Favourite Poems - Horatius at the Bridge - Macauley

LARS PORSENA of Clusium,
By the Nine Gods he swore
That the great house of Tarquin
Should suffer wrong no more.
By the Nine Gods he swore it,	5
And named a trysting-day,
And bade his messengers ride forth,
East and west and south and north,
To summon his array.
East and west and south and north	10
The messengers ride fast,
And tower and town and cottage
Have heard the trumpet’s blast.
Shame on the false Etruscan
Who lingers in his home,	15
When Porsena of Clusium
Is on the march for Rome!
The horsemen and the footmen
Are pouring in amain
From many a stately market-place,	20
From many a fruitful plain,
From many a lonely hamlet,
Which, hid by beech and pine,
Like an eagle’s nest hangs on the crest
Of purple Apennine:	25
From lordly Volaterræ,
Where scowls the far-famed hold
Piled by the hands of giants
For godlike kings of old;
From sea-girt Populonia,	30
Whose sentinels descry
Sardinia’s snowy mountain-tops
Fringing the southern sky;
From the proud mart of Pisæ,
Queen of the western waves,	35
Where ride Massilia’s triremes,
Heavy with fair-haired slaves;
From where sweet Clanis wanders
Through corn and vines and flowers,
From where Cortona lifts to heaven	40
Her diadem of towers.
Tall are the oaks whose acorns
Drop in dark Auser’s rill;
Fat are the stags that champ the boughs
Of the Ciminian hill;	45
Beyond all streams, Clitumnus
Is to the herdsman dear;
Best of all pools the fowler loves
The great Volsinian mere.
But now no stroke of woodman	50
Is heard by Auser’s rill;
No hunter tracks the stag’s green path
Up the Ciminian hill;
Unwatched along Clitumnus
Grazes the milk-white steer;	55
Unharmed the water-fowl may dip
In the Volsinian mere.
The harvests of Arretium,
This year, old men shall reap;
This year, young boys in Umbro	60
Shall plunge the struggling sheep;
And in the vats of Luna,
This year, the must shall foam
Round the white feet of laughing girls
Whose sires have marched to Rome.	65
There be thirty chosen prophets,
The wisest of the land,
Who always by Lars Porsena
Both morn and evening stand.
Evening and morn the Thirty	70
Have turned the verses o’er,
Traced from the right on linen white
By mighty seers of yore;
And with one voice the Thirty
Have their glad answer given:	75
“Go forth, go forth, Lars Porsena,—
Go forth, beloved of Heaven!
Go, and return in glory
To Clusium’s royal dome,
And hang round Nurscia’s altars	80
The golden shields of Rome!”
And now hath every city
Sent up her tale of men;
The foot are fourscore thousand,
The horse are thousands ten.	85
Before the gates of Sutrium
Is met the great array;
A proud man was Lars Porsena
Upon the trysting-day.
For all the Etruscan armies	90
Were ranged beneath his eye,
And many a banished Roman,
And many a stout ally;
And with a mighty following,
To join the muster, came	95
The Tusculan Mamilius,
Prince of the Latian name.
But by the yellow Tiber
Was tumult and affright;
From all the spacious champaign	100
To Rome men took their flight.
A mile around the city
The throng stopped up the ways;
A fearful sight it was to see
Through two long nights and days.	105
For aged folk on crutches,
And women great with child,
And mothers, sobbing over babes
That clung to them and smiled,
And sick men borne in litters	110
High on the necks of slaves,
And troops of sunburned husbandmen
With reaping-hooks and staves,
And droves of mules and asses
Laden with skins of wine,	115
And endless flocks of goats and sheep,
And endless herds of kine,
And endless trains of wagons,
That creaked beneath the weight
Of corn-sacks and of household goods,	120
Choked every roaring gate.
Now, from the rock Tarpeian,
Could the wan burghers spy
The line of blazing villages
Red in the midnight sky.	125
The Fathers of the City,
They sat all night and day,
For every hour some horseman came
With tidings of dismay.
To eastward and to westward	130
Have spread the Tuscan bands,
Nor house, nor fence, nor dovecote
In Crustumerium stands.
Verbenna down to Ostia
Hath wasted all the plain;	135
Astur hath stormed Janiculum,
And the stout guards are slain.
I wis, in all the Senate
There was no heart so bold
But sore it ached, and fast it beat,	140
When that ill news was told.
Forthwith up rose the Consul,
Up rose the Fathers all;
In haste they girded up their gowns,
And hied them to the wall.	145
They held a council, standing
Before the River-gate;
Short time was there, ye well may guess,
For musing or debate.
Out spake the Consul roundly:	150
“The bridge must straight go down;
