Of love & longing across ages and time

Jaspal Singh

Jung Bahadur GoyaL is one of the best read Punjabi writers. His latest book, Muhabatnama, is a wonderful collection of nine accounts of the writers’ erotic extravaganza. The representative authors are Rabindranath Tagore, Balzac, Turgenev, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Luiza Gustavovna Solomé, Khalil Gibran, Jean-Paul Sartre, Mircea Eliade and Amrita Pritam.

Tagore’s first love for his absentee paternal uncle’s wife Kadambini, who was of same age as Tagore and her suicide, is a poignant story of prohibited love within the kinship structure of the famous Thakur family. This is followed by a love affair with Ranu Mukharjee, a rich art lover and the lasting affair with Argentinian litterateur Victoria Ocampo. Famous French novelist Balzac was notorious for his profligacy. He had many reckless love adventures with middle-aged women like Madame de Berny, Madame Zulma Carraud, Madame Juliette Récamier and Countess Ewelina Hanska. 

The well-known nineteenth-century Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev was passionately in love with French performer Pauline Viardot. He lived in Viardot’s house near Paris almost as a family member. He died with his head in her lap in 1883. Another Russian novelist Dostoevsky, author of novels like Crime and Punishment, Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot, etc. had half a dozen love affairs. A compulsive gambler, ultimately he came in contact with Anna Snitkina who became his stenographer and then his wife for rest of his life.

Luiza Gustavovna Solomé was a psychologist, philosopher, novelist and poetess. Three great modern thinkers — Nietzsche, Paul Rée and Sigmund Freud — were friends with her. Both Nietzsche and Paul Rée vied with each other to win over her love. Ultimately, Nietzsche succeeded but for some time. She also had intimate association with Rainer Rilke as well. She died a lonely death in 1937. After her death her library was burnt by the Nazis for being an anti-fascist.

America-based Lebanonian philosopher and painter Khalil Gibran of The Prophet fame had a long love affair with his patron Mary Haskell, who promoted him at every level.

One of the best pieces in this collection is about Jean-Paul Sartre and his lifelong companion, Simone de Beauvoir. Both of them led a free life and had multiple sex partners. Sartre sided with the Left movements and Simone was a leading feminist. 

The love story of American-Romanian philosopher and religious interpreter Mircea Eliade and Maitreyi Devi is rather scandalous. In 1995, Chicago University published their companion novels Bengal Nights and It Does not Die. Their love affair is still mentioned in the annals of romance. 

The last piece in this collection is about the love affair between Amrita Pritam and Imroz. Of all the romances mentioned here, this one is the most controversial. 

There are some mistakes in the book pertaining to names and dates. Some of the accounts are over-romanticised. Despite all this, the book is immensely readable.