The Amorous Heart
Page 18
Even though the sale of all American greeting cards has declined considerably during the last few years, the valentine is holding its own. Saint Valentine, whose name is now equated with a greeting card, could take some comfort in knowing that he has sweetened the union of countless loving couples.
What does it mean that a special day set aside for love has survived for at least six hundred years? It speaks for the enduring power of romance, even in an age when casual sex is more acceptable than it was in earlier eras. Even if we no longer believe there is only one predestined heart for each of us, we still want to feel our hearts “flutter” at the approach of the loved one. Because we live much longer than people in the past, it may be possible to fall in love several times—as adolescents and young adults, and even in middle and old age. Some of us are lucky enough to find a partner to love for a lifetime. But no matter how many times we fall in and out of love, there is always the hope that this time it will be for real, this time it will last, this time the heart and brain, the body and soul will all be satisfied.
Chapter 20
I U
FIGURE 31. Milton Glaser, I Love New York, 1977. Trademarked logo, New York State Department of Economic Development, New York, New York.
IN 1977 THE HEART ICON BECAME A VERB. THE “I NY” logo was created to boost morale for a city that was in severe crisis. Trash piled up on the streets, the crime rate spiked, and New York City was near bankruptcy. Hired by the city to design an image that would increase tourism, Milton Glaser created the famous logo that has since become both a cliché and a meme (Figure 31).
FIGURE 32. Robert Indiana, LOVE, 1973. Postage stamp, US Postal Service.
Compositionally, if not in content, Glaser’s brainchild broadly resembled Robert Indiana’s LOVE design, which had first appeared publicly in 1964 on a Museum of Modern Art Christmas card and later on a 1973 US postage stamp (Figure 32).
With his “I NY” logo, Glaser joined a tradition of artists who, since the Middle Ages, have portrayed the heart as the preeminent symbol of love. However, he extended its meaning beyond the romantic and the religious to embrace the realm of civic feelings and thereby opened the gateway to countless new uses for the heart icon. Once it had become a verb, could easily connect a person with any other person, place, or thing. Imitations of the original logo have sprung up in so many arenas that the city of New York, which earns millions of dollars from copyright permissions, is hard put to go after all violations.
After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, New Yorkers had tragic reasons for loving their city all the more. Glaser even designed a modified version of his logo saying, “I NY More than Ever,” with a little black spot on the heart to mark the site of Ground Zero.
BOTH MILTON GLASER, BORN IN 1929, AND ROBERT INDIANA, born in 1928, are associated with the pop art movement that engulfed the American scene in the early 1960s. The same can be said, to a somewhat lesser extent, about Jim Dine, born in 1935. Whereas Glaser focused largely on the graphic arts and found a receptive audience for his posters, Indiana and Dine made their mark with paintings of everyday objects—Indiana, with American road signs; Dine, with tools, bathrobes, and especially hearts. A brief search for “Jim Dine hearts” on the Internet will reveal a myriad of fanciful depictions in his oil paintings, watercolors, drawings, prints, collages, and sculptures. Often these hearts are simply colorful and decorative, playful expressions of Dine’s technical virtuosity, but sometimes they are more than that and manage to suggest personal and even metaphysical layers of meaning.
To tell the truth, I was never a big Dine fan until I saw his 2010 paintings called “The Magnets.” These twin paintings, one red against a blue background, the other blue against a red background, burrow deeply into the soul of the heart. They evoke its vital presence in our physical and affective lives and even the mysteries of life itself. Recalling the transcendent paintings of Mark Rothko, “The Magnets” suggest the cosmic spirit that surrounds and sustains every individual heart.
When queried in a 2010 interview about his fixation on the heart, Dine answered, “I use it as a template for all my emotions. It’s a landscape for everything. It’s like Indian classical music—based on something very simple but building to a complicated structure. Within that you can do anything in the world. And that’s how I feel about my hearts.”
For a 2015 retrospective of his work in Los Angeles, when asked again about the heart, he said, “I’ve never wanted to be a bleeding heart or wear it on my sleeve; it just so happens that was the subject matter because that was my condition.” Paradoxically, by using the heart as a mirror of his own “condition,” Dine has offered many of us an unexpected entrance into our own.
AT THE VERY END OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY A NEW graphic form appeared that soon disseminated the heart icon as never before. This time the innovation was Japanese rather than American. In 1999 the Japanese provider NTT DoCoMo released the first emoji made specifically for mobile communication. The original 176 emojis were designed by Shigetaka Kurita and rendered in black and white, before they were painted one of six colors—black, red, orange, lilac, green, and blue. This set is now in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City (Figure 33).
