Above all, “The Nightingale and the Rose” is about the nature of love and self-sacrifice. The story explores different meanings of the word “love,” particularly through the different loves of the Student and the Nightingale. Initially, the Student appears to be a “true lover,” but when reading the story with knowledge of its ending, the Student’s declarations of love and fantasies of the ball come across as showy, melodramatic, and stylized: The Student thinks that he is in love but may be more taken with the idea of love than the Professor’s daughter herself. His quick denunciation of love lends credence to this reading, especially as it seems motivated not by the bitterness of rejection but rather by a total misapprehension of love itself.

The Student’s actions stand in direct contrast to the Nightingale’s determined search for the red rose and sacrifice of her life for the Student’s “love.” Unlike the Student and the Professor’s daughter, she realizes that love is not quantifiable or commodifiable: It cannot be “set forth in the market-place” (59), but it is nonetheless exceptionally valuable, which is why she is willing to give her own “heart’s blood” and music to create

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