The Map Of The Human Heart
On How The Heart Became The Receptacle Of Love
How did the meaty fist-sized muscular organ that lives in our chests, busily doing its job, pumping blood and oxygen through valves, vessels, ventricles, arteries, atriums and chambers, aka the human heart, become the universal symbol of love? Maybe because the nervous system and the endocrine system control the heart. Emotional stress and excitement result in the release of a rush of hormones that can affect the functionality of the heart, causing physical aches and pains and making breathing difficult. ‘Broken heart syndrome’ is a real condition, caused by severe emotional trauma.
Some have theorised the connection is because the heart shape resembles the female bottom, upside down, or even the vulva. I can find no academic research to back this theory.
We all understand the emotional meanings behind the language of hearts pounding, beating, trembling, aching, thumping, fluttering, breaking, stopping, exploding, pulsating and racing, hearts getting lost, wild, wrenched, dragged around and being given away, hearts made of gold or steel or glass, but I wanted to know how we all agreed on the symbolism.
When did songs start adopting hearts as metaphors for love and feeling? After being sidelined by far too many fascinating semi-pertinent heart related topics I found that hearts have been used in songs right from the beginning of recorded music. ‘I’m Losing My Heart To Someone’ was a hugely popular song from a 1920 musical. Bessie Smith’s ‘Down Hearted Blues’, released in 1923, was one of the top twenty songs of the 1920s. And hearts had been adding depth and meaning to sentences since the first preserved poems in English literature, they’d been mentioned in the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Quran.
Ancient Egyptians believed that all of our good and bad deeds were recorded on the heart, so it could be judged in the afterlife by the God of Mummification, Anubis, who would weigh the heart against the goddess Ma’at’s feather of truth. If it was equal or lighter, the person was considered to have lead a virtuous life and could go on to party in eternal bliss in Aaru. If it was heavier, they would be eaten by a mythological monster called Annit. Brutal times.
Silphium was a type of giant fennel plant with heart shaped leaves and seed pods that was used for all kinds of digestive and other medicinal purposes in the Ancient Greek city of Cyrene in sixth century BCE and the first century CE, including as a contraceptive, aphrodisiac and an abortifacient. It was so revered for its usefulness with regard to freedom in their sex lives that it was thought to have been a gift from the god Apollo. Songs and poems sung its praises. It was stockpiled alongside gold in the imperial treasure room and Cyrene currency bore this now familiar image on their silver coins, to honour the glory of the silphium seed pod. It became extinct in Roman times when demand for this miracle plant that made sex without unwanted consequences possible simply outgrew the limited supply - Emperor Nero is believed to have had the last ever pill made from silphium. However, a plant medicine researcher from Istanbul University has recently reported finding what he believes to be silphium in the wild. Exciting times!
Back in Ancient Greece, there was much philosophical contemplation and physical examination of the roles and functions of the heart and the brain.
Aristotle performed dissections on animals and corpses and came to the conclusion that the heart was was the source of blood to the body, and the purpose of the brain was to cool the blood that had a tendency to ‘bubble up’.
Plato and Aristotle both believed emotions, movement and intellect came from the heart.
Plato is quoted as saying ‘Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.’
Pythagoras introduced the idea that the brain was in fact the organ that controlled our thoughts and bodies. Whether ‘brain beats heart’ or ‘heart beats brain’ is still being knuckled out in neurological circles.
“Le Roman De La Poire,” a French love poem written by Thibaut in the mid 13th century with an accompanying illustration of a man offering his heart to his beloved, is considered to be the first known depiction of a heart as a symbol of love.
Religious iconography and ‘the sacred heart of Jesus’ cemented the concept of the heart as the ultimate symbol of pure love and intense feeling.
By the Victorian era, we were awash in romantic notions and imagery of hearts and flowers and cupids, love notes, jewellery, poetry, art and cards. The heart was everywhere.
The Polish pianist and composer Chopin died in 1849 and although his body was buried at Pere Lachaise Cemetiere in Paris, in accordance with his wishes his heart was removed from his corpse and returned to his home town of Warsaw, where it still resides in an urn in a church with the inscription ‘Where your treasure is, there is your heart too’.
But it wasn’t until graphic designer Milton Glaser made this innocuous concept sketch for a government sponsored ad campaign to revitalise some support for the crime ridden down at heel city in the back of a taxicab in 1977 that the heart shape became a universal symbol for the verb ‘love’, in what was likely the humble beginnings of the emoji as we know it today.
In a 2011 Village Voice interview, Glaser said ‘I’m flabbergasted by what happened to this little, simple, nothing of an idea. It just demonstrates that every once in a while you do something that can have enormous consequences…it was a bunch of little scratches on a piece of paper! I am just astonished by the amount of money it’s brought in. I went to Chinatown a few months ago, and it had been transformed to a gazillion “I Love New York” T-shirts on every building and facade. It amazes me.’ He created the logo pro bono and gifted the copyright to the city of New York, who later threatened to sue him for copyright infringement when he adapted it to state “I Love New York More Than Ever” as a way to bring people together after 9/11. Ah don’t you love corporate culture?
Did I mention I have a new single out called ‘Fix Your Heart Or Die’? I’m sure I did… although my efforts at promotion are often rather frighteningly obscure. Anyway, this is what set in motion the thinking about hearts in songs and songs in hearts and in the spirit of love and giving and sharing, and also because I have always been obsessed with making themed playlists, I have created a beautiful and diverse playlist of songs in the key of heart to celebrate!
There are songs by Bruce Springsteen, Candi Staton, Erma Franklin, Angel Olsen,
, , , Died Pretty, Kacey Musgraves, Rolling Stones, Irma Thomas, Sparklehorse, Suuny & The Sunliners, You Am I, Velvet Underground, Michael Kiwanuka, Lana Del Rey and of course Bonnie Tyler and me - and so many more … three and half hours of glorious heart tunes I give to thee! Ahhh… I hope you enjoy… and please share your heart filled songs and stories with me in the comments.I heart all y’all’s. If you heart me back please press the little heart at the bottom of this piece to help me find new readers.
PS: In case you didn’t notice, I have experimented with recording an audio VoiceOver version of this missive if you’d prefer to listen while you go about your day/night/life with your hands and eyes unencumbered - it right up the top under the title. If you like this feature, please let me know and I’ll read more aloud.
Wow, what a diverse playlist. My favourite heart song is Quiet Heart from the classic Go-Betweens album 16 Lovers Lane. Was at uni when that came out, which dates me a bit.
Surely, Lo, you have heard the joke about replacing song titles featuring the word "heart" with "arse" - Achy Breaky Arse, Arse of Glass, Hungry Arse, Total Eclipse of the Arse, Listen To My Arse and (now) Fix Your Arse or Die :D :)))