Passion and Society

The present train of thought started 54 years ago with a red book. Technically it was shoplifting but I thought of it as using the campus bookshop as a lending library. In mitigation of the offence, I returned it stealthily to the original shelf ten days later. That was the hard part, very scary. I’ve never knowingly committed any other crime. Recently I decided to acquire one legally, the same 1962 edition, a clean copy with only a coffee-stain on the edge, could be the same one that I borrowed, though I’m not responsible for the stain.

I’d already started to try and write what it’s about for this post, when serendipity came to my aid in the form of an email from Daffodil UK, from whom I’d bought a pedometer. It starts “Dear Buyer’s full name, Thank you for your recent purchase . . . blah blah . . . If you get a minute in your day to write a short review of your item, then just click the link below . . .”

So I duly wrote a short review, and then Amazon invited me to review other recent purchases, including the Red Book. It’s a strange thing but whenever I write a review for Amazon I do it in a single sitting, without agonizing over the editing as I’ve done here for the last seven years, until this mad idea of posting every day. To see the review, click here or on the image.

Reading it again, I see it was easy to write because done in a sort of simplified academic prose, a genre which generally sets itself a low standard. Here, I try to do a little better.

My new interest in the book has its main focus on an odd mystery, which I think strikes to the very heart of religion. Why did the Cathars hold devoutly to their heresy, when it was so strongly opposed by their Catholic priests, the ordeals and tortures put on them by the Inquisition, and finally the bloody Albigensian Crusade ordered by Pope Innocent III, which burned all their books and slaughtered men, women and children? I answer that they must have got some very powerful kick out of practising that heresy. It was a form of Manichaeism, which declared that the flesh was from Satan and Spirit was from God. Accordingly they upheld an ideal of celibacy, even within marriage, though this was achieved only by the Perfecti, those who had received the Consolamentum. Thus was born the notion of a radical difference between body and soul: two parties forever at odds with one another, because they report to different bosses: one to the Devil and one to God.

The lack of Catharist documents makes it difficult to understand what attracted its adherents, but de Rougemont says we can learn from the Troubadour Poets. They lived in the same part of Europe at the same time. Characteristically, the Troubadours and their wealthy patrons were sympathetic to Catharism, if not actual secret followers.

Out of the mix came the notion of Courtly Love, which stands in high contrast to the sexual mores ruling liberal Western society today. The Wikipedia article Troubadour traces courtly love back to an Arab source:

About 1022, the Muslim Cordoban Ibn Hazm published The Ring of the Dove, a literary work in Arabic devoted to narrating anecdotes of love affairs drawn mainly from his own contemporary society of Spain/al-Andalus; the plight of unrequited love, secret love, and love against many obstacles are recurring themes . . .

But isn’t this still the theme of a myriad films, novels & song lyrics? We find more satisfaction in our hero or heroine’s death, than in “So they lived happily ever after”.

Me, I’m equally interested in religion, sex, why people behave as they do, why some constrain themselves out of choice. And this post, third in a row of dailies, takes a step towards a goal promised before of writing a sequel to “Living in a Body”.

To be continued . . .