Loving as Giving and as Undergoing: Shakespeare, Teresa and Thérèse on the Wound of Love

Orientation #

He does not say anything about last time. He says the paradox will be reconciled “later on”, and that Thomas “in the articles” will say loving is an undergoing, after which “we have to explain why this other word, giving, is used too.” He also points forward to an article on the effects of love, whether love is ennobling or makes you worse. The next class takes up Thomas’s first article on love and resolves the giving/undergoing tension.

The class, in order #

1. The paradox in the handout titles (“loving and giving”) #

The point: the first two pages of quotes are headed “loving and giving”, the third “love is a passion or an undergoing”, and these look opposite.

• Carpenter vs. wood: the carpenter is active and gives the wood a shape; the wood undergoes, receives a shape it did not have. Giving is the opposite of receiving.
• Powers of the soul: some act upon their object (the ability to digest acts on food: crunching, chewing, chemicals), others are acted upon by the object (ear by sound, senses generally). Does love act on what it loves, like digestion, or is the heart acted upon by what it loves, like the ear by sound?
• The quotes show truth on both sides; “how can it be both?” is deferred. Plan: see the truth on each side, then reconcile later.

2. From your own experience to Thomas, by way of the poets (“the universal singularized”) #

The point: knowledge of love begins in one’s individual experience (a mother’s love, etc.); Thomas’s treatment is completely universal; the poets bridge the distance.

• The poet gives “the universal singularized, or the singular universalized.” Sophocles’ Oedipus: at his fall the chorus does not say “O Oedipus” but “O you generations of men”; one sees the human situation in one man. Romeo and Juliet: not a historical pair in 14th-century Verona but “young lovers”.
• Aristotle in the book on the poetic art: good fiction is more philosophic than history, since history is about the singular, philosophy about the universal, and the poet wants the universal in this man or situation.

3. Love as giving in Shakespeare (“my bounty is as boundless as the sea”) #

The point: the poets speak of love as something given.

• Romeo and Juliet, garden scene: Juliet “gave thee mine before thou didst request it” yet wishes it “were to give again”, “but to be frank.” Frank originally means free: a thrown stone was under your control before, not after; having given her love she has lost her freedom. Aside: “free” and “friend” go back to an Anglo-Saxon word meaning to love (frēogan); Franklin, Freeman = freeman. Then: “my bounty is as boundless as the sea… the more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite”: she can always give more without taking back, an unlimited capacity to give love, likened to the sea. “Especially God” can always give more love.
• As You Like It, Rosalind: “how many fathom deep I am in love”, “an unknown bottom, like the Bay of Portugal.” Again the ocean. Asides: Thérèse of Lisieux’s first sight of the ocean reminds her of God, the pelagus of God’s infinite extent; Augustine and the boy trying to put the ocean in a hole; a Minnesota lake whose bottom they never found.
• Antony and Cleopatra: “there’s beggary in the love that can be reckoned”; to set a bourn (a limit) you “must needs find out new heaven, new earth.”
• All’s Well That Ends Well, Helena confessing to the Countess that she loves Bertram: “before you, and next unto high heaven.” Shakespeare puns on the first and fourth senses of “before” (from Aristotle’s list he usually gives: before in time or place; before in being; before in the discourse of reason or knowledge; before as better, what you love more). She kneels before the Countess (first sense) and loves her son more than the Countess (fourth). Aside: Shakespeare defines reason as “large discourse, looking before and after.”
• But “it hurts not him that he is loved of me”: this does not show giving; she could love him without his knowing, her love does not affect him, if anything she is affected by him, which is the theme of the later quotes.
• “I know I love in vain, I strive against hope”: when you love you want the person to return your love; in that society a count cannot return a commoner’s love. “Into this capacious and intenable sieve I still pour in the waters of my love” [ed.: transcript has “sea”; the play reads “sieve”].
• Dian vs. Love: Diana is chastity, Love is Venus/Aphrodite, intensity of love; Helena claims both: she will love intensely but never unchastely.
• “Cannot choose but lend and give, where she is sure to lose.” Giving in the strict sense is a gift, nothing expected back; giving expecting the thing or its equivalent back is lending (his father-in-law’s tool with his name on it). Giving love hoping it will be returned is like lending. Aside on how we speak: “I return your love” does not mean giving back the other’s love but giving one’s own in return; not the same love, but the idiom fits “lend.”

