Love says of her can there be mortal thingAt once adorned so richly and so pure?Then looks on her and silently affirmsThat heaven designed in her a creature new.(Transl. byC. Lyell.)
Love says of her can there be mortal thingAt once adorned so richly and so pure?Then looks on her and silently affirmsThat heaven designed in her a creature new.
Love says of her can there be mortal thing
At once adorned so richly and so pure?
Then looks on her and silently affirms
That heaven designed in her a creature new.
(Transl. byC. Lyell.)
(Transl. byC. Lyell.)
Again and again recurs the motif of her beauty before which the world must fall prostrate. In a sonnet not included in theVita Nuovahe says:
In heaven itself that lady had her birth,I think, and is with us for our behoof;Blessed are they who meet her on the earth.(Transl. byD.G. Rossetti.)
In heaven itself that lady had her birth,I think, and is with us for our behoof;Blessed are they who meet her on the earth.
In heaven itself that lady had her birth,
I think, and is with us for our behoof;
Blessed are they who meet her on the earth.
(Transl. byD.G. Rossetti.)
(Transl. byD.G. Rossetti.)
The lover has a foreboding of the fate awaiting him: "I have set my feet into that phase of life from whence there is no return." He divines the sorrow to which love has predestined him. But others, too, divining that this man "expects more, perhaps, of love than others," ask him to explain to them the essence of love, and he answers them with the famous sonnet:
Amor e cor gentil sono una cosa(Love and the gentle heart are but one thing.)
Amor e cor gentil sono una cosa(Love and the gentle heart are but one thing.)
Amor e cor gentil sono una cosa
(Love and the gentle heart are but one thing.)
The death of Beatrice is accompanied by the same phenomena as was the death of Christ: the sun lostits brilliance, stars appeared in the sky, birds fell to the ground, dead, the earth trembled; God visibly intervened in the course of nature.
For from the lamp of her meek lowliheadSuch an exceeding glory went up hence,That it woke wonder in the Eternal Sire,Until a sweet desireEntered Him for that lovely excellence,So that He bade her to Himself aspire;Counting this weary and most evil placeUnworthy of a thing so full of grace.(Transl. byD.G. Rossetti.)
For from the lamp of her meek lowliheadSuch an exceeding glory went up hence,That it woke wonder in the Eternal Sire,Until a sweet desireEntered Him for that lovely excellence,So that He bade her to Himself aspire;Counting this weary and most evil placeUnworthy of a thing so full of grace.
For from the lamp of her meek lowlihead
Such an exceeding glory went up hence,
That it woke wonder in the Eternal Sire,
Until a sweet desire
Entered Him for that lovely excellence,
So that He bade her to Himself aspire;
Counting this weary and most evil place
Unworthy of a thing so full of grace.
(Transl. byD.G. Rossetti.)
(Transl. byD.G. Rossetti.)
In the 29th chapter, which we, to-day, do not readily understand, Dante established by a system of symbolical numbers a connection between Beatrice and the Trinity; the deification of the beloved had been achieved in thought and emotion, religion enriched by a new divinity. "Love, weeping, has filled my heart with new knowledge," he says, at the conclusion of the work of his youth. I repeat what I have already said in another place, and supported by passages from theDivine Comedy: It was never Dante's intention to write fictitious poems in our meaning of the term, but at every hour of his life he was convinced that he was proclaiming the pure truth; he knew himself to be the chosen vehicle for the interpretation of the eternal system of the world.
At the conclusion of theVita Nuova, Beatrice is a divine being, devoid of all emotion—enthroned in Heaven; in theComedyshe becomes her lover's saviour and redeemer, and through him a helper of all humanity. The love of the youth had found no response in the heart of the Florentine maiden, but the soul of the glorified woman was inspired by love of him. She trembles for him, and when Mary's messenger admonishes her: "Why doest thou not help him who has loved thee so much?" she sends Virgil to him as a guide and finally herself leads her redeemed lover to God. Now she responds to hislove; she has even wept for him. This ultimately fulfilled, but always chastely hidden longing for love in return, gives the woman-worship of Dante a peculiarly noble charm. At the end of his journey through life he prays to her, who has again disappeared from his sight, and his last confession is: "Into a free man thou transform'st a slave."
Love's greatest miracle has been made manifest in him; it has transfigured and purified him, and made of the slave of the world and its desires, a personality—the fundamental motif of love.
