A Natural History of Love

by Diane Ackerman

  DECORATING LEISURE TIME

  As the city of Rome grew larger, extending itself in land, variety, and the imagination of its populace, the avenues for love multiplied. This happened in part because the quest for amusement became a kind of pastime. Where the Greeks sought to perfect the body through athletics, Romans perfected the leisure life. It could be bustling and avant-garde, provided it was ample. Roman women had more freedoms, and that brought a new confidence and self-respect. Greek women were so housebound that they had little chance to meet men with whom they might strike up a romance, even if they wished to. But Roman women had time and opportunity for intrigue, and morals were flexible enough that their affairs were found understandable, even if not officially condoned. Women of the right class were obsessed with their looks, spending the morning on coiffures, makeup, and choosing the perfect accessories for their outfits. In the afternoon, they lunched and shopped, organized the household, then tidied up their makeup and later prepared for a dinner party. Fashion has always been a badge of rank, as well as a creative outlet, but they were also obsessively refining and accentuating their physical appeal. Decoration can be a form of advertising, and the new commodity they had to offer was their worth and desirability.

  A government thrives on order. Love is anarchic. Chaotic and emotional, we try so hard to impose what we aren’t on everything around us, and punish those who don’t live up to our ideals. On a walk this morning, I passed through the perfume of a honeysuckle bush so sweet and pleasing I turned around and followed it to its source. I did not mean to be diverted from my path by pleasure; I couldn’t help myself. In the same way, love distracts one from the tidiest plans, the narrowest course, the clearest goals. The Roman vision of social order grew, but so did the empire of love. Hard as Augustus tried to legislate morality, he was grappling with a seditious passion so natural for human beings that he was, essentially, warring with nature. To the Romans, love was not a good enough reason for marriage, but everyone understood its power and how, like a furious river, it could charge past hardship, law, or death.

  *In the first century B.C., sundials swept the imagination. Nobility and city folk were fascinated by them. But the earliest sundial can be traced to Egypt in 3500 B.C.; it consisted of a vertical stick arranged so that its shadow showed the sun’s progress across the sky. Berosus, the third-century B.C. Babylonian priest and astronomer, improved the sundial. And both Greeks and Romans had water clocks for days when the sun didn’t shine.

  *The seventeenth-century English composer Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, a magnificent, heart-wrenching opera, explores the tragedy in homespun melodies reminiscent of ballads and madrigals.

  *The word they used for brassiere was mamillare, and there was apparently a considerable need for them, because Latin includes two words for big-bosomed, mammosa and mamme ata.

  THE MIDDLE AGES

  THE BIRTH OF CHIVALRY

  During the Middle Ages, France seethed with paradoxes. Plague, famine, and filth were Everyman’s constant companions. So-called witches were regularly burned at the stake, and heretics of all stripes were tortured and driven from their homes. Nobles played chess by waging war with one another, in the process destroying crops, terrorizing towns, and killing legions of innocent families. Gangs of outlaws scoured the countryside, looting and burning. No one felt safe from nature or from one another. But, at the same time, a modern-feeling civilization was starting to take hold in Europe. The population was growing, and new towns were being built, improved plows and other tools gave agriculture a boost, merchants had wares to sell, craftsmen busied themselves in the cities, and pilgrims traveled the roads and rivers. The world was in motion, and as Chaucer related so well, anyone could meet anyone on the crossroads to anywhere.

  It’s no coincidence that spires began to appear on the churches. The entire era was gripped by the symbolism of the spire, which connected the earth and sky, the concrete with the abstract, the all-too-visible hovels—full of bodily functions, poverty, and fatigue—with the loftier realities of an invisible city. Could there be no relief from earth’s sweat and decay? Was it possible that a poor life led only downward to a carnal circus underground? People aspired toward heaven, which they depicted as pure, clean, deodorized, and brightly lit. (Throughout history, women have also been associated with cleanliness, that is, they’ve been held responsible for keeping things clean, and judged on the basis of how clean their house is, how well laundered their family. They’ve been required to be “pure” and “clean” sexually. Their virginity and virtue have been extended to the home.)

  Etymologically speaking, a spire is the pointed head of a flower. The cathedral spires of the era, cast in stone and outlined in tiny stone buds, promise the resurrection of spring. I’ve often walked beside such churches in springtime and looked up at their spires through the identically budded branches of a tree. No doubt medieval strollers did the same, reassured by the symbolism. Records tell us that on holy days peasants thronged the churchyards in celebrations so lecherous and pagan that the clergymen reprimanded them. But people yearned for transcendence. In the heaven of their hopes, they abandoned the exhaustions of daily life. The times were infused with great spirituality.

  In this atmosphere of the lofty and the mundane, a ritualized code of manners, called chivalry,* arose to reconcile the worlds of warfare and religion by giving them a common enemy. “A moral gloss was needed that would allow the Church to tolerate the warriors in good conscience and the warriors to pursue their own values in spiritual comfort.” By making the warriors knights of the lord, they supposedly fought for truth, goodness, piety, and the Church. In a solemn dedication ceremony, a knight would purify his soul through confession, receive communion, and take his sacred vows. Then he was free to slaughter for a holy cause.

