We Were One

Heloise to Abelard, in Abelard and Heloise: The Love Letters, A Poetical Rendering, tr. Ella C. Bennett (San Francisco & New York: Paul Elder and Com., 1907), 1-2:

        My Abelard, my love, my own adored!
        When last I wrote to thee my soul I poured,
        In all its grief and anguish from my heart—
        O Abelard, my love, why did we part?
        Why didst thou hide thyself in gloomy cell,
        And banish me, ’til earth seemed part of Hell?
        And my last letter! O not answered yet!
        I cannot for one single hour forget
        That we were one. At night from dreams I call
        Thy name aloud, in pain, then like a pall,
        The ceiling of my cell o’ercaps my view,—
        And visions fade again that brought me you!

        Think you at night when at my prayers I kneel,
        That only thoughts celestial through me steal?
        Think you the sound of orisons divine
        Can banish that lost bliss—that you were mine?
        That once you loved me, we together slept,
        Together laughed and loved, together wept;
        Together shared each joy, each pain, each thought? [...]

Nought But Death

Abraham Cowley, Constantia and Philetus (written around 1630, when Cowley was only twelve years old), ll. 445-476:

        I trust (deare soule) my absence cannot move
        You to forget, or doubt my ardent love;
        For were there any meanes to see you, I
        Would runne through Death and all the miserie
        Fate could inflict, that so the world might say,
        In Life and Death I lov’d CONSTANTIA.                    450
        Then let not (dearest sweet) our absence sever
        Our loves, let them ioyn’d closely still together,
        Give warmth to one another, till there rise
        From all our labours, and our industries
        The long-expected fruits; have patience (Sweet)
        There's no man whom the Summer pleasures greet
        Before he tast the Winter; none can say,
        Ere Night was gone, he saw the rising Day.
            So when wee once have wasted Sorrowe’s night,
            The sunne of Comfort then, shall give us light.       460
                                                                                PHILETUS.

        Your absence (Sir) though it be long, yet I
        Neither forget, nor doubt your Constancie.
        Nor, need you feare, that I should yeeld vnto
        Another, what to your true Love is due.                       470
        My heart is yours, it is not in my claime,
        Nor have I power to give it away againe.
        There's nought but Death can part our soules, no time
        Or angry Friends, shall make my Love decline:
            But for the harvest of our hopes I’le stay,
            Vnlesse Death cut it, ere’t be ripe, away.
                                                                            CONSTANTIA.

Geulincx And Love

Arnold Geulincx, Ethics, tr. Martin Wilson (Leiden: Brill, 2006), treatise I., ch. I. On Virtue in general, §1. Love, sect. I., pp. 11-12 (added two annotations included in page 169 et seq.):

Love has a variety of meanings; and first of all, it signifies a certain Affect, or passion, which caresses the human mind, and fills it with tenderness. In fact, this passion, which is widely called Love, is the entire, exclusive, and sole delight of the human mind, insofar as it is human and joined to a body. For even though the human mind, insofar as it is a mind, is capable of more elevated pleasures (such as the mere approbation of its own actions, when they accord with Divine Law), nevertheless, insofar as it is joined to a body, and born to act on it, and in turn to receive something from it, and as it were be acted upon by it, it knows no other tenderness than passion. Hence, Joys, Delights, Merriment, Laughter, Rejoicing, Jubilation, and the like, are only diverse names for Love. What is tender in Desire, Hope, Trust, and the like, and positively affects and calms the mind, is indeed Love;3 but what troubles and afflicts the mind, is not Love but some other affection that is involved with them at the same time as Love. Now the pleasure of a mind separated and withdrawing itself from the body (which, as I have said, consists in the bare approbation of its own actions, inasmuch as they assent to Divine Law) seems for the most part so meagre, so tenuous and rarefied, that men hardly or not at all consider it to be worthy of the name of Pleasure. And when this spiritual delight is sterile, and does not produce5 the corporeal and sensible pleasure (passionate Love) which in other cases it usually does produce, they complain that they have to live a life of sorrow and austerity, that they are wasting away, and that for all that they obey God and Reason, they are destitute of all reward and consolation.

3 Desire is nothing other than love of something absent; and it therefore contains in itself both tenderness (love), and affliction or bitterness (the anguish caused by the absence of the thing loved). Hope is nothing other than love directed towards a future good of which we can be frustrated; and again therefore it contains tenderness (that is, passionate love) and bitterness (that is, fear of being frustrated of that good). And trust is nothing other than great hope, that is, great love combined with a little fear. I do not offer these definitions in order to show what these things are (they are perfectly well-known from consciousness itself, as I noted just now), but, since they affect us partly for good and partly for ill (as our feelings make quite clear), in order to show why they please us, or harm and afflict us, according as they involve respectively love or some other emotion.

