The "Impossible Love" of the Troubadours

"The Day Dream"

Re-Vision Radio's Quest for "Impossible Love"

Because "There Ain't No Cure" (a la Leonard Cohen) for IMPOSSIBLE LOVE, the Gypsy Scholar presents the theme of IMPOSSIBLE LOVE though his Orphic Essay-with Soundtrack. The Gypsy Scholar would remind his listeners that there's a place other than the one of our daytime routine a "somewhere else" where, we also long to belong and need to go to from time to time. The Gypsy Scholar knows "that we are reminded of this place by a song we hear on the radio," and that we can even go there through the gateway of song(s) we hear on the radio. In the Gypsy Scholar's lexicon, that "place," that "somewhere else" is the Tower of Song.

"There is no cure for impossible love when it revolutionizes our lives. When it leads to the future as well as into the past, when it cannot be comprehended on a purely personal level, then it is not an illness, but an initiation. Initiation into depths, but also into longing, and this will not, should not, ever cease. This longing keeps us in proximity to our souls. It reminds us, as we conscientiously go through the obligations and activities of every day, that there is a place, a "somewhere else" where we also belong and need to go to from time to time. We are reminded of this place by a song we hear on the radio, a sentence we read in a newspaper, a picture on a subway wall, a memory brought to life by a smell. We usually associate this longing with the human object of our impossible loving, but such reminders may also evoke a time a year of happiness long forgotten or a place a country loved and left or an activity music embraced and then given up. In fact, when we can actually go to that place, do that activity, re-create all the elements of that happy time, we find that it's not that either. Even if an impossible love becomes possible, our longing will still be there. It will simply change form, reminding us that we are never quite all here and that part of us always belongs to an Other." --Jan Bauer

Lancelot & Guinevere

Le Belle Dame Sans

Sweet Sir Galahad

In search of the "Beloved," Re-Vision Radio, quests back--"way, way back"--to Plato's myth (in the Symposium) of the primordial Androgyne. According to the myth, human beings were once androgynous--both male and female. These round beings--"man-woman children of the Moon"--were so powerful that the gods became jealous and cut them in half. From then on, each half passionately longed for its lost other half.

"Each of us, when separated, having one side only ... is but the indenture of a man, and is always looking for his other half.... And when one of them meets with his other half, the actual half of himself ... the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and one will not be out of the other's sight, as they say, even for a moment...."

Thus, this may be the origin of the belief--found in many cultures--that every male and female on earth has a "heavenly counterpart." This, of course, is associated not only with the modern psychological idea of the "psychic other" (Jung) in each gender (anima/animus), but also the popular (new-age) idea of the "soul mate."

This ancient mythic theme has taken many forms over the ages. Sometimes the person dreamt of a supernatural lover and sometimes the person actually meets the supernatural lover, who oftentimes was actually a "fairie." (Given that the medieval narratives of the "unhappy love" of Tristan & Iseult--"an old tune so full of sadness"--were taken from an older Celtic legend, the mythogem of the "fairie" is retained in that Iseult's mother was a sorceress--she prepared the magic love-potion--and by hints that Iseult was a fairy-queen.) The legend became especially popular as a subject of poetry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with the Romantics. Keats' "Eve of St. Agnes" and ""La Belle Dame Sans Merci" are good examples of the poetic treatment of the theme. In the former, the lady to be wed meets the supernatural lover through a dream, and in the latter, darker poem, a knight is pinning away to death because he met a beautiful, wild-looking woman in a meadow who, although she spoke a language he could not understand, sang him a mysterious song. He is bewitched and finally kisses her to sleep, and then falls asleep himself. Awakening later, the woman was gone, and the knight is left alone on the cold hillside.

In these poems, the more tragic aspects of Romantic Love--impossible love--are emphasized.

"Sometimes It's Impossible"

IMPOSSIBLE LOVE: or Why the Heart Must Go Wrong

Wrong Kinds of Love

Certain kinds of love affairs are both impossible to live and impossible to forget. They may last a month, or they may go on for years. It doesn't really matter, because they mark our lives far beyond the actual time spent in living them.

A description of these love affairs would not correspond to the relationships that psychology and the experts hold up as proof of maturity and healthy self-esteem. Indeed, they go against every official version of good and "possible" love. They happen at the wrong time, in the wrong place, and with the wrong person. They lead less to intimacy on earth than to intimations of immortality somewhere between heaven and hell. No wonder they go by the name of "impossible love" impossible to live, impossible to give up, impossible to understandmore about confusion than complicity. They exalt and they humiliate, they promise and they disappoint, but they do not bring peace of mind. In addition to all this, they usually end badly. We may become saints or sinners, but we will not become "winners" in these particular love affairs.

Frequently, we sense this from the beginning, and we go into these relationships knowing we shouldn't. We can already count the reasons, proving it will never work. And yet we go. And once in, we stay in them long after we should, even when the impossibility is "proven" beyond a reasonable doubt. But these are not reasonable events, and they are definitely not the "right" kinds of love we would probably have if we had been reasonable in the first place and listened to the advice of concerned friends and therapists. From a healthy minded point of view, these relationships remain both impossible and wrong.

Their impossibility may come from obvious outer taboos or hidden inner inhibitions, material difficulties or psychological differences. Whatever the cause of the obstacles that intrude between the lovers and their love, transgressing them becomes irresistible and heightens the feeling of intensity, but it doesn't make the love any more possible. It just adds to the sense of "wrongness." Wrong to love, wrong to fail to overcome the obstacles to loving.

In former times, this kind of love was called tragic, romantic, or doomed, a great passion or even a "folie a deux." Today, it is more often termed a neurosis, an addiction, or a projection. The star crossed lovers of yesteryear have become the dysfunctional, co dependent patients of today. In the twelfth century AD., Abelard and Heloise were punished and ostracized for loving wrongly. Today, they would be labeled and treated. Each epoch provides its opportunities for impossible love and creates sanctions to deal with it. Today, as in the past, in spite of psychology, people go on loving wrongly and impossibly. They may read self help books by day, but they read love poems by night, and they feel as caught by their own contradictions as they do by the passion itself.

Why would any normal person, especially any normal person with some psychological and practical understanding, consent to such an experience? Why would anyone risk loss of control, of face, of well being, perhaps even of family and reputation for an impossible love? Clearly, a normal person in a normal state of mind would not. Faced with the advent of passion, he or she would consider the risks and run the other way, tie him or herself to the mast, if necessary, in order not to succumb to the siren's call. And many people do run away or bravely and successfully resist before it is too late. Others, even "luckier;" never even hear the song and may manage to live a whole life long without the experience of such disruptive love. It isn't for everyone, nor is it the only way for normal people to be catapulted into abnormal states. Impossible love is just one of the routes into great pain, and through it perhaps great depth and new meaning.

