Collection 4: "Love's Vocabulary" by Diane Ackerman

Love is the great intangible.

Frantic and serene, vigilant and calm, wrung-out and fortified, explosive and sedate—love commands a vast army of moods.

Hoping for victory, limping from the latest skirmish, lovers enter the arena once again.

As lofty as the idea of love can be, no image is too profane to help explain it.

As lofty as the idea of love can be, no image is too profane to help explain it.

What a small word we use for an idea so immense and powerful it has altered the flow of history, calmed monsters, kindled works of art, cheered the forlorn, turned tough guys to mush, consoled the enslaved, driven strong women mad, glorified the humble, fueled national scandals, bankrupted robber barons, and made mincemeat of kings.

How can love’s spaciousness be conveyed in the narrow confines of one syllable?

If we search for the source of the word, we find a history vague and confusing, stretching back to the Sanskrit lubhyati (“he desires”). I’m sure the etymology rambles back much farther than that, to a one-syllable word heavy as a heartbeat.

In fact, in some European and South American countries, even murder is forgivable if it was “a crime of passion.” Love, like truth, is the unassailable defense.

We think of love as a positive force that somehow ennobles the one feeling it.

As with all intoxicants, love comes in many guises and strengths.

It has a mixed bouquet, and may include some piquant ingredients.

Ironically, although we sometimes think of it as the ultimate Oneness, love isn’t monotone or uniform. Like a batik created from many emotional colors, it is a fabric whose pattern and brightness may vary.

Since all we have is one word, we talk about love in increments or unwieldy ratios. “How much do you love me?” a child asks.

Since all we have is one word, we talk about love in increments or unwieldy ratios. “How much do you love me?” a child asks.

“Be precise, be individual, and be descriptive. But don’t use any cliches,” I caution them, “or any curse words.”

Part of the reason for this assignment is that it helps them understand how inhibited we are about love.

Without a supple vocabulary, we can’t even talk or think about it directly.

On the other hand, we have many sharp verbs for the ways in which human beings can hurt one another, dozens of verbs for the subtle gradations of hate.

Our vocabulary of love and lovemaking is so paltry that a poet has to choose among cliches, profanities, or euphemisms.

Our vocabulary of love and lovemaking is so paltry that a poet has to choose among cliches, profanities, or euphemisms.

Mrs. Browning sent her husband a poetic abacus of love, which in a roundabout way expressed the sum of her feelings.

Other lovers have tried to calibrate their love in equally ingenious ways.

People everywhere and everywhen understand the phenomenon of love, just as they understand the appeal of music, finding it deeply meaningful even if they cannot explain exactly what that meaning is, or why they respond viscerally to one composer and not another.

Love also has many fashions, some bizarre and (to our taste) shocking, others more familiar, but all are part of a phantasmagoria we know.