For, since Janiculum is lost,
Naught else can save the town.”
Just then a scout came flying,
All wild with haste and fear:	155
“To arms! to arms! Sir Consul,—
Lars Porsena is here.”
On the low hills to westward
The Consul fixed his eye,
And saw the swarthy storm of dust	160
Rise fast along the sky.
And nearer fast and nearer
Doth the red whirlwind come;
And louder still, and still more loud,
From underneath that rolling cloud,	165
Is heard the trumpets’ war-note proud,
The trampling and the hum.
And plainly and more plainly
Now through the gloom appears,
Far to left and far to right,	170
In broken gleams of dark-blue light,
The long array of helmets bright,
The long array of spears.
And plainly and more plainly,
Above that glimmering line,	175
Now might ye see the banners
Of twelve fair cities shine;
But the banner of proud Clusium
Was highest of them all,—
The terror of the Umbrian,	180
The terror of the Gaul.
And plainly and more plainly
Now might the burghers know,
By port and vest, by horse and crest,
Each warlike Lucumo:	185
There Cilnius of Arretium
On his fleet roan was seen;
And Astur of the fourfold shield,
Girt with the brand none else may wield;
Tolumnius with the belt of gold,	190
And dark Verbenna from the hold
By reedy Thrasymene.
Fast by the royal standard,
O’erlooking all the war,
Lars Porsena of Clusium	195
Sat in his ivory car.
By the right wheel rode Mamilius,
Prince of the Latian name;
And by the left false Sextus,
That wrought the deed of shame.	200
But when the face of Sextus
Was seen among the foes,
A yell that rent the firmament
From all the town arose.
On the house-tops was no woman	205
But spat towards him and hissed,
No child but screamed out curses,
And shook its little fist.
But the Consul’s brow was sad,
And the Consul’s speech was low,	210
And darkly looked he at the wall,
And darkly at the foe;
“Their van will be upon us
Before the bridge goes down;
And if they once may win the bridge,	215
What hope to save the town?”
Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the gate:
“To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.	220
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds
For the ashes of his fathers
And the temples of his gods,
“And for the tender mother	225
Who dandled him to rest,
And for the wife who nurses
His baby at her breast,
And for the holy maidens
Who feed the eternal flame,—	230
To save them from false Sextus
That wrought the deed of shame?
“Hew down the bridge, Sir Consul,
With all the speed ye may;
I, with two more to help me,	235
Will hold the foe in play.
In yon strait path a thousand
May well be stopped by three:
Now who will stand on either hand,
And keep the bridge with me?”	240
Then out spake Spurius Lartius,—
A Ramnian proud was he:
“Lo, I will stand at thy right hand,
And keep the bridge with thee.”
And out spake strong Herminius,—	245
Of Titian blood was he:
“I will abide on thy left side,
And keep the bridge with thee.”
“Horatius,” quoth the Consul,
“As thou sayest so let it be,”	250
And straight against that great array
Went forth the dauntless three.
For Romans in Rome’s quarrel
Spared neither land nor gold,
Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life,	255
In the brave days of old.
Then none was for a party—
Then all were for the state;
Then the great man helped the poor,
And the poor man loved the great;	260
Then lands were fairly portioned!
Then spoils were fairly sold:
The Romans were like brothers
In the brave days of old.
Now Roman is to Roman	265
More hateful than a foe,
And the tribunes beard the high,
And the fathers grind the low.
As we wax hot in faction,
In battle we wax cold;	270
Wherefore men fight not as they fought
In the brave days of old.
Now while the three were tightening
Their harness on their backs,
The Consul was the foremost man	275
To take in hand an axe;
And fathers, mixed with commons,
Seized hatchet, bar, and crow,
And smote upon the planks above,
And loosed the props below.	280
Meanwhile the Tuscan army,
Right glorious to behold,
Came flashing back the noonday light,
Rank behind rank, like surges bright
Of a broad sea of gold.	285
Four hundred trumpets sounded
A peal of warlike glee,
As that great host with measured tread,
And spears advanced, and ensigns spread,
Rolled slowly toward the bridge’s head,	290
Where stood the dauntless three.
The three stood calm and silent,
And looked upon the foes,
And a great shout of laughter
From all the vanguard rose;	295
And forth three chiefs came spurring
Before that deep array;
