I was moved by Gian’s blog “Crazy in Love” to think about some of the craziest historically significant acts of love I can remember. Three immediately came to mind: The first was Paris kidnapping Helen, and setting off the 10 year carnage of the Trojan war (which he, of course, failed to survive). This act, and of course the beauty of Helen which drove her estranged husband to “launch 1,000 ships” to get her back, has often seemed in movie adaptations and popular conception like the Mount Rushmore of romantic acts. Romeo and Juliet somewhat inadvertent double-suicide, of course, has had such a huge impact on our culture that it can’t be dismissed as mere literature or fiction. Finally, Van Gogh cutting off his ear and sending it to a par amour. Ah… that’s gotta be love.

Then, of course, I got curious. How true are these stories? Or at least, how truly have the two factual actors (Paris and Vincent) been portrayed in my rather common exposure to cultural history through movies, novels and high school textbooks? Did these things really happen? Were they really acts of love?

Well, unsurprisingly, looking up the more academic treatises on these subjects takes a bit of the romance out of the picture. Let’s start with Paris and Helen of Troy. According to Greek historians, Paris didn’t really fall in love with Helen. Instead, he was promised “the most beautiful woman in the world” as a prize by Aphrodite as a bribe for naming her the most beautiful of the three goddesses: Aphrodite, Athena and Hera. Unfortunately, as it turned out, Helen was already married to Menelaus, the King of Sparta. So, was Paris acting out of love, or a sense of entitlement and merely collecting his bounty when he kidnapped Helen?

Slightly less convoluted with Greek gods (although equally fraught with artistic giants and mental illness), Van Gogh’s story is equally tangential when it comes to it’s connection with “love.” Although details are vague, it appears that a probably delusional Van Gogh cut off part of his ear after having a falling-out with the visiting Gaugin. Dr. Dietrich Blumer provided the following account in the American Journal of Psychiatry:

On Christmas Eve 1888, after Gauguin already had announced he would leave, van Gogh suddenly threw a glass of absinthe in Gauguin’s face, then was brought home and put to bed by his companion. A bizarre sequence of events ensued. When Gauguin left their house, van Gogh followed and approached him with an open razor, was repelled, went home, and cut off part of his left earlobe, which he then presented to Rachel, his favorite prostitute. The police were alerted; he was found unconscious at his home and was hospitalized. There he lapsed into an acute psychotic state with agitation, hallucinations, and delusions that required 3 days of solitary confinement. He retained no memory of his attacks on Gauguin, the self-mutilation, or the early part of his stay at the hospital.

His murderous gesture directed against Gauguin was reported by the intended victim in his memoirs. The scandalous event in the house of prostitution and van Gogh’s subsequent hospitalization were recorded in the local press. Some plausible explanations later were offered for the strange happenings. Already psychotic, van Gogh may have carried out the attack on Gauguin driven by hallucinatory command voices and may have cut off part of his own ear in self-punishment for his offensive voices. This psychotic logic was perhaps influenced by van Gogh’s knowledge of the bullfight ritual, in which the matador presents a cut-off ear of the killed bull to a fair lady of his choice.

Well, that may conform to the definition of “crazy”.. but it certainly doesn’t sound like love.

So what are the true landmarks of love? Where are the crazy romantic acts which have such historical importance that they define our culture? Surely we can do better than the eight marriages of Elizabeth Taylor, two with Richard Burton (tragically, the only other example which comes to my mind). Help me out here, people. What are our cultural icons for the big, crazy demonstration of love that our romantic ideals seem to express?

Further Reading:

W. Shakespeare (1595) Romeo and Juliet (http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/s/shakespeare/william/romeo_juliet/)

Aeschylus (Author),Robert Fagles (Translator). The Oresteia: Agamemnon; The Libation Bearers; The Eumenides (Penguin Classics)

D. Blumer (2003). The Illness of Vincent van Gogh. Am Journal of Psychiatry Vol. 159 No. 4