Death, illness, divorce, failure, reversal of fortune and hopes are a few of the other blows that life may reserve to jolt us into an awareness beyond that of everyday consciousness. Sometimes the jolt comes from outside, sometimes it comes from within. In one form or another, life provides the raw materials. Unfortunately, it doesn't give the directions or the answers. Maybe that will take a lifetime, but let us at least start by asking the questions. Not the "Why me?" or the "Who can I blame?" or the "What did I do wrong?" questions, but the "Why now?" and the "What for?" questions. What does this event mean in my life, and how can I live it so that at my death I can say I have lived, and not that I was lived?

To ask this question takes a particular kind of courage, not necessarily of the active, heroic kind. It means holding the balance between the temptation to give up and the temptation to strike out. It means having the courage to face the "dragon" (or the symptom, or the problem, or the "bad" guy in our dreams and lives) and find out what it wants, instead of killing it and walking away untouched. It means, if we are engaged in the dragon energy of an impossible love, facing its fire and inquiring what it is bringing into our lives.

It isn't natural to do this. Even Parsifal, the hero of the Grail Quest, who went through death defying adventures in order to find the sacred chalice, forgot to ask what the quest was all about the first time he came to the place of the grail. Because he forgot, because he just wanted to grab and run, the grail disappeared, and so he had to leave and be further tried before he could return, chastened and less greedy, to claim the prize. Like him, most of us forget many times around. We want the prizes of answers and solutions, not meaning. We may be willing to read books and pay therapists but we want results. It is so much harder to let events take their course in our lives, to meet them, and to let their meaning unfold, without over controlling or passively submitting. When something hurts, we want to find a cause, and our "culture of impatience" leads us to look for someone or something to blame: men, women, mothers, fathers, patients, therapists, ourselves, our bodies, our lovers, our lovers' lovers.

. . . . We all have the potential to become psychological fundamentalists when we resist coming to terms with life's ambiguities, including especially the contradictions in our own psyches. Blaming as a way of dealing with the paradox of impossible love doesn't help, either. The love may be all wrong, but there is no right answerno diagnosis or theory to cure it. You can blame yourself and your vulnerability or foolishness. You can blame the other's ruthlessness, seduction, and unconsciousness. Still, the love is there, inappropriate, wrong, impossible perhaps, but undeniable.

Impossible love is not just undeniable in the psyche of a particular smitten individual, however. It is also undeniable in our culture, as a myth and a cultural "imago." Whether we actually live an impossible love or not, we are all deeply influenced by the myth of the star crossed lovers, the central image of Romantic Love. We just don't realize that behind the modem sentimentalized versions of romantic love lies the darker story, a story of impossibility, tragedy, arid death, not happy endings as in Hollywood. When we think of Romeo and Juliet, Abelard and Heloise, Tristan and Iseult, we think of their beauty and commitment, but we forget about their fate. We repress or blithely ignore their unhappy endings when we fall into fantasies of living a legendary love affair, and we are astonished by the darkness when we actually live one. . . .

. . . . We chafe in our relationships or their absence, decrying the lack of romance and/or passion. We yearn to partake in something that is more stirring, more momentous, more transcendent than the relationship we are living or have lived. We long for intensity and for transformation, but we are naive about that word "transformation." In our innocence, we often think it can just "happen" if we live right and go to the right workshops. Therapy will fix us, the workshop will change everything, or, better still, a passionate love affair will give us back our taste for life and transform our whole being. Unfortunately, this is magic thinking. It may happen that way on television, but not in real life. Transformation in real life takes place both gradually and imperceptibly or violently and rapidly, but it rarely takes place at the speed or in the way we had planned.

In cultures where transformation from one state to another is provoked by initiatory rites, the process is invariably and deliberately painful. Skin is lacerated, bodies are mutilated, the mind is stricken, as if to guarantee that there will be no going back to the way it was before. In our culture, where we have few official initiatory rites, our psyches seem to have found other ways to "lacerate" us into initiation and, perhaps, transformation.

An impossible and passionate love may be one of these ways. In that case, it is more than a romantic fantasy, and it may also be more than just a passing madness, a self destructive impulse, or a stubborn addiction. Whatever our ignorance or apprehension about its actual reality, it does continue to fascinate us as a cultural ideal and archetype. There must, therefore, be more to understand about it than its dark destruction, or even its sweet beauty. Indeed, as we shall see, in the "impossibility" of certain passions may lie the possibility of initiation into unknown depths of ourselves, of life, and even death.

This sense of "unknown depths" is what pulls us into the enchantment of a great and impossible love story, whether it be told in an old legend or shown in a modern movie. Our minds follow the story, the plot, the development and adventures of the characters, but our psyches respond to the archetypes. They respond to what is eternal and meaningful and universal behind the particular names and places, and in the responding they remind us that we do not just participate in the practical, linear here and now, but in the timeless space of myth and feeling and destiny.

If this were not true, we would simply leave the theater or put down the book and forget about it, like a meal enjoyed or a newspaper read. We would not be interested in love tales from another century about people we will never meet. But we are interested, and we don't forget these stories, any more than we forget the ones we live ourselves. How else to make sense of what we live? If impossible love is an initiation, it is not just a private one. It is a collective event, as well, that puts us in touch with aspects of human experience much vaster than our own lives.

. . . . How is it possible to survive and make some sense out of a love affair that erupts between two people, but cannot be lived out? How can we understand the disruptive message of impossible love in the cultural psyche of the world at large? There are no absolute or "right" answers in the pages that follow but rather patterns of experience and conclusions to be drawn from them. Most of all, however, starting with an old and true tale of impossible love upon which many of our modem fantasies are based, there is company, lovers past and present to meet and learn from, as we ask the question "What for?"

--Jan Bauer

"La Belle Dame Sans"

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms!
So haggard and so woebegone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
And the harvest's done.

I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew,
And on thy cheek a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

"I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful -a faery's child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery's song.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said
`I love thee true.'

She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept, and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.

And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dreamed -Ah! woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dreamed
On the cold hill's side.

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!'

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill's side.

And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing."

