[1]Dulaure,History of Paris.Silent episode in the queen's apartment the evening of the flight of the Princesse de Condé: the ministers transfixed to the wall and mute, the King striding up and down.
[1]Dulaure,History of Paris.Silent episode in the queen's apartment the evening of the flight of the Princesse de Condé: the ministers transfixed to the wall and mute, the King striding up and down.
[1]Dulaure,History of Paris.
Silent episode in the queen's apartment the evening of the flight of the Princesse de Condé: the ministers transfixed to the wall and mute, the King striding up and down.
Nothing so interesting as passion: for there everything is unforeseen, and the principal is the victim. Nothing so flat as gallantry, where everything is a matter of calculation, as in all the prosaic affairs of life.
At the end of a visit you always finish by treating a lover better than you meant to. (L.,November 2nd, 1818).
In spite of genius in an upstart, the influence of rank always makes itself felt. Think of Rousseau losing his heart to all the "ladies" he met, and weeping tears of rapture because the Duke of L——, one of the dullest courtiers of the period, deigns to take the right side rather than the left in a walk with a certain M. Coindet, friend of Rousseau! (L.,May 3rd, 1820.)
Women's only educator is the world. A mother in love does not hesitate to appear in the seventh heaven of delight, or in the depth of despair, before her daughters aged fourteen or fifteen. Remember that, under these happy skies, plenty of women are quite nice-looking till forty-five, and the majority are married at eighteen.
Think of La Valchiusa saying yesterday of Lampugnani: "Ah, that man was made for me, he could love, ... etc., etc," and so on in this strain to a friend—all before her daughter, a little thing of fourteen or fifteen, very much on the alert, and whom she also took with her on the more than friendly walks with the lover in question.
Sometimes girls get hold of sound rules of conduct, For examples take Madame Guarnacci, addressing her two daughters and two men, who have never called onher before. For an hour and a half she treats them to profound maxims, based on examples within their own knowledge (that of La Cercara in Hungary), on the precise point at which it is right to punish with infidelity a lover who misbehaves himself. (Ravenna,January 23rd, 1820.)
The sanguine man, the true Frenchman (Colonel M——) instead of being tormented by excess of feeling, like Rousseau, if he has a rendezvous for the next evening at seven, sees everything, right up to the blessed moment, through rosy spectacles. People of this kind are not in the least susceptible to passion-love; it would upset their sweet tranquillity. I will go so far as to say that perhaps they would find its transports a nuisance, or at all events be humiliated by the timidity it produces.
Most men of the world, through vanity, caution or disaster, let themselves love a woman freely only after intimate intercourse.
With very gentle souls a woman needs to be easy-going in order to encourage crystallisation.
A woman imagines that the voice of the public is speaking through the mouth of the first fool or the first treacherous friend who claims to be its faithful interpreter to her.
There is a delicious pleasure in clasping in your arms a woman who has wronged you grievously, who has beenyour bitter enemy for many a day, and is ready to be so again. Good fortune of the French officers in Spain, 1812.
Solitude is what one wants, to relish one's own heart and to love; but to succeed one must go amongst men, here, there and everywhere.
"All the observations of the French on love are well written, carefully and without exaggeration, but they bear only on light affections," said that delightful person, Cardinal Lante.
In Goldoni's comedy, theInnamorati, all the workings of passion are excellent; it is the very repulsive meanness of style and thought which revolts one. The contrary is true of a French comedy.
The youth of 1822: To say "serious turn of mind, active disposition" means "sacrifice of the present to the future." Nothing develops the soul like the power and the habit of making such sacrifices. I foresee the probability of more great passions in 1832 than in 1772.
The choleric temperament, when it does not display itself in too repulsive a form, is one perhaps most apt of all to strike and keep alive the imagination of women. If the choleric temperament does not fall among propitious surroundings, as Lauzun in Saint-Simon (Memoirs), the difficulty is to grow used to it. Butonce grasped by a woman, this character must fascinate her: yes, even the savage and fanatic Balfour (Old Mortality). For women it is the antithesis of the prosaic.
In love one often doubts what one believes most strongly (La R., 355). In every other passion, what once we have proved, we no longer doubt.
Verse was invented to assist the memory. Later it was kept to increase the pleasure of reading by the sight of the difficulty overcome. Its survival nowadays in dramatic art is a relic of barbarity. Example: the Cavalry Regulations put into verse by M. de Bonnay.
While this jealous slave feeds his soul on boredom, avarice, hatred and other such poisonous, cold passions, I spend a night of happiness dreaming of her—of her who, through mistrust, treats me badly.
It needs a great soul to dare have a simple style. That is why Rousseau put so much rhetoric into theNouvelle Héloïse—which makes it unreadable for anyone over thirty.
"The greatest reproach we could possibly make against ourselves is, certainly, to have let fade, like the shadowy phantoms produced by sleep, the ideas of honour and justice, which from time to time well up in our hearts." (Letter from Jena, March, 1819.)
A respectable woman is in the country and passes an hour in the hot-house with her gardener. Certain people, whose views she has upset, accuse her of having found a lover in this gardener. What answer is there?
Speaking absolutely, the thing is possible. She could say: "My character speaks for me, look at my behaviour throughout life"—only all this is equally invisible to the eyes of the ill-natured who won't see, and the fools who can't. (Salviati, Rome,July 23rd, 1819.)
I have known a man find out that his rival's love was returned, and yet the rival himself remain blinded to the fact by his passion.
The more desperately he is in love, the more violent the pressure a man is forced to put upon himself, in order to risk annoying the woman he loves by taking her hand.
Ludicrous rhetoric but, unlike that of Rousseau, inspired by true passion. (Memoirs of M. de Mau...,Letter of S——.)