Among the original 176 emojis there were five of the heart, and like all the other emojis, each was made within a grid just twelve pixels wide and twelve pixels long. Of the five heart emojis, one was colored completely red, one included white blank spots to suggest three-dimensional depth, another had jagged white blanks at its center forming the crack in a broken heart, one looked as if it were in flight, and one pictured two small hearts sailing off together.
Even with the limitations of pixel technology, which give the pictograms an archaic quality, most of them are recognizable, though we might be hard put to decipher the original smiley face, with its three pixels for each eye and a rectangle for the mouth. Along with the heart, the smiley face has by now become our most familiar digital icon. When combined with a heart, smiley faces can express various shades of love.
FIGURE 33. NTT DOCOMO. Emoji (original set of 176), 1998–1999. Software and digital image files, Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York. Copyright NTT DOCOMO.
Our online messages are regularly punctuated by heart emoji in multiple colors and combinations. There is the classic red heart for amorous love ; the heart with an arrow recalling Cupid ; two pink hearts, one larger than the other, suggesting love “in the air” ; a heart tied with a ribbon to signal a gift ; a tremulous heart ; and a heart fractured in two by the ache of a traumatic breakup . There are blue hearts, green hearts, purple hearts, yellow hearts, black hearts, and undoubtedly more to come. And even without these, any person with a typewriter or computer can press down on two keys to create this common heart emoticon: 3.
The variety of heart images today is astonishing. Online one can find a plethora of photos culled from the worlds of romance, religion, and nature that are truly breathtaking. A number of these show heart shapes occurring in the wild—in leaves, rock formations, cloud patterns, a heart-shaped pond, a flock of birds that fly in a heart formation, a stag with heart-shaped antlers, the entire island of Galešnjak in Croatia as seen from the sky. Discovering the heart shape in nature has prompted some viewers to experience a kind of new-age pantheism, as expressed poetically by one observer: “Staying aligned with your heart and soul connects you to the universe.” Human love, as symbolized by the heart, radiates outward to embrace the entire natural world—or perhaps the reverse is true, and the heart shape existing in nature led to the creation of the first heart icons and their ultimate association with love. Regardless, today the familiar heart form can inspire the protective concerns many of us feel for our planet and a desire to shield it from further destruction.
OVERALL, BOTH GRAPHICALLY AND VERBALLY THE HEART IS still primarily associated with romantic love. The contemporary version of “Lonely Hearts” ads thrives in the form of online dating sites, with target audi
ences for singles under fifty or over fifty, for Catholics or Jews, for Latinos and blacks, for affluent singles, for singles in your region, for divorced singles, for single parents, for men seeking women, for men seeking men, for women seeking men, for women seeking women, and on and on.
A site founded by Ellen Huerta that specializes in the “brokenhearted” (letsmend.com) set out “to erase the shame and taboo of heartbreak” based not only on her own experience but also on the latest psychological research. Ms. Huerta drew upon studies demonstrating that romantic love stimulates the same part of the brain as addictive drugs, causing similar symptoms of euphoria and dependence. To combat love’s addictive cravings, Huerta now offers an entire program ranging from meditation and tea cleansing to psychological counseling. Yet despite mounting evidence for the brain’s key role in the experience of love, the heart continues to be the metaphor of choice when we talk or write about love. Witness Ms. Huerta’s own online postings that announce, “We’re capturing hearts.” “Heartbreak Cleanse.” “We are your personal trainer for heartbreak.”
In tandem with the amorous heart, the religious heart continues to have currency throughout the world. Most religions claim a special connection between the human heart and the divine. Muslims are still enjoined to come before Allah “with a pure heart.” Buddhists emphasize the compassion of “the wise heart.” Hindus believe in the concept of Paramatman, a sort of universal life force that resides in the hearts of all living beings and even in every atom. Hebrews still look to the Bible, which emphasizes the heart’s moral and spiritual significance, as in Proverb 4:23: “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” Christians have adopted the heart to express one of their most cherished beliefs: that God is love (1 John 4:8).
I would like to believe that God is love. I would like to believe in God. I envy the certainty of some of my friends—Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Bahai—who have faith in a beneficent God. Their loving hearts have irradiated my own and augmented the love I have shared with my parents, children, and grandchildren.
And I have also had the incomparable experiences of falling in love and staying in love—two overlapping but different forms of loving. The first takes you by surprise, pierces you to the core, leaves you elated and vulnerable. Even with greater access to sex outside marriage, Americans of all ages are still receptive to the unique combination of disquiet and delight that distinguishes falling in love from all other feelings.
Staying in love is more demanding. It is not only a feeling but an act of will requiring commitment, adjustment, caring for your partner at least as much as yourself. You need to listen at all times to that person’s heart and make sure it is beating in unison with your own.