4. Thomas: love is the very first gift (“love has the aspect of the very first gift”) #

The point: in the Prima Pars, treatise on the Trinity (not the treatise on love), among the names of the persons (the Son as Word, Imago Dei), the Holy Spirit is named Donum Dei, Gift of God, because he proceeds by way of love, and loving and giving are connected.

1. A gift properly is a giving not to be returned (according to the Philosopher), i.e. not given with intention of return; so it implies gratuitous giving.
2. Love is the reason for a gratuitous gift: we give gratis because we wish good to someone.
3. The first thing we give him is the love by which we wish him good; hence love has the aspect of the very first gift (stress on “first”), through which all gratuitous gifts are given. Parents’ example: every good they give the children is because they love them, so their first gift is their love.
4. Since the Holy Spirit proceeds as love, he proceeds as the first gift; Augustine, On the Trinity XV: through the gift which is the Holy Spirit many private goods are distributed to the members of Christ.

• Aside: grace has the idea of gratis; giving grace is appropriated to the Holy Spirit though the whole Trinity gives it.
• The Our Father in Matthew (seven petitions) and Luke (five): both have the a fortiori argument (bread/stone, fish/snake; “if you, bad as you are, know how to give good things to your children, how much more your heavenly Father”). Matthew ends “good things”, Luke “the good Spirit”: this explains it, since the first thing God gives is his love, appropriated to the Holy Spirit, and the other goods because of it. Likewise “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.”
• “So you’re all convinced now that loving is a giving”: more like the carpenter than the wood.

5. The other side: love is a passion, an undergoing (“love is a passion or undergoing”) #

The point: passion means being acted upon; the poets speak of the heart as acted upon, transformed by what it loves.

• Passion is Latin for suffering; its first meaning is suffering as we understand it; then, as with Greek pathe, it is carried over from harmful reception, to a reception that changes you, to any reception. English “suffering” is stuck on the first meaning, so he uses “undergoing”, though its first meaning too is bad (“he’s undergone a lot in life”). In the wide sense the wood undergoes from the carpenter, the eye from colour, the ear from sound, and that undergoing perfects the eye, since it sees by being acted upon.
• Examples, each showing the heart acted upon:
  • The go-between telling the lady “the passion of my sovereign’s heart”: fame entering at his ears placed her beauty’s image there; she made an “impression”, as we say after a party (“you made a big impression on her”).
  • Two Gentlemen of Verona: “passionate Proteus”, suffering Proteus.
  • Much Ado: Beatrice, “for which of my good parts did you first suffer love for me?”; Benedick, “I love thee against my will”: the opposite of Juliet’s “free”.
  • As You Like It: Orlando throws Charles the wrestler; Rosalind, “you have wrestled well and overthrown more than your enemies”, a woman’s subtle hint that her heart is overthrown; Orlando, “what passion hangs these weights upon my tongue… thou art overthrown”, “or Charles or something weaker masters thee” (Shakespeare’s “or… or” for “either… or”; the weaker sex). Celia: “wrestle with thy affections”; “they take the part of a better wrestler than myself.”
  • Midsummer Night’s Dream, Helena to Demetrius: “you draw me, you hard-hearted adamant… my heart is true as steel”; he is the magnet, she the drawn iron, “leave your power to draw, and I shall have no power to follow”: the lover is moved by the beloved, not the iron’s fault.
  • Antony and Cleopatra, the sea battle: Cleopatra flees, Antony follows and loses; “my heart was to thy rudder tied by the strings, and thou couldst tow me after”: same excuse as Helena, different metaphor.
  • Henry VI: the description of Margaret’s virtues and gifts “do breed love’s settled passions in my heart”: love bred by being acted upon.
  • Titania, under the potion, to Bottom: “mine ear is much enamoured of thy notes, so is mine eye enthralled to thy shape, and thy fair virtues’ force perforce doth move me”: moved by his qualities.
  • Wuthering Heights (Brontë): the rival “would shoot a shaft into your soul”: being acted upon.

6. The wound of love (“he jests at scars that never felt the wound”) #

The point: a stronger word than passion: the lover is wounded by the beloved; you receive a wound, you do not give one; found in secular poets and Christian love alike.

