applied to the sexual union directly...
...should I just start my own substack?