Omnia Vincit Amor et nos cedamus amori (“Love conquers all; let us all yield to love”).
That is a Latin phrase from Virgil’s Eclogues.
Believe it or not, I used to believe in it.
A man named Gallus said ‘Omnia Vincit amor‘ as his last words before death in Virgil’s famous poem. He was love-sick to such an extent that gods questioned his sanity.
“Galle, quid insanis?”, they asked.
After the object of his desire, Lycoris, left him, he literally died due to sadness. Like Padme in Star Wars.
I never knew the origin of this saying (until now) but I did know about the painting of Amor, god of love, also titled ”Amor vincit omnia”. The above painting that ruined Caravaggio’s life.
The painting, commissioned by a disgustingly rich patron Vincenzo Giustiniani, became so popular in the early 17th century that Caravaggio’s rival Giovanni Baglione, simply copied the successful idea and created Divine and Profane Love (below). It will basically look to you like another Caravaggio painting (if you’ve ever seen more than two of them).
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Caravaggio publically called Baglione, with a good reason, a plagiarist. Baglione in response created another version of the same painting, with defeated Lucifer in it looking suspiciously similar to Caravaggio.
I wish someone feuded with me like this. It sounds like something that makes your blood run swifter.
The painting also suggests that the cupid and the devil were engaged in homosexual activities before the divine intervention arrived in time, which was supposed to discredit Caravaggio as a gay.
Caravaggio then made his friends write obscene poems about his adversary and the whole thing led them to seek justice in the court of law. When Caravaggio died, Baglione didn’t let his grudge die with the dearly departed and sat and wrote his first biography. As you may guess, it wasn’t most favourable.
Love didn’t win. Forgiveness and grace didn’t flourish amongst human weakness and envy.
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Vincit Omnia Veritas
About love, as I said many times, I know nothing.
But I do believe that truth wins, if not always, then at least in many situations. The truth about human character, which can never be concealed for too long.
I spoke two days ago with a young woman that had been in a relationship with her now husband for ten years.
Her husband is from a religious Muslim family who doesn’t treat her very well even though she is Muslim herself. The way she is treated changed a little once she delivered her first child, however, she knows that she will never be fully accepted.
She told me that if she could move back in time ten years, she would have never married her partner.
Ten years ago is more or less the year when I met my ex-partner, who was a religious man himself and back then I did believe that love would conquer all the differences between us.
Would it have done that? I don’t think so.
What I believe in is that love can give you a lot of motivation to change yourself, which I don’t think is always bad. It shouldn’t make you suffer and abandon the person that you are but it can harmonize your character, soften your edges and elucidate your shortcomings.
However, truth will win. Truth about your needs and desires and that they are supposed to constitute half of the whole relationship.
Love will never heal your abuser. Love will not fix indifference and neglect. It will be only devoured, used for validation or considered not good enough.
Maybe you are a person who holds your grudges close to your heart and all the changes you have to implement into your life in the name of love will make you, ten years later, a seething and broken man.
Or maybe you will think it was all worth it.
Or maybe, just like me, you will pray for acceptance. The acceptance that love can blind you and make you ignore your own identity, but ultimately, discovering it even very late is better than always trying to defeat the truth.
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Amor Vincit Omnia
BY EDGAR BOWERS
Love is no more.
It died as the mind dies: the pure desire
Relinquishing the blissful form it wore,
The ample joy and clarity expire.
Regret is vain.
Then do not grieve for what you would efface,
The sudden failure of the past, the pain
Of its unwilling change, and the disgrace.
Leave innocence,
And modify your nature by the grief
Which poses to the will indifference
That no desire is permanent in sense.
Take leave of me.
What recompense, or pity, or deceit
Can cure, or what assumed serenity
Conceal the mortal loss which we repeat?
The mind will change, and change shall be relief.