The heart may be only a metaphor, but it serves us well, for love itself is impossible to define. Throughout the ages men and women have been trying to put into words the various shades of loving they experience. We attempt to distinguish between fondness, affection, infatuation, attachment, endearment, romance, desire, erotic passion, and “true love.” We fall in love, write love letters, make love, become lovelorn or lovesick, create a love nest, even resemble lovebirds. We hold back from saying “I love you” until we have reason to hope for a similar response. College students seem to know that “hooking up” is not the same thing as love, but many satisfy themselves with the former until they feel they are ready for the latter. Most people love to love, for what else in life can give you the same intense pleasure, the same vitality, the same raison d’être?
And when words fail us, we fall back on signs. We add to our emails, texts, and letters. We send valentines adorned with hearts and cupids to those most dear to us. A scarf with a pattern of hearts makes a great gift for a female relative or friend. We make heart-shaped cookies for children’s parties. When we receive a present embellished with a heart, that form makes it all the more special. Sometimes we even give ourselves gifts bearing the heart shape. Long ago I bought myself a red glass Lalique heart pendant that I still wear frequently.
I am drawn to the metaphoric heart because it represents the best of human nature. To love and care for another is not just the province of poets but of every mortal existence lived to its fullest. Heartfelt love can be experienced in so many different ways, not just between two erotically charged individuals but also between intimate friends, close members of a club or community, doctors and their patients, not to mention blood relatives. When I look back on my eighty-five years I am startled by the realization that I have loved a surprising number of people, each one unique and yet all sharing space in my heart.
The global popularity of the heart symbolizing love offers a small dose of hope in a world scarred by so much hatred. Ideally, it serves as a reminder of the ageless assumption that only love can save us.
Now that the heart icon appears everywhere, there is, of course, the danger of overuse. Can it serve as a commercial logo on low-fat foods and T-shirts and still maintain its sublime aura? Is the scalloped heart losing its punch? For the moment it seems to be very much alive, still beating strongly in endless settings. Photographers find it in nature, and artists keep coming up with new ways to transmit its message. Who will be the next Jean de Grise, Milton Glaser, or Jim Dine? Who will make the heart sing in the tradition of Sappho, Ovid, Walther von der Vogelweide, Dante, Charles d’Orléans, Sir Philip Sidney, and Bellini? Who will give the age-old icon and metaphor a vital transfusion so it continues to speak the silent words enshrined within our hearts?
Acknowledgments
FIRST AND FOREMOST I WISH TO THANK STANFORD UNIVERSITY, which has provided an intellectual home for my husband and me for more than fifty years. Without the resources of Green Library and the new Bowes Art and Architecture Library, my work on this book would have been nearly impossible.
At Stanford I am indebted to English professor John Bender for pointing me in the direction of European emblem books, to French professor Marisa Galvez for her work on medieval songbooks, to English professor emerita Barbara Gelpi for advice on Catholic religious devotions, to history professor Fiona Griffiths for medieval bibliographical suggestions, to Professor Robert Harrison for insights into medieval Italian literature, to professor emeritus Van Harvey of religious studies for strengthening my knowledge of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, and to G. Salim Mohammed, director of the David Rumsey Map Center, for helping me research cordiform maps. I am also grateful to Edith Gelles, senior scholar at the Michelle Clayman Institute for Gender Research, for comments on the American material. Gelles, along with Clayman senior scholar Karen Offen, Professor Barbara Gelpi, and writer and translator Stina Katchadourian offered a combined critique of Chapter 8.
Graduate student Natalie Pellolio from the Stanford Art Department was invaluable in choosing and procuring illustrations.
Author Kim Chernin made important suggestions for Chapter 18, and her partner, author Renate Stendhal, offered ongoing advice and encouragement.
Theresa Donovan Brown, my close friend and coauthor of The Social Sex, nurtured The Amorous Heart from its earliest stage of development.
My literary agent and longtime friend, Sandra Dijkstra, made sure to find the right publisher for The Amorous Heart, and Dan Gerstle, my editor at Basic Books, was a major influence in shaping the book’s content.
My psychiatrist husband, Irvin Yalom, was the first and last reader of the text and an ever-present support. Our photographer son, Reid Yalom, helped produce the photos. With such family members, colleagues, and friends, writing a book about the heart as a symbol of love came naturally.
Photograph by Reid Yalom
Marilyn Yalom is a senior scholar at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University and the author of A History of the Wife and How the French Invented Love, among other books. She lives in Palo Alto, California, with her husband, the psychiatrist and writer Irvin Yalom.
ALSO BY MARILYN YALOM:
The Social Sex,with Theresa Brown
The American Resting Place, with photographs by Reid Yalom
Birth of the Chess Queen
A History of the Wife
A History of the Breast
Blood Sisters
Maternity, Mortality, and the Literature of Madness
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