Exploring the Essence of Love Through the Lens of the Untamed: A Reflective Journey with Mary Earnshaw

Guest Writer: Mary Earnshaw

Untamed? Love?

I’m afraid I’m going to resort to the writerly cliché of definition quite soon, but before I do, I want to introduce you to a fox and a small boy who happens to be a prince. The lonely little prince  (I think I just gave away the source) has landed in the desert after leaving his home on an asteroid and, while looking for people to befriend, encounters a fox. The prince asks the fox to play with him but the fox says that he can’t because he has not been tamed. There follows a conversation which includes this exchange, beginning with the prince asking:

‘What does “tame” mean?’

‘It’s something too readily forgotten,’ said the fox. ‘It means “creating a bond”’

‘Creating a bond?’

‘That’s right. To me you’re just a little boy exactly like a hundred thousand other little boys. I don’t need you, and you don’t need me … But, if you tame me, we will need each other.’

(The French term for ‘to tame,’ as used in the original version of the book, is ‘apprivoiser’)

If I adopt this view of what it is to be tamed, then what is ‘untamed’? I’d argue it’s wild. It’s uncaring. It’s devoid of responsibility. Does that sound like it encompasses love? Wild, uncaring, devoid of any responsibility?

When Alan Parry asked for poems for an anthology about Untamed Love I struggled (and am still struggling) with the concept, because I can’t actually convince myself that love, real love, can be untamed. So I hedged and submitted four tangential options: one featuring the death of Jesus on the cross; one a new father realising his baby was already an independent spirit; one an imaginary female walking into entrapment; and the one Alan chose, a prose poem inspired by the selkie myth, about a woman who is a victim of coercive control. (I suspect one reason Alan chose the latter is because it contains the word ‘fucking’ – I’m not normally an edgy poet –  perhaps it fits better with Broken Spine’s ethos!)

I saw other contributors to Untamed Love mentioning the Brontës and Gothic literature in this context. Wuthering Heights would, I guess, be regarded as a classic of untamed passion. But the relationship of Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw (fine surname!) is not one of love, I would argue, but passionate obsession. And while I believe ‘untamed’ can be applied to lust, to passion, to obsession, I really don’t see how it can be applied to real, honest-to-goodness love.

Someone even mentioned bestiality in the context of untamed love – but that really isn’t love, is it? Lust, certainly, but not love.

I’ve now reached the point where I need to resort to sharing not one, but two definitions of love, taken from my two volume Shorter Oxford English Dictionary:

‘The state of feeling with regard to a person which manifests itself in concern for the person’s welfare, pleasure in his or her presence, and also often desire for his or her approval;’

‘feeling of attachment based on sexual qualities; sexual passion combined with liking and concern for the other.’

Is concern untamed? Is it wild? I suspect that wild cannot be concerned. Wild is selfish, wants just what the wild ‘lover’ wants with no regard to what the supposedly beloved wants.

I could go on, but I’m sure you will have understood my position by now. So I’ll end with a short poem from the sixteenth century that I found in a little booklet of Elizabethan Love Lyrics that belonged to my father. Old-fashioned, but rather to the point, methinks.

My true love hath my heart and I have his,

            By just exchange of one another given;

I hold his dear, and he mine cannot miss,

            There never was a better bargain driven.

              My true love hath my heart and I have his.

His heart in me keeps him and me in one,

            My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides;

He loves my heart, for once it was his own,

            I cherish his, because in me it bides.

              My true love that my heart and I have his.

Sir Philip Sidney, 1589, Arte of English Poesie

Sources:

The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint Exupery, translated by Ros and Chloe Schwartz published by Picador Classic 2015. The original, Le Petit Prince, was published in 1943 by Reynal and Hitchcock, New York.

Elizabethan Love Lyrics, selected by John Hadfield, from the Pocket Poets series published by Edward Hulton, 1958.

Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on historical principles, volume I, A-M, published by Oxford University Press in 2007.