Love Will be the Death of Us

Love burns: not only with passion, but also with the flame of destruction. The burns of love are the worst type of pain: inescapable and ravaging. What is this paradox of love? That it can be the sweetest bliss, yet suffering and torture. That love is rational, yet somehow irrational.  Ovid’s Ars Amatoria focuses on the rationality of love as Ovid leads the reader through its rules and regulations. Unlike the Ars Amatoria, the story of Equitan from Marie de France differs as it discusses the irrationality of love. However, both describe love as pain and suffering. How do different means of attaining love justify the same end? And why do we continue to seek love even when we know it will be painful?

If love was irrational there would be no need for a manual. However, Ovid believed that love was rational, so he wrote one for us: the Ars Amatoria. Ovid teaches the reader how to master the art of love through his streamlined approach filled with steps, guidelines, and other helpful pieces of advice. He presents the idea that love is rational and to procure a lover one must follow the rules and read the manual. Ultimately, there are three key steps in attaining a lover:

 1) Find a lover

2) Ensure she likes you back

3) Make sure the love lasts.  

This step by step approach is juxtaposed by Marie de France's story of Equitan, which instead focuses on the irrationality of love. First of all, Equitan falls in love with a lady without ever even seeing her, and then proceeds to feel that love “admitted him in its service”, effectively rendering him powerless under the control of love (57). Marie de France even writes that “love let fly an arrow;” Equitan is left with a gaping wound and “wisdom and understanding were of no avail” (57). It is obvious that Equitan fails to use any sense or reason when powerless under the control of love because of the object of his affection: she was his seneschal's wife and of a lower class. Taking someone’s wife is terrible, especially falling in love with her, and yet he did it—and he had no control over it—because love is irrational.

 

 But despite this paradox of love, medieval writers did come to one similar conclusion: love is painful. Here is a chart that illuminates the times love is described as suffering in four different pieces throughout the Middle Ages:

Who said it	What they said	Explanation/Connections
Ovid: Ars Amatoria	“Love will yield to me, though with his bow he wounds my heart, shakes at me his burning torch. The more he pierces me, the more violently he burns me, so much the fitter am I to avenge the wounds” (123).	Ovid explains that love is an external force and that the more Love wounds him, the more likely he is to go back to love. This is very similar to the description from The Knight and the Lion which uses the same metaphor.
Knight in the Panther’s Skin	“The Lover is he who suffers the world’s woes and sorrows” (26). “The Lover seeks solitude when he bestows all his thoughts upon love. Thus his fainting, dying, burning, are all from afar”(27). “Enduring woes and burning in fire for her sake should be joy” (28).	Love is physically described as an entity that kills. The pain of the lover is so great that one must go into solitude to heal. This is in tune with a lot of Persian poetry, like that of Hafez, which talks about the despair of being a lover for it is constantly full of longing and pain. The author goes so far as to say that this suffering in her sake should actually bring the lover joy through longing for their beloved.
The Knight with the Lion	“But the wound of Love worsens the nearer its physician” (273) “This was Sir Yvain’s wound, from which he could never recover, for Love had devoted himself wholly to him.” (273)	Loveis described like quicksand: the more one struggles, the deeper they sink. Love constantly makes the wound in one’s heart worse, but the only cure is the beloved who is the cause of all the pain in the first place. Love is also described as a squatter who simply shows up cannot be evicted.
Marie de France: Equitan	Marie de France writes that Equitan was “dying because of her” (58). He is described in physical suffering when he cannot have the woman he desires (that he hasn’t even met), who happens to be his seneschal's wife.	Although he has not met his lover, longing for her almost kills Equitan. The physical power of love is so astonishing because it can cause the lover to lose all control. This is particularly dangerous for a king, and we see the consequences in his death when he suffers by burning to death in a scalding bath.

From this chart we can see that, despite the narrative, each of these medieval texts centered on the pain and suffering inflicted by love. These pieces were written in varying time periods and places and by completely different people, yet they all center on the same premise: love is suffering. It’s really amazing to behold! One may wonder, why don’t we see this same version of love in our own day? Love is not often portrayed as suffering, longing, and pain. Instead it is the bread and butter of fairy tales, happily ever after, and knights in shining armor. Maybe it has something to say about modern optimism, or maybe we are lying to ourselves. But at the end of the day we can all agree that there has got to be something special about love that makes everyone come crawling back, even when we know that it may be the death of us.