Straining at the seams, racing up hills like mad goats, farting in billows of heavenly perfume: all that strong feeling from love makes us alarmingly creative. Consider just a few love declarations from the canon: how far out-of-the-box should you go?
Woo-er |
When? |
Woo-ee |
What got said: |
Did it work? |
King Solomon |
200-100 B.C. |
Either the early Christian church, or one of several concubines. |
"Thy neck is like the tower of David builded for an armoury, whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men."
|
She's also got hair like flocks of racing goats and teeth like just-shorn sheep. If it did work, it was un-pretty. |
Samuel Beckett |
1958 |
Suzanne Descheveaux-Dumesnil |
"Love, that is all I asked, a little love, daily, twice daily, fifty years of twice daily love like a Paris horse-butcher's regular, what normal woman wants affection?" |
They met in a publicity storm after he was stabbed by a pimp – and stayed together fifty-one years. Success like that calls for a juicy horse-steak. |
James Joyce |
1909 |
Nora Barnacle |
"Write the dirty words big…and hold them under your dear little farting bum. Do more if you wish and send the letter then to me, my darling brown-arsed fuckbird." |
She married him – and then he wrote Ulysses , with Nora as Molly Bloom's model. Score one for intensely short-term success. |
Mother Teresa |
1982 |
Um, God. |
"I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world." |
She's on a fast-track to canonization. You do the math. |
Socrates |
469–399 B.C. |
Xanthippe, his wife |
"The hottest love has the coldest end." |
The only person to have beaten Socrates in argument, she once dumped a chamber pot on his head. Hemlock reveals its upside.
|
Andy Warhol |
1975 |
Incredibly hard to ferret out. |
"Fantasy love is much better than reality love. Never doing it is very exciting."
|
Andy used to ditch his dates a lot to dye his eyebrows. He, at least, was thrilled. |
