Folio I · Recto

loves.quest

“Amor vincit omnia, et nos cedamus amori.”

— Love conquers all things; let us too yield to love. † Virgil, Eclogues X

❦ ENTER ❧

Folio II · Prologue

On the Discipline of Loving

Loves·quest is not, despite appearances, a directory of paramours nor a marketplace of affinities. It is, more austerely, a library of attentions — a study chamber in which love is treated the way a mediaevalist treats a manuscript: with gloves, with footnotes, with a willingness to be wrong about what one finds in the margin.

i. The corpus

We collect texts on Eros and Philia, on Storge and Agape, on the long unfashionable affections — loyalty, patience, the tedious tenderness of the second decade. The corpus is open: contributors are welcome, footnotes are required, and citation is the only currency. Where a fragment is missing, we reproduce the lacuna.

ii. The method

Annotation, glossing, slow re-reading. The site is built to be read, not browsed. Every chapter tile opens into a two-column folio with a marginalia rail; clicking a tag reveals every text in the corpus that bears it. We make no algorithmic recommendations, because love resists recommendation.

iii. The rule

Read closely, mark generously, attribute always, return to the text. The rest is graffiti.

Folio III · The Stacks

The Stacks

A masonry of codices — chapters, footnotes, plates, and tags.

Folio · iv

I

On First Sight, & Its Catastrophes

Petrarch in the church at Avignon, on Good Friday, 1327. The argument that follows is not about her, but about how seeing was theorised in the centuries before optics.

† 12 footnotes · 4 plates

♚ EROS

f. xii.3

†

Carson, Eros the Bittersweet, p. 14: The Greek word eros denotes want, lack, desire for that which is missing.

cited 41 times

Folio · vii

II

Philia, & the Long Friendship

Aristotle distinguishes three friendships: of utility, of pleasure, of virtue. Only the last is a love in the Aristotelian sense, & only the last is rare. Six case studies follow, drawn from letters and ledgers across nine centuries.

† 28 footnotes · 1 illuminated initial

Plate IX — Cor Anatomicum, after Vesalius

Folio · xi

III

Storge: the Tedious Tenderness

Familial love — the affection that endures meals together, illness, the petty repetitions of cohabitation. The least photographed and the most enduring of the four loves.

† 9 footnotes

♚ PHILIA

f. xv.7

†

Heloise to Abelard, c. 1133: God is my witness that, had Augustus, ruler of the world, deemed me worthy of the honour of marriage… the name of friend would be dearer to me, the name of concubine more honourable.

Letter II

Plate XII — Astrolabium Amoris

Folio · xviii

IV

Agape, & the Indifferent Sun

Love that does not depend on the worthiness of the beloved. The hardest of the loves to write about without drifting into theology, & the most necessary if one wishes to escape the economics of desert.

† 17 footnotes · 2 plates

f. xx.1

††

What we love we shall grow to resemble.

Bernard of Clairvaux

♚ AGAPE

Folio · xxiii

V

The Letter, the Lock, & the Lacuna

On the materiality of the love letter: paper, wax, the cut hair preserved in the locket, the inscription cancelled, the absence we read as a presence.

† 6 footnotes

Plate III — Labyrinthus

♚ STORGE

Folio · xxix

VI

On Loyalty, & the Long Witness

The affection of the second decade, when novelty is exhausted & what remains must justify itself by attention. The most under-theorised of the loves; the easiest to confuse with habit.

† 14 footnotes · 1 plate

f. xxxi.4

†

Sappho, fragment 31: he seems to me equal to gods that man / whoever he is who opposite you / sits…

trans. Anne Carson

Plate XX — Hortus & Stella

Folio · xxxv

VII

Coda, & the Open Citation

The corpus is unfinished. It will remain so.