I'd like to respond to Abiola Lapite's column of yesterday, because I've heard that type of argument before, and I'm quite sick of it. Lapite's statement that, "[o]urs is an age of small passions and trivial disappointments," embodies what I'll call the "Anne of Green Gables" mode of thought.
For anyone unfamiliar with the story of the red-haired orphan Anne (a character created by author L.M. Montgomery), she was a highly imaginative young girl and a voracious reader of poetry and prose, who was constantly disappointed in her day-to-day interactions with her contemporaries, particularly in the area of love. To Anne, the young country gentleman of her time was a barbarian when compared to the genteel parfait knights of long ago. Eventually, Anne overcame the feeling that she was born at the wrong time, and realized that while the modes of expression of her time were not as elegant, they were just as meaningful.
It seems to me very elitist and a major oversimplification for Lapite to assume that all "moderns" do not understand love. The concept of love has not changed drastically from age to age, and sex (which Lapite has, as some do, dismissed as a base need utterly unconnected to affection) has always been part of the package. The Japanese that Lapite seems to be so fond of quoting also produced "The Tale of Genji," perhaps the world's first bodice-ripper. When Prince Genji wasn't busy composing pithy haiku of love, he was tricking, trapping and sometimes forcing women into his bed. And he apparently loved each and every one of them, if haiku volume is to be any indication.
Continuing on the subject of haiku: while the haiku Lapite quoted were quite lovely, I could insert them into any number of popular love songs, and they wouldn't even stand out as particularly unusual or wonderful lyrics. While pop songs bring us plenty of stuff like "Sex me," they also provide vivid lines like, "[w]hen we dance, angels will run and hide their wings." It's a lovely image, and as simply expressed as a haiku.
There have always been ivory towers, and there have always been bawdy houses, and there always will be, time without end, amen. Biology can be as much a part of love as finer feelings. Shakespeare and the Bible, two hugely "popular" pieces of literature, pay homage to both. (Notice that the descriptions in "Song of Solomon" are about physical characteristics, including several mentions of breasts. I'm sure lust had nothing to do with that. Right.)
Lapite's rantings and ravings are familiar, because throughout the ages, someone is always ranting and raving about the end of society, the death of intellectualism, the subordination of Platonic love to bestial lust. Society doesn't degenerate, it metamorphoses. Love is an essential human emotion that has remained a huge wonderful mystery to everyone; otherwise, how could poems written hundreds of years ago still resonate with people today? What changes is the way love is expressed, and sometimes even that doesn't change so very drastically. The reason why people often sneer at sentiments of love is because most sound so very trite, and so very similar to something we've all heard before. Love is such an oft-discussed subject that it's nearly impossible to say something truly original about it.
Oh, and as far as I can tell, "The Remains of the Day," that "beautiful," painful, tragic story of a man who was too frightened to risk his feelings, was published in 1989 by a "modern" who was born in 1954. He probably watched television and listened to the Beatles (authors of such lyric poems as "She Loves You, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah,") and yet he still managed to write a fabulous, wrenching tale of "pure" love. Hmm ... people who love deeply but never express their love for one another. Bet you've never heard THAT one before.
Right.