La Belle Dame Sans Merci
--John Keats

How the Gypsy Scholar Learned the Secret What for of Impossible Love

Most of all, however, starting with an old and true tale of impossible love upon which many of our modem fantasies are based, there is company, lovers past and present to meet and learn from, as we ask the question "What for?" --Jan Bauer

The Gypsy Scholar one day found himself part of the company of the Beautiful Losers in love. This was because at some point in his life he succumbed to the siren's call and discovered that certain kinds of love affairs are both impossible to live and impossible to forget. Thus, he found himself in a very strange place, a place where love led less to intimacy on earth than to intimations of immortality somewhere between heaven and hell. This led him, in turn, on a lonely quest, searching for some sort of sanctuary in order to heal and hold the initiation into the paradoxical mysteries of impossible love. This is how the Gypsy Scholar found the Tower of Song (where they dont let a woman kill you ...). In the Tower of Songs labyrinthine library, he found old books about the star crossed lovers of yesteryear, both real and fictionalAbelard and Heloise, Tristan and Isolde, and these stories took him deeper into the mythic labyrinth of the chambers of the heart. (This is what pulls us into the enchantment of a great and impossible love story, whether it be told in an old legend or shown in a modern movie. Our minds follow the story, the plot, the development and adventures of the characters, but our psyches respond to the archetypes. They respond to what is eternal and meaningful and universal behind the particular names and places, and in the responding they remind us that we do not just participate in the practical, linear here and now, but in the timeless space of myth and feeling and destiny.) Because these lovers have become so famous (love in the Western world), he realized that what he was experiencing was not just his own particular obsession and wound, but actually undeniable in our culture, as a myth and a cultural imago. Once more, he read that Whether we actually live an impossible love or not, we are all deeply influenced by the myth of the star crossed lovers, the central image of Romantic Love.

The Gypsy Scholar sought out the Tower of Song because he could not rely on help from the usual resources in our society; the psychotherapists. From the healthy minded point of view of modern psychiatry, these relationships remain both impossible and wrong. (In the twelfth century AD., these star-crossed lovers were punished and ostracized for loving wrongly, whereas they have become the dysfunctional, co dependent patients of today.) And, generally speaking, we have bought into the clinical model of healthy-mindedness, ignoring what the great pioneering American psychologist, William James observed: There is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses to account for are a genuine portion of reality; and they may after all be the best key to life's significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth. Instead, we want happy endings and the rewards of a healthy relationship, as defined by our therapists and self-help gurus. Everybody knows We want the prizes of answers and solutions, not meaning. We may be willing to read books and pay therapists but we want results. . . . When something hurts, we want to find a cause and . . . to look for someone or something to blame. (In their love relationships, Everybody knows Everybody wants a box of chocolates / And a long-stem rose / Everybody knows.) Thus, the impossible loves of our lives are judged by our sense of wrongness about these kinds of relationships, and many people do run away or bravely and successfully resist before it is too late. (Why would any normal person, especially any normal person with some psychological and practical understanding, consent to such an experience? Why would anyone risk loss of control, of face, of well being, perhaps even of family and reputation for an impossible love? Clearly, a normal person in a normal state of mind would not.) We consider those lovers lucky who never even hear the song of the siren of impossible love and manage to live a whole life long without the experience of such disruptive love. And, yes, we enjoy and praise the stories of the great lovers, from Tristan and Iseult to Romeo and Juliet, but we shut out the knowledge of their fate. We just don't realize that behind the modern sentimentalized versions of romantic love lies the darker story, a story of impossibility, tragedy, arid death, not happy endings as in Hollywood. When we think of we think of their beauty and commitment, but we forget about their fate. We repress or blithely ignore their unhappy endings when we fall into fantasies of living a legendary love affair, and we are astonished by the darkness when we actually live one.

This is exactly the love-lesson the Gypsy Scholar had to learn in the Tower of Song. However, thats not all there is to it. Yes, he had been seduced by the sirens song and suffered the fate that impossible love visits upon the foolish lover. Yet, in the library of the Tower of Song, the grieving and depressed Gypsy Scholar heard another song; one that healed from the first song, a song which, paradoxically, he couldnt have really heard without hearing the first.

About love and death in the Western world, the Gypsy Scholar read the following: Whatever our ignorance or apprehension about its actual reality, it does continue to fascinate us as a cultural ideal and archetype. There must, therefore, be more to understand about it than its dark destruction, or even its sweet beauty. Indeed, as we shall see, in the 'impossibility' of certain passions may lie the possibility of initiation into unknown depths of ourselves, of life, and even death. . . . Impossible love is just one of the routes into great pain, and through it perhaps great depth and new meaning. In fact, he eventually discovered that impossible love, in the absence of a collective cultural ritual, was a secular/profane kind of initiation into the mysteries and (if rightly dealt with) psycho-spiritual transformation. As in traditional societies, the initiate undergoes an ordeal, oftentimes involving some sort of laceration. (In cultures where transformation from one state to another is provoked by initiatory rites, the process is invariably and deliberately painful. Skin is lacerated, bodies are mutilated, the mind is stricken, as if to guarantee that there will be no going back to the way it was before. In our culture, where we have few official initiatory rites, our psyches seem to have found other ways to 'lacerate' us into initiation and, perhaps, transformation.)

What impossible love can contribute to our otherwise superficial lives, bereft of traditional meaning, is a sense of "unknown depths." (If impossible love is an initiation, it is not just a private one. It is a collective event, as well, that puts us in touch with aspects of human experience much vaster than our own lives). Indeed, the Gypsy Scholar discovered that it can be a path to what the great Romantic poet Keats called the vale of Soul-making. (Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make soul? A place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways!) Yes, the new sense of unknown depths. On this path of exploring the dark passages one comes upon the essential paradox of impossible love. Expressed in terms of Soul-making, the psychopathology of impossible love goes against the grain of our modern model of psychotherapy and its healthy-minded ethic: "The soul sees by means of affliction. Illness opens doors to a reality which remains closed to the healthy point of view. . . . The soul's native insight is its native pathology." In other words, in the Tower of Song, the Gypsy Scholar realized the mad truth of the paradox of impossible love: The love may be all wrong, but there is no right answerno diagnosis or theory to cure it. As the Gypsy Scholar repeated these startling words, he recalled the lyrics of a song he once heard, and then knew he had always had an inkling of this mad truth about impossible love.

I loved you for a long, long time
I know this love is real
It don't matter how it all went wrong
That don't change the way I feel
And I can't believe that time's
Gonna heal this wound I'm speaking of
There ain't no cure,
There ain't no cure,
There ain't no cure for love.

(Leonard Cohen)

However, this wasnt the final song the Gypsy Scholar associated with his healing revelation in the Tower of Song. As previously mentioned, impossible love can serve as a profane initiation ritual that lacerates the heart into transformation. The music the Gypsy Scholar heard began to sound when he serendipitously turned to a passage from a book in the Tower of Songs library and finally understood that in impossible loves body beats an eternally broken heart: To be is to be vulnerable [wounded]. The defense mechanisms, the character armor, is to protect from life. Frailty alone is human; a broken, a ground-up (contrite) heart. . . . Open is broken. There is no breakthrough without breakage. . . . The body is made whole by being broken. In this weird sense, impossible love is at the same time both the disease and the healing (but not the cure in our modern clinical sense). Or, as the Romantic poem goes: Nothing can be sole or whole / That has not been rent. In other words, heres the secret paradox of impossible love: if Gypsy Scholar were to never even hear the song (sirens song of impossible love), he would not hear the "other side" of it . . . from the Tower of Song:

Now I greet you now from the other side
Of sorrow and despair
With a love so vast and so shattered
It will reach you everywhere.