Naturalness
I saw, or I thought I saw, this evening the triumph of naturalness in a young woman, who certainly seems to me to possess a great character. She adores, obviously, I think, one of her cousins and must have confessed to herself the state of her heart. The cousin is in love with her, but as she is very serious with him, thinks she does not like him, and lets himself be fascinated by the marksof preference shown him by Clara, a young widow and friend of Mélanie. I think he will marry her. Mélanie sees it and suffers all that a proud heart, struggling involuntarily with a violent passion, is capable of suffering. She has only to alter her ways a little; but she would look upon it as a piece of meanness, the consequences of which would affect her whole life, to depart one instant from her natural self.
Sappho saw in love only sensual intoxication or physical pleasure made sublime by crystallisation. Anacreon looked for sensual and intellectual amusement. There was too little security in Antiquity for people to find leisure for passion-love.
The foregoing fact fully justifies me in rather laughing at people who think Homer superior to Tasso. Passion-love did exist in the time of Homer, and at no great distance from Greece.
Woman with a heart, if you wish to know whether the man you adore loves you with passion-love, study your lover's early youth. Every man of distinction in the early days of his life is either a ridiculous enthusiast or an unfortunate. A man easy to please, of gay and cheerful humour, can never love with the passion your heart requires.
Passion I call only that which has gone through long misfortunes, misfortunes which novels take good care not to depict—what's more they can't!
A bold resolution can change in an instant the most extreme misfortune into quite a tolerable state of things. The evening of a defeat, a man is retreating in hot haste, his charger already spent. He can hear distinctly the troop of cavalry galloping in pursuit. Suddenly he stops, dismounts, recharges his carbine and pistols, and makes up his mind to defend himself. Straightway, instead of having death, he has a cross of the Legion of Honour before his eyes.
Basis of English habits. About 1730, while we already had Voltaire and Fontenelle, a machine was invented in England to separate the grain, after threshing, from the chaff. It worked by means of a wheel, which gave the air enough movement to blow away the bits of chaff. But in that biblical country the peasants pretended that it was wicked to go against the will of Divine Providence, and to produce an artificial wind like this, instead of begging Heaven with an ardent prayer for enough wind to thresh the corn and waiting for the moment appointed by the God of Israel. Compare this with French peasants.[1]
[1]For the actual state of English habits, see the Life of Mr. Beattie, written by an intimate friend. The reader will be edified by the profound humility of Mr. Beattie, when he receives ten guineas from an old Marchioness in order to slander Hume. The trembling aristocracy relies on the bishops with incomes of £200,000, and pays in money and honour so-called liberal writers to throw mud at Chénier. (Edinburgh Review, 1821.)The most disgusting cant leaks through on all sides. Everything except the portrayal of primitive and energetic feelings is stifled by it: impossible to write a joyous page in English.
[1]For the actual state of English habits, see the Life of Mr. Beattie, written by an intimate friend. The reader will be edified by the profound humility of Mr. Beattie, when he receives ten guineas from an old Marchioness in order to slander Hume. The trembling aristocracy relies on the bishops with incomes of £200,000, and pays in money and honour so-called liberal writers to throw mud at Chénier. (Edinburgh Review, 1821.)The most disgusting cant leaks through on all sides. Everything except the portrayal of primitive and energetic feelings is stifled by it: impossible to write a joyous page in English.
[1]For the actual state of English habits, see the Life of Mr. Beattie, written by an intimate friend. The reader will be edified by the profound humility of Mr. Beattie, when he receives ten guineas from an old Marchioness in order to slander Hume. The trembling aristocracy relies on the bishops with incomes of £200,000, and pays in money and honour so-called liberal writers to throw mud at Chénier. (Edinburgh Review, 1821.)
The most disgusting cant leaks through on all sides. Everything except the portrayal of primitive and energetic feelings is stifled by it: impossible to write a joyous page in English.
No doubt about it—'tis a form of madness to expose oneself to passion-love. In some cases, however, the cureworks too energetically. American girls in the United States are so saturated and fortified with reasonable ideas, that in that country love, the flower of life, has deserted youth. At Boston a girl can be left perfectly safely alone with a handsome stranger—in all probability she's thinking of nothing but her marriage settlement.
In France men who have lost their wives are melancholy; widows, on the contrary, merry and light-hearted. There is a proverb current among women on the felicity of this state. So there must be some inequality in the articles of union.
People who are happy in their love have an air of profound preoccupation, which, for a Frenchman, is the same as saying an air of profound gloom. (Dresden, 1818.)
The more generally a man pleases, the less deeply can he please.
As a result of imitation in the early years of life, we contract the passions of our parents, even when these very passions poison our life. (L.'s pride.)
The most honourable source of feminine pride is a woman's fear of degrading herself in her lover's eyes by some hasty step or some action that he may think unwomanly.
Real love renders the thought of death frequent, agreeable, unterrifying, a mere subject of comparison, the price we are willing to pay for many a thing.
How often have I exclaimed for all my bravery: "If anyone would blow out my brains, I'd thank him before I expired, if there were time." A man can only be brave, with the woman he loves, by loving her a little less. (S.,February, 1820.)
"I could never love!" a young woman said to me. "Mirabeau and his letters to Sophie have given me a disgust for great souls. Those fatal letters impressed me like a personal experience."
Try a plan which you never read of in novels; let two years' constancy assure you, before intimate intercourse, of your lover's heart.
Ridicule scares love. Ridicule is impossible in Italy: what's good form in Venice is odd at Naples—consequently nothing's odd in Italy. Besides, nothing that gives pleasure is found fault with. 'Tis this that does away with the fool's honour and half the farce.
Children command by tears, and if people do not attend to their wishes, they hurt themselves on purpose. Young women are piqued from a sense of honour.
