It's Only Words: the Moveable Seat of Our Passions

By Glen Blesi

The heart was not always the organ associated with the emotions or the seat of love and passion. Today, it is possible to leave one’s heart in San Francisco. In earlier times, one might leave his liver in Canterbury, or his bowels in Venice, or his breast in Geneva.

As late as 1897, Mary Kingsley, in her book Travels in West Africa, had this line: “He was a great hunter, and his liver grew hot in him for the bush.”

Breast might still be used poetically to refer to the seat of one’s emotions, as in feeling something within one’s breast.

The 1611 Authorized Bible has Paul, the Apostle, referring to the bowels three times in his single-chapter letter to Philemon, as in verse seven: “. . . because the bowels of the saints are refreshed by thee, brother.”

Even kidney could refer to one’s temperament or disposition. In his 1880 novel Endymion, British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli said, “It was a large and rather miscellaneous party, but all of the right kidney.”

Nearly 30 years ago now a friend and work mate would say of himself when he did something that he later thought stupid, “That really took some kidneys.”