Valentine's Day & the Lantern Festival

Dear Members, Alumni, & Friends of the JSMT:

Today is Valentine’s Day, and it also marks the Lantern Festival in the traditional Chinese calendar (the full Moon that occurs two weeks after the Lunar New Year). In honor of these auspicious occasions, I’m presenting a short essay, a poem, and couple of links for you to explore.

The Occitan Culture of Love

By Rob Chappell, CURSUS HONORUM’s Editor

Reprinted from CURSUS HONORUM VII: 3 (October 2006)

       Let’s take a few moments to reflect on where the Western world got its basic ideas about romantic love. An overview of this topic could fill an entire book, but in brief: our Western notions of romantic love really began to take shape in 12th-century Occitania, a once-autonomous region in southern France that included the French Pyrenees and the Riviera.

       The spark that lit the flame of the Occitan “Culture of Love” was its cosmopolitan outlook. Occitania was a multicultural melting pot during the High Middle Ages, and its vibrant society was rather progressive for its time. In 12th-century Occitania, for example, religious tolerance was extended to all Christians (both Catholics and Cathars), Jews, and Muslims; and women were allowed to own property, engage in commerce, enjoy literary activity, and rule sovereign territories on their own. Within this tolerant atmosphere, the arrival of new belief systems (such as Catharism) from Eastern Europe, the importation of sophisticated love poetry from the Arab world, and the recovery of Classical Latin texts on the ancient Roman art of love profoundly impacted all levels of Occitan society: the nobility, the newly emergent middle class, and the peasantry.

       A new breeze was blowing in this open-minded corner of Europe that would forever change the Western outlook on romantic love. Instead of treating women as property that could be carried off or bartered away at will, the “Culture of Love” placed women on an equal par with men. Gentlemen had to practice “courtly manners” to woo the ladies of their choice, and “being courtly” included such things as serenading ladies from beneath their windows and exchanging gifts as tokens of love on a regular basis. To be successful suitors, gentlemen also had to become well versed in the Seven Liberal Arts, undertake heroic deeds of chivalry, and compose love poetry!

       The “Culture of Love” and its lofty romantic ideals quickly spread to royal courts and noble households across Europe. A new generation of love poets – the French troubadours and German Minnesingers – introduced their audiences to the new ideals of courtly love by composing and performing versified stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. The chivalrous characters in these popular stories modeled the “art of courtly love” and held forth a new set of ideals for people to emulate.

       The “Culture of Love” has been preserved for us in countless European books and songs from the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Here are some links to online resources about the “Culture of Love” that is still influencing us today, eight centuries after its zenith in Occitania.

·        Dante’s La Vita Nuova: http://www.adkline.freeuk.com/TheNewLife.htm – Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) narrates his own experience of courtly love with Beatrice Portinari in this autobiographical masterpiece, composed in both poetry and prose.

·        Eleanor of Aquitaine: http://www.royalty.nu/Europe/England/Angevin/Eleanor.html – This Occitan duchess (1122-1204) became Queen of England, chief patron of the troubadours, and mother of King Richard the Lionhearted!

·        “The College of ACES is the College of Love!”  – Dean Simmons :)

“The Song of Wandering Aengus” (1899)

By William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

From the Emerald Isle comes this love-quest poem inspired by classical Irish mythology (see http://www.maryjones.us/ctexts/oengus.html). Yeats’ poem in turn served as the basis of “Rogue Planet,” the 18^th episode of the 1^st season of STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE.

I went out to the hazel wood,

Because a fire was in my head,

And cut and peeled a hazel wand,

And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,

And moth-like stars were flickering out,

I dropped the berry in a stream

And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor

I went to blow the fire a-flame,

But something rustled on the floor,

And someone called me by my name:

It had become a glimmering girl

With apple blossom in her hair

Who called me by my name and ran

And faded through the brightening air.

  

Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,

And pluck till time and times are done,

The silver apples of the Moon,

The golden apples of the Sun.

Finally, to celebrate the Lantern Festival, I encourage you to follow this link to “The Nightingale” (1844), a literary fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875). It’s the story of an extraordinary friendship between a Chinese Emperor and a talented nightingale – the traditional bird of love:

http://hca.gilead.org.il/nighting.html

Wishing everyone a Happy Valentine’s Day and Lantern Festival! J

Rob