Yalom - The amorous heart: an unconventional history of love

F IGURE 2. The Singer of Amun Nany, Funerary Papyrus (detail), ca. 1050 BC . Papyrus, paint. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 1930.

But ancient Egyptians also saw the heart as the home of a persons amorous feelings. as a slave to the woman he desired, and another poet felt his heart surge with love as he went about his daily tasks: How wonderful to go to the fields when ones heart is consumed by love! Despite the distance of more than three thousand years, we immediately recognize these sentiments as identical with our own.

In general the religions that subsequently arose in the Middle EastJudaism, Christianity, and Islamhave been wary of the amorous heart. Aside from the Song of Songs and a few stories in the Hebrew Bible, the sacred books of these religions do not extol sensual love between human beings. Indeed, the birth of monotheism ushered in a rivalry between secular and religious claims to the hearta rivalry that took different forms during the first millennium and became overtly contentious during the Middle Ages.

W HEN TWELFTH-CENTURY TROUBADOURS FROM THE S OUTH of France took up their lyres to sing of love, they believed their songs would have little value unless they sprang from an amorous heart. Then, following the lead of Occitane troubadours, northern French minstrels and storytellers pledged their hearts to an idealized woman and aspired to exchange their hearts as tokens of fidelity. It is true that this lofty mode of behavior was intended primarily for members of the nobility and that even they could not live up to such high standards. And yet this doctrine of refined love issuing from regional courts in France, Germany, and Italy proved to be remarkably persistent: over the centuries it evolved into the small and large courtesies that Western men and women expect of each other, and it created a romantic ethos that has endured to this day.

At the same time Christianity contributed, though in different ways, to the renewed prominence of the heart. was responsible for claiming the chaste heart for Christianity and for discrediting the lustful heart associated with secular love.

During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the revival of religious life in monasteries and convents presided over by such towering figures as Bernard of Clairvaux (10901153), Hildegard of Bingen (10981179), and Saint Francis (11811226) placed a new emphasis on ones inner life, represented by the pure heart dedicated to Jesus. The Church promoted the love of God and all His creatures, conceptualized in the virtue of caritas, as a superior rival to erotic love.

Yet despite the Churchs official opposition to earthly love, Eros found its way into cloistered retreats, where some men and women of the cloth adopted the language of lovers for conversations with each other and with God. Mystical thinkers, such as Gertrude the Great of Helfta, had visions of intimate bodily encounters with Jesus that sound as if they could have come off the pages of French and German romances.