Song of Songs and The Art of Love

Page 281.  This whole passage is basically talking about the first stage of love.  Whenever someone falls in love, they love everything about that person.  They don’t see them as anything but perfect, they think that there could never be anything wrong with them.  “You are wholly beautiful, my love, and without a blemish” (p. 283).  This quote of scripture proves my point entirely of the couple loving everything about each other.  They see each other as perfect because they are still in that “honeymoon” stage.  They imagine their lives together as always being perfect, never fighting, never having any problems with each other.  I think that everyone goes through this at some point in their lives, thinking that everything will always be perfect.  However, everyone always as the realization that this is not really how it is always going to be.  Being in a relationship with someone else takes a lot of hard work and both people have to be willing to continually work at the relationship to make it successful.

Page 294.  This passage is mainly talking about the hard work of love but how it can also be very rewarding.  Love is not an easy task, and Ovid compares love to war.  “Love, like war, is a toss-up.  The defeated can recover, while some you might think invincible collapse; so if you’ve got love written off as an easy option you’d better think twice.  Love calls for guts and initiative” (p. 295).  I really liked this quote because it tells how love really does need more than just the romance part of it.  Love needs “guts and initiative” which is sometimes hard to find in a relationship, especially if it is the couple’s first fight.  You need to take the initiative in the relationship if something the other person is doing or isn’t doing is upsetting you.  Love is a tricky thing, but I think Ovid was right when comparing it to war in some ways.