The art of love and passion

When I got into my teens years, I was suddenly overwhelmed by a girl in our school. Every time I looked at her, I felt a deep pain from inside of me. Sometimes it was a sweet pain too. I felt that my duty was to serve her and to protect her from any kind of harm. I wanted to keep her. But I didn’t know how.

I think she saw it in my eyes and she appeared to feel the same for me. I wanted to see her all the time and yet I did not want her to see me gawking at her. When she did not come for her meals, I took note. When she had a new dress, I noticed as well…

We were desperately tied to each other. We didn’t talk but we understood that we had something going on between the two of us.
Then just about the same time, I started to write poetry. In those poems that I composed effortlessly, she is being taken away from me by dark forces and other people and I am running behind them, pleading them to put her down.

I was overwhelmed by the fear of losing her or the chance that somebody would declare their love for her and win her ahead of me. I actually believed that she was mine. She also believed the same of me, I think. When she caught me bantering with any other girl, she appeared to swoon.

I noticed all this and in our silence we kept each other in check. I began to think that this feeling would kill both of us, soon. I wanted this little game of ours to stop but it did not.
Then much later in life I read about the Medieval Italian poet, Dante Alighieri’s powerfully infatuated love or deep attraction to Beatrice. It is said that Dante met Beatrice when they were barely in their teens and Dante fell in love with her just at first sight.

He felt fatally pulled towards Beatrice that he felt tied and pulled to her, maybe just as in my case. They say the poet never got to declare his love for Beatrice. Some books on Dante call it courtly love. Something like imagining that you are in love and you fall in love. I beg to differ.

Dante wrote many poems and sketches about Beatrice. In many of his writings, Beatrice is depicted as semi-divine, watching over Dante constantly and providing spiritual instruction, sometimes harshly. When Beatrice died in 1290, Dante sought refuge in Latin literature. Beatrice appears in Dante’s famous poem The Divine Comedy.

During one or two occasions that they actually met, it is said that Beatrice greeted Dante. Immediately he became very overwhelmed by that brief meeting and he ran away to sit somewhere and think about her.

Dante writes: “At that moment I say truly that the vital spirit, that which lives in the most secret chamber of the heart began to tremble so violently that I felt it fiercely in the least pulsation, and, trembling, it uttered these words: ‘Ecce deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur michi: Behold a god more powerful than I, who, coming, will rule over me.”

After Beatrice’s death, it is said that Dante withdrew into intense study and began composing poems dedicated to her memory. The collection of these poems, along with others he had previously written in his journal in awe of Beatrice, became La Vita Nuova, a prose work interlaced with lyrics.

Passions tend to consume the carrier. The infatuated love becomes too painful to bear. The lovers become trapped together. They cannot seek help because they don’t know how to reach out to other people outside their relationship.

Leopold Senghor’s poem called I Will Pronounce Your Name reminds me about this kind of love defined by wild passions. Senghor’s poem is about one woman, Naett.

Although many people suggest that this poem is presents Senghor’s love for Africa, which was strong and undisputed, I have always sensed that the poem may definitely have been influenced by a terribly beautiful woman that Senghor had set his sights on and had become overwhelmed!

The affection is high and unquestionable and indeed you see that there is a real life woman mirrored in this intense poem. It operates in superlatives. The poem goes:
“I will pronounce your name, Naett,
I will declaim you, Naett!
Naett, your name is mild like cinnamon,
It is the fragrance in which the lemon grove sleeps
Naett, your name is the sugared clarity of blooming coffee trees
And it resembles the savannah,
that blossoms forth under the masculine ardour of the midday sun
Name of dew, fresher than shadows of tamarind,
Fresher even than the short dusk, when the heat of the day is silenced,
Naett, that is the dry tornado, the hard clap of lightning
Naett, coin of gold, shining coal, you my night, my sun!…
I am your hero, and now I have become your sorcerer,
in order to pronounce your names.
Princess of Elissa, banished from Futa on the fateful day.”

Then suddenly I recalled reading somewhere that, most probably, this poem was about Senghor’s first wife, wife, Ginette Ebou, daughter of Felix Ebou, the Martinican black who became Governor-General of French Equatorial Africa just before the Second World War.

The same Leopold Senghor, a household name in African literature co-founded, with Aimé Césaire, the Négritude movement, which promotes distinctly African cultural values and aesthetics, in opposition to the influence of French colonialism and European exploitation.

Literature of forbidden love as is the case with William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet also has these moments of rich pining for love and unforgettable romantic moments and expressions. That is why Romeo and Juliet is often called a tragic love story and is based on real characters from Verona.

Romeo and Juliet are forbidden to love one another, due to an ancient grudge between their families.

Romeo has an unrequited infatuation for a girl named Rosaline, a niece of Lord Capulet’s. Persuaded by Benvolio, Romeo attends the ball at the Capulet house in the hope of meeting Rosaline. But it is not Rosaline who sweeps him off his feet – it is the fair Juliet.

