Song of Songs 1
v.3
Pleasing is the fragrance of your perfumes; your name is like perfumed poured out. No wonder the maidens love you!
v.15
How beautiful you are, my darling! Oh, how beautiful! Your eyes are doves.
He is struck in particular by her eyes, which he likens to “doves,” perhaps referring to their brightness and quickness, to the fact that they flutter, or to their partial concealment behind a veil (like doves that hide away in dark recesses [2:14; 4:1]).
To a nonlover this is supremely trite and boring. To a lover it is perfect, like a diamond. To a nonlover it is endless repetition. To a lover it can go on forever, like God himself, one, perfect, self-sufficient, “the one thing needful”.
If you have ever fallen in love or had a friend who did, you know the difference between these two perspectives. The lover is totally engrossed in his love, or rather in his beloved He is never bored. He could go on and on forever. The outside observer, however-the friend, roommate, or family member-finds the lover supremely boring, narrow, obsessed-exactly the opposite of what he is to himself.
Imagine the nonlover as literary critic evaluating the little poem above. “Behold, you are beautiful, my love” —you cannot get more trite and clichéish than that. Totally unoriginal.
You could not imagine a less imaginative sentence. “Behold, you are beautiful”-the second line is even less original than the first. Nothing but repetition. We already know she is beautiful; stop harping on it. “Your eyes are doves” —silly, simplistic image. Does not even fit. Oh, well: love is blind. Let us see what he says; maybe he is a better poet than she was, at least. “Behold, you are beautiful, my beloved.” Oh, no! Not more of the same! All he does is repeat her words.
“Truly lovely” —again and again. Four out of five lines totally dispensable. “Our couch is green” —who cares? Certainly I do not. This is the silliest, simplest, tritest, most childish poem (if you dare dignify it by that name) I have ever read.
But now listen to the real critics, the lovers themselves. “Behold”- how startling the vision of love is! What a surprise—like the Beatific Vision, like the Light of God suddenly appearing to human eyes! “You are beautiful, my love” — exactly right, true, essential. Nothing more need be said. This is heart’s desire; this is all the human heart hungers for.