Unrequited Love -- An Argosy of Words

Literature (Prose)

From Miguel de Cervantes' novel "Don Quixote"

Don Quixote's devotion to his Dulcinea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulcinea_del_Toboso?

Excerpt: "... her name is Dulcinea, her country El Toboso, a village of La Mancha, her rank must be at least that of a princess, since she is my queen and lady, and her beauty superhuman, since all the impossible and fanciful attributes of beauty which the poets apply to their ladies are verified in her; for her hairs are gold, her forehead Elysian fields, her eyebrows rainbows, her eyes suns, her cheeks roses, her lips coral, her teeth pearls, her neck alabaster, her bosom marble, her hands ivory, her fairness snow, and what modesty conceals from sight such, I think and imagine, as rational reflection can only extol, not compare."

Nuts! (But, in the abstract, quite an accurate description of a not-uncommon male affliction.)

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"White Nights," by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Excerpt/Ending:

"But to imagine that I should bear you a grudge, Nastenka! That I should cast a dark cloud over your serene, untroubled happiness; that by my bitter reproaches I should cause distress to your heart, should poison it with secret remorse and should force it to throb with anguish at the moment of bliss; that I should crush a single one of those tender blossoms which you have twined in your dark tresses when you go with him to the altar. . . . Oh never, never! May your sky be clear, may your sweet smile be bright and untroubled, and may you be blessed for that moment of blissful happiness which you gave to another, lonely and grateful heart!

My God, a whole moment of happiness! Is that too little for the whole of a man’s life?"

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"This way the way then, people had moved from place to place that last summer when life still appeared to pay heed to individuals, and when it was easier and more natural to love than to hate."

from "The last summer," by Boris Pasternak (translator: George Reavey ), Penguin Modern Classics, 1960, Page 90.

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"He had been held to her by a beautiful thread which it pained him to spoil by breaking, rather than by a chain he could not break.”?

― Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd

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"We are all fools in love" -- Jane Austen, "Pride and Prejudice

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"Every man who is not a monster, a mathematician, or a mad philosopher, is the slave of some woman or other."

-- George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), "Scenes of Clerical Life," (1858), "The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton", Chapter 4

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Literature/Poetry

John Keats poem "Belle dame sans merci" : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Belle_Dame_sans_Merci

Excerpt:?

"I saw pale kings and princes too,

Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;

They cried—‘La Belle Dame sans Merci

Hath thee in thrall!’"

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" 'Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all."

oft-quoted lines from "In Memoriam A.H.H." a poem by the British poet Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1849

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"The Spoon River Anthology," by Edgar Lee Masters (1915).

Excerpt from the epitaph of Herbert Marshall:

"This is life's sorrow:

That one can be happy only where two are;

And that our hearts are drawn to stars

Which want us not."

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"Love’s Secret," by William Blake

"Never seek to tell thy love,??

?Love that never told can be;??

For the gentle wind doth move??

?Silently, invisibly.??

I told my love, I told my love,

?I told her all my heart,??

Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears.??

?Ah! she did depart!??

Soon after she was gone from me,??

?A traveler came by,

Silently, invisibly:??

?He took her with a sigh."

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"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,?

Or what's a heaven for?"

-- Robert Browning, "Andrea del Sarto"

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"If equal affection cannot be,

Let the more loving one be me." -- W.H. Auden, "The more loving one"

The poem in full: https://poets.org/poem/more-loving-one

Here's the poet himself reading this poem aloud: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7474255?

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Shakespeare's farewell note to his own youth is uncannily apt for the end of an illusory relationship between an old man and a young woman!

Sonnet 87: "Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing"

"Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,

And like enough thou knowst thy estimate.

The Charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;

My bonds in thee are all determinate.

For how do I hold thee but by thy granting,

And for that riches where is my deserving?

The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,

And so my patent back again is swerving.

Thy self thou gav'st, thy own worth then not knowing,

Or me, to whom thou gav'st it, else mistaking,

So thy great gift, upon misprision growing,

Comes home again, on better judgement making.

Thus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter:

In sleep a king, but waking no such matter."

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And a less exalted but nevertheless de profundis ode:

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"The swallow flew about him in slanted lines.

Her voice cooed like a million violins.

The poor sphinx fell in love with her.