To earth they sprang, their swords they drew,
And lifted high their shields, and flew
To win the narrow way.	300
Aunus, from green Tifernum,
Lord of the Hill of Vines;
And Seius, whose eight hundred slaves
Sicken in Ilva’s mines;
And Picus, long to Clusium	305
Vassal in peace and war,
Who led to fight his Umbrian powers
From that gray crag where, girt with towers,
The fortress of Nequinum lowers
O’er the pale waves of Nar.	310
Stout Lartius hurled down Aunus
Into the stream beneath;
Herminius struck at Seius,
And clove him to the teeth;
At Picus brave Horatius	315
Darted one fiery thrust,
And the proud Umbrian’s gilded arms
Clashed in the bloody dust.
Then Ocnus of Falerii
Rushed on the Roman three;	320
And Lausulus of Urgo,
The rover of the sea;
And Aruns of Volsinium,
Who slew the great wild boar,—
The great wild boar that had his den	325
Amidst the reeds of Cosa’s fen,
And wasted fields, and slaughtered men,
Along Albinia’s shore.
Herminius smote down Aruns;
Lartius laid Ocnus low;	330
Right to the heart of Lausulus
Horatius sent a blow:
“Lie there,” he cried, “fell pirate!
No more, aghast and pale,
From Ostia’s walls the crowd shall mark	335
The track of thy destroying bark;
No more Campania’s hinds shall fly
To woods and caverns, when they spy
Thy thrice-accursèd sail!”
But now no sound of laughter	340
Was heard among the foes;
A wild and wrathful clamor
From all the vanguard rose.
Six spears’ length from the entrance,
Halted that mighty mass,	345
And for a space no man came forth
To win the narrow pass.
But, hark! the cry is Astur:
And lo! the ranks divide;
And the great lord of Luna	350
Comes with his stately stride.
Upon his ample shoulders
Clangs loud the fourfold shield,
And in his hand he shakes the brand
Which none but he can wield.	355
He smiled on those bold Romans,
A smile serene and high;
He eyed the flinching Tuscans,
And scorn was in his eye.
Quoth he, “The she-wolf’s litter	360
Stand savagely at bay;
But will ye dare to follow,
If Astur clears the way?”
Then, whirling up his broadsword
With both hands to the height,	365
He rushed against Horatius,
And smote with all his might.
With shield and blade Horatius
Right deftly turned the blow.
The blow, though turned, came yet too nigh;	370
It missed his helm, but gashed his thigh.
The Tuscans raised a joyful cry
To see the red blood flow.
He reeled, and on Herminius
He leaned one breathing-space,	375
Then, like a wild-cat mad with wounds,
Sprang right at Astur’s face.
Through teeth and skull and helmet
So fierce a thrust he sped,
The good sword stood a handbreadth out	380
Behind the Tuscan’s head.
And the great lord of Luna
Fell at that deadly stroke,
As falls on Mount Avernus
A thunder-smitten oak.	385
Far o’er the crashing forest
The giant arms lie spread;
And the pale augurs, muttering low
Gaze on the blasted head.
On Astur’s throat Horatius	390
Right firmly pressed his heel,
And thrice and four times tugged amain,
Ere he wrenched out the steel.
And “See,” he cried, “the welcome,
Fair guests, that waits you here!	395
What noble Lucumo comes next
To taste our Roman cheer?”
But at his haughty challenge
A sullen murmur ran,
Mingled with wrath and shame and dread,	400
Along that glittering van.
There lacked not men of prowess,
Nor men of lordly race,
For all Etruria’s noblest
Were round the fatal place.	405
But all Etruria’s noblest
Felt their hearts sink to see
On the earth the bloody corpses,
In the path the dauntless three;
And from the ghastly entrance,	410
Where those bold Romans stood,
All shrank,—like boys who, unaware,
Ranging the woods to start a hare,
Come to the mouth of the dark lair
Where, growling low, a fierce old bear	415
Lies amidst bones and blood.
Was none who would be foremost
To lead such dire attack;
But those behind cried “Forward!”
And those before cried “Back!”	420
And backward now and forward
Wavers the deep array;
And on the tossing sea of steel
To and fro the standards reel,
And the victorious trumpet-peal	425
Dies fitfully away.
Yet one man for one moment
Strode out before the crowd;
Well known was he to all the three,
And they gave him greeting loud:	430
“Now welcome, welcome, Sextus!
Now welcome to thy home!
Why dost thou stay, and turn away?
Here lies the road to Rome.”
Thrice looked he at the city;	435
Thrice looked he at the dead:
And thrice came on in fury,
And thrice turned back in dread;
And, white with fear and hatred,
Scowled at the narrow way	440
Where, wallowing in a pool of blood,
The bravest Tuscans lay.
But meanwhile axe and lever
Have manfully been plied:
