I.
If I wasn't
fortunate enough to take this class, and had someone asked me what
the definition of romance was, I probably would have responded with
something like, “Well, when a man and a woman really love each
other yadda yadda yadda just like Titanic 3D, right?” To an extent
I would be right, but for the wrong reasons. Attraction and love
between people always falls under the category of romance. And while
this briefly quenches the thirst of the question our modern
understanding of the word is so simple that its very
comprehensibility renders it useless, reducing it to an xyz
dictionary term, and removing any potential to go further than what
we perceive. Its seeming non-elusiveness is the very thing that keeps
us wrapped in its dictionary illusion: something to be understood in
a moment rather than experienced through a lifetime. Romance is the
individual quest of transformation, self-discovery, and unification
with an element of ourselves that is necessary to our identity.
Northrop Frye writes that “As we have seen, the message of all
romance is de te fabula: the
story is about you; and it is the reader who is responsible for the
way literature functions, both socially and individually” (186).
Through stories, we create meaning of our own bland existence.
To
extend the Titanic reference, our immediate understanding is just the
tip of the iceberg, an understanding not capable of truly
conceptualizing the 90 percent that lies underneath the surface of
the unconscious, the unfathomable piece that moves everything and
dictates our place in the universal scheme of creation. When we
proclaim full comprehension of romance we confine it to a
four-cornered room as if it were a component to something larger.
Romance is more than just love and attraction between people. It
exceeds the boundaries we give it. Romance is life, and the pursuit
of life, having just as much to do with the individual's quest as it
does with the consummation of love. Similar to Dr. Sexson's
mysterious book, his unopened gift that he received from a woman on
an airplane many years ago, romance only becomes significant to our
lives when we realize that it's not something to be possessed, but
something that we are constantly in the process of becoming.
II.
With this I would
like to ask the fellow reader to think of life, your life, in the
context of stories, and as a metaphor for romance. And from there let
us narrow our gaze and focus on one particular part of romance that
seems to show up both in our love life and in many of the stories
themselves. This happens to be the significance of virginity which is
of much more importance in romance than we may at first realize, and
for different reasons than we would expect. Of course, there is the
social convention of virginity that is the most obvious one. There's
plenty of double standards on this issue for both genders. For women,
we seem to have in the past regarded them as “used goods” once
their virginity had been taken. It's a loss of innocence that
signifies a stepping stone in their feminine evolution. Whereas men
are perceived as having a higher quality of masculinity when they
have “lost” their virginity, than someone having a significantly
harder time in the dating game. It is a sort of rite of passage into
manhood to successfully woo your lover into the bedsheets, and
equally enough a rite of passage for women as well. But why is this
social convention here, and what does it mean? The answer is tied up
in the conventions of romance and storytelling. Frye says that “It
looks as though there were some structural principle in this type of
story which makes it natural to postpone the first sexual act of the
heroine...the social reasons for the emphasis on virginity, however
obvious, are still not enough for understanding the structure of
romance” (72-3). It is more than socially important. We must
consider all aspects of our external lives as reflections of, and
metaphors for, the internal journey we are on. In other words think
of virginity in relation to the world of mythos around us. There is
always an emphasis on protecting chastity in the face of unchaste
advances, because virginity is inextricably tied in with our personal
identity, that sense of “becoming” in romance that I mentioned
earlier. Once we stop becoming, once we halt the process of romance
in our lives, we stop the unfolding of creation and the only possible
direction is loss of identity and death.
III.
One of the first stories we read was that of Daphnis
and Chloe. I chose to focus on this one in particular because it
still remains one of my favorites after all the stories we've read.
Their naivete and innocence seems to warm the heart in the coldest of
places, and melt it where it was already soft to begin with. From the
beginning our narrator starts out by saying that the story we are
about to hear came from “the most beautiful sight I have ever seen,
a painting of an image, a love story...it is intended to heal the
sick and to console the afflicted, to bring back memories for those
who have known love, and to give instruction to those who have not”
(137). He seems to sum up life quite nicely here. It is a beautiful
image of love, and the entire story of these two people swings on the
single hinge of innocent love as the driving force for their life.
It's the most powerful force in the universe.
They grow up together, and once Chloe discovers her
feelings for Daphnis while they're bathing, she kisses him, and
Daphnis realizes that he is attracted to Chloe as well. Once this
happens our narrator goes on to say that “they desired something,
they did not know what they desired. This only they knew, that the
kiss had destroyed him and the bath had destroyed her” (149). This
initiates what I have referred to as romance as the pursuit of life.
