As it rolled past midnight this Valentine’s day, Patrick Swayze was teaching Baby lifts in the lake in Dirty Dancing. I’ve recently re-realized how much I love that movie. One of the best for sure.
Anyways, the book we’re reading in one of my classes has a theme of ‘courtly love’ and in one of the chapters lists off The Rules of Lovecraft. There are 31 rules in total, most in old-tyme English. In honor of this oh so romantic holiday I’m going to give a little recap of these rules for all the modern provencal lovers out there.
Love shouldn’t be held up by anything, even marriage…but you should never have more than two love affairs at a time. To properly love you must be a jealous mess half of the time, and if it’s true love the jealousy will only enhance. Small things drive you crazy and you’re often insatiable when your ‘beloved’ can’t be yours. You turn pale when they walk in the room and can’t eat nor sleep when you can’t have them—you desire only their love and no one else’s and if it’s easy it’s probably wrong.
So there you have it, the chopped up and modernized version of what the old French romantics had to say on the matter of love. But in closing, here’s one more quote from the book that’s kinda beautiful and timeless the way it is.
In Provence, they somehow unconsciously believe that sincere loving polishes and perfects souls, just as they still believe that the eyes are the base of the soul…it seems quite obvious that the only rational occupation for a sane man or woman is to think about love—and to think about it profoundly and continuously, in full tapestry.
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