'Tis a common reflection, but one for that reason easily forgotten, that every day sensitive souls become rarer, cultured minds commoner.
Feminine Pride
I have just witnessed a striking example—but on mature consideration I should need fifteen pages to give a proper idea of it. If I dared, I would much rather note the consequences; my eyes have convinced me beyond the possibility of doubt. But, no, it is a conviction I must give up all idea of communicating, there are too many little details. Such pride is the opposite of French vanity. So far as I can remember, the only work, in which I have seen a sketch of it, is that part of Madame Roland's Memoirs, where she recounts the petty reasonings she made as a girl. (Bologna,April 18th, 2 a.m.)
In France, most women make no account of a young man until they have turned him into a coxcomb. It is only then that he can flatter their vanity. (Duclos.)
Zilietti said to me at midnight (at the charming Marchesina R...'s): "I'm not going to dine at San Michele (an inn). Yesterday I said some smart things—I was joking with Cl...; it might make me conspicuous."
Don't go and think that Zilietti is either a fool or a coward. He is a prudent and very rich man in this happy land. (Modena, 1820.)
What is admirable in America is the government, not society. Elsewhere government does the harm. At Boston they have changed parts, and government plays the hypocrite, in order not to shock society.
Italian girls, if they love, are entirely given over to natural inspiration. At the very most all that can aid them is a handful of excellent maxims, which they have picked up by listening at the keyhole. As if fate had decreed that everything here should combine to preserve naturalness, they read no novels—and for this reason, that there are none. At Geneva or in France, on the contrary, a girls falls in love at sixteen in order to be a heroine, and at each step, almost at each tear, she asks herself: "Am I not just like Julie d'Étanges? "
The husband of a young woman adored by a lover, whom she treats unkindly and scarcely allows to kiss her hand, has, at the very most, only the grossest physical pleasure, where the lover would find the charms and transports of the keenest happiness that exists on earth.
The laws of the imagination are still so little understood, that I include the following estimate, though perhaps it is all quite wrong.
I seem to distinguish two sorts of imagination:—
1. Imagination like Fabio's, ardent, impetuous, inconsiderate, leading straight to action, consuming itself, and already languishing at a delay of twenty-four hours. Impatience is its prime characteristic; it becomes enraged against that which it cannot obtain. It sees allexterior objects, but they only serve to inflame it. It assimilates them to its own substance, and converts them straight away to the profit of passion.
2. Imagination which takes fire slowly and little by little, but which loses in time the perception of exterior objects, and comes to find occupation and nourishment in nothing but its own passion. This last sort of imagination goes quite easily with slowness, or even scarcity, of ideas. It is favourable to constancy. It is the imagination of the greater part of those poor German girls, who are dying of love and consumption. That sad spectacle, so frequent beyond the Rhine, is never met with in Italy.
Imaginative habits. A Frenchman is really shocked by eight changes of scenery in one act of a tragedy. Such a man is incapable of pleasure in seeing Macbeth. He consoles himself by damning Shakespeare.
In France the provinces are forty years behind Paris in all that regards women. A. C., a married woman, tells me that she only liked to read certain parts of Lanzi's Memoirs. Such stupidity is too much for me; I can no longer find a word to say to her. As if that were a book onecouldput down!
Want of naturalness—the great failing in provincial women.
Their effusive and gracious gestures; those who play the first fiddle in the town are worse than the others.
Goethe, or any other German genius, esteems money at what it's worth. Until he has got an income of six thousand francs, he must think of nothing but hisbanking-account. After that he must never think of it again. The fool, on his side, does not understand the advantage there is of feeling and thinking like Goethe. All his life he feels in terms of money and thinks of sums of money. It is owing to this support from both sides, that the prosaic in this world seem to come off so much better than the high-minded.
In Europe, desire is inflamed by constraint; in America it is dulled by liberty.
A mania for discussion has got hold of the younger generation and stolen it from love. While they are considering whether Napoleon was of service to France, they let the age of love speed past. Even with those who mean to be young, it is all affectation—a tie, a spur, their martial swagger, their all-absorbing self—and they forget to cast a glance at the girl who passes by so modestly and cannot go out more than once a week through want of means.
I have suppressed a chapter on Prudery, and others as well.
I am happy to find the following passage in Horace Walpole's Memoirs:
The Two Elizabeths. Let us compare the daughters of two ferocious men, and see which was sovereign of a civilised nation, which of a barbarous one. Both were Elizabeths. The daughter of Peter (of Russia) was absolute, yet spared a competitor and a rival; and thought the person of an empress had sufficient allurements for as many of her subjects as she chose to honour with thecommunication. Elizabeth of England could neither forgive the claim of Mary Stuart nor her charms, but ungenerously imprisoned her (as George IV did Napoleon[1]) when imploring protection, and, without the sanction of either despotism or law, sacrificed many to her great and little jealousy. Yet this Elizabeth piqued herself on chastity; and while she practised every ridiculous art of coquetry to be admired at an unseemly age, kept off lovers whom she encouraged, and neither gratified her own desires nor their ambition. Who can help preferring the honest, open-hearted barbarian empress? (Lord Orford's Memoirs.)
[1][Added, of course, by Stendhal.—Tr.]
[1][Added, of course, by Stendhal.—Tr.]
[1][Added, of course, by Stendhal.—Tr.]
Extreme familiarity may destroy crystallisation. A charming girl of sixteen fell in love with a handsome youth of the same age, who never failed one evening to pass under her window at nightfall. Her mother invites him to spend a week with them in the country—a desperate remedy, I agree. But the girl was romantic, and the youth rather dull: after three days she despised him.
Ave Maria—twilight in Italy, the hour of tenderness, of the soul's pleasures and of melancholy—sensation intensified by the sound of those lovely bells.
