All my songs offer wise advice, so obey the singer.
(The Cures For Love line 703)
The Cures For Love (Remedia Amoris) follows naturally on from the three short ‘books’ which make up The Art of Love (Ars Amatoria). It’s the same kind of length as one of those books (814 lines, 24 pages in the Penguin paperback edition, translated by Peter Green), has the same gaily mocking tone, and directly relates itself to its predecessors. If the previous three books had claimed to be guides for men and women on how to gain lovers, this one teaches how to cope with a love which has gone wrong.
It is addressed to ‘disappointed gallants’ and describes lovers so miserable they have committed suicide. For those who find unlearning passion impossible, who long to throw off love’s shackles but can’t (line 298) that he writes:
I am your public deliverer, will lighten hearts hard mastered
By passion
Thus he adopts a pose throughout of the book of doctor and healer of broken hearts. (He makes a point of emphasising his advice is for both men and women, although all the examples are cast in the form of male strategies; but he does remember this vow from time to time and repeat that his advice is meant to be unisex.)
As soon as you feel love getting a grip on your heart, throw it out, burn it off. Act quickly.
Rule 1 – always be busy. Love springs up where there is leisure and time to kill. Have things to get you up to do: public business, the law courts. Or become a soldier, go fight the Parthians.
Or farming. For a page he channels the spirit of Virgil’s Eclogues with descriptions of chores on the Roman farm.
Or hunting. Hunting deer across country, or setting traps for small birds.
Or simply leave, go away, go a journey. You’ll cry but ignore all excuses, reasons for delay, and just do it. Travelling companions, sightseeing, practical arrangements – all will take your mind off a love gone bad.
Don’t rely on magic. Their tricks didn’t do either Medea or Circe any good. Just a plain and simple prayer to Apollo, his patron, will do.
Dwell on your grievances, how she:
- took all your gifts and gave you nothing in return
- bankrupted you
- cheated on her promise
- kept you waiting outside her door all night
- shags any old travelling salesman, everyone except you
Dwell on her imperfections:
- her stumpy legs
- her skinny arms
- she’s fat
- she’s dark
Distort the truth: if she’s innocent, say she’s ‘naive’; if she’s experienced, call her ‘saucy’; if she’s a bit plump, call her ‘bloated’.
Whatever talents she doesn’t possess, call for those ones: if she can’t sing, ask her to sing; if she can’t dance, call on her to dance; if she’s clumsy, suggest a going for a walk; if she has udders for breasts, recommend her not to wear a bra.
Kill the image you have of her as a perfect woman. Destroy it, trample it underfoot in order to expel her from your heart.
Make an unannounced surprise early morning visit, before she’s covered her face with paint. Observe how plain she is without her makeup. Look at the pots of disgusting gunk it takes to get her looking even passably presentable. Cultivate your disgust.
[Digression on poetry in which he rebuts critics who accuse him of immorality. He doesn’t write for respectable housewives but for sad loser men and courtesans. Also he is not setting out to write an epic in hexameters; he is writing naughty love poetry in elegiacs. He is already famous and will become even more so, since he has many more poems ready in his head. So Envy can take a hike.]
What about sex with the woman you’re trying to get over? Well, it obviously risks making you fall in love with her all over again? So he recommends various ant-aphrodisiacs.
Have sex with another woman before a date with your girl, then you don’t be mad for it, in fact you’ll be a bit jaded, maybe disgusted with the subject and so can remain aloof and not be tempted.
If you do have sex, choose an unsuitable, ungainly position. Keep the shutters open so critical sunlight reveals all her physical flaws, spots and wrinkles. Memorise every fault in her body. Disgust yourself.
One lover was put off by sight of his girl’s slit, another by the wet patch she left on the sheet when she got up. Watch her having a dump. Yuk. None of these by themselves will sever the bond, but cumulatively will shift your mind from love dependency to disgust, revulsion and so to freedom.
Moving onto a major strategy, he suggests having two mistresses and so diluting the power either one, individually, has over you. He distorts the story of Agamemnon replacing Chryseis with Bryseis to make it fit his thesis (though it doesn’t). But his point is clear. Having two mistresses reduces your emotional dependence on an individual. If one chucks you, it’s no longer the end of the world.
How are you meant to get these other girls? Why, read his Art of Love, of course.
How to find them you ask? Read my handbook,
And your boat will soon be scuppers-deep in girls!
(lines 487 to 488)
Cultivate detachment, even if you don’t feel it. Ignore her calls. If you go and she’s locked the door against you, laugh it off. If she calls you in a crowd, ignore her. She presses you to an assignation, say you have another engagement. Habit makes it easy; we fall in love by habit so we can detach ourselves by cultivating habits of indifference until they become real. If you’re bursting with desire, work it off with a prostitute.
If this doesn’t work for you, if withdrawal and detachment is not your style, try an alternative strategy: throw yourself full tilt into the affair, see her every chance you can, go round her house all the time, have all the sex you can, glut yourself till you begin to sicken, till you become sick of the sight of her house and her.
Don’t be alone. Be always in company. Invite friends round. Have an open door policy. Talk, drink, socialise. Days will pass and you’ll forget your lover.
Avoid other young people who are in love. Being in love is contagious, like the plague. Be with happy, sociable people, but shun anyone who’s all loved up.
Avoid the places you used to go to together, and avoid places you know she frequents. ‘Shun scenes of bygone pleasure.’ Burn her letters. Remove all mementoes. It’s hard, but make a conscious effort to change the habits of the affair.
And don’t go round bragging how you’re not in love any more. That tells everyone that you are. Just let go and let her dribble away from the realm of your desires. Let love ‘fade on the breeze and die’ (l.654).
Don’t hate her. That’s as bad as loving her. Often it’s a symptom of lasting love, certainly of enduring passion. Don’t take her to court, don’t litigate to get your presents back, this keeps the wound alive. Let her keep everything. Walk away. Strive to reach a state of complete detachment, indifference, until you can meet her with the same politeness you extend to any other acquaintance. ‘Until you’re heartwhole’ (752).
Ovid shrewdly remarks that breaking off a love affair is often difficult not so much because we love them as because we want to be loved. It is the horrible emptiness of no longer being loved which is so hard to take. So…inure yourself to it by degrees rather than jumping into an ice cold pool. And replace that hole in your life with friends and family and conviviality and activity.
Rather inevitably he comes round to poetry. Don’t read it. Don’t read Sappho, Callimachus, Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius or, though it pains him to say so, even his own poems. They’ll only reopen the wound.
And rivals? Well, you’ll have to overcome your jealousy. He gives half a page of examples of jealous lovers from mythology. But it’s no good tormenting yourself with the thought of her in someone else’s arms. This may be the hardest task but it is the best testament to having escaped love’s net. When you can greet her new lover with perfect cordiality and shake his hand, you’re nearly there. When you can greet him with a cordial kiss, you’re cured!
Thoughts
Although questionable in detail, and no doubt guilty of sexism in numerous ways, nonetheless this is the most impressive of the four books of love. Suggestions like avoiding the places you used to go to together and avoiding her friends and family so as to extirpate all memory of a miserable love – these strike me as very relevant today and, unlike a lot of the stock clichés of the earlier pickup books, indicate a genuine depth of experience and empathy. They aren’t particularly gender-specific or even heteronormative i.e. the lessons apply equally well for the use of women or LGBTQ+ people i.e. anyone trying to get over a love affair or stop themselves getting sucked into one.
Credit
The Erotic Poems of Ovid, translated by Peter Green, was published by Penguin Books in 1982. All references are to the 1982 paperback edition.
Books & Boots 