And now the bridge hangs tottering	445
Above the boiling tide.
“Come back, come back, Horatius!”
Loud cried the Fathers all,—
“Back, Lartius! back, Herminius!
Back, ere the ruin fall!”	450
Back darted Spurius Lartius,—
Herminius darted back;
And, as they passed, beneath their feet
They felt the timbers crack.
But when they turned their faces,	455
And on the farther shore
Saw brave Horatius stand alone,
They would have crossed once more;
But with a crash like thunder
Fell every loosened beam,	460
And, like a dam, the mighty wreck
Lay right athwart the stream;
And a long shout of triumph
Rose from the walls of Rome,
As to the highest turret-tops	465
Was splashed the yellow foam.
And like a horse unbroken,
When first he feels the rein,
The furious river struggled hard,
And tossed his tawny mane,	470
And burst the curb, and bounded,
Rejoicing to be free;
And whirling down, in fierce career,
Battlement and plank and pier,
Rushed headlong to the sea.	475
Alone stood brave Horatius,
But constant still in mind,—
Thrice thirty thousand foes before,
And the broad flood behind.
“Down with him!” cried false Sextus,	480
With a smile on his pale face;
“Now yield thee,” cried Lars Porsena,
“Now yield thee to our grace!”
Round turned he, as not deigning
Those craven ranks to see;	485
Naught spake he to Lars Porsena,
To Sextus naught spake he;
But he saw on Palatinus
The white porch of his home;
And he spake to the noble river	490
That rolls by the towers of Rome:
“O Tiber! Father Tiber!
To whom the Romans pray,
A Roman’s life, a Roman’s arms,
Take thou in charge this day!”	495
So he spake, and, speaking, sheathed
The good sword by his side,
And, with his harness on his back,
Plunged headlong in the tide.
No sound of joy or sorrow	500
Was heard from either bank,
But friends and foes in dumb surprise,
With parted lips and straining eyes,
Stood gazing where he sank;
And when above the surges	505
They saw his crest appear,
All Rome sent forth a rapturous cry,
And even the ranks of Tuscany
Could scarce forbear to cheer.
But fiercely ran the current,	510
Swollen high by months of rain;
And fast his blood was flowing,
And he was sore in pain,
And heavy with his armor,
And spent with changing blows;	515
And oft they thought him sinking,
But still again he rose.
Never, I ween, did swimmer.
In such an evil case,
Struggle through such a raging flood	520
Safe to the landing-place;
But his limbs were borne up bravely
By the brave heart within,
And our good Father Tiber
Bare bravely up his chin.	525
“Curse on him!” quoth false Sextus,—
“Will not the villain drown?
But for this stay, ere close of day
We should have sacked the town!”
“Heaven help him!” quoth Lars Porsena,	530
“And bring him safe to shore;
For such a gallant feat of arms
Was never seen before.”
And now he feels the bottom;
Now on dry earth he stands;	535
Now round him throng the Fathers
To press his gory hands;
And now, with shouts and clapping,
And noise of weeping loud,
He enters through the River-gate,	540
Borne by the joyous crowd.
They gave him of the corn-land,
That was of public right,
As much as two strong oxen
Could plough from morn till night;	545
And they made a molten image,
And set it up on high,—
And there it stands unto this day
To witness if I lie.
It stands in the Comitium,	550
Plain for all folk to see,—
Horatius in his harness,
Halting upon one knee;
And underneath is written,
In letters all of gold,	555
How valiantly he kept the bridge
In the brave days of old.
And still his name sounds stirring
Unto the men of Rome,
As the trumpet-blast that cries to them	560
To charge the Volscian home;
And wives still pray to Juno
For boys with hearts as bold
As his who kept the bridge so well
In the brave days of old.	565
And in the nights of winter,
When the cold north-winds blow,
And the long howling of the wolves
Is heard amidst the snow;
When round the lonely cottage	570
Roars loud the tempest’s din,
And the good logs of Algidus
Roar louder yet within;
When the oldest cask is opened,
And the largest lamp is lit;	575
When the chestnuts glow in the embers,
And the kid turns on the spit;
When young and old in circle
Around the firebrands close;
When the girls are weaving baskets,	580
And the lads are shaping bows;
When the goodman mends his armor,
And trims his helmet’s plume;
When the goodwife’s shuttle merrily
Goes flashing through the loom;	585
With weeping and with laughter
Still is the story told,
How well Horatius kept the bridge
In the brave days of old.
Thmas Babington, Lord Macauley