5 When we approve of some action of ours inwardly and in our mind, with our conscience assuring us that it accords with right Reason, that is, the law of God, it often leads to pleasure, or passionate love, of indescribable sweetness. Virtuous men may be so ravished by this passion that they make light of those calamities commonly known as ruin, infamy, the harshness of imprisonment, torments, and a thousand natural shocks, in fact do not seem even to feel them. But sometimes this mental pleasure is not accompanied by bodily pleasure, which consists wholly in some passion or other; for passion depends on the constitution of our body, and may have a mental cause that on account of the incapacity of the body does not pass into our body itself. On the other hand, passion may have no mental cause, but nevertheless pass into our body on account of the capacity of the body: in this case we feel pleasure without any underlying cause of pleasure.

Regarding Love's Place In Life

S. S. Knight, Human Life, 1910, ch, vii., Love, pp. 156-8:

It is owing to the fact that we cannot enjoy anything to the fullest extent alone, since our nature is so constituted that we must have company in our pleasures, that friends are indispensable. Cicero realized this over two thousand years ago when he said that, “The fruit of talent, and worth, and every excellence, is gathered most fully when it is bestowed upon every one most nearly connected with us.” Appreciating this, nature has given us the love and friendship of parents in our childhood; of the companions of our youth as we grow older; of our life-partner at a later period, and last, the love of our children and grandchildren, so that, by an interest in their lives, we may become ourselves rejuvenated. In this, as in everything else of a physical or mental character, we start at the bottom, and, by a crescendo movement, reach the acme of the condition which with age diminishes, but in this instance the quality does not deteriorate. Our likelihood of forming acquaintances and friends in later years is very much less than in youth, and, certainly, with our habits and idiosyncrasies established, as they are after middle age, the possibility of forming intimate friendships is very much decreased. In childhood and youth, we are more imaginative and less practical, and, consequently, our inclinations in the line of friendships will be more natural and less influenced by considerations alien to friendship itself. Nothing can be more true than the axiom of Cicero, “Friendship does not follow upon advantage, but advantage upon friendship.” Clearly demonstrated as this is, but few people seem to realize it. For the fundamental truth at the bottom of this matter is, as he further states, “the basis of that steadfastness and constancy which we seek in friendship is sincerity. For nothing is enduring which is insincere.”

Lucretius On Love

Titi Lucreti Cari, De Rerum Natura, tr. H. A. J. Munro, (Cambridge, London, 1864 [2009]), vol. I., bk. IV., nearly lines 1045-1209, pp. 199-206:

. . . that to which the fell desire all tends, and the body seeks that object from which the mind is wounded by love; for all as a rule fall towards their wound and the blood spirts out in that direction whence comes the stroke by which we are struck; and if he is at close quarters, the red stream covers the foe. Thus then he who gets a hurt from the weapons of Venus, whatever be the object that hits him, be it a woman breathing love from her whole body, he inclines to the quarter whence he is wounded, and yearns to unite with it and join body with body; for a mute desire gives a presage of the pleasure. 

This pleasure is for us Venus; from that desire is the Latin name of love, from that desire has first trickled into the heart yon drop of Venus' honeyed joy and soon is replaced by chilly care; for though that which you yearn for is away, yet idols of it are at hand and its sweet name is present to the ears. But it is meet to fly idols and scare away all that feeds love and turn your mind on another object, distract your passion elsewhere and not keep it, with your thoughts once set on one object by love of it, and so lay up for yourself care and unfailing pain. For the sore gathers strength and becomes inveterate by feeding, and every day the madness grows in violence and the misery becomes aggravated, unless you choose to erase the first wounds by new blows and first heal them when yet fresh, roaming abroad after Venus the pandemian, or transfer to something else the emotions of your mind. 