There is a close connection between the metaphysical love of Dante and Goethe's confession in the last scene ofFaust, which reveals the poet's deepest conviction, his final judgment of life. The confessions of both poets are identical to the smallest detail. TheDivine Comedyrepresents the journey of humanity through the kingdoms of the world in a manner unique and representative, applicable alike to all men, in the sense of the Catholic Middle Ages. The fundamental idea ofFaustis again the desire of man to find the right way through the world. Here also the journey through life is intended to be typical; it is undertaken five hundred years later; the scene is laid for the most part on the surface of the earth, but the ultimate goal of the wayfarer is Heaven. Hell, instead of being a subterraneous region, is embodied in a presence, accompanying and tempting man; modern man has no faithful guide; he must himself seek the way which to the man of the Middle Ages was clearly indicated in the Bible. The love of his youth (which in the case of Dante fills a book in itself) is merely an episode at the beginning of the tragedy—the lover wanders through all the kingdoms of the world, finally to return home to the beloved.
The last scene ofFaustis an unfolding of metaphysical love into its inherent multiplicity; its summit is the metaphysical love of woman. All human striving is determined and crowned by thesaving grace of love. Faust has no longer a specific name; he has dropped everything subjective, and is briefly styleda lover; like Dante, he has become representative of humanity. The hour of death revives the memory of the love of his youth, apparently forgotten in the storm and stress of a crowded life, yet never quite extinguished in the heart of his heart. Margaret is present and guides him (as Beatrice guided Dante) upward, to theEternal-Feminine, that is to say, to the metaphysical consummation of all male yearning for love. "The love from on high" saves Faust as it has saved Dante.The blessed boys(who, as well as the angels, are present in both poems) singing:
Whom ye adore shall yeSee face to face.[2]
Whom ye adore shall yeSee face to face.[2]
Whom ye adore shall ye
See face to face.[2]
are again referring to the transcendently loving lover. Like Beatrice, Margaret intercedes for him (intercession for her lover has always been woman's profoundest prayer) with the Queen of Heaven:
Incline, oh incline,All others excelling,In glory aye dwelling,Unto my bliss thy glance benign;The loved one ascending,His long trouble ending,Comes back, he is mine!
Incline, oh incline,All others excelling,In glory aye dwelling,Unto my bliss thy glance benign;The loved one ascending,His long trouble ending,Comes back, he is mine!
Incline, oh incline,
All others excelling,
In glory aye dwelling,
Unto my bliss thy glance benign;
The loved one ascending,
His long trouble ending,
Comes back, he is mine!
These words are more intimate and human than the words of Beatrice, but fundamentally they mean the same thing. Dante, meeting Beatrice again, says:
And o'er my spirit that so long a timeHad from her presence felt no shuddering dread,Albeit my eyes discovered her not, there movedA hidden virtue from her, at whose touchThe power of ancient love was strong within me.[3]
And o'er my spirit that so long a timeHad from her presence felt no shuddering dread,Albeit my eyes discovered her not, there movedA hidden virtue from her, at whose touchThe power of ancient love was strong within me.[3]
And o'er my spirit that so long a time
Had from her presence felt no shuddering dread,
Albeit my eyes discovered her not, there moved
A hidden virtue from her, at whose touch
The power of ancient love was strong within me.[3]
But when he who has said so much beholds her face to face, he is stricken dumb.
Beatrice receives Dante from his guide and herself unveils to him the mysteries of life. Similarly Margaret beseeches the Virgin:
To guide him, be it given to meStill dazzles him the new-born day!
To guide him, be it given to meStill dazzles him the new-born day!
To guide him, be it given to me
Still dazzles him the new-born day!
and receives from on high the command which the symbolically burdened Beatrice knows intuitively:
Ascend, thine influence feeleth he,He'll follow on thine upward way.
Ascend, thine influence feeleth he,He'll follow on thine upward way.
Ascend, thine influence feeleth he,
He'll follow on thine upward way.
As Beatrice approaches, the angels sing:
Oh! TurnThy saintly eyes to this thy faithful one,Who to behold thee many a wearisome paceHath measured.
Oh! TurnThy saintly eyes to this thy faithful one,Who to behold thee many a wearisome paceHath measured.
Oh! Turn
Thy saintly eyes to this thy faithful one,
Who to behold thee many a wearisome pace
Hath measured.
And with the fundamental feeling of Dante'sDivine ComedyFaust concludes:
The ever-womanlyDraws us above.
