Our ideal of marriage and true love arose out of courtly love conventions which developed out of the absence of rulers due to their journeys in the Crusades which left their wives in charge of their kingdoms. From this bizarre history, women—for one brief, shinning moment—had a good deal of power which ended as soon as their husbands returned and only lasted if a husband was killed on Crusade. So again, the woman gained strength only by losing a male ruler. Indeed we see this pattern in Margaret of Austria’s story, she became very influential not because her father died, but because both of her husbands died and then she refused to marry, like the later Virgin Queen Elizabeth I who is such a powerful ruler because she does not marry. There are ripples of this history in Cinderella, a woman rises because a powerful male dies or is absent. As I watched the government shutdown, I thought a great deal about Octavio Paz’ very important book, The Double Flame. As a poet and diplomat, Paz traces the development of our notion of love and of Democracy from the Greek, Hebrew, Islamic, and Christian religious traditions to courtly love born in the middle ages and in the Fairy Tales of Europe and finally creating Political Democracy based on a reverence for individuals as equals, a concept ignited by princesses and queens living without their Lords and wooed by lowly troubadours in songs and poems of courtly love which was usually a platonic, frustrated relationship but occasionally was consummated. In courtly love, the two lovers are equal because we are not singing about a King and his Queen but about a widow or lonely Queen or Princess and a poet or musician. Indeed, as in Dante’s case the woman is often portrayed as superior, as a guide to spiritual bliss due to her higher standing or religious devotion. The Crusades allowed art and poetry to shake up the normal rigid class system of feudal Europe and produce this romantic dream of Democracy, of equality first between men and women, later between citizens. Eventually, upon reading all these subversive poems and novels, women began expecting romantic or courtly love in marriage, even in the marriages of aristocrats until finally this deep desire for love overwhelmed our desire for power and we have been struggling with the problems of that quest ever since, both in our political world where we expect to treat other people as equals (even though we usually don’t, treating them as animals or terrorists instead) and in our marriages where our divorce rates testify to our insistence that a marriage must be a true love or else we move on despite the damage to our children. Is this dream of equality a myth for women as well as men as well as citizens? Should we just give it up and settle for marriages of alliance or for good old British aristocracy? Or is Democracy and a loving marriage something which can be achieved but only if the partners and citizens nurture it with humility and an awareness of how much is at stake? Obviously, I don’t have the answers, but I sure do see the questions, especially as I follow the history of love and Democracy in Western Literature. Romance and Politics assume many faces, but always that dream is there urging us to “love one another.” So, so difficult to do. And yet, at times, so natural, just like breathing.
Posted on: Thu, 17 Oct 2013 23:27:46 +0000
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