This is an excerpt from Love Sick: Love as a Mental Illness, by Frank Tallis. Also see incurable romantics.
In literature, examples of love at first sight abound. When Romeo sees Juliet for the first time, he cries: "O! She doth teach the torches to burn bright ... Did my heart love till now?" When Werther sees Lotte, he declares: "My entire soul was transfixed by her figure, her tone, her manner ... I delighted in her dark eyes ... how my entire soul was drawn to her young lips and fresh, bright cheeks ..." Nearly a hundred years later, the very same impressions are repeated by Turgenev, when the young protagonist of First Love, Vladimir, stumbles across the coquette, Zinaida: "I forgot everything; my eyes devoured the graceful figure, the lovely neck, the beautiful arms, the slightly disheveled fair hair under the white kerchief - and the half closed, perceptive eye, the lashes, the soft cheek beneath them ..."
Love at first sight is so intense, it usually leaves an afterimage image - like the patterns of luminosity that linger following a glance at the sun. Dante - who on seeing the young Beatrice considered her to be the daughter of a Homeric god - described Beatrice's likeness "remaining in me always", and Turgenev's Vladimir was haunted by Zinaida: "The image of the young girl floated before me." These "flashbulb" memories - pictures that seem to have been stamped into the visual cortex - are very similar to those reported by trauma victims. Psychologists believe that such memories are particularly well preserved, remaining very vivid, because they cannot be assimilated with the rest of experience by the brain. Put very simply, the traumatic experience is so overwhelming that the usual procedures that convert experience into memory break down. "Flashbulb" memories cannot be properly integrated into the existing network of ordinary memories. Thus, they exist in an unmodified form, retaining a powerful emotional charge and being much more likely to intrude into awareness. Sometimes, trauma victims report a phenomenon known as re-experiencing. The individual actually relives the trauma in the form of an hallucinatory "flashback". It is interesting that many individuals who report a powerful experience of love at first sight are also prone to hallucinatory visions of their beloved. The first memory of love refuses to settle in the unconscious; it constantly reawakens and invades the real world like a dream.
One of the most remarkable and detailed accounts of love at first sight can be found in the autobiography of the composer Hector Berlioz. On II September 1827, he attended the French premiere of Shakespeare's Hamlet at the Odeon in Paris. The role of Ophelia was played by a young Irish actress, Henrietta Smithson, with whom he fell instantly in love.
The consequences were devastating. Berlioz experienced numerous symptoms that would, under any other circumstances, stances, be taken as evidence of a quite severe mental illness:
... the shock was too great, and it was a long while before I recovered from it. I became possessed by an intense, overpowering powering sense of sadness, that in my then sickly, nervous state produced a mental condition adequately to describe which would take a great physiologist. I could not sleep, I lost my spirits, my favourite studies became distasteful to me, I could not work, and I spent my time wandering aimlessly about Paris and its environs. During that long period of suffering I can only recall four occasions on which I slept, and then it was heavy, death-like sleep produced by complete physical exhaustion. These were one night when I had thrown myself down on some sheaves in a field near Ville-Juif; one day in a meadow in the neighbourhood of Sceaux; once on the snow on the banks of the frozen Seine, near Neuilly; and lastly on a table in the Cafe du Cardinal at the corner of the Boulevard des Italiens and the Rue Richelieu, where I slept for five hours, to the terror of the garcons, who thought I was dead and were afraid to come near me.
Berlioz began to rally after his initial bout of love sickness, and decided to impress Miss Smithson by putting on a concert of his works for full orchestra and choir at the Paris Conservatoire. Although he succeeded in organising the concert (which turned out to be a very substantial undertaking), the event escaped Henrietta's notice - a disappointing (if rather predictable) outcome. Berlioz then began writing to her, but he did not get a single reply. She found Berlioz's letters disturbing, and subsequently gave her maid strict orders to stop receiving them.
Undeterred, the next stage of Berlioz's campaign was to attract Henrietta Smithson's attention by getting his name to appear next to hers on the same play-bill. He learned that she was to perform two acts from Romeo and Juliet at the Opera Comique, so he promptly approached the theatre manager and persuaded him to include one of his overtures in the programme. Whatever Berlioz hoped to gain by executing his cunning plan was wholly negated by his subsequent loss of self-control. When he arrived for an orchestral rehearsal, the troupe of actors were just finishing theirs. Romeo was carrying Smithson - as Juliet - off the stage, and from this rather odd vantage, Henrietta looked directly into Berlioz's eyes. This was, of course, the first time that she had ever seen him. Having already expended so much energy trying to impress her, one would have thought that he would strike a romantic or dignified pose - that he would exploit the moment to the full - but this was not to be. Instead, he emitted a loud cry before dashing out into the street, wildly wringing his hands. He was unable to return for an hour.