The ever-womanlyDraws us above.
The ever-womanly
Draws us above.
The earthly love of his youth is fulfilled in the dream of metaphysical love, in the dream of a divine woman. The genius creates, at the conclusion of his life, the fulfilment of all longing. It may sound paradoxical, but Faust—like Dante and Peer Gynt—unconsciously sought Margaret in the hurly-burly of the world; not the young girl whom he had seduced and deserted, but theEternal-Feminine, the purely spiritual love, which in his youth he divined, but destroyed, bound by the shackles of desire. To Dante, to whom life and poem were one, as well as to Goethe-Faust, the memory of first love remained typical of all genuine, profound feeling; with Dante love and Beatrice are identical. In the soul of these two men metaphysical love, the longing for the eternal in woman, which they did not find on earth, graduallyawoke to life. Both place the glorified mistress by the side of another woman, the Catholic Queen of Heaven. In Dante's, as well as in Goethe's Paradise two women, a personal one and a universal one, are loved and adored. The second woman, too, has her exclusive, ecstatic worshipper. St. Bernard, theDoctor Marianusof Dante, prostrating himself before her, addresses to her the sublime prayer which begins:
Oh, Virgin! Mother! Daughter of thy Son!
Oh, Virgin! Mother! Daughter of thy Son!
Oh, Virgin! Mother! Daughter of thy Son!
and inFaustwe meet again theDoctor Marianusburning—as the representative of the totality of her worshippers—with the "sacred joy of love" (Dante says
The Queen of Heaven for whom my soulBurns with love's rapture)
The Queen of Heaven for whom my soulBurns with love's rapture)
The Queen of Heaven for whom my soul
Burns with love's rapture)
and pronouncing the most beautiful prayer to the Madonna which the world possesses, and which is almost identical with Dante's:
Virgin, pure from taint of earth,Mother, we adore thee,With the Godhead one by birth,Queen, we bow before thee!
Virgin, pure from taint of earth,Mother, we adore thee,With the Godhead one by birth,Queen, we bow before thee!
Virgin, pure from taint of earth,
Mother, we adore thee,
With the Godhead one by birth,
Queen, we bow before thee!
And, prostrated before her:
Penitents, her saviour-glanceGratefully beholding,To beatitude advance,Still new pow'rs unfolding!Thine each better thought shall be,To thy service given!Holy Virgin, gracious be,Mother, Queen of Heaven!
Penitents, her saviour-glanceGratefully beholding,To beatitude advance,Still new pow'rs unfolding!Thine each better thought shall be,To thy service given!Holy Virgin, gracious be,Mother, Queen of Heaven!
Penitents, her saviour-glance
Gratefully beholding,
To beatitude advance,
Still new pow'rs unfolding!
Thine each better thought shall be,
To thy service given!
Holy Virgin, gracious be,
Mother, Queen of Heaven!
In the Divine Comedy St. Bernard prays:
So mighty art thou, Lady, and so great,That he who grace desireth and comes notTo thee for aidence, fain would have desireFly without wings.
So mighty art thou, Lady, and so great,That he who grace desireth and comes notTo thee for aidence, fain would have desireFly without wings.
So mighty art thou, Lady, and so great,
That he who grace desireth and comes not
To thee for aidence, fain would have desire
Fly without wings.
TheChorus mysticuscould equally well form the conclusion of theComedy. Theinadequatewhich tofulness groweth, is what the Provençals already, in their time, realised asfolly, as a paradox: the metaphysical love of woman, for ever remaining dream and longing, always unfulfilled, the eternal-feminine.
As theMater Gloriosaappears, Dante exclaims:
Thenceforward what I sawWas not for words to speak, nor memory's selfTo stand against such outrage on her skill.
Thenceforward what I sawWas not for words to speak, nor memory's selfTo stand against such outrage on her skill.
Thenceforward what I saw
Was not for words to speak, nor memory's self
To stand against such outrage on her skill.
And Goethe:
In starry wreath is seenLofty and tender,Midmost the heavenly queen,Known by her splendour.
In starry wreath is seenLofty and tender,Midmost the heavenly queen,Known by her splendour.
In starry wreath is seen
Lofty and tender,
Midmost the heavenly queen,
Known by her splendour.