Favourite Poems - Heraclitus

They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead,
They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed.
I wept, as I remembered, how often you and I
Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.

And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest,
A handful of grey ashes, long long ago at rest,
Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake;
For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take. 

William Johnson Cory

See also A 9th Centrury Chinese poem on Old Age

In Praise of Fluting

I don't know when mugs became the drinking cup of choice for hot drinks, but I much prefer a cup - and a fluted one at that.

It's true that a thick mug retains heat better than a porcelain cup, so I can understand those who come downstairs in the morning to make a mug of tea (first warming the mug) before taking it back to drink in bed, but even then a fluted mug is better than a straight-sided one.  The reason is that it is difficult to sip out of a straight-sided cup and so one's first few sips of the hot liquid are liable to result in the tea escaping down the sides of one's mouth.  This is because when sipping, the point at which the mouth meets the lip of a straight-sided the cup is narrow and does not allow a seal to be made with the rim of the cup.  On the other hand, the architecture of a fluted cup or mug allows the mouth to create a wide seal with the rim, making sipping the hot drink comparatively drip-free.

This reminds me somewhat of this lovely poem

Grave Threat to Stockbridge from Developers 2018

Four years after a plan for a completely inappropriate development (46 houses on the Meon hillside overlooking the High St) was rejected (see post here), another development is threatening the town, this time at its heart. McCarthy & Stone, a controversial* builder of retirement homes, and  developer, Frobisher, have proposed an enormous development of 60 dwellings and an 120 space car park on land behind Thyme & Tides, potentially adding at least 120 people (with their cars**) to the town of fewer than 600 residents with an already overstretched surgery.

The site of the development is Copperknobs, a house and farmyard adjoining countyside unchanged for centuries. The development would include building outside the Settlement Boundary, on designated countryside and on a field that now soaks up much excess water. No need has been established - or even argued - for this development, beyond the profit of the developers themselves. 

The area for the propsed development is above the bkue line but with the prospect of further developmentt to the Marshcourt River below. Copperknobs is the large building on the top left of the field. To the left of tbe area are the 'stew pens' used by the Houghton Club for breeding trout. 

The view from Copperknobs looking south towards the Marsh. Under the proposal, this would be built on.

A plan of the proposed development of 60 dwellings and a car park. 

Copperknobs is certainly ripe for development and no one would be likely to object to a sensible amout of new housing on the old farmyard providing it is within the Settlement Boundary and has adequate parking for all potential residents.

This is an aerial photograph showing the size of the existing Copperknobs and its land within the settlement boundary, retaining the designated countyside and views. Under such permitted development there could be space for a much smaller public car park using the existing road and reducing a potential serious traffic problem at the junction with the High St.