(Leonard Cohen)

Heart With No Companion

Re-Vision Radio's Quest for "Impossible Love" crosses over to

The Borderlands

In various legends, the heavenly counterpart or supernatural lover--sometimes called the "demon lover"--is able to temporarily pass between worlds into the human world to meet his or her lover. One such legend, of Celtic origin (with its mythology of the pagan, magical "Otherworld"), is that of the "Borderlands." Although the legendary theme ranges from the more positive to the negative aspects of passionate love with a non-human lover, nevertheless the spiritual dimension of "Romantic love" can be felt in these tellings. This is, in fact, the great legacy of the Troubadour's more esoteric conception of amor. Here we discover that there is more to the Troubadour's paganistic and feministic "Religion of Love" than almost all scholar's have missed, and that is a "sacramental vision of nature."

"Furthermore, this secret doctrine is not a message, but more an alternate state of mind, a new way of being in the world. Hidden in the verse of Troubadour poetry is a sacramental vision of nature, a sort of eroticized perception, in which nature and the body is affirmed as the way to the Goddess." (From Essay-with-Soundtrack, 'The Troubadours & the Beloved')

.... But I will be your pillow
Where eer your head will lie
And Ill be the star you can only catch
In the corner of your eye
And Ill be the sound of laughter
In the first low flower of dawn
And Ill be the touch to brush your cheek
And wake you in the morning....
And the maid she opened up her eyes
And smiled up through the trees
For as she listened she could almost hear
His voice upon the breeze-o....

('The Borderlands')

The Borderlands

The young man sat above the town
In the glow of the setting sun
With his head held cradled in his hand,
His back against a stone
Sayin, Why have I so little time
In this wretched place to stand
When I cant take the girl I love
Back home to the borderland-o

For I watch her dance upon the hill
And I live but for her song
And she never dreamed I waited here
So silent and so long
But her golden hair it strikes me dumb
And her brown eyes strike me blind
And the thought Ill neer see her again
Is torturing my mind-o

The girl walked down the hill nearby
Toward home and the end of day
And she caught the sound of the young mans words
And she stopped upon her way
And no voice had she ever heard so sweet
As the voice of the stranger lad
And she stood there as if turned to stone
And listened from the shadows

And the young mans words reached out to her
Where she stood upon the lea
And they built her ships upon the clouds
And castles on the sea
And as he spoke her eyes did flash
And burn as with a flame
And the maid she stepped around the stone
As if hed called her name-o

Oh, pray lament no more, she said,
Her voice like a gentle sea
For I have heard your every word
And I know theyre meant for me
And if you speak in truth, my lad,
And you love me as you say
There can be no reason we must part,
Not even for a day-o

Oh the young man started at her words
And he stood up straight and tall
Siad, I never meant for you to hear me
Speak this way at all
For you can never have me, love,
Its useless to deceive
For I must return the the borderlands
Oh, I am bound to leave you

Oh, I care not where youre bound, my lad,
I care not where youre from
For the one thing that Im certain tis
this maidens heart youve won
So take me with you where you must
I freely go your way
And I will lie here in your arms
To greet the light of day-o

So tenderly he laid her down
And next to her did lie
The wind that whispered through the trees
Was sweet as a lullaby
And bending down, he folded her
Into a soft embrace
And with a touch he sent her fast asleep
With a smile upon her face

Oh, sleep content, my love, he said,
I cannot cause you pain
For the dawn will find me far away
And I wont be back again
And though Id take you if I could
I am not what I seem
For I must return to the borderlands
oh, I am bound to leave you

For I am not of your world, my love,
I come from another time
And I crossed here from the borderlands
Between your world and mine
And twas there that I first heard your voice
And longed for your face to see
And I gathered all the powers I had
And stepped out on your lea-o

And you know I watched you quietly
As you danced upon the hill
And though I dared not call to you
I loved you stronger still
But no longer do I have the power
No longer can I stay
And Ill be pulled back into my time
By the dawning of the day-o

But I will be your pillow
Where eer your head will lie
And Ill be the star you can only catch
In the corner of your eye
And Ill be the sound of laughter
In the first low flower of dawn
And Ill be the touch to brush your cheek
And wake you in the morning

So saying this he bended low
And he kissed her once goodbye
And as the dawn broke on the hill
He vanished like a sigh
And the maid she opened up her eyes
And smiled up through the trees
For as she listened she could almost hear
His voice upon the breeze-o

I know you hear me, love, she spoke
As she lay on her grassy bed
For I felt your touch and I felt your kiss
And I heard the words you said
But the next time that our worlds combine
Can not be very far
And Ill be waiting then to take your hand
And dance among the stars-o

(Danny Carnahan)

The film, The Lake House, despite its flawed internal logic (its confused timeline, particularly the time paradox at the end), at least has this virtue going for it:

It is a contemporary metaphor of the old Romantic theme of "impossible love." Though the supernatural aspect of this theme is gone, the film substitutes the modern theory of time travel and two earthly lovers for the old supernatural theme of an other-worldly dimension that collides with the earthly time, when a demon-lover encounters a human lover. And like the lovers in the song above, the lovers in the film must wait for the right time when their worlds come together again. Yet, whether a supernatural or natural "impossible love," the main theme of Romantic "impossible love" is still the basic organizing idea. This is evidenced by that premiere Romantic writer of "impossible love," Jane Austen, whose novel Persuasion is an integral part of the film's thematic background. (Kate and Alex, at their first encounter, discuss the novel and how its impossible lovers get a second chance to meet.)

"There could have been not two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison." This is the passage that Kate reads from Jane Austen's novel Persuasion, which Alex leaves for her to find under the floor-boards of the Lake House.

Thus, in spite of the film's flaws it nevertheless has this going for it. This must be one of the reasons why Roger Ebert gave it a "thumbs up:" "What I respond to in the movie is its fundamental romantic impulse."

To substantiate my claim of the film's "impossible love" metaphor, I offer the following dialogue between the main character, Alex Wyler, and his brother Henry, after Alex thinks he's lost his beloved.

Henry: Hey, come on! This is a good thing. You know, you need a real woman . . .
Alex: Henry, listen!
Henry: --A woman.
Alex: Listen to me! While it lasted, she was more real to me than any of that stuff. She was more real to me than anything I've ever known. I saw her. I kissed her . . . I love her! And now she's gone--she's gone.

