Love And Pain – Intricate Human Emotions
Love and pain are two distinctly different words, which have diagonally opposite connotations. They are however, inalienably linked together; they coexist as one cannot be comprehended without the other. They are two parts of a composite whole.
It is very difficult, one the other hand to give correct definitions of the two words because of the enormity of diverse emotions both of them encompass. The two emotions, in fact are primeval and eternal. Very little alteration has thus come in their expression during the vast passage of time spread over centuries. To give a simple meaning of the word love, one may say, it is an attraction, which a male or female gets obsessed for the opposite sex (love finds its manifestation in various ways such as the tender feelings of the parents for their child or that of the child for the parents, the feelings of piety, which a devotee feels for the almighty, which virtually trades on the verge of worship, the feeling of affinity one feels for nature like Wordsworth and other lovers of nature, etc, etc. The definition given above is restricted to the feeling of attraction for the opposite sex in the backdrop of Sappho’s poem, with his venom (love-poems.name). Pain on the other hand is an unpalatable feeling caused by a circumstance, action, word, etc, contrary to the expectation of the person concerned, which is likely to prove an impediment on the prospect of one’s mating with the other (Metroactive). Attraction, academicians say is manifold – it ranges from purely spiritual to simple biological overtures. The modern scientists, agreeing with the physically based attraction attribute it to the secretion of certain specific hormones, which promotes attraction for a particular person who, by some inexplicable means, get the same kind of hormone-secretion and is attracted to the other with unfailing gusto and vigor. The attraction, whatever the reason, is irresistible through – an unconscious process though. It would however the worthwhile too note that even if the attraction be taken to be purely biological in nature, there is a clear line of demarcation, which one may call as very thin in the nature of fulfillment of the physical needs although, with the same means. Divorced from love, physical satiety becomes lust and attraction, which started for the urge of sexual mating ends with the fulfillment of desire. Love, on the other hand augments the attraction every moment. The desire to mate also increases but with a delicate softness, which is the essence of love. The hurdles coming on the way of desires accomplishment, as said earlier, causes pain, a kind of pain, which always reminds of the inexpressible feeling of joy one derives in the act of sexual mating, which finally ends in coitus.
It is in this vein that Sappho, the ancient Greek poetess has called love irresistible and bitter sweet – irresistible the attraction is, robust and bold. The pleasure in sexual fulfillment comes from the complete relaxation of the limbs them when the emotions ooze out from them and melt into sublimity. This is not the end in itself of everything, like lust, but the lovers pine to get limitless opportunities to experience the sublime emotions time and again. Sappho feels the biological urge and the fulfillment of the natural needs, which, if denied, causes extreme disappointment, a strange but strong ache in her heart and the body undergoes similar process, which she has experienced during her mating.
It is apparent that Sappho lauds the scientific approach including that of Freud and like psychologists who deem love as purely physical. Spiritual tinge, in their opinion, is a misconceived notion without any base. Sappho, as the researchers say, was a lesbian who equally enjoyed the relationships with male and female partners. She had no inhibitions of love, as depicted in great legendary heroes like Romeo and Juliet. She liked to drink life to the lease. Sappho is perhaps the first known character who ranks with the modern mind with a clear cut philosophy of love and pain.
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