The Greater Trumps: (08) The Lovers

In ancient times, this image was that of Isis and Osiris, or Eve and Adam, with a sword dividing the couple - or bringing them together before it. It is the image of the offering of a Choice - which will be concluded by Isis taking up the challenge of recovering her lord's scattered body - or Adam taking up the challenge of exile with his lady wife - forever and ever till the ending of the age. Of course, the image goes beyond that stark brutality of decision: there is always happily ever after, once things have been worked out; once Osiris is whole; when Humanity is redeemed through the children of Eve.

But to get there, one needs a picture that can end well - two complementary halves must exist before the choice that leads to unity can be made. That is why the Lovers is also the image of the Complement, that which matches the one and makes the other whole. The potential tragedy of the Lovers is when Choice exists in the absence of Complement.

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Without a doubt, this is the poem which comes to my mind when I think of the Lovers: Dylan Thomas's And Death Shall Have No Dominion. It is more than just a rant against the fall of night; it is a plea for time and space and humanity. It is also filled with the most wonderful images about that plaint. I reproduce it in full below.

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan’t crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.

The Lovers make an image which attempts to survive death; it is the first of the trumps which makes active cause against that particular boundary of human existence. We would be much less as a race without this.