The Lion & The Nightingale
A Defence of Romantic Love
Morning Friends - this is the lecture I recently gave at the Temenos Academy. It’s long. It may be easier to listen to rather than read, but you’re a grown up – maybe you’ll do both! (Scroll down for audio.) Writing this was a great pleasure, and the result of many years teaching these wonderful ideas, poems and stories. A great deal of me belongs in this particular world. Back next week with the final part of Job.
In the spring words turn green
And the birds sing on,
Each in their own particular Latin.
And I think of that war we brought
To an end,
When you gave me your faithful valley
And your ring.
I want my God to let me live
Long enough
To have my hand
Under your cloak again.
William the 9th of Aquitaine
I’m delighted to be giving this talk as it contains many of the themes I’ve pursued over the last twenty-five years: true love, grace under pressure, the heart over protocol. I’m going to argue that we can’t really understand ourselves without Romantic Love, but that how we approach it can change as we age, but I would dispute that it ever really goes away.
When we think of the myths that underpin the Romances we unearth a code, a code that is essentially Christian, though woven throughout with all sorts of figures from pagan antiquity and even Arabic poetry. One of the key characters is often the figure of a knight. Within the tradition such a knight is expected to be gracious, humble, brave, and unwavering in his discipline. They are not to remind us of their achievements. They protect those in need. At this point it’s easy for our eyes to grow misty as we half remember tales of Camelot, of spires and tournaments and toasts, of midnight meetings with a lover in the orchard.
But I don’t want to start there. I want to begin with something that has the scent of the Underworld about it. Something that evokes what Lorca called Duende. Because there’s a deeper darkness in these stories than is maybe first apparent. For a knight there’s a price sometimes referred to. I want to begin with a story from an old medieval ballad, King Henry.