Hours of pleasure, which only in memory touch the senses.... (Bologna,April 17th, 1817.)
A young man's first love-affair on entering society is ordinarily one of ambition. He rarely declares his love for a sweet, amiable and innocent young girl. How tremble before her, adore her, feel oneself in the presence of a divinity? Youth must love a being whose qualities lift him up in his own eyes. It is in the decline of lifethat we sadly come back to love the simple and the innocent, despairing of the sublime. Between the two comes true love, which thinks of nothing but itself.
The existence of great souls is not suspected. They hide away; all that is seen is a little originality. There are more great souls than one would think.
The first clasp of the beloved's hand—what a moment that is! The only joy to be compared to it is the ravishing joy of power—which statesmen and kings make pretence of despising. This joy also has its crystallisation, though it demands a colder and more reasonable imagination. Think of a man whom, a quarter of an hour ago, Napoleon has called to be a minister.
The celebrated Johannes von Müller(54)said to me at Cassel in 1808—Nature has given strength to the North and wit to the South.
Nothing more untrue than the maxim: No man is a hero before his valet. Or, rather, nothing truer in the monarchic sense of the word hero—the affected hero, like Hippolytus inPhèdre. Desaix, for example, would have been a hero even before his valet (it's true I don't know if he had one), and a still greater hero for his valet than for anyone else. Turenne and Fénelon might each have been a Desaix, but for "good form" and the necessary amount of force.
Here is blasphemy. I, a Dutchman, dare say this: the French possess neither the true pleasures of conversation nor the true pleasures of the theatre; instead of relaxation and complete unrestraint, they mean hard labour. Among the sources of fatigue which hastened on the death of Mme. de Staël I have heard counted the strain of conversation during her last winter.[1]
[1]Memoirs of Marmontel, Montesquieu's conversation.
[1]Memoirs of Marmontel, Montesquieu's conversation.
[1]Memoirs of Marmontel, Montesquieu's conversation.
The degree of tension of the nerves in the ear, necessary to hear each note, explains well enough the physical part of one's pleasure in music.
What degrades rakish women is the opinion, which they share with the public, that they are guilty of a great sin.
In an army in retreat, warn an Italian soldier of a danger which it is no use running—he'll almost thank you and he'll carefully avoid it. If, from kindness, you point out the same danger to a French soldier, he'll think you're defying him—his sense of honour is piqued, and he runs his head straight against it. If he dared, he'd like to jeer at you. (Gyat, 1812.)
In France, any idea that can be explained only in the very simplest terms is sure to be despised, even the most useful. The Monitorial system(43), invented by a Frenchman, could never catch on. It is exactly the opposite in Italy.
Suppose you are passionately in love with a woman and that your imagination has not run dry. One evening she is tactless enough to say, looking at you tenderly and abashed: "Er—yes—come to-morrow at midday; I shall be in to no one but you." You cannot sleep; you cannot think of anything; the morning is torture. At last twelve o'clock strikes, and every stroke of the clock seems to clash and clang on your heart.
In love, to share money is to increase love, to give it is to kill love.
You are putting off the present difficulty, and the odious fear of want in the future; or rather you are sowing the seeds of policy, of the feeling of being two.—You destroy sympathy.
Court ceremonies involuntarily call to mind scenes from Aretine—the way the women display their bare shoulders, like officers their uniform, and, for all their charms, make no more sensation!
There you see what in a mercenary way all will do to win a man's approval; there you see a whole world acting without morality and, what's more, without passion. All this added to the presence of the women with their very low dresses and their expression of malice, greeting with a sardonic smile everything but selfish advantage payable in the hard cash of solid pleasures—why! it gives the idea of scenes from the Bagno. It drives far away all doubts suggested by virtue or the conscious satisfaction of a heart at peace with itself. Yet I have seen the feeling of isolation amidst all this dispose gentle hearts to love. (Mars at the Tuileries, 1811.)
A soul taken up with bashfulness and the effort to suppress it, is incapable of pleasure. Pleasure is a luxury—to enjoy it, security is essential and must run no risks.
A test of love in which mercenary women cannot disguise their feelings.—"Do you feel real delight in reconciliation or is it only the thought of what you'll gain by it?"
The poor things who fill La Trappe(55)are wretches who have not had quite enough courage to kill themselves. I except, of course, the heads, who find pleasure in being heads.
It is a misfortune to have known Italian beauty: you lose your sensibility. Out of Italy, you prefer the conversation of men.
Italian prudence looks to the preservation of life, and this allows free play to the imagination. (Cf. a version of the death of Pertica the famous comic actor, December 24th, 1821.) On the other hand, English prudence, wholly relative to the gain and safe-keeping of just enough money to cover expenses, demands detailed and everyday exactitude, and this habit paralyses the imagination. Notice also how enormously it strengthens the conception of duty.
The immense respect for money, which is the first and foremost vice of Englishmen and Italians, is less feltin France and reduced to perfectly rational limits in Germany.
French women, having never known the happiness of true passion, are anything but exacting over internal domestic happiness and the everyday side of life. (Compiègne.)
"You talk to me of ambition for driving away boredom," said Kamensky: "but all the time I used to gallop a couple of leagues every evening, for the pleasure of seeing the Princess at Kolich, I was on terms of intimacy with a despot whom I respected, who had my whole good fortune in his power and the satisfaction of all my possible desires."
Pretty contrast! On the one hand—perfection in the little niceties of worldly wisdom and of dress, great kindliness, want of genius, daily cult of a thousand and one petty observances, and incapacity for three days' attention to the same event: on the other—puritan severity, biblical cruelty, strict probity, timid, morbid self-love and universal cant! And yet these are the two foremost nations of the world.
