Abelard's Love

Abelard’s Love is an inspired retelling of the story of Abelard and Heloise—the French medieval theologian and his brilliant student—whose love affair led to a scandal that has echoed through the centuries. In the affair’s aftermath, Abelard became a monk and Heloise a nun. Forgotten to history was their unwanted son.

Luise Rinser sets at center stage that son and his unique perspective on his legendary parents. The novel is cast in the form of a long letter written by the son, Astrolabe. Addressed to Heloise in the weeks after Abelard’s death, the letter brings the story of this tragic family vividly to life. Rinser offers insights into each of the three participants in this family drama, yet it is the perspective of the aggrieved son that lies at the book’s core. As the distinguished critic and translator Harry Zohn has remarked, “the young man’s melancholy musings . . . add up to an anguished ‘J’accuse’ of epic dimensions.”

Library Journal

Who hasn't heard of the star-crossed lovers Heloise and Abelard? In this novel Rinser, a prominent German author who was the Green Party's presidential candidate in 1984, presents a very subjective view of the pair via their son, Astrolabe, who was lost to history. Raised in Brittany, Astrolabe always wondered about his fancy Latin name. He finally discovers that it refers not to a saint but to an astronomical instrument used to determine the position of the stars. Astrolabe must make some determinations of his own after his father's death. Like most children who delve into their parentage, Astrolabe discovers both good and bad. Why, since his parents had married, did they choose not to live together and raise him? Why had his father insisted that his mother become a nun? Was his mother as submissive to Abelard as she seemed, or did she decide Astrolabe's fate by refusing to live with Abelard because it would ruin his career as a canon and teacher? Astrolabe becomes a canon, too, one forbidden to marry. Can anyone in his position understand the demands of the flesh? Although set in medieval Europe, this story has many modern parallels. To Astrolabe, the admonition "Know thyself" means to "delv[e] into one's own depths," and his journey toward the truth is well rendered here. Recommended for academic libraries.Doris Lynch, Monroe Cty. P.L., Bloomington, IN

Luise Rinser is the best-selling author of dozens of novels and autobiographical works that have been translated into more than twenty languages. A prominent figure in German intellectual and political life, she was the German Green Party’s presidential candidate in 1984. Jean M. Snook is an associate professor of German at Memorial University of Newfoundland and translator of Else Lasker-Schüler’s Concert (Nebraska 1994).