*For a Parliamentary discussion on the abuses of ground rents see Hansard for 29th December 2016
**Hampshire County Council allow two cars per household for planning purposes

Favourite Writings - Love Undetectable by Andrew Sullivan

I have previously posted a beautiful piece by David Whyte on friendship and wrote then: I value friendship more highly than love, of which it is a part, perhaps the greatest part. It is free of the tiresome jealousies and overheated humours of love and does not need constant validation.  I have now discovered, thank to Maria Popova's Brain Pickings, Andrew Sullivan's wonderful writing on the subject in Love Undetectable. .

For me, friendship has always been the most accessible of relationships — certainly far more so than romantic love. Friendship, I learned, provided a buffer in the interplay of emotions, a distance that made the risk of intimacy bearable, a space that allowed the other person to remain safely another person.

Sullivan argues that our world has failed to give friendship its due as “a critical social institution, as an ennobling moral experience, as an immensely delicate but essential interplay of the virtues required to sustain a fully realized human being.” And yet, he concedes, the cultural silence around friendship also reflects an inherent truth about the nature of the bond itself:

You can tell how strong the friendship is by the silence that envelops it. Lovers and spouses may talk frequently about their “relationship,” but friends tend to let their regard for one another speak for itself or let others point it out.

Reflecting on the tragedy of loss that prompted his meditation, he adds:

A part of this reticence is reflected in the moments when friendship is appreciated. If friendship rarely articulates itself when it is in full flood, it is often only given its due when it is over, especially if its end is sudden or caused by death. Suddenly, it seems, we have lost something so valuable and profound that we have to make up for our previous neglect and acknowledge it in ways that would have seemed inappropriate before… It is as if death and friendship enjoy a particularly close relationship, as if it is only when pressed to the extreme of experience that this least extreme of relationships finds its voice, or when we are forced to consider what really matters, that we begin to consider what friendship is.

In that consideration, Sullivan turns to Aristotle, who is perhaps philosophy’s greatest patron saint of friendship. In Aristotle’s day, the Ancient Greek notion of phila cast a wide net to capture the many dimensions of friendship. Sullivan writes:

In Aristotle’s hermetically sane universe, the instinct for human connection is so common and so self-evidently good that there is little compunction to rule certain friendships out of the arc of human friendliness. There is merely an attempt to understand and categorize each instance of phila and to place each instance of the instinct in its natural and ennobling place. Everything is true, Aristotle seems to say, so long as it is never taken for anything more than it is. And so friendship belongs to the nod of daily passengers on a commuter train, to the regular business client, and to the ornery neighbor. It encompasses the social climber and the social butterfly, the childhood crush and the lifelong soulmate. It comprises the relationship between a boss and his employees, a husband and his wife, a one-night stand and a longtime philanderer, a public official and his dubious contributor.

Friendship, for Aristotle, seems to be the cornerstone of human society and flourishing, an integral part of happiness, and bound up inextricably with the notion of virtue.

For Aristotle, the defining feature of friendship was the trifecta of reciprocity, equality, and the physical sharing of life. Sullivan tackles the first element:

Unlike a variety of other relationships, friendship requires an acknowledgement by both parties that they are involved or it fails to exist. One can admire someone who is completely unaware of our admiration, and the integrity of that admiration is not lost; one may even employ someone without knowing who it is specifically one employs; one may be related to a great-aunt whom one has never met (and may fail ever to meet). And one may, of course, fall in love with someone without the beloved being aware of it or reciprocating the love at all. And in all these cases, the relationships are still what they are, whatever the attitude of the other person in them: they are relationships of admiration, business, family, or love. But friendship is different. Friendship uniquely requires mutual self-knowledge and will. It takes two competent, willing people to be friends. You cannot impose a friendship on someone, although you can impose a crush, a lawsuit, or an obsession. If friendship is not reciprocated, it simply ceases to exist or, rather, it never existed in the first place.

Perhaps more challenging to grasp is the condition of sharing in one another’s physical life. Why should two friends be required to have regular physical and verbal contact? Sullivan writes:

It has been said that a person’s religion is best defined not by what he says he believes but simply by what he actually does. Equally, it could be said that one’s friends are simply those people with whom one spends one’s life. Period. Anything else is a form of rationalization.

