The singers of the Song of Solomon proclaim that “love is stronger than death” (Songs 8:6). It is precisely this quality that makes love what it is. Love is the things that is capable of laying-down its life for the beloved and then rising again.
The arrival of the Other calls the Self out of its own depths. Departing from myself is a negation, I lay down something when I respond to the other. “I” cannot be the complete picture when “You” arrive. "I” am the first thing I lay down when I begin to love. This is a death. A death to the self-life, a negativity.
Love calls us to a renewed dying, a renewed laying-down of life for the beloved. As Andreas Capellanus tells us: love is an inborn suffering for the beloved. George Bataille was, on this point at least, surprisingly correct: “If love exists at all it is […] like death […] within us” (as quoted by Byung-Chul Han, 25).
But undergoing death is not the only feature of love named in the Song. No. Love is not merely a thing that dies, it is a thing that is stronger than death —not because of its resistance of death, but because of its ability to rise again after laying down life.
Marsilio Ficino reflects, “When you love me […] and as I love you […] I recover myself, lost in the first place by my own neglect of myself, in you, who preserve me” (as quoted by Byung-Chul Han, 24).
Life laid down in love for the beloved is stronger than the laying down. A love that is stronger than death does more than merely die. True love, that Love which the Song tells us is lit by the very flame of Yah, is the Love of the Cross. It is the love which does not seek to save its life but to lose it for the sake of the Beloved. And that is precisely where the promise of Love resides, that in laying it down life is actually saved (cf. Matthew 16:24-26; Luke 17:33-35; Jn. 10:11-18).
Divine Love picks-up its cross and follows Jesus in death and resurrection. That love which is not cruciform is in fact not love at all.