How Do I Love You
Posted on October 21, 2008 - Filed Under Business | Leave a Comment
Over a century and a half ago, Elizabeth Barrett Browning penned:
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, -- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! -- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
I think what most caught my eye, after I aged a bit and recovered from the exclusively romantic view of love, was the idea of a love that meets the poet's need, a love that includes tears as well as smiles. True love that endures through the good and the bad that life offers.
How does that idea relate to writing about romance/love? A writer should make his characters and their relationship so real, so believable that even the rough places in life can help build and reinforce their love.
Love and romance in stories and books shouldn't show that the relationship is perfect or that it is nothing but conflict. Perfection can become boring. Constant conflict can become boring and tiring. Elizabeth Barrett Browning stated that "I love thee to the level of everyday's most quiet need." Everyday's quiet need speaks to me of the calm of life. Her words "smiles, tears, of all my life" causes me to consider the good and the bad of life. If love in stories is shown to exist and flourish under all conditions of life, then the author has succeeded.
Browning's final line gives hope to love, whether in fiction or in life, "I shall but love thee better after death." What a goal for writers to try to meet in their work, and what a goal for those of us in love to meet in our lives and relationships.
After teaching composition for twenty-five years and becoming an author on http://www.Writing.Com/ a site for Poetry, Vivian Gilbert Zabel produced Hidden Lies and Other Stores, Walking the Earth, and The Base Stealers Club, which can be ordered through most book stores and on http://www.Amazon.com
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