eat and be eaten, love and be loved
on the macabre beauty of the cannibalism metaphor & and love as something to be consumed
I am ever notorious for my obsession with cannibalism as metaphor for love. Something about the comparison of sweet, pure, tender love with something violent, deranged and disgusting. Love as a consuming, love as violence. Love as something so visceral that you can’t help but watch and yearn for it. I suppose the most popular version of love is in its softness; pink love-hearts, ribbons, white doves and cherubs. But love is a many-headed beast, a hydra that devours and consumes as much as it nurtures and uplifts. And what is more taboo than the consumption of your own kind? The infamy and taboo of cannibalism threads its way through history all the way to the very inception of life itself. This violent act that conjures up images of primal savagery, of the ultimate transgression against one’s own kind, but when you strip it down to the bare essentials, going past the macabre face, down to simply this unignorable need to consume, much can be discovered about the nature of love, and why cannibalism is so popular as a metaphor for it.
People always talk about “being hungry” for someone, or “feasting their eyes” on someone they find attractive. Lovers speak of wanting to “consume” each other to merge into a single entity. This base desire to devour is echoed in the language of love itself. It isn’t just poetic flourish, it’s a nod to the insatiable appetite of Love.
Is there something as satisfying as not so much falling but consuming your way into love with someone? Hours spent together mean your identities become almost unrecognizable. Where does one end and the other begin. There’s always a question of “where’s your other half?” when you go somewhere alone. Where slowly but surely, the boundaries had begun to blur and finally to discover that the very sense of self has been subsumed by the relationship, consumed piece by piece.
How utterly romantic, the idea of knitting your body into that of your lover. Into their blood, their stomach, between their teeth, where every fiber of your being enmeshed into one another. Your body as a final resting place for the one you love, the consumption allowing them to transform your body into a haunted house, a tomb, or simply a new home in a final act of divine devotion. Of course, this doesn’t really apply to high-school crushes or fleeting attractions, but to the kind of love that is so all encompassing, and obsessive to the point of insanity, where one has this base carnal desire to entirely consume the otherness of their partner in order to fulfill a level of closeness that simply cannot be achieved by mere physical closeness. “I love you so much I want to eat you, I want to be under your skin, I want to be the blood that runs in your veins.”
It’s a wild yearning to be completely whole with another person, not as a cute feeling where someone makes your heart flutter, but as this filthy ache that rocks your entire body and soul. The kind of hunger only written about in books. Love is a feast and to learn to abstain takes every sliver of willpower left and many people simply give in to the temptation because it’s just so much easier. And more intimate. And more romantic. There is a sickness that follows the shame of always giving with love only to be met with slaughter. It’s evidence of love that quite frankly transcends hunger. The kind of love that is compared to cannibalism can’t be described in a phrase as weak as “we were in love”. No. It’s more of a “we loved each other, we lived in each other, through each other, and by each other; we are each other.” It’s about not knowing how to love someone without swallowing them. It’s telling someone that you are fragile and unholy and you want them to open you up, ravage, and eat.
In a poem titled “In the Desert” by Stephen Crane, the poet describes creature who is eating his own heart and enjoying it simply because it is his own. Although Crane leaves his poem open for interpretation of its use of cannibalization, it can be used to demonstrate the idea of loving your partner so much that in order to feel the kind of closeness skin on skin contact cannot achieve, you consume them.
In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter—bitter,” he answered.
“But I like it
“Because it is bitter,
“And because it is my heart.”
These seemingly opposing relationships (of love and cannibalism) depicted side by side and intertwined frequently end up being the most powerful and memorable in our cultural lexicon, and I believe this is due to our desire for authenticity triumphing over our need for beauty. Donna Tartt said, “beauty is terror” and it is true that there is beauty to be found in everything, even in the most despicable and distressing expressions of love and devotion; however, it is also true that acknowledging the inherently oxymoronic nature of human nature - self-preserving, yet self-sacrificing; loving, yet deeply hateful; devotional and fragile, yet vengeful - requires an iron stomach. The act of consuming somebody as a gesture of love, of killing them as the ultimate show of devotion, has run rampant in media and minds for eons now.
I live love and breathe Ethel Cain. “Preacher’s Daughter” is Hayden Anhedönia’s 13-track, 76-minute long, folk-rock-blues Southern Gothic opera, following a fictional character, the preacher’s daughter, who loses lover after lover and grapples with religious trauma and sexuality in her Alabama hometown, before being kidnapped and sold into prostitution. After attempting to escape, her captor kills and cannibalizes her. Cain talks about the cannibalism trope that is heavily prevalent in her music as follows.
