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What's on my mind

The dark side of Valentine's Day

BY MASSIMO CIAVOLELLA

Since the 1st century A.D., a phenomenon known as “erotomania,” or “love addiction,” has come to be universally accepted. It was scientifically and philosophically codified by the ancient Greeks. “The fury of love, whenever it seizes man or woman, sets them in a flame,” wrote Plutarch. “When love is not reciprocated, it can turn into a state of morbid obsession or even that of deadly madness.”

As we celebrate Valentine’s Day next week, it’s worth recalling some of the literary and medical traditions surrounding the idea of love, notably love-as-disease. By 1600, lovesickness had become a discipline studied within the faculties of medicine in the most prestigious European universities. Among the issues studied were: How does sexual desire arise, and how and why does it become an obsession leading to morbid depression? Why do women and men show a different physiological inclination to this passion, and how can a person attract the object of his or her love? How can one forget a lover through pharmacological and surgical cures?

It is fascinating that after all these centuries, our ideas of lovesickness are probably more tied to classical traditions than to reality. To this day, we identify with characters in novels, opera and cinema who swoon, get sick or go mad as if beset with the darkest form of melancholy.

The first poem on erotomania to come down to us is from the Greek poetess Sappho, who lived more than 2,600 years ago. “That man seems to me like the gods,” she wrote, “speaking sweetly and laughing passionately. This terrifies my heart in my breast ... in silence my tongue is broken ... a cold sweat holds me down ... and I am greener than grass.”

Sappho’s poem deals methodically with what we consider even today to be the physical symptoms of unrequited love: palpitations, inhibition of speech, trembling and extreme pallor. These were later appropriated by poets and medical writers, becoming part of mainstream Western culture ever since the full text of Sappho’s poem was rediscovered in 1554. I was therefore surprised, while working on early Italian poetry a number of years ago, to note that those few who had examined this cultural phenomenon considered it a marginal curiosity not truly part of Western culture.

About two years ago, I attended a “Congress on Love” in Asia, where, in discussions of traditional Eastern and Western approaches to love, it was clear that there is a common, universal base to our basic feelings of love, both in happiness and in grief. But the way those feelings are expressed differ. For example, in Hollywood films, love is expressed more physiologically, while in many Asian movies, the same feelings are expressed through subtle gestures, moods and music.

The culture of unrequited desire is the dark side of St. Valentine’s Day, the one day of the year when we celebrate the joys of love and share only its happy thoughts. We leave our sorrows, anguish, disillusionments to the rest of the year. I have always thought of Valentine’s Day as a kind of oasis in a world where emotional anguish is never too far. After all, how many poems, books, movies and news reports speak only of happy love?

Ciavolella is professor of Italian and the author of two books on erotomania.