He didn’t know the sad things that would deter

his flight with her to where the flowers bloom

or the escape forever from his erstwhile gloom.

The swallow flies about him no more in slanted lines.

Yet, he hears from a distance, the million violins."

"First Love," -- Anonymous

That anonymous author was apparently unaware of Wordsworth's line from The Solitary Reaper

"The music in my heart I bore

?Long after it was heard no more."

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Mythology

Mentoring a risky proposition (Freudian slip?) in the #MeToo era due to the possibility of the "Pygmalion Effect."?In Greek mythology, Pygmalion was?a sculptor who fell madly in love with a statue he had carved.?https://www.greekmyths-greekmythology.com/myth-of-pygmalion-and-galatea/??(This myth inspired a George Bernard Shaw play, and the movie "My fair lady.") Experienced or successful middle aged man starts mentoring a young female rookie.?She is awed by his wisdom and thankful for his kindness .?Her following his advice enthusiastically tickles his vanity and boosts his ego.?So far so good.?Then the man mistakes her development and gratitude for affection and gets infatuated.?She is confused when he sends her a text or email hinting at or outright declaring his passion.?You can see how this story is going to end.?Man falls for the "statue," and the statue falls on the man!

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Movies

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Mood_for_Love??https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCVfwTt46Rc?

That movie should have been called "Not in the mood for love" since nothing much happens!

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Songs/Music

"When a lovely flame dies, smoke gets in your eyes" -- Song by the Platters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRbvrnCutU4??

See also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqhLDTxODhY?

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Patsy Cline singing "Crazy" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=na5Y9FxR0lg?

Lyrics of "Crazy" by Willy Nelson: https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/patsycline/crazy.html??

Excerpt:?

"Crazy for thinking that my love could hold you

I'm crazy for trying

And crazy for crying

And I'm crazy for loving

You"

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"Plaisir d'amour ne dure qu'on moment

Chagrin d'amour dure toute la vie"

Translation:?

"The joys of love are but a moment long

The pain of love endures the whole life long"

?Indeed! Here's the incomparable Beverly Sills singing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZfYcUA5Gkw?

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"I keep forgettin' we're not in love anymore

I keep forgettin' things will never be the same again

I keep forgettin' how you made that so clear

I keep forgettin' it all"

--Michael McDonald (Doobie Brothers)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=CO&hl=es-419&context=C3c733a4ADOEgsToPDskK2Vn2RvKq3K6Tk-pQOZBwG&v=cjqOsYRQI0o???

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"You don't know what it's like, baby

You don't know what it's like

To love somebody

To love somebody

The way I love you

Can't you see what I am?

I live and I breathe for you

But what good does it do

If I ain't got you, ain't got?"

-- Bee Gees, "To love somebody"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrWqDv3Kfsg?

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等著你回來

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZs5hWfH8XI??

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Gustav Mahler, "Songs of the wayfarer"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lieder_eines_fahrenden_Gesellen?

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https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/music/loves-labour-lost/article18935323.ece?homepage=true?

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Words

saudade (Portuguese): a feeling, a longing for something or someone or a relationship that one is very fond of, is lost or gone, but might return someday.

https://www.npr.org/sections/altlatino/2014/02/28/282552613/saudade-an-untranslatable-undeniably-potent-word?

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limerence: "a state of overwhelming and unexpected longing for emotional reciprocation from another human, known as a limerent object (LO), who is often perceived as perfect but unavailable." Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/27/style/limerence-addiction-love-crush.html?smid=url-share

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l'appel du vide (French): literally "the call of the void" refers to suicidal thoughts, or the urge to engage in self-destructive behaviors; in the present context, an apt description of the lightning-like impulse to communicate that obsessive unrequited love. "Unsolicited and hence unwelcome."??

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cathexis: investment of mental or emotional energy in a person, object, or idea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathexis??

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Thoughts

"The essence of religion consists in the feeling of an absolute dependence." -- Friedrich Schleiermacher

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"Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned."?

-- Song of Solomon 8:7 (Bible, King James Version)

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"The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope." -- Walter Benjamin

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"The only lasting love is thwarted love. . . when it is always difficult, love doesn’t die out.” -- Francois Mitterrand (as quoted in https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/fran%C3%A7ois-mitterrand-s-love-letters-reveal-passion-for-mistress-1.2825923?)

