Love in the Western World (Princeton Paperbacks) [Paperback]

This is a curious, compelling study that is likely to generate as much controversy for its style as for its amalgamation of historical, cultural, literary, operatic, biblical and theological traditions. Rougement traces the "courtly love" tradition from its orgins among 12th century troubadors in southern France through the high Romanticism of 19th century opera to the modern-day consequences of a love that is based on Eros, delusion, and selfishness--a passion that lives for passion, and whose only consummation can be death (for were it to endure, to be exposed to the glaring light of day, it would no longer be romantic passion). Rougement's scholarship is solid, his interpretations provocative, and his proximity to his subject uncomfortably "close" for someone bearing the mantle of cultural critic and scholar. In fact, it's impossible not to feel the conflicted emotions of the author himself. On the one hand, he presents himself as the enemy of "Eros" and proponent of "Agape," as the critic of immature, romantic passion and the defender of mature relationships based on a realistic "dialogue" between two unique, complex individuals. On the other hand, he reveals the heart and soul of an incurable romantic, someone who has been love's thrall, who has been swept up in the dark rapture and sublimely lyrical death wish that is Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde." But far from being a liability, that underlying tension provides the book's argument with an energy, vitality and, yes, "passion" that is lacking in similar studies of this fascinating topic. At times I was suspicious that the author might turn out to be an idealogue, tedious moralist, or Christian "fundamentalist," given the zeal and curiously evangelical flavor of many of his sentences. Not to worry. His intellectual kinship is with Kierkegaard, though he finally falls short of the "leap of faith" and spiritual "marriage" achieved by the melancholy Dane. As proof of the foregoing, I defy any close reader of this text to leave the book more repelled than enticed, entranced, and ultimately entrapped by the Tristan and Isolde myth. Rarely have I read a work in which an author so convincingly argues against himself.

It is a great reading, though not easy, to fully understand this book you need to have a knowledge of european literature concepts (from the courtly love on).
If you don't have such fundamentals however you will only find it a little more difficult but not less interesting.
I'd recommend this book to anyone who want to understand more about not only his way of falling in and feeling Love, but also about his Culture.
Very interesting also the comparisons and discussions about the Eastern culture and influence on the West.
It's a little bit depressing thinking that such books are nowadays sold at such low prices and out-of-print; the subject and discussions have not actually gone out-of-print and probably won't for a couple of centuries ahead.

'Is there something fatal to marriage at the heart of human longing?' This is one of de Rougemont's key questions. And it seems to be based on his sense that the only true passionate love, is adulterous love, the love of the forbidden, the hidden love of the knight for the Lady who belongs to another.

In tracing the 'Myth of Love' in the Western literary tradition through the past seven centuries de Rougemont finds a central theme, that the Love of Passion, the Love of Eros is not the love of Agape, the Love of Christian charity. It is instead that sinful forbidden love for the one who one has no right to.

Here I do not doubt that de Rougemont has isolated a central motif , theme , ' topoi' of Western Literature, and perhaps of Literatures, not Western also. I do not wish to minimize its importance , and as I write this the image of 'Bovary' and 'Anna Karenina' both come as its confirmation.

Yet there also is in my my mind the image of another kind of Love, Biblical love, of Abraham's love for Sarah, of Isaac's for Rebecca, of Jacob's for Rachel. Those loves, at the beginning of one side of the Western Literary tradition seem to me to suggest a kind of passionate intimacy , whose model is sanctity. That is to say against de Rougemont I would want to say that there is a kind of passionate love in marriage , outside the Romantic as he sees it, and this passionate love is the love of Kedushah of holiness. It is too the kind of love which Tolstoy portrays in his parallel- couple to Anna and Vronsky, Kitty and Levin.

In any case the rich suggestiveness of de Rougemont's study and the depth of his thought make it a , at times dense and difficult , but also particularly meaningful work.