Courtly Love

So if you're sort of clueless and read history, ideas that any sane individual would have thought long dead, you wonder - what's in there? Does it work? Huzzah for Flat Earth types, I guess. Shouldn't feel so bad since a bazillion people still believe that the Alpha and the Omega, the Eschatological Ground Meal of the Total Tortilla, put on a pair of badly made sandals and wandered around the Judean hills some 2000 years ago.

Jeez, I sure hope a long throat-clearing means a short post. Anyway, Courtly Love, (conflating all sorts of stuff below, but the inaccuracies are useful) a term from the late Middle Ages, referring to a set of principles for Romance among the noble classes. Most common elements: the woman is elevated far above the man, and at the very least begins with a stance anywhere from cruel and disdainful to simply unwilling; this acts as a spur for the man to be nobler, more virtuous, more accomplished in all things and utterly devoted, so as to better deserve his lover; there is some seemingly insuperable obstacle (other than the man's unworthiness) - most commonly the woman is married and virtuous.

Of course, like the contrary spirit of Carnival, this only works because Courtly Love reverses the real power relationships between the sexes in the Middle Ages, anomalies like Eleanor of Aquitaine's court notwithstanding.

So why am I talking about it? C'mon - this model doesn't have ANY attractions for you, gender role not specified? Oh, maybe not - maybe it's me that's nuts, or, more accurately, I was when I was younger, listening to a lot of Machaut and Dufay, and ready to be devoted. Serially devoted, I think. Besides, there is that element of self-improving calisthenics - using the desired as some sort of all-in-one exercise machine to buff up all your metaphorical muscles, ready to cough up tortured love poetry and be champagne-witty and gallant in conversation in turn. Something here about all the world loves (this kind of) a lover.

Funny, though, my most intense experience of the three elements was after a demise of a relationship, during which the entirely absent woman became a guiding spirit for a couple of years, quite unaware. Genuine lack of interest; earnest and completely unobserved self-improvement; utterly without hope of it ever being influential.

But the sheer ironic perfection of that modern version of Courtly Love isn't why I drifted away. It ultimately was narcissistic as mirrors on a bedroom ceiling, and if such a thing did become consummated, and leaving aside what the chapter is AFTER that, well, even at the moment, the desideratum, all I can think of is two people, each alone with his or her own ecstasies.