Ars Romantica

The human experience, although sometimes limited by language, has a myriad of definitions for love. In English, speakers are at a lexical disadvantage. The word “love” is too simple, as it is an all-encompassing definition of affection or romance or mythological infatuation. And so, it takes pages upon pages to pick apart each separate facet of what society calls — and limits as — love.

Michele Morano’s essay collection Like Love begins this journey into what love, in its expanded definition, includes. In fourteen essays — an auspicious number, perhaps for St. Valentine’s Day? — expresses language with fluidity, moving the reader from beyond love’s colloquialisms to that which, depending on the reader, is almost taboo.

Morano writes from personal experience, much of which could be compared to the soapiness of domestic dramas. Yet in their truth, carefully defined and presented to the reader through a veil of historical fact and the lively play of words (notice the simile in the title), we see beyond the tropes which Morano writes in. For example, in “How to Tell a True Love Story,” a play on Tim O’Brien’s “How to Tell a True War Story,” Morano writes that much of love is embellished over time. When we tell of our journeys, we trip over our own facts and must differentiate between reality and fiction. Sometimes, however, the two blend so beautifully that we are loath to separate them. Yet, in the end, all true love stories come to the same conclusion: “There is nothing new to say. Only the ending remains, and even that isn’t original, it’s the ending you were headed toward all along, the ending of every true love story ever told.”

This essay collection approaches subjects that, upon first read, readers may question. Take, for example, the crush of a thirty-year-old teacher on a twelve-year-old boy. Morano, however, doesn’t tread in dangerous waters, as the essay first suggests. Instead, she focuses on the idea of a “crush” as something simultaneously childish and mature. The narrator’s crush is, we realize, on the underlying spirit of the boy, on his budding talents and wise soul that surpasses his years. It is a crush on a relationship that fosters intellectual stimulation.

Love, then, is not always purely sexual, not even openly apparent or understood to those who, despite their knowledge, fall victim. Morano’s essay, “Ars Romantica (or a Dozen Ways of Looking at Love)” expounds upon platonic love, a desire that manifests through fascination and personal development — art and creativity as catalysts. Morano expertly weaves philosophers, writers, and psychologists through her essay collection to not only aid her many layers of definition, but also to grant artistic authority on the matter: Plato, in his Symposium on platonic love, Robert Sternberg’s theory of love triangles, and biological anthropologist Helen Fisher note aspects of love’s universality. But perhaps Morano’s most interesting exploration is into the language of love. She writes,

In Spanish, love is more nuanced than it is in English. You don’t love a person (te quiero) with the same verb you love, say, a pineapple (te encanta). In both Spanish and English, we can fall in love, echoing lost paradise and a lot of work ahead, but in Spanish the more common phrase carries a reflective twist: me enamoré de. It’s the grammatical equivalent of “Now I lay me down to sleep,” with a subtle implication of agency, of choice. I became in love.

For another, perhaps more widely studied, example, the Greek language has no less than seven words for love. Morano, impressively, has fourteen — with examples.

And of course, at the root of all understanding of affection is that of familial love. Morano’s childhood was, even by today’s standards, non-traditional. Growing up in the ever-changing tides of the 1970s, Morano shuffled between her divorced parents. Sometimes living with a distant father who worked the night shift, sometimes immersed in a patchwork family of...