Love is Everywhere

        After reading Dante’s Inferno, Petrarch and Goethe I have to admit that I am tired of  love. Well love is fine, but it is the tragic love idolization of love from a male perspective that I am tired of. The theme of lost love has been in all three of the past books that we have read. Dante is lead by his lost love, Beatrice. Not much is know about their relationship or discussed in his work of The Inferno, but it is part of the foundation for the story. Petrarch’s work, Selections for the Carzonere is internally based off of his love affair and obsession with Laura. All of his sonnets are based off of his love for her. He expresses the double-edged sword of love, pain and pleasure, joy and sorrow. When Laura dies, his poems reflect his loss of her love and the emptiness he fells.

Goethe portrays almost the same story in his work, Sorrows of the Young Werther. The woman who Werther is infatuated with is named Lotte and is married to a man named Albert. Werther taken his obsession with love to the next step when he kills himself after Lotte denies him. His love is meaningless and empty without her and sees no point in living.

Why are these men, falling in love with women who they cant have, who are married or taken? Why is suicide the answer to love lost? These are the questions that I have asked by self as I have read these works, which have been so influential in literature. Are these men so self absorbed that they cannot see past their own needs or the limitation of life? Or are they so romantic that they would rather die than not be with their one true love? I personal look forward to hearing a female’s perspective on love and relationships. I have learned that denial is a part of life, but it seems as if these men cannot learn this important life lesson.