The Impossible Love
of the Western World's
Great Lovers

Oh, what a dear ravishing thing is the beginning of an Amour!
Aphra Behn, The Emperor of the Moon

Love ceases to be a pleasure, when it ceases to be a secret.
Aphra Behn, The Lover's Watch, Four o'clock

Impossible Love:
Tristan & Isolde

Tristan & Isolde Sharing the Love Potion

Tristan Slays Dragon

Tristan Delivering Elias

Tristan Mortally Wounded in Boat with Harp

Iseult

Isolde

Yseult

Love Potion

The Loving Cup

Tristram & La belle Isoude Drink Love Potion

Tristan & Isolde Sharing Love Potion

Tristan & Isolde (S. Dali)

The Kiss

Tristan & Isolde (15th c. Illumination)

Sir Tristam & la Belle Isaul

Tristan & Iseult

Tristan & Isolde

Mad Tristan (S. Dali)

The Madness of Sir Tristan

The Death of Tristam

La Muerte de Tristan e Isolda

They Went to Their Country of Benoye & Lived There In Great Joy

Tristan & Isolde

The Historical Background to the Tristan & Isolde Story

The tale of Tristan and Isolde was one of the most influential romances in the medieval period. It predated and influenced the Arthurian romance of Lancelot and Guinevere. Originally, the Tristan legend had nothing to do with King Arthur, but shortly after the Vulgate Cycle (or Lancelot-Grail cycle) in c. 1235-40, The Prose Tristan, the hero had joined the fellowship of the Round Table.

The Tristan legend, which has been seen as the prototype of the love-death theme and, thus, for love in the Western world, can be traced back to Cornish and Welsh mythology. Tristan makes his first medieval appearance in the early twelfth century in Celtic folklore circulating in the north of France. Although the oldest folkloric stories concerning Tristan are lost, some of the derivatives still exist. There were many retellings of the legend in courtly romance, beginning in the twelfth century: Anglo-Norman poet Thomas of Britain and his German successor Gottfried von Strassburg, the Arthurian romancier Chrétien de Troyes, the French poet Béroul, and the German poet Eilhart von Oberge. In the thirteenth century, during the great period of prose romances, appeared the Prose Tristan, one of the most popular romances of its time follows Tristan from the traditional legend into the realm of King Arthur where Tristan participates in the Quest for the Holy Grail. In the fifteenth century, Sir Thomas Malory shortened this French version into his own take, The Book of Sir Tristram de Lyones, found in his Le Morte D'Arthur.

The story of the Tristans and Iseults tragic love has been the subject of numerous medieval and modern retellings. There are two main traditions of the Tristan legend: the early tradition comprised of the romances from two French poets from the second half of the twelfth centuryThomas and Beroul. Their sources could be trace back to the original, archetype Celtic romance. (There was an earlier and perhaps the original work of Tristan, which both authors may have relied on, since many of the plots were similar, and yet there was enough difference between these two versions. However the original Tristan story is now lost.) The medieval versions of the story are called the courtly and the common versions. The former is represented by the Tristan of the Anglo-Norman poet Thomas, which was written in the latter part of the twelfth century. Thomas more courtly version of the romance is more interested in the inner thoughts of the characters. (Though the theme and plot were still the same as those of Beroul, his style and some of the scenes were different from that of Beroul.) His version in turn influenced Gottfried von Strassburg, whose Tristan, written in the first decade of the thirteenth century, is one of the great romances of the Middle Ages, and the Old Norse Tristrams saga (1226). In this version, love is loftier and more courtly than in the common version. The love potion is of unlimited duration and Tristan's courtly skills are emphasized. The common version, represented by Béroul's late-twelfth-century Roman de Tristran was considered to be the uncourtly version, because it was less refined. (Beroul may be closer to the original source, since he may have relied on oral tradition.) Neither romance had survived completely. Both were fragmented, however Thomas' version survived in several different manuscripts. Beroul's text can be only found in one manuscript. Beroul's work was missing the beginning ( the birth and childhood of Tristan up to the time a knight taken Isolde from Mark by playing the harp) and the ending (Tristan exiled to Brittany to the lovers' death). While a great deal of the middle parts was missing in Thomas' romance. Most scholars used Eilhart von Oberge, a German writer who wrote "Tristrant und Isalde" (c. 1170), to supplement the lost Beroul's fragmented romance. However, Eilhart's poem is now lost, but there were redaction of his work in the 13th century. Another German writer, Gottfried von Strassburg, wrote "Tristan und Isold" (c. 1210), and had based his poem on Thomas' romance. Other works based on Thomas' romance, included the Scandinavian "Tristams Saga og Isonde" (13th century), and the English "Sir Tristrem" (c. 14th century). Chretien de Troyes may have also written his own version of the Tristan legend, which was probably titled "Mark and Iseut la Blonde". If this is the case, then his work is now lost. It is clear Chretien knew of and understood the original work.

There were many other medieval versions of the tale, including a long French prose romance, the Middle English poem Sir Tristrem, which was edited by Sir Walter Scott in 1804. These later versions come from The Prose Tristan (c. 1240), which was markedly different from the earlier tales written by Thomas and Beroul. The Prose Tristan became the official medieval tale of Tristan and Isolde that would eventually provide the materials for Sir Thomas Malorys Le Morte d'Arthur (c. 1469), where the Tristan-Isolt-Mark triangle is a foil for the Lancelot-Guinevere-Arthur triangle.

The story has been equally popular in the Victorian period. Matthew Arnold, the first of the Victorians to treat the story, wrote his Tristram and Iseult in 1852. Tennyson's moralistic and condemnatory account of the lovers in the idyll "The Last Tournament" inspired Algernon Charles Swinburne to write Tristram of Lyonesse (1882), which he considered to be more medieval in tone because more sympathetic to the lovers. Of course, there is Richard Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde (1857), which was inspired by Gottfried's Tristan. Numerous twentieth-century poets, playwrights and novelists have taken up the theme, including Thomas Hardy, John Masefield, Martha Kinross, Don Marquis, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, John Erskine, John Updike, and many others. Thus modern literature is rife with examples of Tristan and Isolde works, most of them focusing on the forbidden romance, rather than the chivalry of Tristan. John Erskine, Rosalind Miles, Anna Taylor, Rosmary Surcliff , Hannah Closs and Nancy McKenzie are just a few examples of authors of modern Tristan and Isolde tales.

Scholars generally agree that the tale of Tristan and Isolde is essentially Brythonic (a southern group of Celtic languages) in origin, with incorporated details from other (later) sources. The original story is thought to have been an archetypal trickster tale (common to Celtic tales), which evolved through early Celtic forms. The strict taboo enforced by a Druidic culture against written works means there is little definite literature from these early ages. The titles of the Welsh Triad form have afforded clues to possible early Tristan and Isolde works, the Triad of Drystan, Essyllt and March obviously being the most probable but there is no certainty. The earliest works that are definitely known of (or indeed still survive) originate from the 12th century and their comparative similarity suggests an original (either oral or written) story existed prior to then.

