Ae Dil Hai Mushkil attributes to Writers and their Muses

Ae Dil Hai Mushkil attributes to Writers and their Muses

The love story of Ayan, Alizeh and Saba entice us to screen. As a film critic I have penned down a review earlier, this time I would like to find the psycho-literal linkage between characters.

This article of mine is an attempt to dust out the love affairs of writers and their muse. Love is a psychological feeling suppressed under various social, political, national and religious factors. Writers have experienced it and explored it at length. I have selected the best writers who have extensively written on love. They have experienced the pangs of love. It has motivated them to write and their writing later converted into many medias and became classic.

John Keats and his lady love Fanny Brawne exchanged their feelings through letters.  These immortalized  beautiful love letters masterpieces. John Keats's most famous sonnets, “Bright Star” is written for her.

He urged Fanny "whenever you know me to be alone, come, no matter what day."

Dante Alighieri met Beatrice when he was just 9 years old; they were in love till the last breath. Beatrice met untimely death; a grief stricken Dante wrote his feelings in La Vita Nuova. He also mentions Beatrice in his masterpiece ‘the Divine Comedy’.

William Shakespeare, who has inspired the world literature, had a muse. We can find the trace in his 154 sonnets, a ‘Fair Youth’ and a ‘Dark Lady’. His relationship with the Dark Lady of beautiful eyes remains as mysterious as her name. Some attributed it to notoriously famous prostitute Lucy Negro.

The French poet Charles Baudelaire met Jeanne Duval in 1842 at Haiti. They spent 20 years of courtship together. We find her influence in Baudelaire’s writing and his life. He dedicates many of his poems to her. Baudelaire lovingly called her his “Vénus Noire” (black venus). 

F. Scott Fitzgerald the writer of The Great Gatsby met Zelda Sayre in 1918 at Alabama.  They had first met in a train station, which Fitzgerald later recounted in The Great Gatsby.  Zelda has a heavy influence on his writing career, he created many female characters but every character has a ting of Zelda. Experts have found out this after studying her diary.

W. B. met Maud Gonne an Irish Nationalist revolutionary in 1889 and was instantly smitten by her. He expressed his love for her number of times between 1891 and 1901, and she always rejected. This unrequited love reflected in his poems of romantic yearning.

Ayn Rand in her teenage, the author of The Fountainhead had a huge crush on her neighbour Lev Bekkerman. Bekkerman was selfish and reckless, and didn’t care for Rand’s feelings. This inspired Rand to create destructive and dreamy character of Leo Kovalensky in her first published novel, we the Living.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the German writer, was in love with a woman. She was engaged to someone else. Goethe had suicidal tendencies and they were reflected in his first novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, the protagonist shot himself to death in despair after his failed love affair. This also gave birth to the trend of copycat suicide, named Werther effect after Goethe’s novel.

Jane Austen had a year of almost whirlwind romance with Tom Lefroy, who later became the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland. This was the same period when she wrote Pride and Prejudice. It is widely believed that the main characters and their affair are heavily influenced by Austen’s own. All we know is that, their love was never fulfilled, and Austen remained single for the rest of her life!

These classical love affairs cannot be compared with film ADHM but this film attributed to them. ADHM may not be considered into modern classic but it is certainly a landmark of changing times and climes

ADHM is a milestone film to introduce the concept of ‘fling’, ‘one sided complete love’ and ‘love on rebound’. Director has used contemporary chaotic lifestyle and plastic emotions. This film clearly makes a demarcation between love and lust.