Love (and Literature) is in the Air: February Content Update

This month, we focused on the classics to bring you new and improved content for old favorites. In the process, we rediscovered how much we adore chaotic love triangles, murderous affairs, and complicated relationships.

Plus, how better to celebrate the end of February—and all its ooey-gooey romance—than with three classic stories of love gone wrong, weird, and wild?

Love triangles suck, and love quadrangles (is that even a thing?) are probably even worse. If you’ve ever been stuck in an unrequited romance, you know what it’s like to be caught in that particular cycle of unpleasantness.

But, bad as that feels, you can count your lucky stars that you’re not a character in Italo Calvino’s “The Distance of the Moon.” For all its absurdity, this tale of moon cheese and its harvesters swirls into an exquisite, ridiculous love story in which no one wins, and everyone is unhappy.

Narrated by Qwfwq, a crew member of Captain Vhd Vhd’s harvesting ship, the story opens with a description of moon cheese and its harvesting. Because of the Moon’s proximity to Earth, moon cheese harvesters sail out into the ocean. Then, when directly beneath the Moon, they raise a ladder to its surface—simple as that!

Moon cheese is a central aspect of the story. Yet, it soon fades into the background as Qwfwq introduces the romantic misalignments aboard Captain Vhd Vhd’s ship. Brace yourself because it gets complicated…

1. Qwfwq finds himself captivated by Mrs. Vhd Vhd. However,
2. Mrs. Vhd Vhd is in love with The Deaf One. Unfortunately,
3. The Deaf One is enamored with the Moon. Of course,
4. The Moon is a celestial body and, therefore, incapable of returning love.

Anyone else exhausted?

So, if you felt at all left behind this Valentine’s Day, think of Mrs. Vhd Vhd, who was literally left behind. The story ends with her stuck on the Moon, kept eternally company by the celestial body that stole her man—can it get any worse than that?

In 1510, Giovanna d’Aragona, the Duchess of Amalfi (a coastal town nestled in the rocky bluffs of southwestern Italy), fell victim to the rage of her brothers. For her crimes—her years-long romantic dalliance with her steward-turned-husband—they arranged for her murder. A century later, John Webster chronicled her tragic story in his play The Duchess of Malfi. His telling is empathetic, rendering the tale of the doomed Duchess and her lover with tenderness.

To this day, d’Aragona’s fate remains unknown—she, her maid, and her children vanished into thin air. Yet, Webster’s tale brings her tragedy to the fore. Rather than allowing her to pass quietly into nothingness, he grants her the final word. In his telling, there is no ambiguity. The Duchess and her husband are innocent of all but love; her brothers are revealed as the villainous figures they were.

So, we take it back. It turns out it can get worse than being stuck on the Moon.

Calvino’s tale of love gone weird is for those of us sick of the Valentine’s Day dramatics. Webster’s, however, is for those of us in need of an extended cry. The seventeenth-century masterpiece reaches across time, sharing a touching tale of love gone wrong with its author’s characteristic language, in all its entrancing poignancy.

If sappy isn’t for you, then Webster’s classic tragedy just might be.

Speaking of tragedies, Rousseau’s The New Héloïse certainly fits the bill. Star-crossed lovers? Check. French Romanticism at its finest? Check. All of it framed within the ever-conflicting realms of individual happinesses and the external expectations of society? You guessed it: Check.

Subtitled Letters of Two Lovers Who Live in a Small Town at the Foot of the Alps, this epistolary novel unfolds through the dual perspectives of Julie and her tutor-turned-life-long-lover, Saint Preux. Their doomed love affair—forbidden by Julie’s father on the grounds of Saint Preux’s low social standing—spans innumerable years and miles and, in true Romantic fashion, surpasses even death itself.

While the tale is full to bursting with emotion, it bears little in the way of conventional storytelling. Through the obstacles inhibiting the central relationship, Rousseau illuminates the quiet tragedies of the human experience, fraught with yearning, unsatisfied desire, and subtle sorrow.

To be sure, the description of Julie and Saint Preux’s affair is less than virtuous and, in the context of its time, carried a greater shock value than it does today. Yet, even still, the pair’s tender, not-quite-unrequited love lingers, captivating in its central characters’ resigned acceptance of their life-long longing.

All of a sudden, the Moon is beginning to look a little alluring…

With Valentine’s Day having come and gone and the month of love nearing its end, you’ve got just enough time for one more tale of love gone awry. So, which will it be? Moon cheese? Sororicide? Love letters? Let us know down below!