Such love

I see in you, God-in-love, a 'Romeo and Juliet' intensity of passion for the Beloved Other, which we in part comprise and participate in. Words like 'smitten' describe the impact of each of you on the other; 'passionate' your reciprocal attraction. And, instead of the doom implicit, some may say, in any such headlong romance, I conceive your love more as a frontier after frontier of ever-deepening, ever-enriching mutual regard enfolding that core of vivid 'adolescent' ardor.

So coming across the popular tale of young love from China, the story of Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, I'm moved to wonder: can I speak of a 'Shanbo and Yingtai' quality to your relationship with the Beloved? Not at a gate-crashed party, the Chinese pair meet at school where, the girl Yingtai disguised as a boy, befriends her classmate Shanbo who never, until told, suspects the deception. Together they enjoy a friendship built around study, music, poetry, philosophical debate. Her feelings deepened from comradely amicability to something more profound, but, intimate as she might the truth, Liang never catches on.

Summoned home, she is pledged to marry a friend of her family. Shanbo, informed too late, realizes his love and the impossibility of its requital, and dies of sorrow. Yingtai gets permission to route her wedding procession past the tomb of he she had loved. Grieving there in the rain, an earthquake occurrs and she is swallowed in a chasm. After the ground closes up again, two large, beautiful butterflies come out of the tomb and, spiraling around each other, fly away.

The force that drives this story is different from that impelling Romeo and Juliet. Despite their poetic words, neither Veronese is presented as cultivators of culture. The love of Abelard and Heliose is a teacher-pupil love and the book of Paolo and Francesca is pander to their passion. Neither of these explore the erotics of intellectual and aesthetic enterprise between peers.Yet, I know enough of the excitement of the mind to entertain the possibility that this too may be an aspect of the affair you're having with the Beloved..

Neither Romeo nor Juliet fails to recognize their love for each other or of each other's identity for very long. Very different is the Chinese tale. Shangbo doesn't get it by himself, despite broad hints like pointings to mandarin ducks (an iconic couple, see?). Yet, upon being told who Yingtai really was, he then understood the feelings he'd had for her. Shakespeare also played with the girl dressed up as boy theme, climaxing in dramatic disclosure scenes. No such moment in this story, it seems. Still, there's enough blindness among us to your presence, God-in-love, that we can feel akin to the scholar who knew everything but what was closest and most important.

The social proprieties are not just upheld but honored in the tragedy of Shanbo and Yingtai. Filial piety is endorsed by 'heaven' as the two lovers were resigned to the duty that meant their separation. Not so, R&J whose very violation of parental will turns out to the vehicle for reestablishment of social concord. Norms kept or broken, but society is affirmed. The fates of the two sets of lovers stand in contrast though: we're stabbed by the sight of the stacked bodies in the tomb, or wonder-struck, as we follow the flutter of butterflies. Each experience expresses in some way the quintessence of life, and we wouldn't want to forget either.

I still know so little about love. These stories and others, unfamiliar as some of them seem, are ways I can learn. Teach me.