Do you follow the confusing, yet tender tether of Love or do you listen to the inklings of your heart…?

In this episode, Dolli asks me the question: have you, Rob, ever been in love? And from that single question, we get the whole ball rolling on the endless question of what is love? What does it mean? What does it look like? When is love real? How do we love? We look at the philosophy and histories of love from the Ancient Greeks to the Troubadours to the modern approaches of romantic love and online dating. We take deep dives into the psychology of love, from wondering about the narcissism of the Don Juan archetype to the destructive nature of the Siren. Dolli and I also examine our loves, past and present, with Dolli reading from her book, A Guernsey Promise. I finish with a translation of my favourite Rilke poem, Du, im voraus. All of this to the tender music of Borodin’s ‘Notturno’ to inspire us.

Portrait of Shelly, Alfred Clint (after Amelia Curran’s version of 1819)

Thou demandest what is Love? It is that powerful attraction towards all we conceive, or fear, or hope beyond ourselves, when we find within our own thoughts the chasm of an insufficient void, and seek to awaken in all things that are, a community with what we experience within ourselves. If we reason we would be understood; if we imagine we would that the airy children of our brain were born anew within another's; if we feel we would that another's nerves should vibrate to our own, that the beams of their eyes should kindle at once and mix and melt into our own; that lips of motionless ice should not reply to lips quivering and burning with the heart's best blood:--this is Love.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), 'On Love'

You, a little beyond’ (Du im voraus)

You, a little beyond

Beloved, long-lost, never to arrive

I live not knowing the songs you love

Given up, my search for you in the approaching wave of the

nearing moment. Still, these images 

in me  - landscapes ever-broadening with

A portrait of Rilke two years after his death, 1928, Leonid Pasternak -

unsuspecting turns in the path

cities, towers bridges

and the lands with their gods intermingling

forever trembling -

all rise up with this one meaning:

You, my elusive one. 

Ah, you are gardens

I looked upon wistful with such

Hope. An open window, yes,

in a country house – and you, ever pensive

nearly stepped out, as if only for me. Streets I found myself in

you had been there in passing.

And sometimes the windowed mirrors of the merchant shops,

Joyfully spinning from your reflection became startled,

All at once, due to mine. – who knows whether

The same bird sang through us,

Yesterday, alone in the evening.

Translation - (c) - Christijan Robert Broerse