The earliest extant version, Tristram (although incomplete), was written (c.1165-1185) by Thomas of Britain in Anglo-Norman French verse. At a similar time The Romance of Tristan was written by the French poet Beroul (1160-1190). Eilhart von Oberge, Marie de France, and Chretien de Troyes, all wrote their own works on Tristan and Isolde soon after (their derivation from an original story or that of Beroul or Thomas is evident to scholars from their style of writing). Gottfried von Strassburg of Germany wrote "Tristan und Isold" (c. 1210), and based his poem on Thomas' romance. His poem is acknowledged to be the father of modern variations of the original myth. The association with the Court of King Arthur appeared first in Chretien de Troyes work but was overshadowed by The Prose Tristan (c. 1240). The Prose Tristan became the standard version of Tristan and Isolde, and even influenced Sir Thomas Malory, who wrote the Le Morte d'Arthur (c. 1470).

It is important to understand that the myth of Tristan and Isolde was not represented by one unified story with an established sequence of events. Rather, there were multiple versions from across Europe. The existing stories are episodic rather than presenting one continuous and complete narrative. Different works recount different incidents in which the enemies of the lovers plot against them, the lovers contrive to meet, get caught together, and manage to extract themselves. Nevertheless, the fundamental, basic premise of all the stories can be seen as the same.

________________________________

Tristan & Isolde: A Synopsis of the Story

Tristan is son of Blanchefleur and Rivalen, King of Lyonesse. He is given his name "Tristan" because of the sadness surrounding his birth, which caused the death of his mother. Tristan is trained by Governal in France, and then becomes at the service of his uncle King Mark of Cornwall. Tristan saves Cornwall from the giant Knight, named Morholt, whose sister is the sorceress Queen of Ireland. Tristan is wounded with poison, and sails to Morholts native Ireland to seek a cure. There he meets a jongleur (a wandering minstrel, or poet), who teaches him the art of singing poetry. He is eventually cured by Isolde, the fair daughter of the Queen of Ireland. He returns shortly to Cornwall. King Mark finds himself under pressure by his barons to marry. Eventually he decides he wants the lady who possesses the blonde hair brought miraculously to Cornwall by a swallow. Tristan seeks that woman, whom he identifies as Princess Isolde. Both sail back to Cornwall, accompanied by Brangain, Isolde's lady-in-waiting. Brangain carries a secret love potion prepared by the Queen of Ireland for King Mark. Tristan and Isolde accidently drink it and are bound in unbreakable love. Isolde is married to Mark but Brangain is substituted for Isolde on the wedding night. When the couples secret love is denounced by Mark's barons, Tristan is banished from court, yet the illicit lovers manage further secret rendezvous. Finally they are discovered and denounced by an evil dwarf and sentenced to death. Tristan escapes, and rescues Isolde. The lovers live in forest of Morrois in bliss. Eventually, they are discovered by Mark's forester. Mark goes into forest alone and finds their secret sunlit hut, but the sight of the sleeping lovers with a naked sword between them causes Mark to have pity and spare them, since he takes the sword to be a sign of chastity. Mark replaces Tristan's sword with his, after forgiving them. It is this clemency that inspires Isolde to return to Mark (in Béroul: because effect of love potion disappears after three years). Tristan leaves Britain and offers his service to Hoel of Brittany. He later marries Hoel's daughter, Isolde au Blanches Mains, but cannot forget Isolde the Fair and thus does not consummate his marriage. Isolde au Blanches Mains tells her brother Kaherdin that she still a virgin. Tristan convinces Kaherdin of his love for Isolde the Fair. Kaherdin and Tristan go to her and arrange secret meetings, where Tristan is disguised as leper, penitent, and madman. Back in Brittany, after fighting great battles Tristan is fatally wounded in combat and only Isolde the Fair can save him. He sends a messenge to her, instructing Kaherdin to raise a white sail she if she is on the boatif not, black. His jealous wife lies to him and tells him it is black. Tristan dies of grief. Isolde arrives only to find her lover dead and dies at his side. The two are buried side by side with the two trees that grow on their grave entwined together.

Impossible Love:
Heloise & Abelard

"Abaelard & Heloisa"

The Impossible Love of Heloise & Abelard

Although these two pairs of famous lovers in the Western world probably are the source of the romances of the high Middle Ages, including the Grail, or "Arthurian" stories (the adulterous lovers Tristan and Iseult become Lancelot and Geneviere), the difference between Tristan/Isolde and Abelard/Heloise is that the latter really existed. Proving that life--in this case, the facts of Heloise's and Abelard's love-life--is just as dramatically interesting and profound in its thematic scope as purely fictionalized accounts.

Heloise and Abelard lived 900 years ago. Their storya mixture of philosophical learning, spiritual quest, erotic passion, love-song, treachery, and lost loveis probably the most memorable among the romantic stories from the high Middle Ages. It became fictionalized when it passed into the hands of the poet Jean de Meung who, in 1275, became the first person to mention the couple in writing when he incorporated their story into his epic poem the Romance de la Rose. In a very short time these two real-life lovers became the model for the later romances. (Abelard and Heloise were contemporary with the Troubadours in the south of France, or Occitania.)

Heloise and Abelard is one of historys most passionate and romantic true love stories. The nine hundred year old love affair of the 12th century philosopher and theologian and his student Heloise continues to inspire and move us. Their passionate relationship scandalized the community in which they lived, one whose policies resulted in rigid attitudes of intellectual, theological and sexual repression. This great love story, and the courage and passion of its protagonists, has much to teach us not only about the power of "romantic love" (amor), but also about our own understanding of sexual equality, intellectual freedom, and "the twelfth-century renaissance."

We, today, know them through their letters, which not only reveal Heloise (who identified herself with Mary Magdalene!) to be one of the most learned women of her time, but the more profound and spiritually superior of the two. Spiritually superior because it is Heloise who, although Abelard (who sent her to a convent where she became a famous abbess) is her brother superior in Christ, remains true to her heart's (human) love and (despite a lifetime of prodding and duress) never, ever denies her ideal--her impossible love! She therefore, in denying Christian love as greater, paradoxically achieves a self-sacrifice that makes the case for "romantic love" as being equal in transformative power to religious love. Indeed, reading between the lines of her letters, it could be argued that Heloise--matron saint of lost love-- is the first individual in the Western world to unite profane- with sacred love.

In a similar way, it could be argued--in another favorite theme for The Tower of Song--that Abelard, her lover, united not only eros and ideas, but philosophy and song. This scholar-lover not only wrote philosophical treatises, but love-songs, which Heloise claimed made her fall in love with him. Thus, Abelard from Brittany, the great dialectician of his time who sought to reconcile faith with reason, seems to belong to the poetic tradition of the "Dialectic Love" school. However, he is thus connected to the greater and older tradition of Orphic scholarship. From the Re-Vision Radio Manifesto: Orpheus, lover of Euridyce, was both a master rhetorician and "singer of love songs." From Abelard's Autobiography: "... and so with our lessons as a pretext we abandoned ourselves entirely to love. Her studies allowed us to withdraw in private, as love desired, with our books open before us, more words of love than of our reading passed between us, and more kissing than teaching. My hands strayed more often over the curves of her body than to the pages, love drew our eyes to look on each other more than reading kept them on our texts."

