The expression “love at first sight” comes from French “coup de foudre“and describes with a metaphor thesudden falling in love and intense that happens at the first meeting between two people, as if one struck between them spark. The origin of the expression is uncertain, but it can be placed in 18th century Francewhen the so-called “electric games” were in vogue at court and in the Parisian salons: public experiments in which electric discharges, sparks and electrostatic phenomena were experimented with materials and water. In this context, the image of “lightning” became the perfect metaphor to describe the sudden attraction between two people.
Even Plato, in the Symposium, uses the symbol of lightning: he says that Zeus divided human beings into two halves and, when they meet again, they still feel the charge of the lightning that once separated them, a reminder of the idea of an immediate and irresistible bond.
Origin and meaning of “love at first sight” in the 18th century
THE “electric games” of eighteenth-century France were real entertainment based on electrical experiments involving ordinary people, with the aim of demonstrating how electricity works, and entertaining. In 1767, the English scientist Joseph Priestley published the treatise “The History and Present State of Electricity”where he wrote:
“Electricity has a prerogative compared to other branches of science: it offers both material for meditation for scientists and entertainment for all people alike. (…) Sparks of fire can be seen coming out of a piece of cold metal and even from water (…) and what is even more wonderful is that a normal glass bottle, after a simple preparation, acquires the power to give anyone a violent shock and this shock is accompanied by a thunderclap and a mass of fire resembling lightning.”
In the same years, thanks to Charles Dufay, botanist and superintendent of the royal gardens, and his collaborator, the abbot Antoine Nollet, numerous electrical phenomena were experienced: sparks jumping between metals, feathers or silk threads rising apparently by themselves, jets of water repelling each other as a result of opposite charges, and soap bubbles moving as if animated by invisible spirits.
One of the most surprising experiments was one in which people became part of the electrical circuit. Nollet, famous for his public demonstrations, had dozens of spectators line up holding hands: he passed the discharge of a Leyden jar, one of the first forms of electrical capacitor, through them, causing shouts and laughter while everyone simultaneously felt the shock. In other experiments, a lady was electrically charged with the electrostatic machine: her hair rose, her dress rustled and anyone who approached her received small sparks, to the amazement and joy of those present. In the same years, experiments explaining electrical phenomena with different instruments, such as glass globes and electrostatic machines, became widespread, showing attraction, repulsion and sparks in spectacular ways.
These shows, which today we could consider precursors of “popular physics”, had a dual purpose: to arouse curiosity and to educate. Electricity thus became a way to explain science through wonder, transforming a natural phenomenon into an instrument of knowledge and pure entertainment.
“Love at first sight”: between psychology and Plato’s myth
This concept of “lightning” linked to falling in love is not only modern: Plato, in Symposium (190 BC), tells the myth of Aristophanes and the Androgynes. According to legend, Zeus divided the original human beings, all “androgynous” with two heads, four arms and four legs, by hurling real lightning at them. From that moment, each half searches for their other half, and when the two meet, a new “love at first sight” is born.
“Finally Zeus had an idea and said: “I believe I have found the way for men to continue to exist while giving up their insolences once they have become weaker. Now I will cut them in two one by one, and thus they will weaken and at the same time, by doubling their number, they will become more useful to us.”
Plato explains that the soul, here on Earth, attempts to reunite with its original half, preserving links and reminiscences with the perfect world of Ideas, where everything was unitary and harmonious. The encounter with beauty, understood not only as a physical aspect, but above all as inner harmony, can unleash an intense spark, a true “love at first sight”, which brings the two halves closer together and reactivates contact with that ideal world. As Plato concludes:
“Therefore the desire and search for the whole is called love.”