Nor is he who shuns love without the fruits of Venus, but rather enjoys those blessings which are without any pain: doubtless the pleasure from such things is more unalloyed for the healthy-minded than for the love-sick; for in the very moment of enjoying the burning desire of lovers wavers and wanders undecided, and they cannot tell what first to enjoy with eyes and hands. What they have sought, they tightly squeeze and cause pain of body and often imprint their teeth on the lips and clash mouth to mouth in kissing, because the pleasure is not pure and there are hidden stings which stimulate to hurt even that whatever it is from which spring those germs of frenzy. But Venus with light hand breaks the force of these pains during love, and the fond pleasure mingled therein reins in the bites. For in this there is hope, that from the same body whence springs their burning desire, their flame may likewise be quenched; the direct contrary of which nature protests to be the case; and this is the one thing of all, in which, when we have most of it, then all the more the breast burns with fell desire. Meat and drink are taken into the body; and as they can fill up certain fixed parts, in this way the craving for drink and bread is easily satisfied; but from the face and beauteous bloom of man nothing is given into the body to enjoy save flimsy idols; a sorry hope which is often snatched off by the wind. As when in sleep a thirsty man seeks to drink and water is not given to quench the burning in his frame, but he seeks the idols of waters and toils in vain and thirsts as he drinks in the midst of the torrent stream, thus in love Venus mocks lovers with idols, nor can bodies satisfy them by all their gazing upon them nor can they with their hands rub aught off the soft limbs, wandering undecided over the whole body. At last when they have united and enjoy the flower of age, when the body now has a presage of joys and Venus is in the mood to sow the fields of woman, they greedily clasp each other's body and suck each other's lips and breathe in, pressing meanwhile teeth on each other's mouth; all in vain, since they can rub nothing off nor enter and pass each with his whole body into the other's body; for so sometimes they seem to will and strive to do: so greedily are they held in the chains of Venus, while their limbs melt overpowered by the might of the pleasure. At length when the gathered desire has gone forth, there ensues for a brief while a short pause in the burning desire; and then returns the same frenzy, then comes back the old madness, when they are at a loss to know what they really desire to get, and cannot find what device is to conquer that mischief: in such utter uncertainty they pine away by a hidden wound. 

Then too they waste their strength and ruin themselves by the labour, then too their life is passed at the beck of another . . . all in vain, since out of the very well-spring of delights rises up something of bitter, to pain amid the very flowers; either when the conscience-stricken mind haply gnaws itself with remorse to think that it is passing a life of sloth and ruining itself in brothels, or because she has launched forth some word and left its meaning in doubt and it cleaves to the love-sick heart and burns like living fire, or because it fancies she casts her eyes too freely about or looks on another, and it sees in her face traces of a smile.

And these evils are found in love returned and highly prosperous; but in crossed and hopeless love are ills such as you may seize with closed eyes, past numbering; so that it is better to watch beforehand in the manner I have prescribed, and be on your guard not to be drawn in. For to avoid falling into the toils of love is not so hard as, after you are caught, to get out of the nets you are in and to break through the strong meshes of Venus. And yet even when you are entangled and held fast you may escape the mischief, unless you stand in your own way and begin by overlooking all the defects of her mind or those of her body, whoever it is whom you court and woo. For this men usually do, same as the ugly woman; and fumigates herself, poor wretch, with nauseous perfumes, her very maids running from her and giggling secretly. But the lover, when shut out, often in tears covers the threshold with flowers and wreaths and anoints the haughty door-posts with oil of marjoram and imprints kisses, poor wretch, on the doors. When however he has been admitted, if on his approach but one single breath should come in his way, he would seek specious reasons for departing, and the long-conned deep-drawn complaint would fall to the ground; and then he would blame his folly, on seeing that he had attributed to her more than it is right to concede to a mortal. Nor is this unknown to our Venuses; wherefore all the more they themselves hide with the utmost pains all that goes on behind the scenes of life from those whom they wish to retain in the chains of love; but in vain, since you may yet draw forth from her mind into the light all these things and search into all her smiles; and if the is of a fair mind and not troublesome, overlook them in your turn and make allowance for human failings. 

Nor does the woman sigh always with fictitious love, when she locks in her embrace and joins with her body the man's body and holds it, sucking his lips into her lips and drinking in his kisses. Often she does it from the heart, and seeking mutual joys courts him to run the complete race of love. And in no other way could birds cattle wild-beasts sheep and mares submit to bear the males, except because the very exuberance of nature in the females is in heat and burns and joyously draws in the Venus of the covering males. See you not too how those whom mutual pleasure has chained are often tortured in their common chains I How often in the highways do dogs, desiring to separate, eagerly pull different ways with all their might, while all the time they are held fast in the strong fetters of Venus. This they would never do, unless they experienced mutual joys, strong enough to force them into the snare and hold them in its meshes. Wherefore again and again I repeat there is a common pleasure.

For a fine and eloquent version in verse for these unsurpassed, learned lines of Lucretius that leave you imbued with awe and engross you into a ruminative mood, vide: 

Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, trans. into verse John Mason Good, (London, 1851), bk. IV., pp. 184-189.

Love's Remedy

Longus, Daphnis and Chloe 2.7.7 (Philetas speaking; tr. Jeffrey Henderson, LCL 69, 2009, p. 69):

No, there is no remedy for Love, none to drink, to eat, or chant in songs, except kissing, embracing, and lying down together with naked bodies.

Ἔρωτος γὰρ οὐδὲν φάρμακον, οὐ πινόμενον, οὐκ ἐσθιόμενον, οὐκ ἐν ᾠδαῖς λαλούμενον, ὅτι μὴ φίλημα καὶ περιβολὴ καὶ συγκατακλιθῆναι γυμνοῖς σώμασι.