"Heloise and Abelard" (A. Deveria)

"Magdalene reading ..."

"Lady Reading Letters of Heloise & Abelard"

Heloise's profane love--the love of Eros, not Christ--for Abelard binds them by its own nature; it doesn't need any public sanction, much less the Church's sacrament of marriage. Now as an abbess, she makes her sacrilegious point to her estranged lover with a combination of philosophical thought and and eroticism, which one feels can only have come out of those now longed-for sessions behind closed doors of her uncle's house:

"God is my witness that if Augustus, emperor of the whole world, thought fit to honor me with marriage and conferred all the earth on me for ever it would be sweeter and more honorable to me to be, not his empress, but your whore." (Heloise, First Letter)

It is Heloise's (Mary Magdalene's?) premiere example that has become the standard for what we mean as "true love" between a man and a woman. Indeed, she shows the rest of us, despite the suffering and grief that it brings in its wake, the value and virtue to our souls of impossible love.

Therefore, given that we still seem plagued by both the old- and new-age dichotomy between "sacred" and "profane" love, the Gypsy Scholar would offer the example of Heloise/Magdalen and the following question (for the next time you hear from a-newage-Rumi-enthusiast friend, who tells you, when your all-too-human love has fallen apart, that "after all, it's just romantic love and not the proper love for God")

Which is it: is it profane . . . or is it sacred love?

Abelard & Heloise caught in the act

Abaelardus and Heloise in the manuscript Roman de la Rose (14th c) by Jean de Meun

Lady Heloise?

Abbess Heloise? Matron Saint of Holy Romantic Love

Abelard & Heloise: a Synopsis of the Story

Abelard, born in Celtic Brittany from a father who was a knight, instead decides to become a scholar. After traveling all around Europe as a wandering scholar ("a Peripatetic Paladin"), he comes searching his fortune to Paris, then the intellectual capital of Latin Europe. Abelard takes Paris by storm, overturning the position of its greatest scholars and puuting himslelf in their place. His Aristotelean dialectic is put into the service of uniting reason and faith. Soon, he is the most celebrated scholastic philosopher in the land and students come from all over Europe to attend his lectures. In twelfth-century Paris, the intellectually gifted young Heloise, the niece of Notre Dames Canon Fulbert, strives for knowledge, truth, and the answer to the question of human existence. She has already acquired a great reputation for her classical learning. It soon becomes apparent that only one teacher in Paris can provide the education that she seeks. Abelard, now master and canon at Notre Dame, takes her on as a student. Abelard quickly becomes intrigued and smitten by Heloises learning and her uncommon wit and intelligence, for Heloise is an intellectual match for the celebrated scholar. They soon find themselves so caught up in discourse that neither can resist the inflamed desires of their bodies, yet they both know that the laws of the time forbid such a relationship. But their physical love and the strength of their passion proved to be a power impossible to resist. It is at this time (c.1115-1116) that they correspond with each other in what are now called "The Lost Love Letters of Abelard and Heloise." Not only did Abelard write these love letters, but he also wrote love songs to Heloise, songs which spread the fame of their illicit love far and wide. It was through indiscretions such as these that eventually got the couple discovered by her uncle Fulbert.

When Heloise becomes pregnant, they realize it is not safe for her to remain in Paris. They flee for Brittany, Abelards place of birth. It is here that their child, Astrolabe, in born. In a scheme to protect the dignity of his fallen niece, and return Heloise to his home, Canon Fulbert arranges a secret marriage between Heloise and Abelard. Heloise, true to her idea of love and fearing for Abelard's reputation and career, refuses to hear of it. Nonetheless, both Abelard and Fulbert overrule her. But shortly after the two lovers are wed (c.1117-8), they discover Fulberts true plot is to ruin Abelard and keep Heloise for himself. For her safety, Heloise escapes to the convent at Argenteuil, but it is too late for Abelard and he is brutally attacked in his bed by Fulbert's relatives and castrated (c.1117-8) in punishment for his sexual relations with Heloise.

As a result of his humiliating punishment, Abelard no longer considers himself capable of continuing as a teacher at Notre Dame, and he decides that they should enter the monastic life. Canon Bedell pleads with Abelard to not force such a fate upon Heloise, but Abelard insists, again against the wishes of Heloise, that they must take holy orders as monk and nun (c.1117-8).

Years later, the repentant Abelard writes his autobiography in the form of a long letter to an anonymous younger monk, whose stated purpose is to serve as a cautionary tale and demonstrate that the young monk's troubles pale in the light of Abelard's. It is this letter (The History of My Calamities) to a third party that Heloise, now the abbess of the convent Abelard founded (c.1122), receives (1132) after not hearing from her estranged husband for fifteen years. (Prior to the chance finding of the early love letters in 1980 and published in 1999, these eight letters exhanged were the bases of all the knowledge we had of the famus couple.) In their famous correspondence of twenty years, we witness, through Heloise's refusal to forget about the past and the true love they shared, the couple that was the talk of all Paris trying to come to terms with what had happened to them. For Abelard's part, he was now a converted monk who only loved and served God and he tried, albiet unsuccessfully, to convince Heloise that she should forget him and do the same. Abelard, as recounted in his autobiography, was, for his radical and controverisal ideas, brought up on charges of heresy at the Council of Soissons in 1121, where he was forced to burn his book on the Trinity. Yet this was not the end of his troubles with the eccliastical authorities, like St. Bernard. He was from this time on embroiled in one conflict after another as a monk (e.g., the Counncil of Sens, 1140, acccuses him of heresy), and he finally had to flee to exile under the protection of the famous Peter the Venerable of Cluny. Abelard died there in 1142. Heloise lives on as abbess, successfully managing the Paraclete and expanding it to its daughter foundations. She died in 1163. They never met again, yet through their famous letters, their love endures.

Six hundred years later, it was Josephine Bonaparte, so moved by their story, the she ordered that the remains of Abelard and Heloise be entombed together at Pére Lachaise cemetery in Paris. To this day, lovers from all over the world make pilgrimages to visit the tomb where the remains of Heloise and Abelard rest eternally together.

