The destruction of marriage and the disowning of love

[fpb]

Let us start with two truly great love songs, sang half a century ago by a giant of the opera stage:

And let us compare it with a contemporary performance of the second of these, with which readers of this blog are already familiar:

A charming performance and a fine voice, no doubt; and rather less Russian accent than one would expect. (For that matter, Giuseppe Pippo di Stefano was a Sicilian from Catania, which, where Naples and the Neapolitan language are concerned, amounts pretty much to the same thing.) But I do not think that it takes a great deal of familiarity with the technique of song to feel very strongly that something very important has gone out from the first performance to the second.

These are serenades: songs to be sung to one's beloved from the street, in a climate and country where families assumed that girls would be kept for marriage and that men had a duty to be faithful. In other words, the background assumption that shapes the song is marriage for life, patrolled by severe penalties for violators. For this reason, the lover is supposed to sing to his beloved from outside; the walls of the house incarnate the power of the family, which is not to be lightly dealt with or violated.

But for this reason, too, the singer who knows what he is about will put not only grace, but muscle too, in this kind of love song. He must not only convince the girl that she is loved; he must convince her and her family that he is a full man - strong enough to be faithful, strong enough to protect and care for his wife and the children who will arise, strong enough to take a commitment for life. This is at the core of the imagery of the lyrics. The last stanza of Dicitencello Vuje, addressing the beloved for the first time (the song had started with an address to her friends, "you talk to this lady friend of yours, I can't"), says that she herself is the bond, the golden chain, who will hold him all his life long: Te voglio bene... Te voglio bene assaje... Si' tu chesta catena ca nun se spezza maje! ("I care for you, I care for you so much - you are yourself this chain, and it will never break!"). Do I even have to add that the symbol of marriage is a golden ring?

Sure, it can lead to lifelong unhappiness. Which is why these songs must contain something more than beauty, something more than grace, something more even than strength - something that can only be described as heroism. The man who sings such a song is taking his whole future life in his hands, merely on the strength of his love for a girl. The risk is terrible, and in the society in which these songs were composed it was unrelieved by any such thing as divorce. And the authors did not hide the fact: a whole sub-genre of comic songs exists purely about the miseries of marriage, going back to the middle ages. (It bears saying that the assumption behind these songs, in turn, is that you are not allowed either to get rid of a termagant wife or to beat her into submission. In other words, marriage means taking a lifelong commitment to put up with someone you may end up not standing; and the rest of the world may well find it funny, too.)

Muscle and heroism have completely gone out of the Russian singer's version. It is merely pretty; you would not stake your life on it. But you might stake a night.

This is the hideous betrayal of love and marriage in which we live, without even realizing it. The idiot schoolgirls who cheer at the fact that Iowa has lined up to destroy marriage don't know that they are cheering the certainty of their own coming loneliness and emptiness; the fact that they will never meet anyone who would not only risk his life for them, but bet his life on them. The reduction of marriage to a kind of contract for regular fucking, with a built-in escape clause and no provision for fertility, means the permanent weakening of society. And if you want to know why, compare the strength, let alone the heroism, of Pippo di Stefano's account with that of a modern singer.

Comments

[cheyinka]

Did you see my post regarding the Iowa decision? I'm not trying (seriously, I am not) to get you to jump into any of the various arguments, but I am curious to know what you thought of what I wrote. :)

[marielapin.livejournal.com]

I read your post, which I agreed with. We do need to make an extra effort to fix the problems with marriage. I do think that this is happening, albeit slowly enough that the trends of the abuse of marriage still overwhelm the successes of healed marriages and large happy and holy families. I was amused by the one poster who quoted Matt 7:5, the FIRST part, then made a comment that the next line said that the beam was not to be used to whack someone else in the head. Oh no, it says:

"You hypocrite! First remove the beam from your own eye, and then you will see clearly enough to remove the speck from your brother's eye ."

Which was the whole point of your post.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I would suggest that this is a counsel of perfection. While we try to settle our own problems with sex and marriage, the black tide is flowing in. We cannot wait till we are made saints in order to resist this revolt against reality and reason; by definition, we shall not be saints until we are dead - and by then this insane fashion will have deprived another generation of the opportunity to even understand what sanctity is about. Souls are being destroyed and damned now. Lies are being proclaimed as truth now. Now is the time to answer. "Blessed are you when they insult and threaten you for My name... You shall be brought before rulers and synagogues. On that day, do not ask what you will say: the Spirit will tell you".

[cheyinka]

I don't know if we can coherently resist, though, and I don't know if we can really expect the Spirit to prompt us in our arguments, if we don't at least attempt sanctity in our lives.

In any event it wasn't so much a counsel of "let us be perfect before we do anything," but more "it is inevitable that society will be flooded, let us at least not contribute." :/

[fpb.livejournal.com]

It is not inevitable. You are taking enemy propaganda ("enemy" in the Screwtape Letters sense) as fact.

[mentalguy.livejournal.com]

In the case of marriage legislation and so forth, it has less to do with making moral judgements about individuals, and more to do with what is objectively good for society.

I think it is in fact true that marriage needs to get sorted out among Christians if the situation is to meaningfully improve in the long-term, but that is not a good reason to avoid any sort of holding action in the meantime. The present situation really needs to be addressed on both fronts.

[mentalguy.livejournal.com]

That's rather astonishing.

Before listening to them just now I might have been inclined to attribute much of the difference to a difference in ability between the two singers. However, having listened, it is very clear in this instance that (whatever differences in ability might exist) the two performers have radically different understandings of the material they are performing.

[mentalguy.livejournal.com]

Maybe astonishing is the wrong word. But I wasn't really prepared for it.

[marielapin.livejournal.com]

I was a bit flabbergasted myself. The second performer has a beautiful voice but the gestures he is making and the way he sings sounds more like he's singing a lullaby than a song to convince another of power of his love. He has no soul behind his voice.

The first two songs...wow. They would convince me.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

ACtually, part of my point is that Oleg Pogudin's voice is really quite classy, true and firm. And nobody ever thought Russians could not do bold and passionate. But this really is, as Marielapin said, a lullaby, a gentle and pretty attempt to smooth away a day's troubles. It is sweet, but the whole rise in the chorus, which really encourages one to belt it out, goes for nothing. It does not even occur to him that heroism should or could be one of the components of a great love song.

[mentalguy.livejournal.com]

Hmm. At least from the performances of his that I have seen so far, it doesn't seem to me that Pogudin is personally capable of much fire. On the other hand, with this song it's quite evident that it hasn't even occurred to him to try, just as you say.

[dr-ladybug.livejournal.com]

the fact that they will never meet anyone who would not only risk his life for them, but bet his life on them
Some of those girls will meet other girls who will risk their lives for them and bet their lives on them. Now that such unions are becoming more accepted, perhaps fewer of them will have to die for their love.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Check the statistics about the frequency of the collapse of lesbian relationships as compared with real marriages, and you will realize that you have just talked complete nonsense. If you are open to argument, which I am practically certain you are not. Incidentally, if this is the beginning of another troll invasion, I can promise immediate deletion without comment to any post I do not want in my LJ. I have let this one stand just in case it was not, but the timing (immediately after the deletion and banning of another twit) does not lend me much hope.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

To be fair, there has been no troll invasion, and I withdraw the suspicion I had stated - and apologize for it. Let us be clear: you have my apology for suspecting aloud that you could be one of a troll army on the march, since the evidence seems to show that such is not the case. I have had some, to say the least, unfortunate experiences when touching this subject, and I tend to expect mob assaults. However, it does not in the least change my views about the folly of these doctrines.