Classic books on attraction: Ovid, Carnegie and more

Advice on attraction is older than pickup. A Roman poet wrote a how-to for finding a partner about 2,000 years ago, and some of what he lists will look familiar. This post covers five books from different centuries: what each says, when it appeared, and what has been said about it since. For one modern book in depth, see Robert Greene's The Art of Seduction.

Ovid, Ars Amatoria (around 1 BC to AD 2)

Ovid (born 43 BC) wrote Ars Amatoria, "The Art of Love", as a poem in elegiac couplets. Books I and II address men: the first on finding a woman, the second on keeping her. Book III, written about two years later, addresses women. The topics are practical and often playful. One English prose translation, by Henry T. Riley in 1885 and free on Project Gutenberg, opens: "Should any one of the people not know the art of loving, let him read me."

The poem points men to public places, like the theatre and the races, as spots to meet someone. It recommends writing letters, and the same translation says that a lover should be pale, "the proper complexion for one in love." Advice about being looked at, writing first and showing up in public places is easy to recognize. Other parts depend on a Roman world of slaves, patrons and marriage laws.

Documented context: In AD 8 the emperor Augustus banished Ovid to Tomis on the Black Sea. Ovid himself blamed "a poem and a mistake" and never said exactly what either was, so historians still argue about the link to this poem. Girolamo Savonarola burned Ovid's works in Florence in 1497, and U.S. Customs seized an English translation in 1930. The poem is still taught in university Latin courses.

Andreas Capellanus, De amore (1180s)

Often called The Art of Courtly Love, this Latin treatise was probably written after 1184 and before 1186, and was written at the request of Marie de Champagne for a young pupil, Walter, whom the author warns about love's pitfalls. It has three books: a definition of love in the style of an academic lecture, sample dialogues between people of different social ranks, and stories from courts of love presided over by noblewomen.

Scholars disagree on how to read it. Some medieval readers took it as a serious guide. Many modern scholars read it as satire of the nobility, and others call it didactic or simply descriptive. Both readings are common in the literature.

Stendhal, De l'amour (1822)

Marie-Henri Beyle (1783 to 1842), who wrote as Stendhal, based this book on his unrequited love for Mathilde Dembowska, whom he met in Milan. It is best known for one idea, crystallization. In 1818 he visited the Hallein salt mines near Salzburg, where a bare branch left in the mine comes out covered in sparkling salt crystals. He used that as an image of how a lover sees the beloved: new "perfections" keep appearing. He described falling in love in stages, from admiration through acknowledgement and hope to delight, and used a trip from Bologna (indifference) to Rome (perfect love) as an image.

Psychologist Dorothy Tennov drew on the book's ideas in her 1979 book Love and Limerence. One thing to keep in mind: it's a theory from one man's experience, not a study.

Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936)

Carnegie taught business education courses in New York from 1912. Leon Shimkin of Simon & Schuster took one of the courses and later persuaded Carnegie to let a stenographer take notes for publication. Simon & Schuster published the book in 1936. According to Wikipedia it sold 250,000 copies in its first three months and has sold more than 30 million worldwide.

It's about people in general, not romance, but its principles are the ones many conversation guides repeat. Under "making people like you" it lists showing real interest in others, smiling, remembering names, listening and encouraging others to talk, and talking in terms of the other person's interests. Other sections cover avoiding arguments and starting in a friendly way. A 1981 revision cut the sections on business letters and marriage.

Reception has been mixed in both directions. A 1937 New York Times review called the advice insightful but very simple. Sinclair Lewis later wrote a sharply critical assessment of Carnegie's methods. Because the text is likely still in copyright, this post describes it and doesn't quote it.

Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving (1956)

Fromm, a psychoanalyst, argued that love is a skill that takes theory and practice, discipline, concentration and patience, and that most people treat it as a matter of being loved rather than loving. He named four elements: care, responsibility, respect and knowledge. He also wrote that Western culture treats love as a trade of popularity or sexual appeal. It's his best-selling book, popular on campuses in the 1960s. Some left-wing critics at the time described it as not emancipatory.

Book	Era	Aim	Method
Ars Amatoria	Rome, around 1 BC to AD 2	Entertain and instruct	Verse, examples
De amore	Late 1100s	Define and discuss	Lecture, dialogues
De l'amour	1822	Analyze love	Personal theory
How to Win Friends	1936	Get on with people	Short principles
The Art of Loving	1956	Treat love as a practice	Essay

None of the five is a study. The research side of the same question, how attraction works, is a different kind of evidence.

What to do next

Read 20 lines of Ovid's Book I. Riley's translation is free at gutenberg.org (ebook 47677). Mark two ideas that still apply and two that don't.
Try one Carnegie habit for a week. Ask one follow-up question in every conversation, and note when you did it.
Write a one-line "crystallization check." After a first meeting, write three things you know about the person for sure, and three you've guessed.
Pair an old book with a modern one. See pickup and dating books for what each covers. Or pair it with a film scene, the way dating lessons from film and TV does.
Practise the listening part. Charisma on Command breaks conversation habits into drills.
Keep a short log. A notes file or Run Game can record what you tried and what happened.