Right: Fragment of
Indian
painting
Shiva and fammily
We All
Are Heloises And Abelards
Big romantic loves aren’t only a creation of our minds and
dreams. They are also a creation of our societies, as
Heloise and Abelard’s love vividly illustrates.
Would Heloise and Abelard’s love be possible nowadays?
We can uphold the yes-thesis. And even maintain that it
could be a yet bigger love, a truer one. Freed from the
constraints of medieval society, Abelard and Heloise could
have offered much more to one another, without falling into
separation and a monastic life.
But we can see things from a distinct angle. Would Abelard
and Heloise, in our time, without the repressions and
conventions of the French twelfth century, felt and loved
the way they did? And would they have written the letters
which have immortalized them? Obviously no. Heloise and
Abelard's love isn’t a twenty-first century love.
And we can even postulate a more cynical argument, and plead
that their love would very probably end in divorce, or at
least in a banal love. It was the Middle Age society and its
religious and repressive environment that created Abelard
and Heloise’s love.
In some sense we all are Abelards and Heloises. In the
millions of couples whose love falls into banality and turns
into divorce, there are many thousands of Abelards and
Heloises whose love could have been heroic and majestic, had
they been born in French castles, surrounded by monasteries
where men discussed the Aristotelian logic and scholarly
philosophy that turned Abelard famous, and had they had the
powerful uncles engaged in defending their niece’s honour
sending men to «cut off those parts of the body» with which
Abelard had done that «which was the cause» of his «sorrow».
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See:
True love
gives meaning to life: Quotes and extracts of poems
