The source of human emotion and particularly love was considered to be the heart for many cultures including the ancient Egyptians and Greeks. The use of the iconic love heart shape has been common since the 14th century. One of the earliest depictions is in a painting by Jehan de Grise from 1344. In the painting a woman holds up a heart that she has presumably received from the man who puts his hand over his chest to indicate the place from which it has come.
But this shape, we now know, is not anatomically correct and there are opposing theories as to why it came about.
1. Silphium – a species of giant fennel that was used as a contraceptive.
On some ancient depictions, the seed of the silphium resembles the modern heart shape. The use of Silphium “became so popular that it was cultivated into extinction by the first century A.D. (legend has it that the Roman Emperor Nero was presented with the last surviving stalk)". Silphium’s seedpod bore a striking resemblance to the modern Valentine’s heart, leading many to speculate that the herb’s associations with love and sex may have been what first helped popularize the symbol. The ancient city of Cyrene, which grew rich from the silphium trade, even put the heart shape on its money.” (From History.com)
2. Misinterpreted texts
Other scholars including Pierre Vinken and Martin Kemp have argued that the symbol originated in the writings of Galen and the philosopher Aristotle, who described the human heart as having three chambers with a small dent in the middle. Italian physicist, Guido da Vigevano, made a series of anatomical drawings featuring a heart that closely resembles the one described by Aristotle.
In this Ted Talk Marilyn Yalom discusses her research into the use of the heart shape -
The Heart in my stories -
I’m a horror not a romance writer and while the human heart appears in my stories on more than one occasion it appears with a certain visceral irony. I include below two examples.
The first appears in Psychonaut and is quite literally a “change of heart”.
Dave’s scream echoes through the trees. Freya’s hands, slick with blood, grip the knife tighter.
‘Shhh, Baby,’ she whispers. ‘Don’t struggle. It will be over soon.’
His chest heaves. Gurgling, he shudders. No words come from his lips, but blood and spit drip from his open mouth.
She kisses him. The taste of salt and iron gives her strength. She must finish this. To leave him now, bleeding slowly to death or eaten by wild animals, that would be far more cruel. This way at least he will be of use. Regret for lost opportunities stabs at her own heart as she pushes the knife deeper into his breast.
‘I never loved you,’ she says.
She looks at his face. His eyes are glazed. There is nothing in them to indicate he even heard her words.
A final push and she breaks through as bone splinters beneath her blade. Through the hole she can see his heart, still beating. She takes a ribbon from her hair, breathes into it and recites words she doesn’t understand. The ribbon starts to sway in her hand. She places it next to the wound and it slides inside, coiling and weaving as it moves. She watches the purple satin wrap itself around his heart. His mouth gapes wider and she wonders if he senses it feed on his life source. Before her eyes he transforms. His face becomes smaller, his lips softer. His eyes change from brown to blue. He slumps in the ropes and she watches his body shrink until he is the same height as her. She looks into her own face, a face that smiles back at her. Already the wound is healing above newly formed breasts. She kisses the tiny hole that remains and her doppelganger’s nipple hardens.
The second is a little more traditional. It appears in Basement Beauty. Daniel recites a poem about giving his heart to another and her unwelcome reaction. The poem was written by my partner Glen W Hunter and included in the novella with his blessing.
I gave her my heart after years of promises
and she ran screaming from the room as it pulsed in my hand
I couldn’t understand why it didn’t go as planned
Maybe my love was too literal
Visceral and exposed like a raw nerve
Too quick to serve myself to her this way
I’ve always been too impulsive
Quick to follow my sorrow down the wrong street
The sound of feet
Running
Charging
Headlong into memories lane down a soon forgotten path
A run-down, ransacked and rancid math
of you subtracted from me
equalling nothing but fractions and remainders
but these are the dangers of Cupid’s bow
Love will come
Love will grow
Love will go
or wither on the vine
In this green house of time there are many dead roses.
If these two excerpts aren't enough of an antidote to all the lovely dovie romance this day brings, you can read last year’s Bad Love blog post below, in case you missed it first time round -
Bad Love or Why I’d Ban Valentines Day and Send Romance to the Gallows.
Full disclosure – I don’t do romance. I don’t mean simply that I don’t write romance stories, but that I think romance is a scam, a farce and I run away from anyone romantic enough to bring me flowers.
However, both as a horror writer and as a human being, I see love as an important part of the human condition. I do love.
Love is a part of the stories I write because love can make people do appalling things, perhaps more efficiently than hate. A person can lose themselves in love, it can consume them. Love consumes a number of my characters: Satori (Starblood), Chloe (Impatient for Death), and Daniel (Basement Beauty).
Because this is Valentines Day I want to return to the subject of romance. After all, romance is the essence of the day, not love. It’s the one day a year when people are blackmailed into expressing their feelings (or an ideal version of them) to their significant other, or profess their desire in secret to a crush. Bah Humbug! If you have to be guilted into doing something, it doesn’t count.
Worse than mere meaninglessness, I am confident arguing that the very concept of romance is dangerous, and to be avoided at all costs.
Why?
Romance is a form of idealization, putting one’s love on a pedestal. The trouble with artificially elevating anyone is that it sets them up for a fall. When your sweetheart inevitably messes up, what will be able to console you? Romance makes you lose sight of flaws and the humanity of those you most admire.
Romance, in practice, resembles a financial transaction. If I buy her dinner, bring her flowers and pay for all our dates then she’ll sleep with/marry me (delete as applicable). It may have made sense in an age where a woman’s only career progression was a good marriage, but nowadays it feels counter-intuitive for both men and women. We should not look for ways to earn or buy another’s love. If you wish to do that, then at what point have you done enough? Do you quit romancing your mate at that point and expect to reap the rewards from all that investment, harvest the affection due to you forever more?
Romance means hiding your imperfections and revealing only what you think the other wants to see. In turn it blinds you to the faults of the object of your desire. When you both feel comfortable enough to reveal your true selves is it too late to run away? Do you care?
Romance means never having to take no for an answer. It’s the idea that a man’s job is to wear down the resistance of the woman he pursues until she eventually accepts his proposal. This is the most toxic and dangerous aspect of romance. It is rape-culture and stalker-ville. It steamrolls over another person’s agency and free choice.
Romance is the opposite of getting to know someone as an equal and testing compatibility. And so, this Valentines Day, I’m shouting from the rooftops, “Death to Romance!”
A few years ago I wrote a short story about toxic romance, called Selkie, with illustrations by Deborah Blount. This has gradually evolved into a dark erotic tale called “How To Catch a Selkie” which is included in the anthology “Bloody Sexy” due to be released this April.