What’s interesting to consider, however, is that at the time of Sullivan’s writing — and certainly in Aristotle’s time millennia earlier — the physical and the real overlapped far more congruously than they do today, in the age of digital sociality. Consider, for example, the friendship between two people who live apart and rarely spend physical time together, but are constantly and intimately connected via email, Facebook, Skype, text-messaging, and other digital extensions of physical presence. Is that relationship any less real, even though it isn’t rooted in physicality? Perhaps the criterion of “people with whom one spends one’s life” is better reframed as “people on whom one spends one’s emotional energies.”

I

Still, for both Aristotle and Sullivan, as well as the centuries of thinkers in between, the most important criterion for friendship is that of “equality between the parties.” Sullivan explains:

This may seem a banal point on the surface, but the more you think about it, the more significant it seems. It is linked to reciprocity. Because each human being is equal in his capacity to assent or not to assent to a relationship, each is, in some sense, radically equal in the capacity for friendship. Even in relationships in which one person vastly outweighs the other in money, or wit, or good looks, or social power, the inferior party can quit the friendship of his own accord and reduce it to its essential elements. A friendship is thus ultimately defined by the desire of each person to be in it. And it is successful insofar as that desire is equal between the two parties.

Friendship… is almost a central symbol of human autonomy, and the most accessible example of that autonomy in practice.  This notion of autonomy is what takes us to Sullivan’s most central point — the supremacy of friendship over romantic love, or Aristotle’s notion of eros, despite our culture’s compulsive fetishism of the latter:

The great modern enemy of friendship has turned out to be love. By love, I don’t mean the principle of giving and mutual regard that lies at the heart of friendship [but] love in the banal, ubiquitous, compelling, and resilient modern meaning of love: the romantic love that obliterates all other goods, the love to which every life must apparently lead, the love that is consummated in sex and celebrated in every particle of our popular culture, the love that is institutionalized in marriage and instilled as a primary and ultimate good in every Western child. I mean eros, which is more than sex but is bound up with sex. I mean the longing for union with another being, the sense that such a union resolves the essential quandary of human existence, the belief that only such a union can abate the loneliness that seems to come with being human, and deter the march of time that threatens to trivialize our very existence. We live in a world, in fact, in which respect and support for eroshas  acquired the hallmarks of a cult.

Still, Sullivan concedes, the allure of romantic love isn’t hard to grasp. It has been described as a unique experience that makes “the boundaries between you and not-you relax and become more permeable,”a “fever which comes and goes quite independently of the will.”Sullivan adds to history’s most moving definitions of love:

It can eclipse every other emotion and transport us to levels of bliss and communion we have never felt before. It is intoxicating, but, unlike most other forms of intoxication, it appears to have meaning and depth. We believe, for a moment, that we have found our soulmate, that we are reunited with another half of ourselves that finally gives meaning to everything in our lives. And because we are with that person, more often than not gazing into his or her eyes, it is easy and indeed necessary to abandon perspective. In fact, it almost seems a crime against love to retain any sort of perspective.

Eros, Sullivan points out, blinds us to even such universal concerns as time and death — why else would lovers promise one another eternal love and swear that they couldn’t live without each other? More than that, they even “insist upon it, because to trap it in time would be to impair the inherently unbounded nature of the experience” and “because anything else implies that love is just one competing good among others.” But this quality of eros comes with a dark side:

Love is a supremely jealous thing. It brooks no rival and obliterates every distraction. It seems to transport the human being — who is almost defined by time and morality — beyond the realm of both age and death. Which is why it is both so irresistible and so delusory.

It is from behind that shadow that friendship shines its superior light. Sullivan writes:

Of course, the impossibility of love is partly its attraction. It is an irrational act, a concession to the passions, a willing renunciation of reason and moderation — and that’s why we believe in it. It is also why, in part, the sober writers and thinkers of the ancient and medieval worlds found it a self-evidently inferior, if bewitching, experience. But their confidence in this regard was based not simply on a shrewd analysis of love but on a deeper appreciation of friendship. Without the possibility of friendship, after all, love might seem worth the price. If the promise of union, of an abatement to loneliness, of finding a soulmate, was only available through the vagaries of eros, then it might be worth all the heartbreak and insanity for a glimpse, however brief, of what makes life worth living. But if all these things were available in a human relationship that is not inherently self-destructive, then why, after all, should one choose the riskier and weaker option?

