Anyone who has taken a Classics course can probably tell you about eros, the word the ancient Greeks used for romantic love, always coupled with sexual desire. But the other terms for love used by the Greeks are less well known. There is philia, that brotherly love that applies to friends and family, and agape, selfless love or charity for all people that is the cornerstone of Christ’s philosophy as related by the Gos­pels, and is an important concept in Buddhism and many other religions. Then there is self-love (philautia) and even a term for playful, flirtacious, or childish love called ludus by later schol­ars.

But in English we just have the one love, and there is a cer­tain wisdom to that as well. All “types” of love at heart share a common emotional feeling of attachment and affection. Love is generally portrayed as a beneficial emotion; perhaps the most important thing in our lives are those we love. However this is not always the case—Greek myths and Shakespearean come­dies abound with lovers who are made fools of. And love can be a destructive force as well, like the romance of Heathcliff and Catherine in Wuthering Heights. By portraying love as a dark, irrational feeling attended by ghosts and gravestones, Emily Brontë created what is perhaps the most disturbing novel in the English language.

In her sonnet “I shall go back again to that bleak shore”, Edna St. Vincent Millay described a past love affair as being “a little under-said and oversung.” So we probably shouldn’t be surprised that eros dominates the Billboard Top 40, but is a less frequent visitor to a poetry reading, and makes only an occa­sional appearance in novels like Moby Dick and On the Road. Still, behind many a literary hero—Byron’s Corsair, Haw­thorne’s Hester Prynne, Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby, George Eliot’s Dorothea Brooke—there is a romance gone wrong. And many a sit-com and bromance is built around that steadier, more pla­tonic love of philia.

So welcome to Whistling Shade’s Love issue. Herein you will find a packet of love letters written from various circum­stances and points of view. Whether your loved one is a new love or old, real or imagined, a cyber date, a co-worker, a friend, a sibling, a child, a pet, a spouse of many years—we have some lines for you to peruse. May they fill you with eros, philia, agape, even ludus—most of all, may they fill you with love.

- Joel Van Valin