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“It is better to lose your pride with someone you love rather than to lose that someone you love with your useless pride.” ― John Ruskin

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“Few people understand either the purely subjective character of the phenomenon of love, or how it creates a supplementary person who is quite different from the one who bears our beloved’s name in the outside world, and is mostly formed from elements within ourselves” -- Marcel Proust "à l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleur"

We may infer from this insight that projection sets you up for rejection!??

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“One can feel an attraction towards a particular person. But to release that fount of sorrow, that sense of the irreparable, those agonies which prepare the way for love, there must be -- and this is perhaps, more than a person, the actual object which our passion seeks so anxiously to embrace -- the risk of an impossibility.”― Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, Part 2

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Love ''interrupts every hour the most serious occupations, and sometimes perplexes for a while even the greatest minds. It does not hesitate . . . to interfere with the negotiations of statesmen and the investigations of the learned. . . . It demands the sacrifice sometimes of . . . health, sometimes of wealth, position and happiness.'' (“The pursuit of personal happiness and the production of healthy children are two radically contrasting projects, which love maliciously confuses us into thinking of as one for a requisite number of years.We should not be surprised by marriages between people who would have never been friends.") -- Arthur Schopenhauer (as interpreted by Alain de Botton

?https://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/13/magazine/the-schopenhauer-method.html?From the latter article: "Love's capacity to make us happy is rivaled only by its capacity to make us miserable. Indeed, lovesickness has given rise to one of the modern age's most dynamic industries: self-help for the brokenhearted. The rejected lover now has an infinite array of options to soothe the heart -- videos, seminars, men on Mars, Laura Schlessinger, chocolate with pecans and pine nuts. Yet there is one solution that has been sadly overlooked by the self-help industry. It rests, remarkably, in the works of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), relatively unknown today as a guru on love, but in his dark analyses at once highly thought-provoking and oddly cheering"

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"THE stage is more beholding to love, than the life of man. For as to the stage, love is ever matter of comedies, and now and then of tragedies; but in life it doth much mischief; sometimes like a siren, sometimes like a fury. You may observe, that amongst all the great and worthy persons (whereof the memory remaineth, either ancient or recent) there is not one, that hath been transported to the mad degree of love: which shows that great spirits, and great business, do keep out this weak passion. You must except, nevertheless, Marcus Antonius, the half partner of the empire of Rome, and Appius Claudius, the decemvir and lawgiver; whereof the former was indeed a voluptuous man, and inordinate; but the latter was an austere and wise man: and therefore it seems (though rarely) that love can find entrance, not only into an open heart, but also into a heart well fortified, if watch be not well kept. It is a poor saying of Epicurus, Satis magnum alter alteri theatrum sumus; as if man, made for the contemplation of heaven, and all noble objects, should do nothing but kneel before a little idol, and make himself a subject, though not of the mouth (as beasts are), yet of the eye; which was given him for higher purposes. It is a strange thing, to note the excess of this passion, and how it braves the nature, and value of things, by this; that the speaking in a perpetual hyperbole, is comely in nothing but in love. Neither is it merely in the phrase; for whereas it hath been well said, that the arch-flatterer, with whom all the petty flatterers have intelligence, is a man's self; certainly the lover is more. For there was never proud man thought so absurdly well of himself, as the lover doth of the person loved; and therefore it was well said, That it is impossible to love, and to be wise. Neither doth this weakness appear to others only, and not to the party loved; but to the loved most of all, except the love be reciproque. For it is a true rule, that love is ever rewarded, either with the reciproque, or with an inward and secret contempt. By how much the more, men ought to beware of this passion, which loseth not only other things, but itself! As for the other losses, the poet's relation doth well figure them: that he that preferred Helena, quitted the gifts of Juno and Pallas. For whosoever esteemeth too much of amorous affection, quitteth both riches and wisdom. This passion hath his floods, in very times of weakness; which are great prosperity, and great adversity; though this latter hath been less observed: both which times kindle love, and make it more fervent, and therefore show it to be the child of folly. They do best, who if they cannot but admit love, yet make it keep quarters; and sever it wholly from their serious affairs, and actions, of life; for if it check once with business, it troubleth men's fortunes, and maketh men, that they can no ways be true to their own ends. I know not how, but martial men are given to love: I think, it is but as they are given to wine; for perils commonly ask to be paid in pleasures. There is in man's nature, a secret inclination and motion, towards love of others, which if it be not spent upon some one or a few, doth naturally spread itself towards many, and maketh men become humane and charitable; as it is seen sometime in friars. Nuptial love maketh mankind; friendly love perfecteth it; but wanton love corrupteth, and embaseth it." -- Francis Bacon, Essay X, "Of Love"??