As among princesses there has been an Empress Catherine II, why should a female Samuel Bernard(56), or a Lagrange(57)not appear among the middle-class?
Alviza calls this an unpardonable want of refinement—to dare to make love by letter to a woman you adore and who looks at you tenderly, but declares that she can never love you.
It was a mistake of the greatest philosopher that France has had, not to have stayed in some Alpine solitude, in some remote abode, thence to launch his book on Paris without ever coming there himself(58). Seeing Helvétius so simple and straightforward, unnatural, hot-house people like Suard, Marmontel or Diderot could never imagine they had a great philosopher before them. They were perfectly honest in their contempt for his profound reason. First of all, it was simple—a fault unpardonable in France; secondly, the author, not, of course, his book, was lowered in value by this weakness—the extreme importance he attached to getting what in France is called glory, to being, like Balzac, Voiture or Fontenelle, the fashion among his contemporaries.
Rousseau had too much feeling and too little logic, Buffon, in his Botanical Garden, was too hypocritical, and Voltaire too paltry to be able to judge the principle of Helvétius.
Helvétius was guilty of a little slip in calling this principleinterest, instead of giving it a pretty name likepleasure;[1]but what are we to think of a nation's literature, which shows its sense by letting itself be led astray by a fault so slight?
The ordinary clever man, Prince Eugene of Savoy for example, finding himself in the position of Regulus, would have stayed quietly at Rome, and even laughed at the stupidity of the Carthaginian Senate. Regulus goes back to Carthage. Prince Eugene would have been prosecuting his own interest, and in exactly the same way Regulus was prosecuting his.
All through life a noble spirit is seeing possibilitiesof action, of which a common spirit can form no idea. The very second the possibility of that action becomes visible to the noble spirit, it is its interest thus to act.
If this noble spirit did not perform the action, which it has just perceived, it would despise itself—it would be unhappy. Man's duties are in the ratio of his moral range. The principle of Helvétius holds good, even in the wildest exaltations of love, even in suicide. It is contrary to his nature, it is an impossibility for a man not to do, always and at any moment you choose to take, that which is possible and which gives him most pleasure at that moment to do.
[1]Torva leoena lupum sequitur, lupus ipse capellam;Florentem cytisum sequitur lasciva capella..... Trahit sua quemque voluptas. (Virgil, Eclogue II.)
[1]Torva leoena lupum sequitur, lupus ipse capellam;Florentem cytisum sequitur lasciva capella..... Trahit sua quemque voluptas. (Virgil, Eclogue II.)
[1]
Torva leoena lupum sequitur, lupus ipse capellam;Florentem cytisum sequitur lasciva capella..... Trahit sua quemque voluptas. (Virgil, Eclogue II.)
Torva leoena lupum sequitur, lupus ipse capellam;Florentem cytisum sequitur lasciva capella..... Trahit sua quemque voluptas. (Virgil, Eclogue II.)
To have firmness of character means to have experienced the influence of others on oneself. Therefore others are necessary.
Ancient Love
No posthumous love-letters of Roman ladies have been printed. Petronius has written a charming book, but it is only debauch that he has painted.
For love at Rome, apart from Virgil's story of Dido[1]and his second Eclogue, we have no evidence more precise than the writings of the three great poets, Ovid, Tibullus and Propertius.
Now, Parny'sElegiesor Colardeau'sLetter of Héloïse to Abelardare pictures of a very imperfect and vague kind, if you compare them to some of the letters in theNouvelle Héloïse, to those of the Portuguese Nun, of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, of Mirabeau's Sophie, of Werther, etc., etc.
Poetry, with its obligatory comparisons, its mythology in which the poet doesn't believe, its dignity of styleà laLouis XIV, and all its superfluous stock of ornaments called poetical, is very inferior to prose when it comes to a question of giving a clear and precise idea of the working of the heart. And, in this class of writing, clearness alone is effective.
Tibullus, Ovid and Propertius had better taste than our poets; they have painted love such as it was to be found among the proud citizens of Rome: moreover, they lived under Augustus, who, having shut the temple of Janus, sought to debase these citizens to the condition of the loyal subjects of a monarchy.
The mistresses of these three great poets were coquettes, faithless and venal women; in their company the poets only sought physical pleasure, and never, I should think, caught a glimpse of the sublime sentiments[2]which, thirteen centuries later, stirred the heart of the gentle Héloïse.
