ST. VALENTINES DAY - 2003

The stamp has been issued in 20-stamp sheets. The Croatian Post has also issued the commemorative First Day Cover (FDC) and an illustrated postcard. This is what the Croatian writer Ivan Kušan says about St.Valentine’s Day and the differences in the understanding of the notion love: As a young man and young artist I knew nothing about St.Valentine’s Day. The tragedy of Bleiburg had barely finished and the one of the prison camp of Goli Otok began. Young men used to wear espadrilles or clogs, and girls, if they had grandmothers, used to wear their sharp-pointed shoes and stockings with imposing seams on their stockings. Couples would walk, slightly apart, for short periods in the evening, along the promenade on Zrinjevac, bashful couples, barely touching. St.Valentine’s Day did not exist as such, and the well-read knew only about the murky events connected with this date. In 1947, on St.Valentine’s Day, among others, the notorious Al Capone was killed in front of a Chicago garage. In free Croatia St.Valentine’s Day started shining like in other places in the world. St.Valentine’s Day is, among other things, the day of love, embraces, kisses, fashion, showing off, both physical and spiritual, the brave ones go bravely even further - and deeper. We had also known something about this sublime feeling before the others did. We used to read, leaf through books. The great writer T.S.Eliot pointed to the one whom he regarded not only greater than himself, but the greatest poet in the world. William Butler Yeats was simple to the core, particularly when love was concerned. He wrote: “... loved your beauty, with love false or true...”. Just like centuries before him, in China, Lao-Tse wrote: “... rose of our love and courage, because of deep love one is courageous.” Shakespeare could be extremely simple, adept: “... beauty in a woman’s eye...” (Love’s Labour’s Lost). Or more sophisticated: “... if music were the food of love...” (Twelfth Night) . The poet Wordsworth wrote seemingly simply about the seemingly simple: “ ...The rainbow comes and goes, and lovely is the rose...” Or: love is also “...A maid whom they were none to praise, and very few to love...” Apostle Paul preached: Freedom my love... Spiritual fruit - love. Who loves not, knows God not, because God is love. The new version of the Bible has the word tenderness, kindness, in the Epistle to the Corinthians, translated as love into Latin, “caritas” “... There is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth our fear...” The great Spanish dramatist Lope de Vega thinks that “...harmony is pure love”. The old English preacher and poet John Donne (1573-1621), who inspired Ernest Hemingway for some of his book titles, wrote a long time ago: “...Love no season knows, not hours, days, months...”; St.Augustine would say that he “has fallen in love with love”, and Christina Rossetti considered “love to be immortal”, or “...the birthday of my life is come, my love is come to me...”. The modern American writer James Thurber declared “I love the idea of there being two sexes”. But love may also have another side to it. We remember what Shakespeare wrote down in “As You Like It”: “Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love”. More recently, the Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936) wrote that it was sad “when you are not loved, but it is sadder if you are unable to love”. Finally, like in the beginning, Eliot’s favourite poet William Butler Yeats in his poems also wrote the following: “She bid me take love easy, ... but I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.” Thus, even on St.Valentine’s Day, “nothing is overmuch ponderable to our love”. -------------------------- In order to sound exceptional, Valentine-like and everlasting, i.e. eternal, not only in Yeats’s poetry but also in classical history, (when there was no Valentine’s Day at all, nor was there in Croatia), we resorted to the ancient notion which could not be found even in Old Latin. You would leaf through De Verbo in Verbum in vain. Even in the classics there had been a word that was retained by the Romance languages: “Amor” or love. Without “amor”, as we have seen, there would be no St.Valentine’s Day. So, AMOR! Let’s start from mother’s love, amor matris! And what’s the meaning of the following: Amor non est medicabilis herbis? Love cannot be cured by herbs? Ovid actually thought that there is no cure for love, least of all on St.Valentine’s Day - the day actually fuels it up. Like his “Epistulae ex Ponto”. Amor omnibus idem - love is the same for everybody. It has been attributed to Vergil, the author of “The Aeneid”, to have thought that all creatures living on earth, (from people to beasts and birds), are all equally inclined to love. Amor ordinem nescit - St.Jerome thought that love does not know of any order, all will have their turn - to fall in love, just like on St.Valentine’s Day. Finally, let us be aware, “amor vincit omnia”: love will conquer! Happy St.Valentine’s Day! Ivan Kušan