Jenny kiss’d me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,
Say that health and wealth have miss’d me,
Say I’m growing old, but add,
Jenny kiss’d me.
–Leigh Hunt, “Jenny Kiss’d Me”
First published in 1838, Hunt’s poem was inspired by a greeting kiss from Thomas Carlyle’s wife Jane Welsh, as he was visiting their home following his recent recovery from a flu epidemic. Hunt’s speaker suggests no intention of adultery but clearly appreciates Jenny’s polite affection. The poem, the form of which is know as a rondeau with repetition of the first and last three words and title, brings to mind two things.
The first is courtly love, or amour courtois, the notion that medieval European knights were ennobled and inspired to chivalry by their romantic attraction to a noble, usually married, woman. “Sexual satisfaction… may not have been a goal or even end result, but the love was not entirely Platonic either, as it was based on sexual attraction,” according to Wikipedia.
Second, Hunt’s poem and courtly love dovetail with Freud’s concept of cathexis, or investment of libido, i.e., the idea that almost any activity in which we are strongly invested contains a kernel of eroticism. Cathexis may be the last theoretical refuge for the dirty old man–or senex amans to you Classicists and English majors out there–a stock figure in Greek and Roman comedies and medieval literature like The Canterbury Tales.
Update: Now for something completely different…Here are some competing bits of advice. “Fortune favors the bold” versus “better safe than sorry.” I suppose it’s a judgment call. My young nephew, who likes to boldly climb trees, says he is “brave but careful.” Consider Alexander the Great, who boldly conquered much of western Asia but died after one of history’s most famous examples of imperial overreach at the age of 32.