Olive Travers bemoans the loss of the lyrical flourish when it comes to love. Why have we turn our back on the bards to bearhug teddy and the rest of his mawkish crew?
When Louis Armstrong sings "I see friends shaking hands, saying 'How do you do?', they're really saying 'I love you'", he is accurately observing how it is easier for us to express significant feelings in a symbolic way. We Irish are particularly notorious for our inability to call anything as it is, let alone our love for another.
The wedding proposal of "How would you like to be buried with my people?" is a funny example of this. It has also given rise to much anguish, as eloquently portrayed by the emotionally tongue-tied father and son in Brian Friel's Philadelphia Here I Come.
In these modern times, the reality of being able to communicate on a 24/7 basis does not appear to have made face-to-face meaningful communication any easier. Help is at hand, however, from the greeting card industry which will communicate every possible sentiment on our behalf and who allow us to say with impunity what we would never have the courage to say face-to-face.
It is understandable then, that other than Christmas, Valentine's Day creates the most demand for their services.
Symbolic gifts to express romantic love has a long history, from the murky origins of the feast day, in the Roman fertility festival of Lupercalia.
In the 16th century, a Valentine was simply a folded piece of paper bearing the name of the loved one, and only gradually became a poem or letter to a sweetheart. The first commercial cards in the 19th century simply retained the symbols of love used on the hand made cards during the previous centuries. These symbols were chosen for good reasons. Roses were always a good choice as they are an even older token of love than Valentine, and daisies, violets and cornflowers were all associated with love by the Romans.
Cupid, as the Roman god of love, has of course always been popular and the heart pierced by the arrow represents the vulnerability of love or the merging of the male and female as one. Birds earned their place as symbols from the belief that they choose their mates on February 14th and doves in particular were sacred to the Roman Goddess, Venus. Other birds, such as love birds and humming birds, mate for life, and the symbol of the love knot with its no beginning or end also represents unending love.
Why then, when we have such a wealth of symbols to express Van Morrison's "inarticulate speech of the heart", do so many Valentine cards today resemble nursery decorations? Your local card shop will evidence that the traditional symbols are being ousted by the ubiquitous teddy bear, along with an alarming array of other animals, including cats, dogs, mice, rabbits, elephants and bizarrely, even hedgehogs.
The anthropomorphising of animals is nothing new. Beatrice Potter, among others, has entertained generations of children by attributing human characteristics to animals. Her animals, while they may have been made to look silly by having to wear human clothes, at least are recognisable for what they are. In contrast, the card manufacturers have neutered all animals into pink, fluffy, aberrations of their true nature. How have these infantile, mawkish creatures become acceptable symbols of something so full of ardour, fervour and passion as romantic love?
Have we so reduced the language of love to a soppy, sentimental parody of how we talk to babies that the card manufactures have responded in kind and given us symbols in keeping with our baby talk? Just look at the Valentine personals for examples of how much "Honeybun" loves his "Cuddly bunnikins".
There is nothing remotely suggestive of fertility in the puerile animals depicted, neither is there any trace of the earthiness with which our ancestors expressed erotic love, as in Merriman's 18th century poem: The Midnight Court.
There is, of course, universal appeal in the beauty of the young of most animals but surely this appeals more to the desire to nurture and protect than the love, lust and longing of the senders of Valentine cards. This ousting by animals of the traditional love symbols of cupids, hearts, lovebirds and roses is perhaps, also, a result of the knock-on effect of our collusion with the manufacturers of teddy bears.
They have for centuries succeeded in persuading us that very large, smelly and dangerous animals, whose hug is a lethal weapon, are really cute loveable creatures deserving of universal love.
The majority of us accept that we cannot compete with the beautiful expressions of love by poets through time, right from the Psalms to the Brownings and Yeats's of this world.
Lyrical utterances such as Pablo Neurda's "I want/to do with you what spring does to the cherry trees", may never be ours. But, if in your wonderful world, you want to go further than shaking hands to express what you feel for your beloved, at least leave the animals with their dignity in the wild where they belong.