What they desire is not something to be readily obtained within a
moment's notice. “There is no remedy, no cure, for Love, no drink,
no food, no spells to chant, nothing – only kisses and embraces and
lying down naked together” (159). Only their journey can take them
towards this consummation. And this proves true, as they face many
separations and trials of chastity between that moment and when they
finally reunite at the end of the story as two very different
individuals that have undergone their own unique transformation.
The time eventually comes when Chloe learns “for the
first time, that the things they had done earlier in the woods were
merely games that shepherds play” (210), and it is here that she
loses her virginity. And as I said before, this would usually signify
the symbolic loss of an identity. But what she loses in personal
identity, she gains back in unity with her lover, Daphnis. Frye says
that “One of the most fundamental of human realizations is that
passing from death to rebirth is impossible for the same individual”
(89). In the consummation of their love, they are perpetuating their
own identities, and their own rebirth with the redemption of
children. Chloe undergoes a rebirth in that the very moment she is
destroyed, she is subsequently reborn again. Her identity is not
destroyed at all, but undergoes a displacement onto someone else as
they both take part in the universal act of creation. The story may
quit at this point, but the beautiful thing is that the romance
hasn't ended. They will certainly live on in the human imagination,
and as long as the stories like this keep getting told, the romance
continues forever as we discover that our own lives are merely just
an extension of where this story leaves off.
IV.
We see the same thing occurring in Zimmer's retelling
of the story of Shiva. Much like Chloe, Shiva is chaste and virginal.
He has no desire to marry any woman, whatsoever. His only concern is
detachment from the material world, the illusion of Maya, and chooses
to focus on his yoga and remain in deep meditation. However, Brahma,
the life force, knows that the universe cannot be sustained between
his creative powers, Vishnu's continuance, and Shiva's ultimate
destruction, unless romance is injected into Shiva's life. “But
now, if you remain for all time aloof from the course of history,
yoked in your yoga, clean of every gladness and grief, it will not be
possible for you to play your necessary part in the development of
the picture. How are creation, preservation, and destruction to mesh,
if the absorbing diabolic powers are not perpetually held in check?”
(272). While Shiva's virginity is a symbol of his pure identity, it
is one that is meant to be destroyed in order to continue the process
of creation. And in that process the individual undergoes personal
transformations that lead to the path of self-discovery and will
reunite him in the end with a new found sense of innocence and
redemption that could not have been obtained before.
We cannot avoid emotions, happiness, and grief if we
wish to be a part of this universe. If we don't yield the symbolic
virginity, or suffer some other destruction of identity, then we
suffer the destruction worse than death: never undergoing the process
of individuation, never participating in creation, and thus never
being a part of the great story.
Shiva is fooling himself with the dictionary romance, a
social contract that defines it as only something to be obtained,
occurring only on a Friday night date at dinner and a movie, rather
than realizing that romance is something that never ceases. And if he
followed through with this mindset he would have denied himself the
transformation. For as important as virginity is, as a symbol of what
Frye calls “a human conviction, however expressed, that there is
something at the core of one's infinitely fragile being which is not
only immortal but has discovered the secret of invulnerability that
eludes the tragic hero” (86), it is equally necessary to lose this
symbol of immortality in order to participate in the creative process
of the universe and replace our virginity with an everlasting
redemption.
V.
It is here that we come to see the connection between
the virgin identity, and its loss, as merely another stepping stone
along the path of self-discovery, the romance that never ends. It is
this cyclical repetition that balances the universe. Brahma says to
Shiva that “in the counterpoise of our powers we are dependent on
each other, mutually, and must perform our several works in
co-operation; otherwise, there can be no world” (271).
So now if anyone ever asks me what true romance is, I
don't have to reference a Hollywood film to explain myself, because I
now know better. Instead I might sit them down, hand them a copy of
Northrop Frye's book, and ask “Well...how much time do you have?”
Because as we have seen, the sufficient amount of time to explain
what romance is all about will take the process of a lifetime.
It's not just the happy ending of the story, the kiss
on the lips, it's the story itself, the adventure. This is where the
meaning unravels itself to us. The process of life from beginning to
end is all romance, and what better way is there to express this
important concept than through the fantastic medium of a story.
