In his Symposium, Plato talks of soul mates. His myth is literal: we were once each attached to another, and split apart as punishment, the purpose of our lives is to reclaim our other halves. Yet this idea of perfect symmetry, this idea of a perfect love waiting somewhere for each and every one of us, is too perfect. It is a mere ideal, and even Plato himself admitted that the ideal can never be achieved, for the moment it becomes a reality, it is merely a copy of what could be. Reality will never be able to suffice the dreamer. As wonderful a thought it is, soul mates exist only in the mind, but it is that belief, that comfort that we are not alone, that there is someone out there for each of us, made only for each of us, that keeps the myth alive. This hopeless pursuit is the essence of romantic love. Misnamed, romantic love is not the substance of faerie tales, of marriages in May, of forever. Romantic love leads only to tragedy, to pain, and in many instances, death in the shadows of love forgotten. Shakespeare in this regard is gravely understood. Romeo and Juliet, considered to be one of the greatest love stories of all times, a tragic dedication to true devotion, fails to encompass much of the pain of romantic love. However, Othello, on the other hand, can be seen as the greatest example of true romantic love.
Romantic love as a concept owes its roots not only to Plato, but to much of the concept of courtly love. Courtly love, born in the age of aristocrats and chivalry, was an escape to many from the constraints of unwanted and staged marriages. It thrived on Plato’s exalted ideal. A man could look but never touch, fixing in his mind the perfect woman, untouchable by anything save his eyes. And while this woman might know, nothing could ever come to pass. It would be traitorous, ruinous, both to them and to the beauty of imagination. And so the man, and often times the woman, burned with his passion, his unquenchable need, and existed in the happiest of discomforts: knowing how wonderful it would be, but never could be. Romantic love was born from this: the moment courtly love crossed the boundary between intangible and tangible. The moment two individuals sacrificed everything to bring the ideal into bringing, to make an unsuccessful copy of it. It can never work. They can never work. It will always be imperfect, and the reasons for hiding it in the first place will always work against it. The public, parents, social taboos, homosexual relationships or interracial relationships or the plethora of combinations that worry old men and women. Romantic love is volatile, emotions caged within long-standing constraints and the limits of the human capacity to feel. Romeo and Juliet loved each other, and while their downfall did begin in the innocence of courtly love, it never truly breaks down. They die completely in love, and while it is tragic, it is not the love that is tragic. It is the circumstance. They kept it secret until the end, and in the end, their love accomplished something. The play ends with their love immortalized, and that is not the nature of romantic love. The nature of romantic love is to end in emptiness.
Othello exhibits this utter disparity. From the beginning, the outcome is questionable. Desdemona’s father dies from the utter shock of his daughter running off with a black man, of destroying his trust in such a hostile manner. Not to mention that the courtship yielded passion but not much else; Desdemona was wooed by Othello’s fights, bloodshed, violence. A wonderful change, a break from the normalcy of living in her father’s household, but truly only the stuff of sex-filled dreams. Yet they get married, on an apparent whim as there seems to be no other reasoning. Yet the passion is evident in Othello’s anger, in his jealousy. For the biggest downfall of both romantic love and courtly love is jealousy; but it is also the truest sign of both. Passion that renders a man incapable of seeing anything beyond his lover, beyond the trust of his lover and the breaking of that trust, is a testament to emotion. How often he calls her a whore, and calls himself a fool. How often he feels betrayed, as if his life is ending with her impurity. How quickly he is consumed by his passion all over again, the same passion but donning a different face. Like all romantic love, the mistake lays in publicizing it, and the moment others find out, they only wish to prevent it. And of course, they will succeed. They will succeed, not only in preventing it, but destroying it. This is why Romeo and Juliet exhibit not the truest form of romantic love. They die in love: Desdemona dies unloved by Othello and Othello dies unloved by himself. They die with each other as their final thoughts, but only as objects of regret, not of devotion. And this pain, this tragedy, is beautiful. It tears at the soul because it is so true. It is an ending fit for everyone, anyone willing to see the truth. Leave Romeo and Juliet for the liars.