• Romeo, escaping Mercutio’s jokes about Rosaline who does not return his love: “he jests at scars that never felt the wound.” The heart is especially said to be wounded when the love is not returned, but the image is used apart from that too.
• Romeo to Friar Lawrence: “I have been feasting with my enemy, where on a sudden one hath wounded me, that’s by me wounded”: mutual wounding, not with swords but with love at first sight.
• Two Gentlemen: Julia tears up “love-wounded Proteus” letters in front of her maid, then gathers the pieces: “poor wounded name, my bosom as a bed shall lodge thee till thy wound be thoroughly healed.” Valentine is the faithful one; Proteus is named for the shape-changing god (Odyssey).
• Taming of the Shrew, Lucentio: “that maid whose sudden sight hath thralled my wounded eye.” Aside: “whoever loved that loved not at first sight” (quoted from Hero and Leander [ed.: Marlowe, inferred]): knowing is a cause of love.
• Cupid’s arrow: why do we speak of being struck by Cupid’s arrow and then loving? On the likeness of receiving a wound. Oberon: the bolt fell on a flower “now purple with love’s wound”, love-in-idleness.
• Silvius to Phebe (who mocks him): “the wounds invisible that love’s keen arrows make”, unlike a soldier’s visible wound.
• Digression on “fancy”: from imagination (phantasm) it came to mean love, because of the connection between romantic love and imagination (“lovers and madmen have such shaping fantasies”, “what eyes hath love put in my head that have no correspondence with true sight”: lovers said to be blind). Likewise “fond”: originally foolish, then to like someone; so the words teach the connection of love with folly and with imagination (“does she strike your fancy?”).

7. Two Carmelite saints wounded by fire (“a long golden spear”) #

The point: the same likeness of wound (and fire) for the increase of charity, not romantic love.

• Teresa of Avila, Autobiography ch. 29: a short, very beautiful angel, all aflame, one of the highest (as Dionysius explains the seraphim, burning with love of God), pierces her heart with a golden spear tipped with fire, seems to draw out her entrails (“you draw me”, like the magnet), leaves her afire with love of God; pain so sharp yet so sweet one never wishes to lose it, nor is content with less than God. “Very significant” that the increase of love comes under the likeness of a wound.
• Thérèse of Lisieux (whom a pope, he thinks Pius X, called the greatest saint of modern times): after offering herself to merciful love, at the Way of the Cross, “wounded by a dart of fire”, plunged wholly into fire, “but what fire, but sweetness.”
• Alphonsus Liguori’s meditations on the passion quote Luke, “I have come to cast fire upon the earth”: love of God under the metaphor of fire. If your heart is set aflame it is being acted upon, consumed, as fire acts on paper.

8. Love as transformation of the heart (“thou hast metamorphosed me”) #

The point: the heart undergoing is stated more explicitly as being formed over: transformation = metamorphosis (Latin/Greek; morphosis, formation, as in morphology).

• Two Gentlemen: Valentine goes to court after honour, Proteus stays after love: “thou, Julia, thou hast metamorphosed me, made me neglect my studies, lose my time, put me at war with good counsel… my heart sick with thought.” Goethe: we are shaped and fashioned by what we love; love beautiful things and you are already somewhat beautiful, love disgusting things and you are already disgusting. He notes a later article asks whether love ennobles or makes worse: evidence on both sides.
• Valentine at court sees Silvia (“heaven lent her such graces”); Speed: “now you are metamorphosed with a mistress… I can hardly think you my master.”
• Proteus sent to court, sees Silvia, debates betraying Julia and Valentine: “my love is thawed, which like a waxen image against a fire bears no impression of the thing it was”: the heart loses the form Julia gave it and melts to take Silvia’s. Plot: he betrays Valentine’s elopement plan to the Duke, Valentine exiled, and the Duke hopes “a little time will melt her frozen thoughts”: “a figure trenched in ice… doth lose his form.”
• Twelfth Night: “how easy is it for the proper false [a handsome villain] in women’s waxen hearts to set their forms”: sealing wax stamped by the seal; women have more capacity to love, hence “waxen.” Also “his heart like an agate with your print impressed” (agates with portraits).
• Return to “impression”: the impression you make on someone’s heart is their beginning to like you; so loving is undergoing. This is what Thomas will say in the articles; but then why is “giving” also used? To be explained.

9. Hard hearts, soft hearts, and the eyes (“thy capacity receiveth as the sea”) #

The point: the idioms confirm undergoing, and the forms come in through the eyes.