And in almost every regard, friendship delivers what love promises but fails to provide. The contrast between the two are, in fact, many, and largely damning to love’s reputation. Where love is swift, for example, friendship is slow. Love comes quickly, as the song has it, but friendship ripens with time. If love is at its most perfect in its infancy, friendship is most treasured as the years go by.

In fact, this difference in pace of development is what lends friendship its emotional gravitas.

If love is sudden, friendship is steady. At the moment of meeting a friend for the first time, we might be aware of an immediate “click” or a sudden mutual interest. But we don’t “fall in friendship.” And where love is often at its most intense in the period before the lover is possessed, in the exquisite suspense of the chase, and the stomach-fluttering nervousness of the capture, friendship can only really be experienced when both friends are fully used to each other. For friendship is based on knowledge, and love can be based on mere hope… You can love someone more than you know him, and he can be perfectly loved without being perfectly known. But the more you know a friend, the more a friend he is. (In some instances, as Stendhal famously argued in his 1822 treatise on the role of “crystallization” in love, knowledge can be the mortal enemy of love, squeezing the hope-giving fantasy out of a reality that comes up short.)

Besides the difference in pace, Sullivan also points to a difference in intensity of investment, which translates into a difference in stability:

Love affairs need immense energy, they demand a total commitment and a capacity for pain. Friendship, in contrast, merely needs tending. Although it is alive, a living, breathing thing, and can suffer from neglect, friendship can be left for a while without terrible consequences. Because it is built on the accumulation of past experiences, and not the fickle and vulnerable promise of future ones, it has a sturdiness that love may often lack, and an undemonstrative beauty that love would walk heedlessly past.

One interesting consequence of that dynamic — of the difference between eros and phila— unfolds in the realm of lifelong union, which Sullivan captures beautifully:

The most successful marriages, where the original spark of eros has slowly lit a flame of phila that sustains the union when other more compelling passions have long since died away. Indeed, one of the least celebrated but most important achievements of the increasingly successful battle for women’s equality is that it has properly expanded the universe of friendship for both men and women and made marriage more of a setting for friendship than for love. This is no mean accomplishment.

He contrasts C.S Lewis’s model of love as two people facing one another enraptured by the other’s gaze with the stance of friendship: The classic stance of two friends is side by side, looking ahead in the same direction. The two stances are not complementary; they are opposed. And although it is conceivable to unite them, it is quite a hazardous enterprise. When a friendship becomes a love, of course, the moment may be partially liberating. But it is liberating precisely because one is leaving the distance and discipline that friendship demands for the union and abandon that love promises.

Love is about control and loss of control. In love, we give ourselves up to each other. We lose control or, rather, we cede control to another, trusting in a way we would never otherwise trust, letting the other person hold the deepest part of our being in their hands, with the capacity to hurt it mortally. This cession of control is a deeply terrifying thing, which is why we crave it and are drawn to it like moths to the flame, and why we have to trust it unconditionally. In love, so many hazardous uncertainties in life are resolved: the constant negotiation with other souls, the fear and distrust that lie behind almost every interaction, the petty loneliness that we learned to live with as soon as we grew apart from our mother’s breast. We lose all this in the arms of another. We come home at last to a primal security, made manifest by each other’s nakedness…

And with that loss of control comes mutual power, the power to calm, the power to redeem, and the power to hurt.

Friendship, by contrast, offers a wholly different and diametrically opposed paradigm:

A condition of friendship is the abdication of power over another, indeed the abdication even of the wish for power over one another. And one is drawn to it not by need but by choice. If love is about the bliss of primal unfreedom, friendship is about the complicated enjoyment of human autonomy. As soon as a friend attempts to control a friend, the friendship ceases to exist. But until a lover seeks to possess his beloved, the love has hardly begun. Where love is all about the juggling of the power to hurt, friendship is about creating a space where power ceases to exist. There is a cost to this, of course. Friends will never provide what lovers provide: the ultimate resort, that safe space of repose, that relaxation of the bedsheets. But they provide something more reliable, and certainly less painful. They provide an acknowledgement not of the child within but of the adult without; they allow for an honesty which doesn’t threaten pain and criticism which doesn’t imply rejection. They promise not the bliss of the womb but the bracing adventure of the world. They do not solve loneliness, yet they mitigate it.

See also David Whyte on Frienship