Let Us Count the Ways of Love : Costa Mesa Class Examines Concept of Romantic Compulsion

Things base and vile, holding no quality,

Love can transpose to form and dignity:

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;

And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind

--William Shakespeare, from “A

Midsummer Night’s Dream” (1592)

All’s cold and grey without it

They that have had it

Have slipped in and out of heaven

--Sir James Matthew Barrie, from

“What Every Woman Knows” (1906)

Are there stars out tonight?

I don’t know if it’s cloudy or bright....

I only have eyes for you

--Songwriters Al Dubin & Harry Warren (1934)

Don’t get me wrong if I look a little dazzled

I see neon lights whenever you walk by

--The Pretenders (1986)

Where do we get our ideas on what true love is? Who decided that a knotty stomach, sweaty palms, glazed eyeballs, leaden tongue and palpitating heart signal Big Romance, not swine flu?

Do we learn it from the movies? Pop music? Classic novels? Great works of art? BMW ads?

Truth be told, it’s all of the above.

Actually, the modern concept of what love and romance ought to feel like predates even the 16th-Century musings of Shakespeare, which has long intrigued Judith Salzinski, a professor of literature at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa.

The results of her fascination with the origins of romance--which stretch back to her childhood when she memorized the words to Irving Berlin’s “I Wonder Why”--can be seen in a two-part videotape that she showed Monday at the Newport Beach Public Library.

The tapes, which Salzinski uses to grease students before sliding them into studying comparative lit, were incorporated into a talk on “The History of Romantic Love in Art, Music and Literature.”

Had Salzinski come up with a saucier title, she might have attracted more than the eight people present for her talk (this reporter included). Here’s the way Geraldo would handle it: “Medieval cult’s forbidden love practices--tune in at 3:30!”

Nevertheless, the audience was an attentive one. Salzinski said the practice of “courtly love,” which originated in the Middle Ages, is essentially the same thing we describe today when we talk about romantic love. She went on to illustrate the ways that these ideas permeate the writings of Shakespeare and Dante, the paintings and poetry of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the operas of Wagner.

And it’s still with us. It may be 9 centuries later, but the knight errant of olden days is a brother--OK, a much older brother--of the movie star/TV hero of today who embarks on a harrowing mission to prove his love.

Two key beliefs came out of the medieval concept of courtly love that most Westerners continue to wrestle with:

- The idealized woman, who represents the means of spiritual transformation for man.

- The elevation of the love relationship itself into a metaphorical experience through which the lovers transcend life’s travails and, sometimes, even death.

Such notions lie beneath such aphorisms as “love is blind,” “love can conquer all” and other bumper stickers.

If this sounds at all academic or arcane, just open a book or tune in the radio, and you’ll see its real-life manifestations. Flush-faced lovers, former lovers, would-be lovers, never-were-but-wanna-be lovers--all pining about the flaming passion burning deep down in the red-hot furnaces of their smoldering hearts.

It’s enough to give Smokey the Bear sweaty palms.

To most of us, all this emotional intensity sounds perfectly, well, romantic. Is it wise to submit romance to so much intellectual scrutiny? In that respect, isn’t love a lot like comedy, except without the whoopee cushion?

Look at the flood of books on “keeping the romance alive” in relationships. It seems that something’s not working for lots of folks in their quest for happily ever after. And wasn’t it George Santayana who pointed out that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeatedly get their hearts tossed in the recycling bin?

Salzinski didn’t address the So what? question. But she did say she’s working on another grant that would let her delve further into the subject.

One scholar who has taken all this history and applied it to the modern relationship as we know (and love) it is San Diego psychologist Robert Johnson. In his book “We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love” (1983), Johnson uses the classic romance myth of Tristan and Isolde to illustrate the concepts of love that Western society holds dear:

“With courtly love, a whole new set of values came into our culture. Without our being aware, a new morality was born within us and began to shape our attitudes. Romance, in its purest form, seeks only one thing--passion. It is willing to sacrifice everything else--every duty, obligations, relationships or commitment--in order to have passion. . . . Our ideal of romance teaches us that we must seek the ultimate ecstasy . . . by the one means known to us: falling ‘in love.’ ”

While society has changed drastically since the days these ideas were forged, Johnson suggests: “The main notion that has not changed over the centuries is this: our unconscious belief that ‘true love’ must be a mutual religious adoration of such overwhelming intensity that we feel all of heaven and earth revealed in our love.

“But unlike our courtly ancestors, we try to mix that worship into our personal lives, along with sex, marriage, cooking breakfast, paying the bills and raising children.”

Johnson, as a Jungian psychologist, has the theory that these ideas persist because they fulfill a fundamental psychological need, a need that Western man has not outgrown and that is responsible for a widespread inability to make love relationships work (as evidenced by the national divorce rate of 50%):

“It still hasn’t occurred to Western man to stop looking on woman as the symbol of something and to begin seeing her simply as a woman--as a human being,” according to Johnson’s book.

Meanwhile, the old myths continue to flourish, perpetuated in the TV, movies, pop music and art that we treasure.

Consider, though, what Shakespeare was advancing in a sonnet that Salzinski used as an example of the anti-romantic, pro-realist point of view:

“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips’ red . . . .

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound;

I grant I never saw a goddess go;

My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.

And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare

As any she belied with false compare . “

As Salzinski said at the end of her talk, “Think about that next time you hear ‘Some Enchanted Evening.’ ”