Category: English

Components of Love

Color wheel Eros Storge Philia

Today I will discuss the various types of feelings and emotions involved in what one calls love, I label them “components.” I am to some extent inspired by the famous book The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis, but while he described them as distinct forms of love, I will rather consider that they can mix together in various proportions through any particular love relation. This idea of mixing different forms of love was developed by John Allan Lee in Lovestyles; however he views them as “styles,” which can be not only emotions, arousals and feelings, but also attitudes towards feelings such as commitment, playfulness or manipulation, as well as degrees of compliance with social norms such as marriage and family. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

Posted on by Christian 2

Clair, by Gilbert O’Sullivan

Gilbert O’Sullivan and Clair Mills – from The Daily Mail, 5 February 2011

The Irish singer-songwriter Gilbert O’Sullivan was popular in the early 1970’s. One of his greatest hits has been the song Clair, which ranked top in the UK Singles Chart for two weeks in November 1972. It tells his affectionate love for a little girl aged 3 or 4 whom he babysat, the daughter of his producer-manager Gordon Mills. He expresses his feelings straightforwardly, with a spontaneity that would be difficult to find in our epoch of moral panic about intergenerational relations: “Each time I leave you I feel I could die / Nothing means more to me than hearing you say / ‘I’m going to marry you / Will you marry me, Uncle Ray ?’” (O’Sullivan’s real forename was Raymond.) CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

Posted on by Christian 1

We saw a mermaid, by Graham Ovenden

Today I give a poetic composition by a contemporary British artist. Mostly known as a photographer and painter, Ovenden is also a connoisseur of poetry: for the 7th anniversary post in Pigtails in Paint, he proposed the poem “The Seven Ages of Girlhood” by Ashby-Sterry, which is how I learned about that 19th century poet. Moreover, he also writes some poetry himself, for instance he contributed the poem “A Father to his Seven Year Old Daughter” to that anniversary post. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

Posted on by Christian 0