TRAGIC LOVE

TRAGIC LOVE

“Then, must you speak
Of one that lov’d not wisely but too well.”
‘Othello’
by William Shakespeare

Possibly the most famous fictional example of tragic love was that of the star-crossed teenagers from feuding families in Verona.  Each died by their own hand after a fatal misunderstanding:  Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

Many years ago I wandered round the coast of Brittany looking for relics of Peter Abelard. The true story of Peter Abelard and Eloise happened in medieval times.  Eloise was eighteen and Abelard, who was fifty-one, was employed as her tutor.  He was a philosopher and a priest but they embarked on an illicit love affair, were secretly married and Eloise became pregnant.  Her uncle found out and had Abelard castrated and Eloise dispatched to a nunnery.  For the rest of their lives the only contact was by letters.  In 1817 Abelard’s body was transferred to Pere la Chaise where the lovers lie together at last.

Two later examples of tragic love that have always intrigued me were that of the Fitzgerald’s and the Hughes – possibly because they were all writers.  The Fitzgerald’s: Scott and Zelda were a fabulous couple in the twenties.  They were the epitome of ‘the beautiful people’ and were feted in New York and Europe.  Picasso, Hemingway and Isadora Duncan were intimates and they were adopted by a wealthy couple – the Murphy’s so that life was one long party.  However the marriage was flawed by jealousy on both sides, Scott’s escalating alcoholism and Zelda’s bipolar tendencies which developed into schizophrenia.  Scott’s novels ‘The Beautiful and the Damned’ and ‘Tender is the Night’ earned him fame with Zelda always desperately trying to emulate him with her ‘Save the Last Waltz for Me.’  
Scott was cruelly dismissive of her talent and she ended her life in a sanatorium which tragically caught fire.  Scott went to Hollywood as a screen writer and slowly drank himself to death.  Many years later I was thrilled to meet the brother of a friend of my sister in New York who had been at Princeton with Scott.  He wasn’t very talkative but did say that Scott – even then - burnt the candle at both ends and was ‘overly sentimental’.

The true story of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath has always fascinated me.  It was bound to be an exciting liaison with his fierce talent and hawkish good looks and her tortured genius and fragile beauty.  The first time they met at a party she bit his neck till it bled.
Ted Hughes – a Yorkshire man - was born in the bleak landscape of the Calder Valley.  Four months after he met Sylvia they were married and had a creative partnership.  They had two children but there was a lot of emotional pressure and Ted started an affair with a family friend Assia.  Sylvia found out and was destroyed.  Six years after they were married she gassed herself aged thirty.

I made a pilgrimage to her grave in Heptonstall (and round about the same time visited Abelard’s grave in France) and after attending a lecture on Plath given by a feminist I felt very anti- Hughes but over the years became more understanding.  However just recently I have been reading ‘A Lover of Unreason:  the Life and Tragic Death of Assia Wevill’, by Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev.

As the writers say ‘we reveal how the couple’s tempestuous relationship and his serial infidelity led her to kill herself-and their little daughter.’

After reading this I am vacillating once more.  I cannot subscribe to the maxim that genius entitles you to behave like a monster.  One paragraph had particular resonance for me:-
‘On Saturday morning, March 22, she and Ted bid each other goodbye at Manchester station.  Assia boarded the train to London, and he travelled to Devon.  She seemed to him to be in good spirits.  However, her au pair, Else, had a different impression.’

The next evening Assia took her sleeping daughter into the kitchen, switched on the cooker and lay down to die.
Which is what started me on this ramble of ‘Tragic Love’.  I promise I’ll write something more cheerful next time.