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?Also seducers, sectuaries, &c. They all play as the fals harted man, which beeing put in trust to speake to a mayden for another, doe wooe and make suite for them selues, to tourne the liking of the mayden to their owne persons.

— Bartimaeus Andrewes, Certaine verie worthie, godly and profitable sermons, 1583?

(from https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/word-history-suit???

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Psychology

"Under the arrangements that now prevail, a woman is the parental person who is every infant's first love, first witness, and first boss, the person who presides over the infant's first encounters with the natural surround and who exists for the infant as the first representative of the flesh (Page 28). . . . What these deeper roots mean is that in intimate relations between a man and a woman he is in one very important respect more vulnerable than she is. She can more readily re-evoke in him the unqualified, boundless, helpless passion of infancy. If he lets her, she can shatter his adult sense of power and control; she can bring out the soft, wild, naked baby in him. (Page 66)" -- Dorothy Dinnerstein, "The Mermaid and the Minotaur--Sexual Arrangements and the Human Malaise," Harper Colophon Books,1977. https://a.co/g8pdI9h

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"Men don’t like younger women because their flesh is firmer but because their opinions are a bit less firm – or at least that’s the hope. Anyone 20 years younger than you tends to assume you’re right about most things. Some men will trade in a lot of shared cultural reference points for a bit of admiration. Likewise, the cliche is that young women date older men because they are richer, whereas nearer the truth is that they seem to know a lot of useful stuff." -- Zoe Williams

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/09/men-prefer-younger-women-not-for-their-firmer-bodies-but-their-greater-admiration?

This point is supported by another quote: “Superior people enrich your life with their knowledge,” she said. “It is immense happiness to admire the person one loves . . . never to be bored, to share all interests." -- Anne Pingeot (mistress of French politician and statesman Francois Mitterrand, 27 years younger than him ) https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/fran%C3%A7ois-mitterrand-s-love-letters-reveal-passion-for-mistress-1.2825923?

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https://www.healthing.ca/wellness/advice/asking-for-a-friend-i-have-a-crush-on-my-doctor/

"To avoid being the person stuck with unrequited love , try to figure out which part of yourself comes alive with your crush —?experts suggest that our unmet needs or parts of self that have been buried or suppressed often manifest into these intense attractions. For example, if he makes you feel alive and sexy, it may be time to get back to self-care , exercise or physical activities that might give you a similar kind of rush. Perhaps the thing driving your crush isn’t so much that you want to start a romance with this person, but rather, there is a need for you to reflect on what is lacking from your life."

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https://www.healthline.com/health/unrequited-love#the-other-s-ide

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History

Dante and Beatrice https://www.passagestothepast.com/2010/01/dante-beatrice-and-la-vita-nuova.html?

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Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, dedicated to Beethoven’s pupil and passion, 17 years old Countess Giulietta Gucciardi https://www.all-about-beethoven.com/moonsonata.html?

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Some precedents for older men (yes, it's invariably men who go astray) getting besotted by young women; not unrequited in the cited examples, but tacky.

Boris Pasternak &Oolga Ivinskaya: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-3729163/The-passionate-love-affair-novelist-Boris-Pasternak-mistress-Olga-inspired-heroine-Doctor-Zhivago.html?

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Otto von Bismarck ("The Iron Chancellor" of 19th century Germany) and Princess Katarina Orlov: https://books.google.com/books?id=94LfKeiMTegC&pg=PA30&lpg=PA30&dq=Otto+von+Bismarck+infatuation&source=bl&ots=RcrZoWKa09&sig=05jswrKskhEY7kUq78Eo_AJWPPw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiGks3wlv7PAhUGQiYKHZ53AxsQ6AEIUDAJ#v=onepage&q=Orlov&f=false?

