No Longer Our Own – Part I
On the feast of St. Mary Magdalene we read in Scripture an erotic love poem between a man and a woman – the Song of Songs. Mention of the erotic, of Eros, is likely to make us uncomfortable. Eros is indeed an unsettling thing, but not for the obscenities attached to the term. It is unsettling because in erotic love, the Beloved becomes the very center of our being. In Eros, we are unsettled out of ourselves, for we are no longer our own.
By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth. In the bower of her bedroom, within that intimate space, the woman tells us that she seeks the object of her love, him whom her soul loveth, and though he is absent, yet he holds court at the very center of her soul’s longing. He is at the center of her being so that even on her bed, she is not her own. This is not simply infatuation – though that common experience (one perhaps we first knew as awkward middle-schoolers) is enough to show us how another person can take possession of us. But here in the Song of Songs, the Beloved is longed for by the soul – the very center of the self. What is the Beloved’s name? It is him whom my soul loveth, so complete is the woman’s entire self given over to him.
Erotic love is a kind of movement towards the Beloved – the woman loves, therefore she seeks. I sought him, she says. But the movement is frustrated: I sought him, but I found him not. Should she remain on her bed, within her private chambers, the love would come to no fruition – but instead, this movement of love draws her out: I will rise now and go about the city in the streets and in the broad ways will I seek him whom my soul loveth. In that sense, erotic love is ‘ecstatic’ [which comes from the Greek word meaning ‘put out of one’s place’], it quite literally draws her out of her bedroom, out of her private sphere, out of herself. She is entirely concerned with the Beloved and in the grip of her love she fears no danger. The woman goes out into the night, through deserted streets in search of him whom her soul loveth. And in this being drawn out of herself, even at risk to herself, her love is no longer about her gratification or the satisfaction of some itch, it is truly about theBeloved. It is all about him whom my soul loveth. And though her search for the Beloved is twice fruitless, yet the woman’s love is still drawn onward, or rather I should say upward; such love is pitched differently because the Beloved is not within or without, he is not to be found in moving from point A to point B, from emptiness to satisfaction, rather such love is more like an expectation, the promise of him whom she cannot find yet, the woman’s love is oriented towards the man not yet present.
The woman encounters the watchmen of the city, and she inquires Saw ye him whom my soul loveth? She turns to those who have watched to see what she has not seen, and since he is not present, she asks that he whom her soul loveth might be presented to her – saw ye him? But erotic love passes on from the watchmen and with all the abruptness of stumbling upon him, the woman sings out I found him whom my soul loveth; I held him and would not let him go. Such love effects a mutual indwelling; the lover and the Beloved are not simply presented to each other but are present in each other. She clings to him and does not let him go as a physical intimation of that mutual indwelling.
I held him and I would not let him go, until I had brought him into my mother’s house, and into the chamber of her that conceived me. “Until” does not mean cessation here, as if the lover would let the Beloved go upon entering her mother’s house; rather it means transformation – something greater will happen at this point. And indeed here at the end, love’s effect is one of union. The man and woman are united as one in a place of eternal fecundity.
That is the nobility of erotic love – to be caught up by another, to love with such abandon, to give oneself entirely to another in devotion. That is the sublimity shared between lovers. “In one high bound,” writes CS Lewis, “[Eros] has overleaped the massive wall of our selfhood; it has made appetite itself altruistic… and planted the interests of another in the centre of our being. Spontaneously and without effort we have fulfilled the law [to love another as oneself]” [The Four Loves, p. 130]. This is the stuff of song – if only the lover sings, then Eros gives us the Song of all Songs! The greatest song – how great it is. Yet here, we need to be careful, not that we risk loving another too much but that Eros, in speaking “like a god” [p 124] as Lewis says, in sounding so divine and commanding total devotion, might lead us short of love’s end.