It turns out that the Roman emperor Claudius II did not like his soldiers to get married because – he said ‘this way they have fewer commitments that tie them to common life and they go to war without ties’… That’s what he said. But the Christian priest, Valentine, considered this to be unfair and therefore disobeyed the monarch’s command; He catechized in favor of Christianity and secretly carried out marriages between couples of young lovers.
He was discovered and because he was disobedient he was taken to court to explain the reason for his disobedience; Valentine explained it to the emperor and gave him reasons in favor of Christianity and the union between couples to preserve the feeling of love and also preserve the human race with the birth of new beings. He almost convinces him…
But nothing: Claudius listened to his advisors who warned him of the danger of Valentine’s intervention in matters of state and war and… well that: on February 14, 270 AD, he was simply sacrificed. After that it seemed that nothing more would happen in Rome…
Until the four hundred’s, Gelasius I, as head of the church in an already Christianized Rome, sought the elimination of the “Lupercal” festivals, where according to tradition dogs and goats were sacrificed to skin them and use the skin to make whips to beat the animals. women, to ensure their fertility.
In contrast, he chose the life of Valentine to represent love. And she set a date: February 14. So the first Valentine’s Day was celebrated on February 14, 494. Already in the 20th century it disappeared from the Catholic calendar.
It is already a global celebration: Valentine’s Day, which is ‘the day of love and friendship’. Not bad. Because both human feelings are essentially loving, they are the expression of love: one passionate and demanding; the altruistic other is essentially filled with brotherhood and solidarity.
The theme of love is inexhaustible, in human beings, in their daily lives, in their day to day, in their minute by minute, love is embodied in each person’s life for better or worse, to be happy or unhappy, to see the day dawn and see the light die each sunset: love is in itself a form of emotion and is a form of vital strength.
For the great Susan Sontag Susan “Nothing is mysterious, no human relationship. Except love” she said. At the end of the day, the feeling of love is mysterious because it is expressed in different ways in each human being because it is like their fingerprint, very personal and unique.
Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare’s drama, has a lot to do with the love of two teenagers separated by family hostility but united by their own unforgettable feeling. And for that love they die. The same author writes another work that has to do with love-madness (like that of Juana la Loca by Felipe el Hermoso)… in this case excess love leads to despair, delirium and the loss of reason, as is jealousy in “Othello”:
To wit: Othello is a married Moorish general in love with Desdemona, who is beautiful. His ensign, Iago, convinces him that she is unfaithful with Cassio, and says this because he wants to ruin his military career. Then Emilia, Iago’s wife, who is Desdemona’s confidant, intervenes… and Blanca, a married and loquacious woman who is pursuing Cassio.
Everything is a tangle of intrigues and lies, of hatred and revenge that culminate in that: tragedy. Jealousy ruined Othello and Desdemona’s love: Othello: “Once it is doubted, the state of the soul is irrevocably fixed.”
And when referring to jealousy as an extreme expression, Sister Juana Inés de la Cruz points out: “Enough of rigor, my good, enough: do not be tormented by tyrannical jealousy anymore, nor by vile suspicion, contrast your restlessness with foolish shadows, with vain indications. “Well, in liquid humor you saw and touched my broken heart in your hands.”
But hey, they are the little things of love. Endless theme, yesterday, today and tomorrow. And that, everyone talks about love the flame, depending on how things went at the fair and their play. But no one escapes the supreme feeling, unless he has a heart of steel and plasticine.
There are works of art in which love is exalted or suffered. In music, in art, in cinema… uhhh, world cinema is full of expressions of love and heartbreak, of madness and disenchantment, but also of happy endings, with a kiss and a bright horizon.
“The dream of love” by Franz Liszt is recurring. “Nothing like a lonely heart” by Tchaikowsky the same. And a lot of Beethoven has to do with his love failures… so many more. In movies that we see on a daily basis there are reasonable ones that talk about extreme love as well as sweet-colored, caramel-flavored love. There is everything, but yes: love is the sauce of almost all cinematic moles.
But what about friendship? Novo says in the introduction to his “Jewels of friendship set in an anthology” – unsurpassed compendium on friendship in history and in our daily lives – says that ‘friendship is that quiet, peaceful and sweet feeling that time does not abate or diminish. Quite the opposite.’
And if. Friendship contains challenges and responsibilities, but above all it contains dedication and willingness to be happy and to accompany us through failures. To walk together even if there is silence, that the company alone is enough to fill the soul with intense color.
Friends know that they are friends, even if they do not say it to each other, between those who share the same life and one, because according to the Greek symbol of friendship, two intertwined YYs discover cordiality, the hand held out strong, the desire to walk together and lift each other up when there are stumbles. Giving one’s life for one’s friend has been a cause for reflection and art.
It is the story of Captain and Dersú Uzalá in the book of the same name written by Vladimir Arseniev. In his work, the author narrates his travels through the Ussuri River basin in the easternmost part of Russia. There he met Dersú Uzalá (ca. 1849-1908), a hunter from the Nanái people, who served as a guide for the expedition group between 1902 and 1907, saving them from dying of hunger and cold on several occasions.
Between them, the Captain and Dersú, a firm, ironclad, endearing friendship is born, full of affection and solidarity. It is the story of Arseniev himself that tells of his meeting with the character-guide of the expedition to lay out the railway in Siberia, their journey together through inhospitable places and, above all, the rescue that the captain makes of Dersú when he is away. about to lose sight.
…But he does not get used to living in the city and returns to the mountains and the frozen forests: he is murdered there, while the captain mourns the irreparable loss of his best friend: his brotherly love.
“If I love you it is because you are, my love, my accomplice and everything, and on the street side by side, we are much more than two…” wrote Mario Benedetti. “And for your sincere face, and your wandering step; and your cry for the world: Because you are a people I love you”…
And what greater example of friendship and brotherly love than between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza? “The Knight of the Sad figure” and his faithful squire. The one that places the maddened character in reality although little by little he accepts that the dreams, illusions, aspirations and love of Don Quixote for his Dulcinea del Toboso are true and nothing more than true.
They go together and fight together. They fight against imaginary knights or against the mockery and humiliation of those who do not understand the sense of justice that they carry in their saddlebags and about Rocinante, the man of La Mancha whose name they do not want to remember. Inseparable Sancho.
In good times and bad they go together, alone, mounted on Rocinante, on Rucio and with a spear at the ready. Sancho goes with his friend not for the promised Barataria Island, it is because he wants to be with his friend and explore the Extremaduran countryside and from there to the north… And much later, no one but him suffers the death of his friend Don Alonso Quijano.
So much about the little things about love on the day of Friendship and Love: that at the end of the day they are the same because there is no love without friendship and there is no friendship if there is no love.
“I cannot avoid your suffering when some sorrow breaks your heart, but I can cry with you and pick up the pieces to put it back together…” Jorge Luis Borges.