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Herbert Henry Asquith (British Prime Minister when the first world war started) and Venetia Stanley: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-3634319/The-PM-daughter-love-girl-Venetia-Stanley-won-heart-Herbert-Asquith-host-men.html?See also https://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n22/bee-wilson/a-little-talk-in-downing-st?

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This book's title says it all: "Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love" by Andrew Shaffer https://a.co/bhVs2a7?

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Evelyn Waugh (a man, actually) and Teresa Jungman: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jul/21/evelyn-waugh-love-letters?

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"[Gorge Bernard] Shaw succumbed to a number of intense infatuations—including with Mrs. Patrick Campbell and Florence Farr—in which, Henry Higgins–like, he sought to take over and shape their careers, their artistry, and their lives."

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/04/19/george-bernard-shaw-superman-in-tweeds/?

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J.D. Salinger and Joyce Maynard https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/1998/9/salinger-in-love?

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Sinister & Sick

The background of Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/29/gender.uk?

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Vladimir Nabokov's classic novel "Lolita" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolita?

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Picaresque?

The birthday of the Infanta," a story by Oscar Wilde: https://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/BirInf.shtml?

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A Museum!

?https://brokenships.la/?

(OK, not quite about the present topic, but akin.)

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Cynical Commentary

"If a woman cannot make a man miserable, she cannot make him happy." -- George Bernard Shaw

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"One mustn't ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness." -- Gustave Flaubert

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"Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch's wife

He would have written sonnets all his life?"― Lord Byron

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Passion thrives not on satisfaction but impediment . . . When passion seizes the heart it invents reasons that seem not only plausible but conclusive to prove that the world is well lost for love. It convinces you that honor is well sacrificed and that shame is a cheap price to pay. Passion is destructive . . . and if it doesn't destroy it dies. It may be then that one is faced with the desolation of knowing that one has wasted the years of one's life, that one's brought disgrace upon oneself, endured the frightful pang of jealousy, swallowed every bitter mortification, that one's expended all one's tenderness, poured out all the riches of one's soul on a poor drab, a fool, a peg on which one hung one's dreams, who wasn't worth a stick of chewing gum.”

― W. Somerset Maugham, "The Razor's Edge"?

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,“You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.” ― Wayne Gretzky

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“A young wife is not good for a man who’s old

She’s like a boat that steered left veers to the right.

Breaks mooring lines, whose anchors do not hold,

And often finds another port at night.”

-- Theognis of Megara (6th Century B.C.)

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"She seems to have been a cold, vain and interested coquette, who perfectly understood how much the influence of her charms was increased by the fame of a severity which cost her nothing, and who could venture to flirt with a succession of admirers in the just confidence that no flame which she might kindle in them would thaw her own ice." -- Thomas Babington Macaulay, "The History of England from the Accession of James II," 1855, Volume 4, Chapter XIX, Page 310?

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"I am a very foolish fond old man" -- Shakespeare, "King Lear" Act IV, Scene 7

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Therapy

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/08/brain-training-could-help-the-heartbroken-says-neuropsychologist?

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?Let's close on some rueful notes that are potent by virtue of being indirect.

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Metaphors?

"But the horses didn't want it--they swerved apart; the earth didn't want it, sending up rocks through which riders must pass single file; the temples, the tank, the jail, the palace, the birds, the carrion, the Guest House, that came into view as they issued from the gap and saw Mau beneath: they didn't want it, they said in their hundred voices, 'No, not yet,' and the sky said, 'No, not there.'"

-- E.M. Forster, "A Passage to India," ending

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"But none of that mattered. That night the waters of the Mississippi, to the east, rose along with those of the Missouri, to the west, overflowing their tributaries and flooding the earth of Iowa from Osceola to Pottawattamie, from Winnebago to Appanoose; carrying away in its muddy stream houses and carriages, wooden posts and neo-Hellenic columns, church steeples, wheat and corn crops, potatoes with Cyclopean eyes and roosters with crests like imperial banners; erasing the tracks of buffalo and drowning the desperate raccoons; putting the inundated plain to sleep in order to return to the Indian name for the land. Iowa: sleeping land but land watched over by the antonym of the white nation. Iowa: hawk-eye. Sleepy some moments, alert at others, the land sinks, disappears, and no one, as time passes, can go home to it again."?

-- The closing paragraph of "Diana -- The Goddess who hunts alone," by Carlos Fuentes

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