Although this episode appears in Berlioz's autobiography, there is some doubt as to whether it really happened. He does not tell us which of his overtures was performed, and no reviews appeared in the usual journals. Subsequently, Berlioz scholars have suggested that these events more probably reflect the content of a dream - or hallucination. If so, then they constitute a remarkable example of how love at first sight can affect the mind - even more remarkable, perhaps, than if the described events were real.
The next day, Smithson was due to leave for Holland. By this time, Berlioz (by accident, so he claimed) had taken lodgings opposite hers on the Rue Richelieu. He had been lying on his bed until three in the afternoon, and finally rose to look out of the window. The moment he chose coincided with Smithson's departure, and he was able to witness the object of his desire getting into a carriage, bound for Amsterdam. His reaction was characteristically overwrought:
No words can describe what I suffered; even Shakespeare has never painted the horrible gnawing at the heart, the sense of utter desolation, the worthlessness of life, the torture of one's throbbing pulses, and the wild confusion of one's mind, the disgust of life, and the impossibility of suicide ... my mind was paralysed as my passion grew. I could only - suffer.
Berlioz was utterly devastated - so much so, that we must remind ourselves that he had still not spoken a single word to Henrietta Smithson. Nor, being French, had he understood stood a single word of her Shakespearian declarations on stage. Berlioz's strong feelings were predicated entirely on her beauty.
For more than two years, Berlioz heard nothing of Henrietta. During that time, he won a musical prize, wrote the Symphonie Fantastique (the movements of which romantically dramatised his infatuation for Smithson), narrowly survived being shipwrecked, met Felix Mendelssohn in Rome, and traveled around Italy - all of which failed to exorcise Smithson's memory. Indeed, on his return to Paris, he was still so obsessed with her that he took a room in her old lodging house. It was there that he learned again of her whereabouts. A servant told him that she was not only back in Paris, but she had only just vacated Berlioz's room - the night before his arrival. Berlioz suspected the operation of strange forces: "... a believer in magnetic influences, secret affinities, and mysterious promptings would certainly find in all this powerful argument in favour of his system".
Subsequently, through a chain of acquaintances, Berlioz managed to ensure Henrietta's presence at a concert of his music, which included the Symphonie Fantastique. Apparently, as the concert progressed, she realised that Berlioz was still passionately in love with her, and her heart melted. She consented to meet him, and within a matter of months they were married. Sadly, Berlioz's expectations of conjugal bliss were never realised. The fantasy did not correspond with reality. In a relatively short space of time, Henrietta and Hector were making each other very unhappy. They argued. Henrietta started to drink heavily. She put on weight. Soon, Berlioz had stopped finding her quite so attractive. He neglected her and, in response, she became jealous - not without good reason. Berlioz became interested in younger women, and in due course he and Henrietta separated. After her death, he was forced to reflect on what he called their "dead love".
Berlioz was not so much a representative of the Romantic movement as the embodiment of romance itself. He lived his life like a romantic hero. Yet, in the end, he had to acknowledge that his passion was essentially shallow, a temporary madness. He lamented the fact that love - supposedly the greatest of all human emotions - could not triumph over even trivial adversities and hardship. In reality, domestic drudgery, financial problems and petty bickering proved too much for love - a deeply depressing thought for a man who had subscribed so wholeheartedly to the romantic ideal.
Yet how could it have been otherwise? Berlioz hardly knew his wife before they were married.
The narrative of the Symphonie Fantastique concerns a young artist who takes opium in a fit of amorous despair and enters a dreamscape, haunted by visions of his beautiful beloved. This was the woman whom Berlioz really fell in love with - a fantasy figure. It was inevitable that the woman he married - the real Henrietta Smithson - would be a disappointment.
Although Berlioz is an extreme example, his fate is shared by many. Under the influence of romantic idealism, intimate relationships have acquired enormous significance. Indeed, it is a basic tenet of romanticism that life cannot be satisfactory without someone special to love. Unfortunately, that special person might not materialise. Thus we are caught between need and reality, and if reality fails to deliver, we are perfectly capable of twisting it into shapes of our own choosing. Ordinary folk are transformed into brave knights and beautiful maidens, and everyday life is transformed as well, becoming like a film or fairy tale. Inevitably, however, reality reasserts itself. The vivid colours fade, and we find ourselves again in a monochrome world of flawed humanity, kitchen sinks, electricity bills and mortgage repayments.
When couples attend marital therapy, it is often the case that one party will ascribe his or her dissatisfaction to some kind of change in the other: "He's not like he was when we were dating"; "She's a different person now." Typically, such assertions are used to legitimise scalding criticism: "You're no fun any more"; "You used to take much better care of yourself"; "You've lost interest in sex" - but more often than not, the recipient of such criticism hasn't really changed at all. Rather, it is the critic's perception of them that has changed. Without love's magic, fairy-tale conventions are reversed, and even the most handsome prince can find himself croaking.
Dante was fortunate. His pseudo-religious visions of Beatrice were never tested against human imperfection. It was Berlioz's misfortune to have a wish come true. Romantic idealism rarely survives such a disaster.
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