Desire of the Eyes

Desire of the Eyes

"What is it that will not stand lock nor chain?  --- The eye of a
person in the company of a friend: it will not abide shutting nor
restraint, but only looking upon."
    ____ from the riddle contest between Fionn  and Grainne,
           Scots Gaelic lore (trans CM)


    The riddling courtship of the aging Irish hero Fionn mac Cumhail and the young and lovely Grainne (FINN mak KOOL and GRAWN'ya respectively) comes to nothing when Grainne sets eyes on Fionn's best companion, Diarmuid. Instead of marrying Fionn, Grainne runs away with Diarmuid. The desire of the eyes that both feel cannot be tamed; they are helplessly bound to each other and have to retreat from Fionn's sight or suffer in a terrible eternal triangle.

  Desire of the eyes is an affliction from which we have all suffered whether the desire be for a person or an object. In any love affair, desire of the eyes is the first signal to those close to the couple that something is sparking, for they cannot tear their eyes away from each other. The desire that links two people together in a mutual bond is a beautiful and potent force that other people do well to avoid: it has its own attractive energy with the power to short-circuit any interference. But the unreciprocated desire of one person for an unwilling one is an unhappy bondage that sometimes leads to a series of possessive interferences: stalking, interception, even soul-theft or rape. The doting parent who gazes unsparingly upon the apple of her eye with more pride than descretion inflicts the desire of the eyes upon her child; the lonely man who yearns after a woman who is ignorant of his existence inflects unwanted attentions upon her. Despite these potential distortions, desire of the eyes sometimes leads to a great love that (if it is mutual) no one may sunder to the world's ending.

"How does desire of the eyes affect your life? Is the attraction mutual or unreciprocated?"
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]