My Love is Selfish

February 14th – Happy Valentine’s Day (if you celebrate)! It’s still unclear to me if Germans do and to what degree. We’ll file that under German dating customs I haven’t figured out. More on that soon!

On love: I’ve been thinking a lot the last week or so about the love we didn’t know existed until we knew it, that is, until we found it. Maybe it is a specific person who ignites a exact want that was always there, our heart unawares. People bring this type of love up often when talking about having a child. But it exists as much in romance, too, I think.

While reading this morning one of Keats’ letters to his beloved Fanny, he expresses this idea:

You have ravish’d me away by a Power I cannot resist: and yet I could resist till I saw you; and even since I have seen you I have endeavoured often “to reason against the reasons of my Love.” I can do that no more – the pain would be too great – My Love is selfish – I cannot breathe without you.

Yours for ever
John Keats

fullsizerender-7 Cannot breathe without you vibe
Photo courtesy of my girl, Nedelle @advicefromparadise

I was also reading the German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine (for which there is a U-bahn stop named after) and came on the idea there too in his poems The Phoenix and Leaning Against the Mast. They appear below (Translated by Vernon Watkins) from an August, 1949 issue of Poetry magazine.

two-translations

I could write and research and think only about love for the rest of my life. That is what I’m doing much of the time in my essay collection. Love — romantic, familiar, universal. I adore you and this world and this life!