It may have been due partly to a natural reaction against asceticism, partly to the rarity of spiritual beauty, that the mediæval poets in enumerating the charms of their mistresses, confine themselves almost exclusively to their physical features. Professor Scherr, after quoting Ariosto’s description of his heroine Alcina in Orlando Furioso (vii. 11, seq.), for comparison with similar efforts of German poets, observes: “It is very remarkable that, as in this female portrait sketched by Ariosto, so with mediæval poets in general, including those of Germany, the principal accent is placed on the bodily charms of the women. Almost all sketches of this kind are purely material. Intellectual beauty, as expressed in the features, is barely mentioned. These old romanticists were much more sensual than modern writers would have us believe.”
SPENSER ON LOVE
That Love, too, continued to be looked at from a material point of view, long after the chivalric efforts to idealise it, is shown strikingly by the way in which Spenser compares love with friendship and family affection. In the fifth book of the Faery Queene he asks—
“Whither shall weigh the balance down; to wit,
The dear affection unto kindred sweet,
Or raging fire of love to womankind,
Or zeal of friends, combined by virtues meet?”
Like an ancient Greek he decides in favour of friendship—
“For natural affection soon doth cease,
And quenched is with Cupid’s greater flame,
But faithful friendship doth them both suppress,”
(for)
“Love of soul doth love of body pass.”
Could anything attest better than this the general mediæval ignorance of the psychic traits or “overtones” which constitute Romantic Love?
DANTE AND SHAKSPERE
Long before the day of Spenser there lived, however, in Florence, a poet whose transcendent genius enabled him to feel and describe for the first time the real romantic sentiment of Love. It is true that some of the poets of Chivalry had before him attempted to depict the supersensual, æthereal side of the passion. But their portraits lacked the touch of realism: they described what they imagined; Dante what he felt.
Dante was born in 1265: Modern Love was born nine years later—613 years ago. “Nine times already since my birth,” says Dante, “had the heaven of light returned to the self-same point almost, as concerns its own revolution, when first the glorious lady of my mind was made manifest to mine eyes; even she who was called Beatrice (she who confers blessing) by many who knew not wherefore. … From that time onward, Love quite governed my soul. … But seeing that were I to dwell overmuch on the passions and doings of such early youth, my words might be counted something fabulous, I will therefore put them aside,” etc.
These are the opening lines of the Vita Nuova, in which Modern Love is for the first time portrayed with an air of sincerity, and concerning which Professor C. E. Norton justly remarks that “so long as there are lovers in the world, and so long as lovers are poets, will this first and tenderest love-story of modern literature be read with appreciation and responsive sympathy.”
What a privilege to describe First Love not only in an individual but a historic sense, as Dante did in this poem, which Rossetti calls “the auto-biography or auto-psychology of Dante’s youth, till his twenty-seventh year.”
After that first sight of Beatrice one of her sweet smiles was the highest goal of his desires; but so powerful was the spell of her presence that he was obliged to avoid her. “From that night forth the natural functions of my body began to be vexed and impeded, for I was given up wholly to thinking of this most gracious creature; whereby in short space I became so weak and so reduced that it was irksome to many of my friends to look upon me … the thing was so plainly to be discerned in my countenance that there was no longer any means of concealing it.” Such words as “trembling,” “confusion,” “weeping,” constantly occur as the narrative proceeds. Love, he says, “bred in me such overpowering sweetness that my body, being all subjected thereto, remained many times helpless and passive.” When for the first time Beatrice denied him her smile, “I became possessed with such grief that, parting myself from others, I went into a lonely place to bathe the ground with most bitter tears.” And in one of the sonnets interspersed he says—
“My face shows my heart’s colour,
No sooner do I lift mine eyes to look
Than the blood seems as shaken from my heart,
And all my pulses beat at once and stop.”
But by far the most remarkable thing in the Vita Nuova, is Dante’s own indirect testimony that such Love as he felt, such supersensual, æsthetic Love, was a novelty and a puzzle to his contemporaries. For he tells how he met some ladies who gazed at him and laughed till one of them asked: “To what end lovest thou this lady, seeing that thou canst not support her presence? Now tell us this thing that we may know it: for certainly the end of such a love must be worthy of knowledge.”
No doubt it was worth knowing; for, as the author of the admirable article on “Poetry,” in the eighth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1859), remarks: “When in modern times the attempt was made to revive tragedy, it proved totally unsuccessful until this principle (of romantic love) was admitted into the drama to give it warmth and life. Of that species of composition which in its proper sense is peculiar to the moderns, viz. the novel and romance, it forms, as we all know, the moving power. In short, it influences, more or less, every department in which the imagination has exerted itself with success since the revival of literature.”
Once more it is well to state that there are geniuses in the emotional as in the intellectual world. Dante was both; and the realistic descriptions he has given of the effects of Romantic Love have helped to sustain the notion that Love is immutable, and has existed at all times. But the indirect testimony to the contrary just quoted, and the whole argument of this chapter on Mediæval Love, make it apparent that Dante’s Love was the exception which proves that among the others Love did not exist. And even Dante was not entirely modern in his Love. A modern lover would not have attempted to conceal the object of his Love, but would have made it apparent to all by his foolish actions that he was in Love with this particular girl and no other; he would perhaps have wooed more persistently, and his feelings would not have remained unchanged after her marriage to another. Like Petrarch, moreover, Dante cannot be quite acquitted of the suspicion that, after the first flush of excitement, the excessive and persistent purification and idealisation of his passion was based not so much on real amorous feelings and motives, as on an author’s craving for an object on which to lavish his literary art of embellishment.
Dante, in a word, hyper-idealised his passion. He became quite deaf to the fundamental tone of Love, and heard only its overtones. And herein lies his inferiority to Shakspere. It is in the works of Shakspere that the various motives and emotions which constitute Love—sensuous, æsthetic, intellectual—are for the first time mingled in proper proportions. Shakspere’s Love is Modern Love, full-fledged, and therefore calls for no separate analysis. It is a primitive passion, purified and refined by intellectual, moral, and æsthetic culture. And though by no means universal, or even common, at the present day, it is yet of frequent occurrence, and will become more and more prevalent as time rolls on. To facilitate its progress by pointing out its characteristics,