"Love Sonnets"

The Gypsy Scholar Reads
The Love Leters of Abelard & Heloise

The story of the love affair between Abelard and Heloise is one of the most famous of the Middle Ages, serving as the real-life model for later romances (e.g., The Romance of the Rose; Lancelot and Guinevere). It is told in the pages of Peter Abelards autobiography, The History of My Calamities, and in the letters which passed between the two lovers. Abelard (c.10791142) was one of the most brilliant scholars of the renaissance of learning that flourished in Paris in the early twelfth century. He was the first to want to reconcile faith with reason (i.e., to use logic --dialectica-- based upon the works of Aristotle in order to explain religious text and doctrine): "In doubting, we come to seek, and in seeking, we perceive the truth." For this he was tried twice tried for "heresy," resulting in some of his work burned.

However, Abelard's scholarly powers of analysis and prowess in agrumentation, which gained him many enemies, was not the limit of his gifts. He also excelled in music; in writing love songs! (As if he was made for the prime example for Re-Vision Radio's program of dialectics mixed with music--and for an ancient model of the musical/orphic scholar!)

Why should I say more? We were united first in the dwelling that sheltered our love, and then in the hearts that burned with it. Under the pretext of study we spent our hours in the happiness of love, and learning held out to us the secret opportunities that our passion craved. Our speech was more of love than of the books which lay open before us; our kisses far outnumbered our reasoned words. Our hands sought less the book than each other's bosoms -- love drew our eyes together far more than the lesson drew them to the pages of our text. In order that there might be no suspicion, there were, indeed, sometimes blows, but love gave them, not anger; they were the marks, not of wrath, but of a tenderness surpassing the most fragrant balm in sweetness. What followed? No degree in love's progress was left untried by our passion, and if love itself could imagine any wonder as yet unknown, we discovered it. And our inexperience of such delights made us all the more ardent in our pursuit of them, so that our thirst for one another was still unquenched.

In measure as this passionate rapture absorbed me more and more, I devoted ever less time to philosophy and to the work of the school. Indeed it became loathsome to me to go to the school or to linger there; the labour, moreover, was very burdensome, since my nights were vigils of love and my days of study. My lecturing became utterly careless and lukewarm; I did nothing because of inspiration, but everything merely as a matter of habit. I had become nothing more than a reciter of my former discoveries, and though I still wrote poems, they dealt with love, not with the secrets of philosophy. Of these songs you yourself well know how some have become widely known and have been sung in many lands, chiefly, methinks, by those who delighted in the things of this world. As for the sorrow, the groans, the lamentations of my students when they perceived the preoccupation, nay, rather the chaos, of my mind, it is hard even to imagine them. (Abelard, Historia Calamitatum)

In fact, it was precisely this--writing love songs--that Heloise claims made her fall in love with him. Heloise refers to these letters as great in number at the end of the letter she wrote to Abelard after reading his Historia Calamitatum:

When you sought me ou{ for shameless pleasures, you showered me with incessant letters, you placed your Heloise on the lips of everyone through frequent song: I resounded through every market-place, each house. But how much more rightly might you now arouse me in God, as then you aroused me in lust! Consider, I beg you, what you owe me; listen to what I demand; and so I finish a long letter with a brief conclusion: Farewell, my only one. (Heloise)

(These love songs did not survive, but we have some of the later liturgical hymns he wrote for Heloise's Paraclete.) Heloise (c.1090c.1164) was his young student, and the niece of Fulbert, canon of Notre Dame in Paris. She became known as one of the most learned women of her time, studied not only in bliblical sources (like 'The Song of Songs') but in the classics (e.g., Greek and Roman literature, including rhetoric and Ovidian treatises on love). She was also a skilled writer. They were married (an act that Heloise herself was at first against, thinking it would hurt Abelard's religious career), but that didn't prevent her uncle his revenge. Incensed by Abelards seduction of Heloise, Fulbert ordered an attack on Abelard and had him castrated in punishment for the scandal and insult he had caused. Abelard fled Paris, entered a monastery and forced Heloise to become a nun. Their relationship continued through their letters (and perhaps through later meetings, when Abelard took over the responsibilties of becoming the spiritual director of the nunnery, the La Paraclet, which he himself had earlier founded as a monastery). By the time of Abelard's death, Heloise (who lived for over twenty more years) had become known as the wise abbess of The Paraclete--but only out of her sense of duty to Abelard. She never, in all her long years as a nun, forgot her true love.

"The name of wife may seem more sacred or more binding, but sweeter for me will always be the word mistress, or, if you will permit me, that of concubine or whore." (Heloise)

The post-love affair letters (including newly discovered letters), in which Heloise challenges her former scholar-lover (who is now in holy denial about their love) to live up to both what he taught her about real ethics and his promisies to her, are testiments to Heloise's real faith in the face of Abelard's reconsituted faith and the Church's condemnation of profane love. It is, therefore, the Gypsy Scholar's opinion that, in the final analysis, it is not Abelard who emerges the greater figure, secure in his moral higher ground, but Heloise, who, while bravely holding her social role as abbotess, remained forever faithful to her independent principles about the essential purity of romantic love; i.e., faithful to the "Religion of Love. "

This is what Ibn 'Arabi, roughly contemporary in Arabic Andalusia, called it. Ibn 'Arabi was born in Murcia, Andalusia in 1155. When this Sufi mystic and later writer of profane love poetry, "undertook his journey to Mecca in the thirteenth century, he was forced to reflect on the nature of love, that extraordinary feeling that gives human beings a chance to reach toward divine perfection. It is well known that the Sufi mystics, starting with Ibn 'Arabi, have always had trouble drawing the line between love inspired by the divine and love inspired by a woman." [Fatema Mernissi, Scheherazade Goes West.] And thinking of the Gypsy Scholar's essays, "The Origins of the Troubadours: 'Andalusia, I Want To See You Again and Again,'" the great Thousand And One Nights, or Arabian Nights, which stories were translated first into Arabic and then into Latin by the mid-13th century and, thus, made popular to Latin Europe, featured the storyteller-heroine Scheherazade. Thus, it could be said, with some reservations, that Heloise, in her challenging post-love affair questions to Abelard, in order to get him into a renewed dialogue, and perhaps to bring him back around to the feminine point of view, is a real-life Scheherazade: "Scheherazade had read the books of literature, philosophy, medicine. She knew poetry by heart, and had studied historical reports, and was acquainted with the sayings of men and the maxims of sages and kings. She was intelligent, wise, and refined. She had read and learned." (For the Gypsy Scholar's refusal to draw the line between sacred and profane love, see p. 5: "Quest-Romance.")

The story of Abelard and Heloise is one of passion, pride, devotion, grief over lost love, faith, heresy, brutality, exile, and intellectual brilliance. Through it we can question medieval attitudes to sex and marriage, faith and learning, sacred profane love. They lived at a time of great intellectual and social change, not to mention the political flux and anxiety about the crusade. It was a time, then, of intense creative energy that made Paris one of the centres of the Twelfth-century Renaissance.

Therefore, the story of Heloise and Abelard serves as the best example of what the Tower of Song program is all about: Argument & Song; Philosophy & Love.