EPISODE 19: EROS

Eros (/ˈɪərɒs/ or /ˈɛrɒs/; Ancient Greek: ἔρως érōs "love" or "desire") is a concept in ancient Greek philosophy referring to sensual or passionate love, from which the term erotic is derived. Eros has also been used in philosophy and psychology in a much wider sense, almost as an equivalent to "life energy".[1] Protestant author C.S. Lewis posits it as one of the four ancient Greek words for love in Christianity, alongside storge, philia, and agape.[2]

Although erotic love has frequently been understood primarily as sexual desire and passion, its classical religious and philosophical meaning was the idealistic desire to acquire the highest spiritual and intellectual good. Britannica

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

“The minute I heard my first love story, I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”

“I want to see you. Know your voice. Recognize you when you first come ’round the corner. Sense your scent when I come into a room you’ve just left. Know the lift of your heel, the glide of your foot. Become familiar with the way you purse your lips then let them part, just the slightest bit, when I lean in to your space and kiss you. I want to know the joy of how you whisper “more”

RUMI

The Indian Serenade

BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

I arise from dreams of thee

In the first sweet sleep of night,

When the winds are breathing low,

And the stars are shining bright:

I arise from dreams of thee,

And a spirit in my feet

Hath led me—who knows how?

To thy chamber window, Sweet!

The wandering airs they faint

On the dark, the silent stream—

The Champak odours fail

Like sweet thoughts in a dream;

The Nightingale's complaint,

It dies upon her heart;—

As I must on thine,

Oh, belovèd as thou art!

Oh lift me from the grass!

I die! I faint! I fail!

Let thy love in kisses rain

On my lips and eyelids pale.

My cheek is cold and white, alas!

My heart beats loud and fast;—

Oh! press it to thine own again,

Where it will break at last.

Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds

BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand'ring bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me prov'd,

I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

[somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond]

BY E. E. CUMMINGS

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

any experience,your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me

though i have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens

(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and

my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,

as when the heart of this flower imagines

the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

the power of your intense fragility:whose texture

compels me with the colour of its countries,

rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes

and opens;only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

A LOVE SONG

How shall I hold on to my soul, so that

it does not touch yours? How shall I lift

it gently up over you on to other things?

I would so very much like to tuck it away

among long lost objects in the dark

in some quiet unknown place, somewhere

which remains motionless when your depths resound.

And yet everything which touches us, you and me,

takes us together like a single bow,

drawing out from two strings but one voice.

On which instrument are we strung?

And which violinist holds us in the hand?

O sweetest of songs.

Rainer Maria Rilke

New Poems: c. 1907

My Wife

From Songs of Travel

Trusty, dusky, vivid, true,

With eyes of gold and bramble-dew,

Steel-true and blade-straight,

The great artificer

Made my mate.

Honour, anger, valour, fire;

A love that life could never tire,

Death quench or evil stir,

The mighty master

Gave to her.

Teacher, tender, comrade, wife,

A fellow-farer true through life,

Heart-whole and soul-free

The august father

Gave to me.

Come, and Be my Baby

The highway is full of big cars

going nowhere fast

And folks is smoking anything that’ll burn

Some people wrap their lies around a cocktail glass

And you sit wondering

where you’re going to turn

I got it.

Come. And be my baby.

Some prophets say the world is gonna end tomorrow

But others say we’ve got a week or two

The paper is full of every kind of blooming horror

And you sit wondering

What you’re gonna do.

I got it.

Come. And be my baby.

To My Dear and Loving Husband

BY ANNE BRADSTREET

If ever two were one, then surely we.

If ever man were loved by wife, then thee.

If ever wife was happy in a man,

Compare with me, ye women, if you can.

I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,

Or all the riches that the East doth hold.

My love is such that rivers cannot quench,

Nor ought but love from thee give recompense.

Thy love is such I can no way repay;

The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.

Then while we live, in love let’s so persever,

That when we live no more, we may live ever.

Love Comes Quietly

Robert Creeley - 1926-2005

Love comes quietly,

finally, drops

about me, on me,

in the old ways.

What did I know

thinking myself

able to go

alone all the way.

"A lovestruck Romeo sang the streets a serenade

Laying everybody low with a love song that he made

Finds a streetlight, steps out of the shade

Says something like, "You and me, babe, how about it?"

Juliet says, "Hey, it's Romeo, you nearly gave me a heart attack"

He's underneath the window, she's singing, "Hey, la, my boyfriend's back

You shouldn't come around here singing up at people like that

Anyway, what you gonna do about it?"

"Juliet, the dice was loaded from the start

And I bet, and you exploded into my heart

And I forget, I forget the movie song

When you gonna realize it was just that the time was wrong, Juliet?"

Come up on different streets, they both were streets of shame

Both dirty, both mean, yes, and the dream was just the same

And I dreamed your dream for you and now your dream is real

How can you look at me as if I was just another one of your deals?

When you can fall for chains of silver you can fall for chains of gold

You can fall for pretty strangers and the promises they hold

You promised me everything, you promised me thick and thin, yeah

Now you just say "Oh, Romeo, yeah, you know I used to have a scene with him"

"Juliet, when we made love, you used to cry

You said 'I love you like the stars above, I'll love you 'til I die'

There's a place for us, you know the movie song

When you gonna realize it was just that the time was wrong, Juliet?"

I can't do the talks like they talk on the TV

And I can't do a love song like the way it's meant to be

I can't do everything but I'll do anything for you

I can't do anything except be in love with you

And all I do is miss you and the way we used to be

All I do is keep the beat, the bad company

All I do is kiss you through the bars of a rhyme

Julie, I'd do the stars with you any time

"Juliet, when we made love you used to cry

You said 'I love you like the stars above, I'll love you 'til I die'

There's a place for us you know the movie song

When you gonna realize it was just that the time was wrong, Juliet?"

And a lovestruck Romeo, he sang the streets a serenade

Laying everybody low with a love song that he made

Find a convenient streetlight, steps out of the shade

He says something like, "You and me, babe, how about it?"

"You and me, babe, how about it?"

DIRE STRAITS, ROMEO AND JULIET

The More Loving One

W. H. Auden - 1907-1973

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well

That, for all they care, I can go to hell,

But on earth indifference is the least

We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn

With a passion for us we could not return?

If equal affection cannot be,

Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am

Of stars that do not give a damn,

I cannot, now I see them, say

I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,

I should learn to look at an empty sky

And feel its total dark sublime,

Though this might take me a little time.

"LONGING"

by Matthew Arnold

Come to me in my dreams, and then

By day I shall be well again!

For so the night will more than pay

The hopeless longings of the day.

Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times,

A messenger from radiant climes,

Amd smile on thy new world, and be

As kind to others as to me!

Or, as thou never cam'st in sooth,

Come now, and let me dream it truth,

And part my hair, and kiss my brow,

And say, My love! why sufferest thou?

Come to me in my dreams, and then

By day I shall be well again!

For so the night will more than pay

The hopeless longings of the day.

[POEM] LOVE SONG by Rainer Maria Rilke, Translated by Stephen Mitchell

How can I keep my soul in me, so that

it doesn’t touch your soul? How can I raise

it high enough, past you, to other things?

I would like to shelter it, among remote

lost objects, in some dark and silent place

that doesn’t resonate when your depths resound.

Yet everything that touches us, me and you,

takes us together like a violin’s bow,

which draws one voice out of two separate strings.

Upon what instrument are we two spanned?

And what musician holds us in his hand?

Oh sweetest song.

“Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation.” Rumi