• Hard heart vs. soft (waxen) heart: Benedick, “I would I could find in my heart that I had not a hard heart, for truly I love none”; Olivia’s “heart of stone” toward one she loves who does not return it. A hard or stony heart is one not apt to love; soft or waxen, apt to love. The soft receives, the hard gives (the hard seal acts on the softened wax); so the loving heart is the one acted upon: undergoing, suffering, being wounded.
• Friar Lawrence: Romeo’s love “formed by the eye… full of strange shapes… varying as the eye doth roll”: the forms that act on the heart come through the eyes; Romeo goes to see Rosaline, sees Juliet, “another form comes into the eyes”, and his heart loses one form for the other.
• Twelfth Night, “O spirit of love… thy capacity receiveth as the sea… so full of shapes is fancy”: love as receiving, tied to imagination; Shakespeare ties “spirit” to love, partly why the Holy Spirit is called Spirit. (Class ends here.)

His words #

• loving and giving / love is a passion or undergoing: the two handout headings, apparently contrary.
• frank: originally free; free/friend from Anglo-Saxon frēogan, to love; Franklin/Freeman, freeman.
• the four senses of before: in time or place; in being; in the discourse of reason or knowledge; better, what you love more.
• gift vs. lending: gift is a giving not to be returned; giving expecting return is lending; loving hoping for return is like lending.
• Donum Dei: Gift of God, a proper name of the Holy Spirit; love “has the aspect of the very first gift.”
• gratis / grace: giving because we wish good to someone.
• passion: Latin for suffering; extended (like Greek pathe) from harmful reception, to changing reception, to any reception; he prefers “undergoing” [ed.: passio, pathos].
• impression: “you made a big impression on her”: the beloved acting on the heart.
• wound of love: you receive a wound, not give one.
• fancy: imagination (phantasm) come to mean love; fond: foolish come to mean liking.
• seraphim: burning with love, as Dionysius explains.
• transformation / metamorphosis: forming over; morphosis = formation.
• proper false: a handsome villain; waxen heart: apt to be formed; hard or stony heart: not apt to love.

Texts #

Read in class

• Handout “Nature and Kinds of Love”, pp. 3–18 (verified): Shakespeare quotations from Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It, Antony and Cleopatra, All’s Well That Ends Well, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Henry VI, Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night; Brontë, Wuthering Heights.
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Prima Pars, treatise on the Trinity, on Gift as a name of the Holy Spirit (I q. 38 a. 2 inferred), read in translation.
• Teresa of Avila, Autobiography, ch. 29.
• Thérèse of Lisieux, Autobiography (the dart of fire). Mentioned
• Sophocles, Oedipus (the chorus at his fall).
• Aristotle, on the poetic art (fiction more philosophic than history); Aristotle on the senses of “before” (no locus given).
• Shakespeare on reason as “large discourse, looking before and after” (Hamlet, inferred); a love sonnet, “what eyes hath love put in my head.”
• Augustine, On the Trinity XV (cited in Thomas); Augustine and the boy at the seashore.
• Our Father in Matthew and Luke; “God so loved the world” (no locus given); Luke, “I have come to cast fire upon the earth” (via Alphonsus Liguori’s meditations on the passion).
• Dionysius on the seraphim; Homer, Odyssey (Proteus); Goethe, “we are shaped and fashioned by what we love”; Hero and Leander (“whoever loved that loved not at first sight”).
• Thomas, a later article on the effects of love, whether love ennobles or makes worse.

His questions #

• Is loving like the carpenter, a giving, or like the wood, a receiving? Both seem true; the reconciliation is deferred to a later class.
• Does love act upon its object like digestion on food, or is the heart acted upon like the ear by sound? Seems “a bit of both”; the poets and Thomas incline to acted upon.
• Why does the poet let us pass from individual experience to the universal? The poet gives the universal singularized; fiction is more philosophic than history.
• Why is the Holy Spirit named Gift of God? He proceeds by way of love, and love is the very first gift, through which all gratuitous gifts are given.
• Why does Luke’s Our Father discourse say the Father gives “the good Spirit” where Matthew says “good things”? The first thing God gives is his love, appropriated to the Holy Spirit; the rest follows from it.
• Does “it hurts not him that he is loved of me” show love is a giving? No; her love does not affect him, if anything she is affected by him.
• Why do we speak of Cupid’s arrow and of falling in love as being wounded? Because to begin to love is to have been acted upon, like receiving a wound.
• Why is a heart not apt to love called hard, and one apt to love soft or waxen? The soft receives, the hard gives; the loving heart is the one acted upon.
• If loving is really undergoing, why is the word “giving” used too? left open (to be explained from Thomas’s articles).