Today’s Totally Random
Lines
‘Had
I no eyes but ears, my ears would love
That
inward beauty and invisible;
Or
were I deaf, thy outward parts would move
Each
part in me that were but sensible:
Though neither eyes nor ears to hear or see,
Yet should I be in love by touching thee.'
Venus
Venus and Adonis Line
433 - 438
This is a stanza in the middle of this long poem
about Venus and Adonis. The poem is 1,194 lines long, so this is about a third
of the way through.
Venus it telling Adonis
how enraptured she is with him. Unfortunately for her, he doesn’t seem to be the least bit
interested.
This is an interesting
dichotomy, isn’t it: the woman in love with the man, and the man being
completely not in love with her. In fact, it’s an interesting dichotomy
irrespective of whether it’s the man or woman who is the disinterested one. I
suppose we’ve seen tons of this in literature, in media, and in real life. And
it can be a very problematic situation.
In the case of Venus
and Adonis, Adonis gets killed in an unrelated situation before the
love/no-love problem can run its full course. Unfortunately (it’s odd to use
the word unfortunately when speaking about not dying), in most cases of the
love/no-love problem, a completely unrelated cause of death is not the
resolution. More unfortunately, a related cause of death is in some cases also
the resolution.
Whilst the ideal is, of
course, love/love, there’s also the many in-between cases of
love/not-the-same-amount-of-love. In fact, arguably, this might be the most
prevalent situation. Oh, I suppose there are plenty of love/love’s out there,
but being the realist that I am, I think the love/not-the-same-amount-of-loves
are the majority.
I’m not sure how I got going down this road today. I think it’s partly because yesterday I ran into a case of love/no-love-but-just-going-along-with-it-for-now. This is a serious in-betweener, leaning dangerously in the direction of love/no-love. I can’t help but wonder how this one's going to turn out. I’ll keep you posted.