  It wasn’t easy being a knight, whose sole occupation was warfare, which meant hand-to-hand combat while wearing a suit of armor that wasn’t very flexible and weighed around fifty pounds. Lances, swords, and battle-axes were preferred weapons, and they were used during what amounted to traffic accidents—two riders galloping at each other at full speed. The ensuing crash usually hurled at least one rider to the ground, where getting up was like an overturned turtle’s efforts to right itself. Being a knight took immense strength and energy; and, if you didn’t exhibit plenty of what was called prowess, you were branded a sissy. Wounds were frequent, and they often became septic. Only the young could manage this lifestyle for long. Lest knights become unruly or psychopathic, chivalry’s code required that they be courteous and kind when dealing with civilians. Dandies in later eras, who spread their capes over puddles so that women might pass with unsullied ankles, inherited their sense of gallantry from the knights. A knight’s word was his bond; breaking it was an act of treason. This was the code, anyway. As often as not, the ideal differed from the reality. Soldiers were ruffians by trade, who settled disputes with violence, and they sometimes fought battles for lords whom they then murdered and robbed, or used the costume of chivalry to lure maidens whom they seduced or raped. According to one knight, La Tour Landry, he and his pals would ride into a village, lie like crazy to the local girls in order to bed them, then ride off like a band of armor-plated gigolos.

  When they weren’t at war, knights engaged in tournaments staged by nobles with time to kill and a yen for a human version of a cockfight. As much as a week might be devoted to a tournament, with all sorts of events interspersed with the fighting. A hundred or so knights would contest with one another, in pairs or in groups. Just as a horse race or soccer match is usually surrounded by parties and ballyhoo, the tournaments justified feasts and merriment. They attracted people from all classes, including gamblers, conmen, prostitutes, souvenir sellers, and groupies. If a knight died during a tournament, the Church considered it suicide, which meant direct passage to hell. Even that didn’t deter the knights, who had much to gain in prizes and fame, and women to impress. Tournaments gave them a chance to win armor
and horses, and rehearse the codes of chivalry in a small, safe setting. Faced with the rigors of all-out warfare, etiquette and form might be the last things on their minds.

  During the first thirty years of the twelfth century, half the knights in France rode to the Crusades, joined by knights from England and Spain. The first Crusade was a blood-and-thunder success, driving the Muslims farther and farther south and out of Jerusalem. Knights returning from the Holy Land were conquering heroes. Imagine the wild temper of revelry and vindication they must have felt, not to mention divine favor. All had seen friends die savagely at sword point. Many would be suffering from what we now call posttraumatic stress syndrome. Spirited young men full of spunk and mischief, they were accustomed to bloodshed, intrigue, and new hungers. They brought back a taste for the exotic spices of the Orient; brilliant silks and sensuous perfumes tempted the western appetite. The knights sang songs of conquest, bawdiness, bravery. At their most exquisite, they praised nature for allowing them pretty fields in which to slaughter their enemies. Heroic epics such as the Song of Roland celebrated the warriors’ brotherhood, and since castles revolved around knights and war, it was just these songs that rang from their parapets.

  While the men were away fighting, it often fell to the women to manage the estates. Although both Church and society dismissed women as frail, incompetent beings who were lifelong children, women handled the estates with an aplomb that raised their image and self-esteem. When necessary, they even took disputes to court. This didn’t radically alter their position in French society, but it gave them confidence, it widened their social contacts, and it improved their legal status. As new decision makers, they had greater freedom of action, of course, but, more important, they had greater freedom of thought. And with that came the fantasizing about love, the hiring of troubadours, and the indulging in affairs.

  Mind you, the Christian tradition preached that erotic love was dangerous, a trapdoor leading to hell, which was not even to be condoned between husband and wife. He was allowed to kiss, fondle, and caress her—provided he didn’t really enjoy it. Sexual appetite was normal and acceptable; passion was not. Any man who felt too much erotic passion for his wife was committing an act of adultery. Instead they were supposed to live together like business partners, who felt affection for each other, got on amiably, and just happened to have children. The idea of all-out love lay elsewhere.

  BOOKS OF LOVE

  Most ideas about love came from reading the pagan or Christian thinkers. Books were rare, but students could find some in the libraries of monasteries and cathedrals. There they might read a smattering of Greek and Roman authors, some of whom were just being translated. Plato was popular because he renounced the material world and abandoned the delights of the flesh. Distrust of the body, while seeking the spiritual, fit neatly into Christian teachings. Plato and Cicero both celebrated lofty, nonerotic love between men, and that appealed to the celibate clergy. From Virgil’s Dido and Aeneas, students learned of love as a demented passion, a mix of bliss and raw danger. People could die from love, so surely it was an affliction, a deadly humour, a plague. Ovid’s smart-alecky Art of Love introduced them to the frank country joys of lust, where every lover was a soldier in the trenches. But in Ovid’s writings, they also found descriptions of the tender love he felt for women. The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice taught them about the heroics of love, which led deep into the Underworld and out again.