After the ball, in Act 2 scene 2, Romeo sneaks into the Capulet courtyard and overhears Juliet on her balcony vowing her love to him in spite of her family’s hatred for his family.

Not aware that Romeo is actually in the vicinity, Juliet pours out her wish that Romeo was not in the wrong family and forbidden. She is infatuated by him. It is one rare moment in literature when a woman pines for a man: “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?”

In that line and the others that follow after it, Juliet is not asking where Romeo is. She is asking why he has to be Romeo, a Montague. Juliet has already discovered Romeo’s identity by talking to the nurse earlier in the play.

She tries to come to terms with the fact that the man she loves is part of her family’s most hated rival clan.

On Romeo’s part, hiding in the Capulet orchard after the feast, he sees Juliet leaning out of a high window. Though it is late at night, Juliet’s surpassing beauty makes Romeo imagine that she is the sun, transforming the darkness into daylight.

Romeo likewise personifies the moon, calling it “sick and pale with grief” at the fact that Juliet, the sun, is far brighter and more beautiful. Romeo then compares Juliet to the stars, claiming that she eclipses the stars as daylight overpowers a lamp—her eyes alone shine so bright that they will convince the birds to sing at night as if it were day. The words are touching and charmed:

“It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That thou, her maid, art far more fair than she.
Be not her maid since she is envious.
Her vestal livery is but sick and green,
And none but fools do wear it. Cast it off!
It is my lady. Oh, it is my love….
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars
As daylight doth a lamp. Her eye in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright
That birds would sing and think it were not night.
See how she leans her cheek upon her hand.
Oh, that I were a glove upon that hand
That I might touch that cheek!”

In the end, the two lovers die as they take their own lives because each thinks they will not live without the other. They are overwhelmed by the family feud but more violently by the passions that they have for each other.

The outstanding suggestion towards their intimacy adds on to the wild passions and violence that characterise their relationship.

In Act 3 scene 5, Juliet does not want Romeo to go away after spending the night with him. She is overwhelmed by what happens when they are together. She says that the light outside is not from the sun.
Overcomed by love and passions, Romeo responds that he will stay with Juliet, and that he does not care whether the Prince’s men will kill him:

“Let me be ta’en, let me be put to death;
I am content, so thou wilt have it so.2115
I’ll say yon grey is not the morning’s eye,
‘Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia’s brow;
Nor that is not the lark, whose notes do beat
The vaulty heaven so high above our heads:
I have more care to stay than will to go:2120
Come, death, and welcome! Juliet wills it so.
How is’t, my soul? let’s talk; it is not day.”

But, eventually, Romeo sees that day time has come and prepares to flee. The story demonstrates the power of passion and the pull that comes from the physical. Romeo and Juliet’s is love at first sight. As soon as they see each other, they turn away from their initial love targets.

‘Malaika’ is one of the most well known love songs in Africa. It has been replayed and remixed by various bands and musical artists. As a result, its authorship is credited to various song writers.

One of them is Adam Salim of Tanzania, who is said to have composed it in 1945 for his girlfriend Halima Ramadhani Maruwa. It is said that their parents disapproved of their relationship, and Halima was forced by her parents to marry an Asian tajir (wealthy man) instead. Fadhili William of Kenya is also associated with the song since he was the first to record it.

However, the Miriam Makeba version of ‘Malaika’ is my favourite. During her rendition, I find Makeba to be deeply soulful that I start to miss the idea of being in love. She rolls her big eyes and wiggles her body on the spot.

When you listen to the song, ‘Malaika’ , you learn that it is about a love-struck man wanting to marry a woman but he does not have the money for the bride-price. Parts of the song are here, as translated by Rupert Moser:

Malaika, nakupenda Malaika
Angel, I love you angel
Malaika, nakupenda Malaika
Angel, I love you angel
Nami nifanyeje, kijana mwenzio
and I, what should I do, your young friend
Nashindwa na mali sina, we,
I am defeated by the bride price that I don’t have
Ningekuoa Malaika
I would marry you, angel
Nashindwa na mali sina, we,
I am defeated by the bride price that I don’t have
Ningekuoa Malaika
I would marry you, angel
He cries on and on, regardless and as you listen, you feel that he is going to harm himself with his plight:

Pesa zasumbua roho yangu
The money (which I do not have) depresses my soul
Pesa zasumbua roho yangu
the money (which I do not have) depresses my soul
Nami nifanyeje, kijana mwenzio
and I, what should I do, your young friend
Nashindwa na mali sina, we
I am defeated by the bride price that I don’t have
Ningekuoa Malaika
I would marry you, angel
Nashindwa na mali sina, we
I am defeated by the bride price that I don’t have
Ningekuoa Malaika
I would marry you, angel

These few cases in literature and art show that out there, there is sometimes intense passion that springs up at first sight between men and women. In some of these cases, love or infatuation expresses itself as a violent, ecstatic, overpowering force that supersedes all other values, loyalties, and emotions.

Memory Chirere