Painfully Inlove

What is it with love and suffering? Why are they always linked and connected and even seem to be synonyms? I guess, like many musicians have said, love is a disease. And happens to be that in The Knight’s Tale, love is the issue, too. I guess there isn’t a way to escape it. I’ve noticed that about 90% of the songs in the world are about love, or finding a love mate, or the pain that love causes, among all the problems that brings falling for someone, that must not be a coincidence. Not only in music, almost every novel, and book I’ve read there is a love story in it. And The Knight’s Tale isn’t the exception.

The story is basic, two men, that are cousins, fall for the same woman, and they end up fighting to death for her. It kinda is cliché in a way, but it is the first time that I know of someone that fights till, literary, death, for love. Poor Arcite ends up without Emelye. There is some bit of hyperbole in The Knight’s Tale, but since it is a poem it is to be expected. For example, from lines 2770 to 2782, Arcite is lamenting, woeing, and saying goodbye to Emelye, hurtfully. “That I have suffered for you, and so long! Alas, the death! Alas, my Emelye!” (Part IV lines 2772-2773) I feel sorry for him. It is physical pain he is suffering for the love he feels, apart from the fact that he is dying. I really hope that doesn’t happen to me, neither the dying part nor the falling in love.

On the other hand, there is the winner story. Lucky Palamon, gets to stay with Emelye after a god’s level fight, marry her and live happily ever after. “For now is Palamon in complete happiness, Living in bliss, in riches, and in health, And Emelye loves him so tenderly,” (Part IV lines 3101-3103) Every man’s dream. This tale shows the two sides of love, the happily ever after, the one we are seeking and will always seek, because of what I’ve said earlier in my previous entry, we are condemned to the pursuit of happiness, and there is the painful, heart breaking, horrible part of love. The Ying and Yang, good and evil. Love is not just hearts and roses.