They say that love is a many splendid thing, and I suppose that it very well can be. But is it right to make such a grandiose statement about a subject so infinitely complex that it has never been truly understood? Great minds the likes of Aristotle, Galileo, Plato, Socrates and all other embodiments of brilliance have long puzzled on the subject, side-by-side with poets, and for once it is the temperamental, languishing romantics, the writers and song-spinners who have grown closer to the mark. Though indeed Shakespeare himself could not define it with any perfect certainty, for indeed love is a matter of the heart, rather than the mind, and the heart is a wild creature, often tending towards manic eccentricity. So can we say that love is, in brief, a many splendid thing? And if so, what matter of love?
Jealous love, passionate love, familial love, brotherly love, one-sided love, unrequited love, nostalgic love, possessive love, schoolyard crushes, the love for one's country, the love for one's deity, the love of oneself, parasitic love, languishing love, sinful love, impossible love, love for one's children, love for one's generation, love for humanity, love for the downtrodden, material love, hopeless love, undeserved love and many more besides. Some are resplendent but others...
And have you not wondered just why all of the world's great love stories end in tragedy. Were love merely splendid, would it climax in catastrophe? Lancelot and Gwenivere, young lovers betraying their friend, husband and king, in what would ultimately cause him to lose his kingdom and his life. Tristan and Isolde, Antony and Cleopatra, Helen of Troy and Paris. Not one among them truly an honorable affair. And then comes the epic tragedy that stands paramount among all love stories: that of Juliet and her Romeo. Two star-crossed lovers thrown together in heated passion, only to fall to unhappy fate, dying side by side. Certainly their story is dramatic, but one must ask oneself, would it be so romantic if it were not so tragic? If I may take up the Bard's pen a moment and imagine a different ending to the play, one in which Juliet wakes up in time, and hand-in-hand with Romeo, they walk off into the distance and life happily ever after. Would everyone know their names then? Or would the play have fallen to the status of some of Shakespeare's other lesser-known plays.
But for all this, love is something that does indeed unite us all, complicated though its intricacies are. We have all loved: be it a lover, a mother, a pet or another. Most have been loved. We have suffered love in some way, for indeed every fractured angle of love has drippings of the bittersweet. Sadness, loss, tears, anger, impatience, perhaps even betrayal.
Then again, perhaps that is why they say that love is a many splendid thing, for so it must be if its brilliance is to outshine all of its tiny imperfections. So it must be to push us to forever strive to love again and love greater.