Another Eng. trans. (by Rowland Smith, 1889):

. . . for there is no mighty magic against love; no medicine, whether in food or drink: nothing, in short, save kisses and embraces, and the closest union of the naked body.

Young Hegel On Love

Georg Wilhelm Hegel, On Love 1797, tr. T. M. Knox, 1970:

True union, or love proper, exists only between living things who are alike in power and thus in one another’s eyes living beings from every point of view; in no respect is either dead for the other. This genuine love excludes all oppositions. It is not the understanding, whose relations always leave the manifold of related terms as a manifold and whose unity is always a unity of opposites [left as opposites]. It is not reason either, because reason sharply opposes its determining power to what is determined. Love neither restricts nor is restricted; it is not finite at all. It is a feeling, yet not a single feeling [among other single feelings]. A single feeling is only a part and not the whole of life; the life present in a single feeling dissolves its barriers and drives on till it disperses itself in the manifold of feelings with a view to finding itself in the entirety of the manifold. This whole life is not contained in love in the same way as it is in this sum of many particular and isolated feelings; in love, life is present as a duplicate of itself and as a single and unified self. Here life has run through the circle of development from an immature to a completely mature unity: when the unity was immature, there still stood over against it the world and the possibility of a cleavage between itself and the world; as development proceeded, reflection produced more and more oppositions (unified by satisfied impulses) until it set the whole of man’s life in opposition [to objectivity]; finally, love completely destroys objectivity and thereby annuls and transcends reflection, deprives man’s opposite of all foreign character, and discovers life itself without any further defect. In love the separate does still remain, but as something united and no longer as something separate; life [in the subject] senses life [in the object].

Since love is a sensing of something living, lovers can be distinct only in so far as they are mortal and do not look upon this possibility of separation as if there were really a separation or as if reality were a sort of conjunction between possibility and existence. In the lovers there is no matter; they are a living whole. To say that the lovers have an independence and a living principle peculiar to each of themselves means only that they may die [and may be separated by death]. To say that salt and other minerals are part of the makeup of a plant and that these carry in themselves their own laws governing their operation is the judgment of external reflection and means no more than that the plant may rot. But love strives to annul even this distinction [between the lover as lover and the lover as physical organism], to annul this possibility [of separation] as a mere abstract possibility, to unite [with itself] even the mortal element [within the lover] and to make it immortal.

. . . love is indignant if part of the individual is severed and held back as a private property. This raging of love against [exclusive] individuality is shame. Shame is not a reaction of the mortal body, not an expression of the freedom to maintain one’s life, to subsist. The hostility in a loveless assault does injury to the loving heart itself, and the shame of this now injured heart becomes the rage which defends only its right, its property. If shame, instead of being an effect of love, an effect which only takes an indignant form after encountering something hostile, were something itself by nature hostile which wanted to defend an assailable property of its own, then we would have to say that shame is most of all characteristic of tyrants, or of girls who will not yield their charms except for money, or of vain women who want to fascinate. None of these love; their defense of their mortal body is the opposite of indignation about it; they ascribe an intrinsic worth to it and are shameless.

A pure heart is not ashamed of love; but it is ashamed if its love is incomplete; it upbraids itself if there is some hostile power which hinders love’s culmination. Shame enters only through the recollection of the body, through the presence of an [exclusive] personality or the sensing of an [exclusive] individuality. It is not a fear for what is mortal, for what is merely one’s own, but rather a fear of it, a fear which vanishes as the separable element in the lover is diminished by his love. Love is stronger than fear. It has no fear of its fear, but, led by its fear, it cancels separation, apprehensive as it is of finding opposition which may resists it or be a fixed barrier against it. It is a mutual giving and taking; through shyness its gifts may be disdained; through shyness an opponent may not yield to its receiving; but it still tries whether hope has not deceived it, whether it still finds itself everywhere. The lover who takes is not thereby made richer than the other; he is enriched indeed, but only so much as the other is. . . . This wealth of life love acquires in the exchange of every thought, every variety of inner experience, for it seeks out difference and devises unifications ad infinitum; it turns to the whole manifold of nature in order to drink love out of every life. What in the first instance is most the individual’s own is united into the whole in the lovers’ touch and contact; consciousness of a separate self disappears, and all distinction between the lovers is annulled. The mortal element, the body, has lost the character of separability, and a living child, a seed of immortality, of the eternally self-developing and self-generating [race], has come into existence. What has been united [in the child] is not divided again; [in love and through love] God has acted and created. . . .

Vide, too: Jens Lemanski (2018): An Analogy between Hegel's Theory of Recognition and Ficino's Theory of Love, British Journal for the History of Philosophy.