Love.

What is it that constitutes a true love story?

Is it tragedy?

Obstacles?

Passion?

Endurance?

Or any other matter that defines it specifically?

Having just seeked out yet another renowned love story in history, I was shocked to find that there was controversy over whether the story could actually be deemed a 'love' story. Truly, it is awful that someone could critique someone else's life story in such a way. But yet again, it pulls me back to the grand question: What is love?

The story of Abelard et Heloise:

In a letter to Abelard, Heloise wrote: "You know, beloved, as the whole world knows, how much I have lost in you, how at one wretched stroke of fortune that supreme act of flagrant treachery robbed me of my very self in robbing me of you; and how my sorrow for my loss is nothing compared with what I feel for the manner in which I lost you."

This story is one of two passionate lovers joined by their passion for knowledge and letters. Separated by over 20 years in age, they were forced to part by Fulbert, Heloise's uncle. This however, did not end their affair. When they found that Heloise had fallen pregnant to Abelard's child, they stayed at his sister's until they had given birth to her child.

It is said that Abelard then pleaded for Fulbert's forgiveness and his permission for their marriage. After a secret marriage, Heloise went to stay with nuns, the cause of which her uncle misinterpreted as having been cast off by Abelard. Seeking vengeance, Fulbert and his kinsmen sneaked into Abelard's lodgings and had him castrated.

Violently incensed, they laid a plot against me, and one night while I all unsuspecting was asleep in a secret room in my lodgings, they broke in with the help of one of my servants whom they had bribed. There they had vengeance on me with a most cruel and most shameful punishment, such as astounded the whole world; for they cut off those parts of my body with which I had done that which was the cause of their sorrow.

Abelard and Heloise continued living, both devoting themselves to the Church and communicating only via letters, now famous for their passion and heartwrenching words.

Heloise asks for his words, saying: "While I am denied your presence, give me at least through your words--of which you have enough and to spare--some sweet sem­blance of yourself." She ends the letter with: "I beg you, think what you owe me, give ear to my pleas, and I will finish a long letter with a brief ending: farewell, my only love."

To her passionate letters, he responds in part: "If since our conversion from the world to God I have not yet written you any word of comfort or advice, it must not be attributed to indifference on my part but to your own good sense... I did not think you would need these things..."

Is love truly something to be rejoiced? Or is it simply a cause for sadness, sorrow and tragedy...?

"When my self is not with you,

it is nowhere."

Héloise. (c. 1098-1164)

"Tis very much like light,

a thing that everybody knows yet none can tell what ot make of it:

'Tis not money, fortune, joynture, raving, stabbing, hanging,

romancing, flouncing, swearing, ramping,

desiring, fighting, dying,

though all those

have been, are, and still will be

mistaken and miscalled for it."