LOVE

What is love? An answer to this question was sought by ancient philosophers, and in the contemporary times we desire to find it as well. Although we try to catalogue the ‘symptoms’ of love, to put this feeling into words and define it, the essence still seems to elude all scientific and non-scientific descriptions.

There is probably no subject that has more often been touched in writing and that has inspired more. Among the millions of written pages, the thousands of cultural creations, it is impossible to find one that explains this feeling to everyone’s satisfaction. In the Western civilisation, when we think of love, we tend to focus on its ‘romantic’ aspect, failing to realise at first that love is a universal phenomenon, that there are many kinds of love, quite different from each other, of which the feeling for another person – the beloved – is the most distinctive.

Although the understanding of love has changed over time, and various concepts and theories have been created, this feeling has always inspired us. Each and every one of us can think of an ideal of love, often relating to literary or film heroes, legendary or historical figures.  Cupid and Psyche, Tristan and Isolde or Romeo and Juliet have inspired generations of writers, painters, and composers. Human minds are also stimulated to dream by great loves that really happened, such as between King John III Sobieski and Marysieńka or King Sigismund Augustus and Barbara Radziwiłłówna.

The eight types of love of the ancient Greeks or our contemporary concept of the five languages of love testify to the fact that humans are constantly trying to find out what this love is and how it manifests itself.

In this edition of the project Shelved: Stories from a Storeroom, we invite you to get to know some of its faces.