love

[ellenkushner]

A friend in a locked post writes about different languages' words for love and friend - made me reply thus:

There is a beautiful word in Dutch (which an old flame taught me) that means you feel a love for something so intense that - and this is pretty much what the King James Bible used, too! - your bowels twist within you. From the way he used it, it's less about romantic love than that sudden wrench you get over a beloved child, or a landscape . . . Nevertheless - interesting to know how English limits us (now that our bowels no longer yearn like they used to in 1605)!

(And, yes, I've forgotten the actual word - though I can still see his face and eloquent gestures in the restaurant candlelight . . . Anyone know it?)

Comments

[twistedchick]

I don't know what it is in Dutch, but when I was briefly in Switzerland I learned that there are two words in German for friends: freund and bekannte. One might have one or two true freundin in a lifetime but many bekannte, who are something more than acquaintances but not heart-deep friends. (My German spelling is undoubtedly faulty here.)

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Bekannten are indeed acquaintances.

I don't know what the love word is--no Dutch, just Deutsch speaker here--but German has a verb for writing poetry, which I always thought cool: dichten.

[msmemory.livejournal.com]

The French make a similar distinction between ami and copain. A copain is a buddy or chum, but an ami(e) is a close and intimate friend.

[kasakitis.livejournal.com]

A friend suggested 'Ontroering'.

[tayefeth.livejournal.com]

Sounds reasonable to me.

[tabbymarie.livejournal.com]

Hm..there's several Greek/Hebrew words for love the bible uses...Here's a few (perhaps there's a word here which will sound like the Dutch word you're thinking of):

Agape: unconditional, absolute
Philio: brotherly love; the type of typical love one extends to friends and family
Eros: Love for that wrench, pizza, landscapes, a sort of temporary state of love driven by emotions or hormones
Ludos: Playful love, kinda like the warm fuzzies one feels when having a great time with someone one knows
Xenia: affectionate feeling one has for someone that he or she does not know as well, but it cannot possibly be the other loves above since one doesn't want to do that person against the wall, nor does one know them well enough to extend playful attitudes or philio love. This is often applied to hospitable people who go our out of their way to extend help to strangers and genuinely care about them.

In English, nearly all of those are boiled down to the one word "love" which is why its so diluted everywhere we go.

[carnotite.livejournal.com]

I don't know Dutch, but if my guess is correct, the phrase innerlijke bewegingen seems to have been used to translate the Greek word for bowels, or tender mercy, in the Dutch Bible. Does anyone know if this roughly translates "inner movements"?

Luke 1:78
Greek - δια σπλαγχνα ελεους θεου ημων
KJV - Through the tender mercy of our God
Duttch - innerlijke bewegingen der barmhartigheid onzes Gods

Philippians 1:8
Greek - ως επιποθω παντας υμας εν σπλαγχνοις ιησου χριστου
KJV - how greatly I long after you all in the bowels of Jesus Christ.
Dutch - met innerlijke bewegingen van Jezus Christus

Strong's Greek Dictionary gives σπλαγχνα - splagchnon (splangkh'-non) - probably strengthened from splen (the "spleen"); an intestine (plural); figuratively, pity or sympathy bowels, inward affection, + tender mercy.

[zhai.livejournal.com]

(now that our bowels no longer yearn like they used to in 1605)!

This somehow reminds me of -- and hopefully I'm recalling this correctly -- the phrase in East of Eden about the time before "the thighs of women lost their clench"...

I am all about the bowel-twisting love.

[zhai.livejournal.com]

Whoops. Bad html, no cookie.

[vschanoes.livejournal.com]

I don't know, Ellen...the idea of bowel-twisting love just sounds to me like what I feel when I accidentally drink milk or eat cheese without taking my pills first. Not nice at all!

The Song of Songs

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

2 I sleep, but my heart waketh:
it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying,
Open to me, my sister, my love,
my dove, my undefiled:
for my head is filled with dew,
and my locks with the drops of the night.
3 I have put off my coat;
how shall I put it on?
I have washed my feet;
how shall I defile them?
4 My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door,
and my bowels were moved for him.
5 I rose up to open to my beloved;
and my hands dropped with myrrh,
and my fingers with sweet smelling myrrh,
upon the handles of the lock.
6 I opened to my beloved;
but my beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone:
my soul failed when he spake:
I sought him, but I could not find him;
I called him, but he gave me no answer.
7 The watchmen that went about the city found me,
they smote me, they wounded me;
the keepers of the walls took away my veil from me.
8 I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
if ye find my beloved, that ye tell him,
that I am sick of love.

-- King James Version

Re: The Song of Songs

[vschanoes.livejournal.com]

I can't help it, sweetie. The phrase still just speaks to me of nausea! One of the many reasons, I suppose, that should I ever have a wedding, The Song of Songs will not be one of the readings...

"I am sick of love"--indeed.

Re: The Song of Songs

[(Anonymous)]

Most English Bibles use "bowels" or "heart" there, but Strongs has "womb" in the list of possible meanings.

I think that's a bit more accurate than "heart", meself.

[huladavid.livejournal.com]

Hmm... My gramma (who was a tough ol' bird who never baked cookies) used to use the phrase "don't get your bowels in an uproar". Unfortunately, I don't think she was talkin' about LUUUUUUUUUUV.

[db2305.livejournal.com]

Huh. I'm Dutch and I can't think of any word connecting love and twisting guts. and wouldn't you know, there's no Dutch thesaurus online yet. 'Ontroerend' en 'hartroerend' seem close. The latter: stirring the heart. That what you mean?

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

"roerend" sounds like it has the root of the English "rending" - without the negative context. What's the translation of "ontroerend"? I bet either that or "hartroerend" was the word he used.

[db2305.livejournal.com]

"Roeren" is literally to stir. I doubt that rending is etymologically connected.
"Ontroerend" is touching, moving, basically the same as 'hartroerend', but just a notch lower on the emotional scale.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Ah! Thank you.

[krismcd59.livejournal.com]

The OED indicates that "bowels" in the Early Modern period referred to the deepest center of anything, particularly a person. Emotions were thought to be situated in various places -- the heart perceived beauty, the liver was the location of courage, but the more extreme the emotion, the deeper/lower it was located -- kind of a spiral to the center or omphalos of which the alchemists were so fond. I'll always prefer the King James version of the OT and NT, despite its many deficiencies, because it's written in Shakespeare's English!

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Me, too!

[upstart-crow.livejournal.com]

Finally getting to reply to this. I was the one who prodded Ellen for the word, in case anyone is curious.

What a fascinating discussion! Ontroerend? What a beautiful word. My family lost any connection to the Dutch language when Hitler forced us out of the Netherlands...for the Dutch people here, how is that pronounced?