I borrow the following passage from a distinguished man of letters,[3]and one who knows the Latin poets much better than I do:—
The brilliant genius of Ovid, the rich imagination of Propertius, the impressionable heart of Tibullus, doubtless inspired them with verses of a different flavour, but all, in the same manner, they loved women of much the same kind. They desire, they triumph, they have fortunate rivals, they are jealous, they quarrel and make it up; they are faithless in their turn, they are forgiven; and they recover their happiness only to be ruffled by the return of the same mischances.Corinna is married. The first lessons that Ovid gives her are to teach her the address with which to deceive her husband: the signs they are to make each other before him and in society,so that they can understand each other and be understood only by themselves. Enjoyment quickly follows; afterwards quarrels, and, what you wouldn't expect from so gallant a man as Ovid, insults and blows; then excuses, tears and forgiveness. Sometimes he addresses himself to subordinates—to the servants, to his mistress' porter, who is to open to him at night, to a cursed old beldam who corrupts her and teaches her to sell herself for gold, to an old eunuch who keeps watch over her, to a slave-girl who is to convey the tablets in which he begs for a rendezvous. The rendezvous is refused: he curses his tablets, that have had such sorry fortune. Fortune shines brighter: he adjures the dawn not to come to interrupt his happiness.Soon he accuses himself of numberless infidelities, of his indiscriminate taste for women. A moment after, Corinna is herself faithless; he cannot bear the idea that he has given her lessons from which she reaps the profit with someone else. Corinna in her turn is jealous; she abuses him like a fury rather than a gentle woman; she accuses him of loving a slave-girl. He swears that there is nothing in it and writes to the slave—yet everything that made Corinna angry was true. But how did she get to know of it? What clue had led to their betrayal? He asks the slave-girl for another rendezvous. If she refuse him, he threatens to confess everything to Corinna. He jokes with a friend about his two loves and the trouble and pleasure they give him. Soon after, it is Corinna alone that fills his thoughts. She is everything to him. He sings his triumph, as if it were his first victory. After certain incidents, which for more than one reason we must leave in Ovid, and others, which it would be too long to recount, he discovers that Corinna's husband has become too lax. He is no longer jealous; our lover does not like this, and threatens to leave the wife, if the husband does not resume his jealousy. The husband obeys him but too well; he has Corinna watched so closely, that Ovid can no longer come to her. He complains of this close watch, which he had himself provoked—but he will find a way to get round it. Unfortunately, he is not the only one to succeed therein. Corinna's infidelities begin again and multiply; her intrigues become so public, that the only boon that Ovid can crave of her, is that she will take some trouble to deceive him, and show a little less obviously what she really is. Such were the morals of Ovid and his mistress, such is the character of their love.Cynthia is the first love of Propertius, and she will be his last.No sooner is he happy, but he is jealous. Cynthia is too fond of dress; he begs her to shun luxury and to love simplicity. He himself is given up to more than one kind of debauch. Cynthia expects him; he only comes to her at dawn, leaving a banquet in his cups. He finds her asleep; it is a long time before she wakes, in spite of the noise he makes and even of his kisses; at last she opens her eyes and reproaches him as he deserves. A friend tries to detach him from Cynthia; he gives his friend a eulogy of her beauty and talents. He is threatened with losing her; she goes off with a soldier; she means to follow the army; she will expose herself to every danger in order to follow her soldier. Propertius does not storm; he weeps and prays heaven for her happiness. He will never leave the house she has deserted; he will look out for strangers who have seen her, and will never leave off asking them for news of Cynthia. She is touched by love so great. She deserts the soldier and stays with the poet. He gives thanks to Apollo and the Muses; he is drunk with his happiness. This happiness is soon troubled by a new access of jealousy, interrupted by separation and by absence. Far from Cynthia, he can only think of her. Her past infidelities make him fear for news. Death does not frighten him, he only fears to lose Cynthia; let him be but certain that she will be faithful and he will go down without regret to the grave.After more treachery, he fancies he is delivered from his love; but soon he is again in its bonds. He paints the most ravishing portrait of his mistress, her beauty, the elegance of her dress, her talents in singing, poetry and dancing; everything redoubles and justifies his love. But Cynthia, as perverse as she is captivating, dishonours herself before the whole town by such scandalous adventures that Propertius can no longer love her without shame. He blushes, but he cannot shake her off. He will be her lover, her husband; he will never love any but Cynthia. They part and come together again. Cynthia is jealous, he reassures her. He will never love any other woman. But in fact it is never one woman he loves—it is all women. He never has enough of them, he is insatiable of pleasure. To recall him to himself, Cynthia has to desert him yet again. Then his complaints are as vigorous as if he had never been faithless himself. He tries to escape. He seeks distraction in debauch.—Is he drunk as usual? He pretends that a troupe of loves meets him and brings him back to Cynthia's feet. Reconciliation is followed by more storms. Cynthia, at oneof their supper parties, gets heated with wine like himself, upsets the table and hits him over the head. Propertius thinks this charming. More perfidy forces him at last to break his chains; he tries to go away; he means to travel in Greece; he completes all his plans for the journey, but he renounces the project—and all in order to see himself once more the butt of new outrages. Cynthia does not confine herself to betraying him; she makes him the laughing-stock of his rivals. But illness seizes her and she dies. She reproaches him with his faithlessness, his caprices and his desertion of her in her last moments, and swears that she herself, in spite of appearances, was always faithful.Such are the morals and adventures of Propertius and his mistress; such in abstract is the history of their love. Such was the woman that a soul like Propertius was reduced to loving.Ovid and Propertius were often faithless, but never inconstant. Confirmed libertines, they distribute their homage far and wide, but always return to take up the same chains again. Corinna and Cynthia have womankind for rivals, but no woman in particular. The Muse of these two poets is faithful, if their love is not, and no other names besides those of Corinna and of Cynthia figure in their verses. Tibullus, a tender lover and tender poet, less lively and less headlong in his tastes, has not their constancy. Three beauties are one after the other the objects of his love and of his verses. Delia is the first, the most celebrated and also the best beloved. Tibullus has lost his fortune, but he still has the country and Delia. To enjoy her amid the peaceful fields; to be able, at his ease, to press Delia's hand in his; to have her for his only mourner at his funeral—he makes no other prayers. Delia is kept shut up by a jealous husband; he will penetrate into her prison, in spite of any Argus and triple bolts. He will forget all his troubles in her arms. He falls ill and Delia alone fills his thoughts. He exhorts her to be always chaste, to despise gold, and to grant none but him the