  They learned from the Christian writers of a loving and merciful God, an idea we now take for granted; but to the ancients it was a startling thought. The pagan gods didn’t waste affection on human beings, whom they often toyed with as rather peevish pets. Gigantic, alien, and magically endowed, the gods were nonetheless all too human in their sadism, whimsy, and churlishness. In contrast, the Old Testament God, obsessed with love, commands his people first and foremost to “love the lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” It is one’s moral duty to feel love. This continues into the New Testament, where we learn that “God is love,” that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,” and that one must love one’s neighbor as oneself. With what poignancy St. Paul describes this new importance of love:

  If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing…. So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

  The Bible teaches that God’s love is unconditional, a gift given by a doting parent. It needn’t be won, and it doesn’t go only to those who deserve it. Altruism appears as a moral good, even if loving one’s neighbor does have a missionary zeal to it. No one can be saved who doesn’t convert to Christianity, so converting a neighbor is the greatest gift you can give him.

  Heterosexual love in the Old Testament is sometimes down to earth, very material, and deliciously sensual, as when Solomon tells his future bride:

  You are stately as a palm tree, and your breasts are like its clusters.

  I say I will climb the palm tree and lay hold of its branches.

  Oh, may your breasts be like clusters of the vine, and the scent of your breath like apples,

  And your kisses like the best wine that goes down smoothly, gliding over lips and teeth …

  But, in the New Testament, sex becomes nonerotic and full of self-denial.* Paul advises that “It is well for a man not to touch a woman,” but he concedes that marriage is a last resort for those who can’t be celibate. Because pent-up desires can lead to fornication or adultery, “each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.” Their duty is to use sex as a safety valve and to produce children. Divorce is forbidden. “To the unmarried and the widows,” Paul warns, “I say that it is well for them to remain single as I do. But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn.” And better to marry than to burn with desire, which he depicts as a private hell in which sin walks one’s nerves as if they were so many tightropes. In this mix of traditions, Plato’s call for sublimating one’s desires blended neatly with Christianity’s, and at times celibacy seems to be enjoyed as a reverse erotics all its own. St. Augustine describes his vow of abstinence like this: “Now was my soul free from the biting cares of canvassing and getting, and weltering in filth, and scratching off the itch of lust.” That’s rather spirited self-sacrifice.* Then something happened that would change the course of love in the western world.

  TROUBADOURS

  When he returned from a spotty career in the Crusades, William IX, duke of Aquitaine (1071–1127), began composing songs of love and yearning, which we now recognize as the first troubadour love songs. He may well have been inspired by Moorish writers, who sang of love as an ennobling force and women as transcendent goddesses. Arabia and Spain regularly exchanged artists as well as ambassadors, and their culture spread into southern France. Best known was the Andalusian poet Ibn-Hazm, who wrote in his classic The Ring of the Dove (1022) that “the union of souls is a thousand times more beautiful than that of bodies.” His attitude was deeply Platonic as well as Muslim, especially when he spoke about the need to become one with the beloved. It was a natural need, common as sand but powerful as radium, because love is the reunion of souls that, before creation, were made from the same primordial stuffs that became divided later in the physical universe. “The lover’s soul,” he says, “is ever seeking for the other, striving after it, searching it out, yearning to encounter it again, drawing it to itself it might be as a magnet draws the iron.”

  Beauty is the lure. The soul is beautiful and it feels drawn to physical beauty. But if sex is the only appeal, then the soul can’t grasp the beautiful object long enough for love to take shape; it needs the glue of finding a k
indred spirit. Arguing that lust is a vulgar emotion, though reveling in the other’s senses is magnificent, he depicts the lover as his mistress’s slave, who should address her either as sayyidi (“my lord”) or mawlaya (“my master”). He cautions the lover against actually possessing his beloved, details the torment of love-sickness, and even offers this guide to help read love’s facial semaphores:

  To make a signal with the corner of the eye is to forbid the lover something; to droop the eye is an indication of consent; to prolong the gaze is a sign of suffering and distress; to break off the gaze is a mark of relief; to make signs of closing the eyes is an indicated threat. To turn the pupil of the eye in a certain direction and then to turn it back swiftly, calls attention to the presence of a person so indicated. A clandestine signal with the corner of both eyes is a question; to turn the pupil rapidly from the middle of the eye to the interior angle is a demonstration of refusal; to flutter the pupils of both eyes this way and that is a general prohibition. The rest of these signals can only be understood by actually seeing them demonstrated.

  Ibn-Hazm’s lovers become transformed by love, growing strong and brave, dignified and generous. His countrymen wrote love stories with similar concerns, steeped in the senses; they relied heavily on natural imagery, and were usually accompanied by musical instruments. The sensuous world of the East would have been as welcome as perfume in French society, at a time when the upper class was becoming richer and idler.