February, 2000 Monthly Feature : Each month I have been putting together some of my favourites to share with you. Archives
Star-crossed lovers
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[ Eros, who is love, handsomest among all the immortals. who breaks the limb's strength who in all gods, in all human beings and all their shrewd planning. |
Hesiod ]
Eros is a spiritual, cosmic, lofty kind of love, and it is this love that we find in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
Four more than four centuries now, Romeo and Juliet have been symbols of the overwhelming love that comes to true lovers but once in a lifetime. The two young lovers, touched by the hand of a god, were transmuted. The transformation purifies them and compels them to seek the completion that can only be found in union.
As the story unfolds, their overwhelming love for each other draws Romeo and Juliet ever further away from their daily lives and into a new realm of pure and spiritual love. Only the complete interweaving of body and spirit in death satisfies the dedication of a love so guileless and selfless that it must transcend the flesh. This story draws on our deepest emotions. It demands of the reader acknowledgement of both the profound gift of a love so vast, and of the price it extracts from those who receive it. What glorious sadness.
In Tchaikovky's "fantasy-overture", Tchaikovsky evokes Romeo and Juliet's deep but doomed love for each other. The extract here begins with their touching love theme. It is followed by a tender passage played on soft muted strings, before the theme returns on the flutes with a horn solo sounding behind them.
Happy St Valentine's Day.
K.M.G.
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| JULIET: | Then, window, let day in, and let life out. |
| ROMEO: | Farewell, farewell! one kiss, and I'll descend. [He goeth down] |
| JULIET: |
Art thou gone so? love, lord, ay, husband, friend! I must hear from thee every day in the hour, For in a minute there are many days: O, by this count I shall be much in years Ere I again behold my Romeo! |
| ROMEO: |
Farewell! I will omit no opportunity That may convey my greetings, love, to thee. |
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