So, when I was a kid I had this vivid imaginary scenario, like, when you're a kid and you don't know what sex is and you have these crushes on people that you can't explain, there's this need for physical intimacy that you can't explain away with sex, so I would always imagine that I wanted to open myself up and pull someone into me and devour them. I felt like I had to put people inside of me to love them. I was so little imagining this. I think cannibalism itself is crazy and it's not anything new, but I think there's a similarity between cannibalism and not being able to get someone that you love close enough to you, so you have to literally devour them, and that's still not close enough. I just love the romantic implications of the desperation of getting someone so close to you that you have to devour them. I think this new rise of cannibalism in media - Satanic panic aside - is such an act of devotion, metaphorically. Which is so beautiful! Before I even knew what intimacy was like as a child I was like, “I have to eat people." So, then you pair that with the gritty true crime vibe that all the indie girls love to have and there's such a romantic factor and aspect of desperation. It's so bad, but love that is healthy is so good, and so unappealing, to me, at least. Which is probably why I'm so bad at dating. If it's not driving me crazy, then I'm like "This is no good." I have to want to eat you. If I don't want to eat you, then it's not real love.
All sin and corruption begin with the mouth, the tongue and the never ending wanting. The first poem in the world is “I want to eat”. In the movie Bones and All, every color sound and texture come alive with vibrancy. Spilled blood is artful, gore is beautiful and feasting on it seems almost fitting like something you were meant to do all along. In a movie very clearly about the relationship between love and cannibalism, the concept of cannibalistic love is deceptively pure; once you get past the blood and guts, loving someone as you devour them, heart and soul, is one of the most vulnerable and pure ways of caring for another. Perhaps it is even the most desirable. To love someone is to devour them and to devour someone is to love them. Bones and all.
After decades of starving and yearning and wanting down on your knees, when love and affection are finally bestowed upon you, how else can you react to the delightful intensity of its taste? where each bite overwhelms you to the very bone? Of course, cannibalism is the most monstrous of all the monstrous acts, but after decades of starving and wanting for love you can only go on a diet for so long before you get really, really hungry for it. I fear if I begin listing all my saved excerpts of cannibalism as a metaphor for love, this essay will never end, but here are some of my favorites.
It is our custom
to consume
the person we love.
Taboo flesh: swollen
genitalia nipples
the scrotum the vulva
the soles of the feet
the palms of the hand
heart and liver taste best.
Cannibalism is blessed.I'll wear your jawbone
round my neck
listen to your vertebrae
bone rapping bone in my wrists.
I’ll string your fingers round my waist
what a rigorous embrace.
Over my heart I'll wear
a brooch with a lock of your hair.
Nights I’ll sleep cradling
your skull sharpening
my teeth on your toothless grin.Sundays there's Mass and communion
and I'll put your relics to rest.Gloria Anzaldúa, The Cannibal's Canción
So I say, satisfy your hunger. Be that animal you fear. Eat and ravage your lover and let them do the same to you, and when you are finished, don’t be ashamed. This is the way of love. There is red love-juice all over your hands and under your nails. It’s all over your shirt and between your teeth. It’s all over the countertop too and the floor is all ruined. Now, catch your breath. Calmly wash your hands and face. Let your heart slow down. Sit and dream, of the passion, of the incessant need to be inside your lover one way or another because being two separate individuals just is not enough to house the raw need you both have for each other. Love freely and passionately. Life and time are too short to be a lukewarm lover. Love with your whole entire being. Love by getting your hands so dirty and mouth all stained.
It’s all about the bitten lips, the kissed limbs, the hungering tongue and teeth with limbs entwined. It is not uncommon of us to want to eat what we love so dearly. Is that not just human nature? Whenever mouth touches skin there blazes such a primal desire to eat and feast and feast and devour. This violent hunger that’s shaped like two hands wrapped around a throat. Such is love, such is unfaltering devotion. Such is the face of God. To eat and be eaten. To love and be loved.
“Eat of me baby, skin to the bone. Body on body. Until I’m all gone. But I’m with you inside” (Ethel Cain, 2022).
This isn’t the last I’ll speak on this topic which I adore so much, but
Until next time, my sweet hearts, I will put you in my mouth and I will swallow and you will come and live inside me hidden in the maroon flesh, because I love you so!
All my roses and cherries,
Rara xx