{"id":82623,"date":"2015-02-11T17:30:46","date_gmt":"2015-02-11T22:30:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=82623"},"modified":"2015-02-11T16:39:33","modified_gmt":"2015-02-11T21:39:33","slug":"theres-nothing-wrong-with-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/11\/theres-nothing-wrong-with-love\/","title":{"rendered":"There\u2019s Nothing Wrong with Love"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Rosalie_Ida_Blun_Straus\"<\/a>

Isidor and Ida Straus.<\/p><\/div>\n

Many people hate Valentine\u2019s Day for its commercialism and general tawdriness. And even those of us who don\u2019t\u2014who might, say, have invested in boxes of conversation hearts, or bedecked their apartment doors with slightly crooked foil hearts from the ninety-nine-cents store\u2014understand that the holiday is kind of repulsive. However unironically the candy heart beats in your breast, however much you enjoy the prospect of couples sharing overpriced prix fixes or the sight of beleaguered husbands clutching bodega roses, it\u2019s hard not to feel depressed under the weight of the sexy doubles entendres and seasonal boxers. Hallmark holiday? That alone I could handle. It\u2019s the treacle plus<\/em> a thousand leering letterpress puns that really start to break the spirit.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re feeling that fatigue and happen to find yourself in New York, a good antidote is Straus Park at Broadway and 106th Street. <\/p>\n

Isidor and Ida Straus married in 1871. When the\u00a0Titanic<\/em>\u00a0struck an iceberg in 1912, the couple was returning from a winter sojourn in Europe. Because a number of their first-class fellow travelers survived the disaster, there were numerous accounts of the Strauses\u2019 final moments. Ida refused to take a place in a lifeboat with the other women and children; instead, she insisted that her maid take one, and that she wear her fur coat. Seeing that the couple would not be parted, another traveler tried to offer his spot to Isidor. He, too, refused, as there were still women and children who had not been saved. Ida is reported to have said,\u00a0\u201cI will not be separated from my husband. As we have lived, so will we die, together.\u201d Whether or not this is so, more than one survivor recalled seeing the couple standing on the deck, arm in arm, before the ship went down.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The story captured the public imagination and has been dramatized in several media (although the Strauses barely rate a cameo in James Cameron\u2019s Titanic<\/em>). Still, it is surprisingly easy to miss the park, which stands near the site of the Strauses\u2019 home. It\u2019s a modest strip of land south of the Columbia campus, dominated by a memorial fountain that bears these words:\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n

IN MEMORY OF ISIDOR AND IDA STRAUS
WHO WERE LOST AT SEA IN THE TITANTIC DISASTER APRIL 15, 1912
LOVELY AND PLEASANT WERE THEY IN THEIR LIVES AND IN
THEIR DEATH THEY WERE NOT DIVIDED.
II SAMUEL I-23<\/small><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s enough to send you into a ninety-nine-cent store in search of a messed-up foil heart.<\/p>\n

Sadie Stein is contributing editor of <\/em>The Paris Review and the <\/em>Daily\u2019s correspondent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many people hate Valentine\u2019s Day for its commercialism and general tawdriness. And even those of us who don\u2019t\u2014who might, say, have invested in boxes of conversation hearts, or bedecked their apartment doors with slightly crooked foil hearts from the ninety-nine-cents store\u2014understand that the holiday is kind of repulsive. However unironically the candy heart beats in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[616,17011,17012,17014,2111,3771,17016,125,17010,17013,17015,6382],"class_list":["post-82623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-couples","tag-ida-straus","tag-isidor-straus","tag-james-cameron","tag-love","tag-macys","tag-monuments","tag-new-york-city","tag-straus-park","tag-the-titanic","tag-unity","tag-valentines-day"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nIsidor and Ida Straus Put the Love Back in Valentine\u2019s Day<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sadie Stein remembers the couple, who made history for refusing to separate when they were aboard the sinking Titanic.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/11\/theres-nothing-wrong-with-love\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"There\u2019s Nothing Wrong with Love by Sadie Stein\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"February 11, 2015 \u2013 Many people hate Valentine\u2019s Day for its commercialism and general tawdriness. 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