Essay about A Modern Romantic’s View on Love - 1216 Words

Love – a simple four letter word shrouded in mystery and many different meanings. Philosophers, poets, and writers have all tried to discern the significance or concept of love for many centuries. Plato, for example, was one such philosopher who in his work the Symposium (which means â€Å"Drinking Party†) wrote about â€Å"Eros† – the term for sexual love in Greek. The Symposium was written approximately around 384 and 379 B.C.E., and follows five elite Athenian men as they pronounce their admiration of Eros while lounging on couches listening to flute girls play in the distance. Each of the men has different backgrounds ranging from tragic poet, comedian, doctor, playboy, and even Socrates himself (Norton). All these characters bring diverse views†¦show more content†¦Aristophanes explains: This, then, is the source of our desire to love each other. Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature. Each of us, then, is a â€Å"matching half† of a human whole, because each was sliced like a flatfish, two out of one, and each of us is always seeking the half that matches him (Norton). This reveals how people today seem to be searching for their â€Å"soul mate† – the one that completes them. Even Aristotle once said: â€Å"Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies† (Brainyquote). But is this a realistic search? Is there really someone out there that â€Å"completes† the other? Tania Vaughn, in her Ministry Blog on Christian Single Mix.com, doesn’t believe so. She writes: There is however, a very real feeling that we often have of something being missing or feeling as though we are incomplete. It is not because of our separation from another half, it is because of our separation from God. We were originally made to live alongside God, to walk with him as Adam and Eve first did in the garden (Christian). In other words, when we find God we are complete because He is the one we’ve been searching for our whole lives. He fills the missing piece in our hearts. In contrast, Lesya Li, Editor in Chief of Having Time.com, reasons: We are already whole. You don’t find the need to seek validation elsewhere soShow MoreRelated Comparing Dover Beach and Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Essays1556 Words   |  7 PagesModernist Perceptions as Exemplified by Dover Beach and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock    Matthew Arnold and T.S. Eliot, in their respective poems, share a sense of alienation, not only from other people but from nature and God as well. Arnold is writing in an age when the place of man in the universe is coming into question, for the first time since the advent of Christianity. He can no longer take the same solace in nature and the love of God that his Romantic predecessors did. While ArnoldRead More Brownings Love Among the Ruins Essay2113 Words   |  9 PagesBrownings Love Among the Ruins Among the failed and fallen works of man, the mundane, indeed profane, outcome of our history’s cyclic vastation, human affection may finally reign. This is the claim of Browning’s Love Among the Ruins, published in his monumental volume Men Women, in 1855. Subtler emotions of kindliness and endearment between two persons only take the foreground of our affairs when the brazen dynamo of the days of kings and their mobs collapse in their mad, millenary mill-raceRead More Romanticism in European Art and Culture Essay2490 Words   |  10 Pagesculture. By looking at modern paintings, we can see the influence Romanticism has had throughout the generations. With Romanticism, artists have been able to take painting to different levels. The paintings are so profound that they allow the viewer to learn, develop, and acknowledge new aspects of life. The beginning of the Romantic era marked the birth of creative activities and aesthetic behaviors. Romanticism allows an artist to be creative, original, and authentic. Romantics view the world as more