War & Peace &Romantic Love

Romantic Love

Watching the recent BBC adaptation of War and Peace I cried joyfully at the romantic interlude between Lily James, aka Natasha Rostova, and Prince Andrei.

I was subsequently dumbfounded at her capacity to fall in love twice more before the end of the 6 week season!!

Perhaps If I’d actually read the book, all 1200 pages of it, her antics would have seemed more credible.

However, such is the nature of Romantic Love: There is no logic to it.

Falling in love and its many stages:

Idealising the beloved (we are already in trouble)

Longing, yearning (probably the best part)

Merging ( if we are lucky. And often short lived- even for Lily James)

Separating, rifting (can take quite a while)

Drifting apart.

Disappointment, anquish, despair (hopefully short lived)

Remorse, Revenge (hopefully vented only in a rant or a poem!)

The anxiety of it all at every stage!!

And then we do it all over again

And again and again.

Not for the faint-hearted.

And to be fair to Lily 
she didn't have time to go through all these stages once 
never mind three times.....

Here is an early onset stage:

Beginnings

If I speak now

I might unsettle the butterfly

that hovers here about

If you speak

you might

unsettle me

Speech here does not suffice

And neither does silence

first published in The Women's Works, Vol VI