Pyramus’s Unrequited Love

Below the fold is a discussion I’ve been planning on writing about the most tragic line I’ve ever read:

“At the name of Thisbe Pyramus lifted his eyes heavy

with death and having seen her, he closed them.”

“Ad nomen Thisbes oculos a morte gravatos

Pyramus erexit visaque recondidit illa.”

~Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

The story of Pyramus and Thisbe, retold by Ovid in his Metamorphoses, is the archetypal story of two lovers whose marriage is prevented by their parents. Inspiring Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” and countless stories and songs, the theme of unrequited love is the most pervasive and accurate assessment of the human condition.

These two lovers, living in adjacent houses in the city of Babylon communicate furtively through an ancient crack in their communal wall. Desperate to be joined together they plan a rendezvous under the cover of night outside the walls of the city. Thisbe arrives at the meeting spot first, but is frightened away by a lioness coming to quench her thirst at a nearby spring. She flees to a cave, but in her haste her veil slips from her back and his torn to shreds by the lioness’s bloodstained jaws. Pyramus arrives later and finding the shredded garment he faults himself for her death and out of tragic desperation he stabs himself. As Pyramus lies dying on the ground, Thisbe returns from the cave and embraces the body of her beloved.

It is at this moment, when Pyramus looks up and sees Thisbe alive and well, that the true tragedy of love is fully realized. For the fleeting seconds when his eyes rest upon his beloved, the reason for his suicide, Pyramus must recognize with infinite remorse that it is he alone who ruined their chance at love. With his dying breath he must feel the irreconcilable burden of his mistake: Thisbe lives and this tragedy is entirely his fault. Romeo is allowed to die believing that he was nobly joining his Juliet, ethically satisfied in his decision. Pyramus is forced to see that his self-inflicted death was in error, he is forced to recognize his own tragedy in its entirety.

This difference between Romeo and Pyramus, that the former died believing that he remained faithful to his noble love while the latter perished in a state of indescribable remorse, defines the difference between a romantic and a modern understanding of love. While Shakespeare would have us believe that it is fate alone which prevents us from the paradise of Romantic love, Ovid knows that it is our own actions which stop us. While Romeo and Juliet seem to be battered about by the chances of fate and the actions of others, the totality of the tragedy rests upon the shoulders of Pyramus and Thisbe alone: they take their love into their own hands and the only possible result is tragedy.

For Ovid this romantic death isn’t noble. It is truly and horrifically painful. But so is all love. No matter how the stars are aligned it is up to us as individuals to make our own love, and, more than likely,  to destroy it. As Pyramus learns this, that the tragedy is his fault alone, I recognize my own romantic failings. I have no one else to blame when things go wrong in relationships: it’s my misunderstandings and my failings. Ovid tells us this story so we can learn from Pyramus: there will always be extenuating circumstances outside of our control they can neither begin nor end love – tragically that burden must rest upon us alone.

Note: I will probably be playing around with this in the weeks to come, so don’t be surprised if it changes with time.