love she has granted him. But Delia does not follow his advice. He thought he could put up with her infidelity; but it is too much for him and he begs Delia and Venus for pity. He seeks in wine a remedy and does not find it; he can neither soften his regret nor cure himself of his love. He turns to Delia's husband, deceived like himself, and reveals to him all the tricks she uses to attract and see her lovers. If the husband does not know how to keep watch over her, let her be trusted to himself; he will manage right enough to wardthe lovers off and to keep from their toils the author of their common wrongs. He is appeased and returns to her; he remembers Delia's mother who favoured their love; the memory of this good woman opens his heart once more to tender thoughts, and all Delia's wrongs are forgotten. But she is soon guilty of others more serious. She lets herself be corrupted by gold and presents; she gives herself to another, to others. At length Tibullus breaks his shameful chains and says good-bye to her for ever.He passes under the sway of Nemesis and is no happier; she loves only gold and cares little for poetry and the gifts of genius. Nemesis is a greedy woman who sells herself to the highest bidder; he curses her avarice, but he loves her and cannot live unless she loves him. He tries to move her with touching images. She has lost her young sister; he will go and weep on her tomb and confide his grief to her dumb ashes. The shade of her sister will take offence at the tears that Nemesis causes to flow. She must not despise her anger. The sad image of her sister might come at night to trouble her sleep.... But these sad memories force tears from Nemesis—and at that price he could not buy even happiness. Neaera is his third mistress. He has long enjoyed her love; he only prays the gods that he may live and die with her; but she leaves him, she is gone; he can only think of her, she is his only prayer; he has seen in a dream Apollo, who announces to him that Neaera is unfaithful. He refuses to believe this dream; he could not survive his misfortune, and none the less the misfortune is there. Neaera is faithless; once more Tibullus is deserted. Such was his character and fortune, such is the triple and all unhappy story of his loves.In him particularly there is a sweet, all-pervading melancholy, that gives even to his pleasures the tone of dreaminess and sadness which constitutes his charm. If any poet of antiquity introduced moral sensibility into love, it was Tibullus; but these fine shades of feeling which he expresses so well, are in himself; he expects no more than the other two to find them or engender them in his mistresses. Their grace, their beauty is all that inflames him; their favours all he desires or regrets; their perfidy, their venality, their loss, all that torments him. Of all these women, celebrated in the verses of three great poets, Cynthia seems the most lovable. The attraction of talent is joined to all the others; she cultivates singing and poetry; and yet all these talents, which were foundnot infrequently in courtesans of a certain standing, were of no avail—it was none the less pleasure, gold and wine which ruled her. And Propertius, who boasts only once or twice of her artistic tastes, in his passion for her is none the less seduced by a very different power!
The brilliant genius of Ovid, the rich imagination of Propertius, the impressionable heart of Tibullus, doubtless inspired them with verses of a different flavour, but all, in the same manner, they loved women of much the same kind. They desire, they triumph, they have fortunate rivals, they are jealous, they quarrel and make it up; they are faithless in their turn, they are forgiven; and they recover their happiness only to be ruffled by the return of the same mischances.
Corinna is married. The first lessons that Ovid gives her are to teach her the address with which to deceive her husband: the signs they are to make each other before him and in society,so that they can understand each other and be understood only by themselves. Enjoyment quickly follows; afterwards quarrels, and, what you wouldn't expect from so gallant a man as Ovid, insults and blows; then excuses, tears and forgiveness. Sometimes he addresses himself to subordinates—to the servants, to his mistress' porter, who is to open to him at night, to a cursed old beldam who corrupts her and teaches her to sell herself for gold, to an old eunuch who keeps watch over her, to a slave-girl who is to convey the tablets in which he begs for a rendezvous. The rendezvous is refused: he curses his tablets, that have had such sorry fortune. Fortune shines brighter: he adjures the dawn not to come to interrupt his happiness.
Soon he accuses himself of numberless infidelities, of his indiscriminate taste for women. A moment after, Corinna is herself faithless; he cannot bear the idea that he has given her lessons from which she reaps the profit with someone else. Corinna in her turn is jealous; she abuses him like a fury rather than a gentle woman; she accuses him of loving a slave-girl. He swears that there is nothing in it and writes to the slave—yet everything that made Corinna angry was true. But how did she get to know of it? What clue had led to their betrayal? He asks the slave-girl for another rendezvous. If she refuse him, he threatens to confess everything to Corinna. He jokes with a friend about his two loves and the trouble and pleasure they give him. Soon after, it is Corinna alone that fills his thoughts. She is everything to him. He sings his triumph, as if it were his first victory. After certain incidents, which for more than one reason we must leave in Ovid, and others, which it would be too long to recount, he discovers that Corinna's husband has become too lax. He is no longer jealous; our lover does not like this, and threatens to leave the wife, if the husband does not resume his jealousy. The husband obeys him but too well; he has Corinna watched so closely, that Ovid can no longer come to her. He complains of this close watch, which he had himself provoked—but he will find a way to get round it. Unfortunately, he is not the only one to succeed therein. Corinna's infidelities begin again and multiply; her intrigues become so public, that the only boon that Ovid can crave of her, is that she will take some trouble to deceive him, and show a little less obviously what she really is. Such were the morals of Ovid and his mistress, such is the character of their love.
Cynthia is the first love of Propertius, and she will be his last.No sooner is he happy, but he is jealous. Cynthia is too fond of dress; he begs her to shun luxury and to love simplicity. He himself is given up to more than one kind of debauch. Cynthia expects him; he only comes to her at dawn, leaving a banquet in his cups. He finds her asleep; it is a long time before she wakes, in spite of the noise he makes and even of his kisses; at last she opens her eyes and reproaches him as he deserves. A friend tries to detach him from Cynthia; he gives his friend a eulogy of her beauty and talents. He is threatened with losing her; she goes off with a soldier; she means to follow the army; she will expose herself to every danger in order to follow her soldier. Propertius does not storm; he weeps and prays heaven for her happiness. He will never leave the house she has deserted; he will look out for strangers who have seen her, and will never leave off asking them for news of Cynthia. She is touched by love so great. She deserts the soldier and stays with the poet. He gives thanks to Apollo and the Muses; he is drunk with his happiness. This happiness is soon troubled by a new access of jealousy, interrupted by separation and by absence. Far from Cynthia, he can only think of her. Her past infidelities make him fear for news. Death does not frighten him, he only fears to lose Cynthia; let him be but certain that she will be faithful and he will go down without regret to the grave.
