200 Ideals in the Modern World
imagination is vital for Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell and Neil
Young and every rocker who sings about the way love can open the
door to the expansion of consciousness and make us wiser and
kinder and sadder and stronger. The faith in the Romantic ideal is
not only alive in artists. Everyday people risk (every day) their
fortunes and futures on the proposition (dubious as it might be
to some) that by falling in love with the right person they can be
reborn.
The Romantics are not of course the inventors of love. Before
them come Donne and his beloved, Heloise and Abelard, Antony
and Cleopatra, and even (dare one say it) Adam and Eve. But what
distinguishes the High Romantics is the conviction that love is at
the root of self- transformation— and social and cultural transforma-
tion too. When Soulmates meet and join, both can move to a higher
state of being. Love opens the door to a shift in identity; one is no
longer what one was.
But for the High Romantics love is about more than transforming
the self. For Romantic love puts one in the position to do one’s work
in the world. “Do your work and I shall know you,” says Emerson,
prophet of self- reliance, who has little if any time for the intensities
of erotic life. High Romanticism is not about self- reliance, but the
reliance of one highly sensitive and imaginative person on another—
or, in the case of Whitman, upon many others. When the Romantic
lover joins with the beloved, he garners an energy that can result in
new perceptions and new possibilities in life— which can lead to
productive change for others as well.
The Romantic quest is akin to the philosophic quest, in that it
seeks knowledge. But it seeks knowledge not purchased by the loss
of erotic power. In The Symposium, Socrates’ teacher Diotima,
expressing the Platonic view, insists that sexual love must in time
by sublimated into love for the Beautiful and for the Good. Erotic
love is where the philosophic quest begins, but it should not end