Songs of Love and Death: All-Original Tales of Star-crossed Love

Начало книги

The earliest reference we can find for the phrase “star-crossed lovers” traces it to 1595, attributing it to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, a tragedy about the doomed romance that blossoms between a young man and a young woman on the brawling streets of Verona, a romance that is destined to fail because the families they come from are locked in a deadly feud: “From forth the fatal loins of these two foes, / a pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life.”

It’s an astrological phrase, of course, stemming from the old belief (still held today by millions of people, as a look at any newspaper will tell you) that the position of the stars at your birth casts a supernatural influence that determines your fate. So to say that a romantic relationship is “star-crossed” is to say that the influence of the stars are working against it, that it’s opposed by fate, ill-fated, “thwarted by a malign star.” Not meant to be. That you’re destined to be kept apart no matter how hard you struggle to be together.

Читать дальше →