After more treachery, he fancies he is delivered from his love; but soon he is again in its bonds. He paints the most ravishing portrait of his mistress, her beauty, the elegance of her dress, her talents in singing, poetry and dancing; everything redoubles and justifies his love. But Cynthia, as perverse as she is captivating, dishonours herself before the whole town by such scandalous adventures that Propertius can no longer love her without shame. He blushes, but he cannot shake her off. He will be her lover, her husband; he will never love any but Cynthia. They part and come together again. Cynthia is jealous, he reassures her. He will never love any other woman. But in fact it is never one woman he loves—it is all women. He never has enough of them, he is insatiable of pleasure. To recall him to himself, Cynthia has to desert him yet again. Then his complaints are as vigorous as if he had never been faithless himself. He tries to escape. He seeks distraction in debauch.—Is he drunk as usual? He pretends that a troupe of loves meets him and brings him back to Cynthia's feet. Reconciliation is followed by more storms. Cynthia, at oneof their supper parties, gets heated with wine like himself, upsets the table and hits him over the head. Propertius thinks this charming. More perfidy forces him at last to break his chains; he tries to go away; he means to travel in Greece; he completes all his plans for the journey, but he renounces the project—and all in order to see himself once more the butt of new outrages. Cynthia does not confine herself to betraying him; she makes him the laughing-stock of his rivals. But illness seizes her and she dies. She reproaches him with his faithlessness, his caprices and his desertion of her in her last moments, and swears that she herself, in spite of appearances, was always faithful.
Such are the morals and adventures of Propertius and his mistress; such in abstract is the history of their love. Such was the woman that a soul like Propertius was reduced to loving.
Ovid and Propertius were often faithless, but never inconstant. Confirmed libertines, they distribute their homage far and wide, but always return to take up the same chains again. Corinna and Cynthia have womankind for rivals, but no woman in particular. The Muse of these two poets is faithful, if their love is not, and no other names besides those of Corinna and of Cynthia figure in their verses. Tibullus, a tender lover and tender poet, less lively and less headlong in his tastes, has not their constancy. Three beauties are one after the other the objects of his love and of his verses. Delia is the first, the most celebrated and also the best beloved. Tibullus has lost his fortune, but he still has the country and Delia. To enjoy her amid the peaceful fields; to be able, at his ease, to press Delia's hand in his; to have her for his only mourner at his funeral—he makes no other prayers. Delia is kept shut up by a jealous husband; he will penetrate into her prison, in spite of any Argus and triple bolts. He will forget all his troubles in her arms. He falls ill and Delia alone fills his thoughts. He exhorts her to be always chaste, to despise gold, and to grant none but him the love she has granted him. But Delia does not follow his advice. He thought he could put up with her infidelity; but it is too much for him and he begs Delia and Venus for pity. He seeks in wine a remedy and does not find it; he can neither soften his regret nor cure himself of his love. He turns to Delia's husband, deceived like himself, and reveals to him all the tricks she uses to attract and see her lovers. If the husband does not know how to keep watch over her, let her be trusted to himself; he will manage right enough to wardthe lovers off and to keep from their toils the author of their common wrongs. He is appeased and returns to her; he remembers Delia's mother who favoured their love; the memory of this good woman opens his heart once more to tender thoughts, and all Delia's wrongs are forgotten. But she is soon guilty of others more serious. She lets herself be corrupted by gold and presents; she gives herself to another, to others. At length Tibullus breaks his shameful chains and says good-bye to her for ever.
He passes under the sway of Nemesis and is no happier; she loves only gold and cares little for poetry and the gifts of genius. Nemesis is a greedy woman who sells herself to the highest bidder; he curses her avarice, but he loves her and cannot live unless she loves him. He tries to move her with touching images. She has lost her young sister; he will go and weep on her tomb and confide his grief to her dumb ashes. The shade of her sister will take offence at the tears that Nemesis causes to flow. She must not despise her anger. The sad image of her sister might come at night to trouble her sleep.... But these sad memories force tears from Nemesis—and at that price he could not buy even happiness. Neaera is his third mistress. He has long enjoyed her love; he only prays the gods that he may live and die with her; but she leaves him, she is gone; he can only think of her, she is his only prayer; he has seen in a dream Apollo, who announces to him that Neaera is unfaithful. He refuses to believe this dream; he could not survive his misfortune, and none the less the misfortune is there. Neaera is faithless; once more Tibullus is deserted. Such was his character and fortune, such is the triple and all unhappy story of his loves.
In him particularly there is a sweet, all-pervading melancholy, that gives even to his pleasures the tone of dreaminess and sadness which constitutes his charm. If any poet of antiquity introduced moral sensibility into love, it was Tibullus; but these fine shades of feeling which he expresses so well, are in himself; he expects no more than the other two to find them or engender them in his mistresses. Their grace, their beauty is all that inflames him; their favours all he desires or regrets; their perfidy, their venality, their loss, all that torments him. Of all these women, celebrated in the verses of three great poets, Cynthia seems the most lovable. The attraction of talent is joined to all the others; she cultivates singing and poetry; and yet all these talents, which were foundnot infrequently in courtesans of a certain standing, were of no avail—it was none the less pleasure, gold and wine which ruled her. And Propertius, who boasts only once or twice of her artistic tastes, in his passion for her is none the less seduced by a very different power!
These great poets are apparently to be numbered among the most tender and refined souls of their century—well! this is how they loved and whom. We must here put literary considerations on one side. I only ask of them evidence concerning their century; and in two thousand years a novel by Ducray-Duminil(59)will be evidence concerning the annals of ours.