[etni] fw: origin of term - soulmates
- From: "Ask Etni" <ask@xxxxxxxx>
- To: <etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2006 10:23:16 +0200
"Dr. Natan Ophir" - natan21@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: origin of term - soulmates
To fellow ETNIERs,
Soulmates - where is the term first mentioned?
Any one out there who can help?
I am writing an article on "Soulmates" for the soon to be
published Encyclopedia of Love in World Religions" edited
by Dr. Yudit Kornberg Greenberg and trying to trace the
first use of the term "soulmate" in English. On the Web
a number of sites repeat the claim that Soulmate was
first use by Samuel Coleridge in 1822 - however I have
been unable to locate any poem of his from 1822 that
uses "soulmate". In fact, I can't even find Coleridge
using "soulmate". The closest I could come was
Percy B. Shelley's Epipsychidion (Greek meaning
literally "about a soul") - Shelley describes romantically
a "soul within a soul". This was published in London 1821
and Shelley had just completed translating Plato's
Symposium, thus he was enshrining a kind of Platonist
bridal hymn for his soulmate - "Whither twas fled, this soul
out of my soul; And murmured names and spells which
have control Over the sightless tyrants of our fate".
But "soulmate" I have yet to discover who invented the term.
And no, it was not Aristophanes in the Symposium.
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