Here the "sacred fire of love," metaphysical eroticism, has reached its absolute climax. The universe is represented by a divine woman, and man, abandoning himself to her, worships her. Goethe'sFaustconcludes at this point, but Dante went further, right into the heart of the eternal glory of the Deity, there to lose himself.
I have previously said that the last scene ofFaustwas the final unfolding of the manifold blossom of metaphysical eroticism, and I will proceed to establish my point. Hitherto I have used the term metaphysical eroticism always in its narrow sense of love of woman. Henceforth I shall use it in its broader meaning of mystical love in general, all love that is projected on the transcendental and the divine. Emotion is the specific domain of humanity, its power, its essence. And in the profoundest emotion, in love, a connection between the temporal and the eternal may be divined. Hence the Christian mystery of mysteries, God giving His Son to the world for love of humanity; God unable to approach the world other than as a lover—sacrificing Himself for the sake of love. We cannot conceive the Sublime with any other principal function than that of love; for love is the deepest and profoundest emotion of thehuman heart, and, in accordance with the first postulate, must therefore be the soul of the universe. On this point all mystics and all metaphysical ecstatics are agreed; "God is love" is written in the Gospel of St. John. "Love which moves the sun and all the stars," stands at the termination of Dante's masterpiece: and inFaustthePater Profundusconfesses:
So love, almighty, all-pervading,Does all things mould, does all sustain.
So love, almighty, all-pervading,Does all things mould, does all sustain.
So love, almighty, all-pervading,
Does all things mould, does all sustain.
He is still wrestling for divine love; he still has to fight against the temptations of doubt (of thought),
Oh, God! My troubled thoughts composing,My needy heart do thou illume!
Oh, God! My troubled thoughts composing,My needy heart do thou illume!
Oh, God! My troubled thoughts composing,
My needy heart do thou illume!
But the true enthusiastic lover of the divine, compelled to annihilate himself so as to become absorbed in God, the lover who no longer knows the difference between pain and delight, is represented by thePater Ecstaticus: The condition of rest is foreign to him, ceaselessly moving up and down, he sings:
Joy's everlasting fire,Love's glow of pure desire,Pang of the seething breast,Rapture a hallowed guest!vDarts pierce me through and through,Lances my flesh subdue,Clubs me to atoms dash,Lightnings athwart me flash,That all the worthless mayPass like a cloud away,While shineth from afar,Love's gem, a deathless star!
Joy's everlasting fire,Love's glow of pure desire,Pang of the seething breast,Rapture a hallowed guest!vDarts pierce me through and through,Lances my flesh subdue,Clubs me to atoms dash,Lightnings athwart me flash,That all the worthless mayPass like a cloud away,While shineth from afar,Love's gem, a deathless star!
Joy's everlasting fire,
Love's glow of pure desire,
Pang of the seething breast,
Rapture a hallowed guest!
vDarts pierce me through and through,
Lances my flesh subdue,
Clubs me to atoms dash,
Lightnings athwart me flash,
That all the worthless may
Pass like a cloud away,
While shineth from afar,
Love's gem, a deathless star!
These ejaculations completely exhaust the emotional life of the self-destructive metaphysical erotic—he is conscious of nothing but his passion of love which eclipses all else. With him the second form of metaphysical love, the love-death, is reached. Goethe, in creating this character, must have had in his mind the unique Jacopone da Todi. For this rapturous lovewas the keynote of Jacopone's character, his whole life was one great ecstasy:
My heart was all to broken,As prostrate I was lying,With dear love's fiery tokenSwift from the archer flying;Wounded, with sweet pain soaken,Peace became war—and dying,My soul with pain was soaken,Distraught with throes of love.In transports I am dying,Oh! Love's astounding wonder!—For love, his fell spear plying,Has cleft my heart asunder.Around the blade are lyingSharp teeth, my life to sunder,In rapture I am dying,Distraught with throes of love.
My heart was all to broken,As prostrate I was lying,With dear love's fiery tokenSwift from the archer flying;Wounded, with sweet pain soaken,Peace became war—and dying,My soul with pain was soaken,Distraught with throes of love.
My heart was all to broken,
As prostrate I was lying,
With dear love's fiery token
Swift from the archer flying;
Wounded, with sweet pain soaken,
Peace became war—and dying,
My soul with pain was soaken,
Distraught with throes of love.
In transports I am dying,Oh! Love's astounding wonder!—For love, his fell spear plying,Has cleft my heart asunder.Around the blade are lyingSharp teeth, my life to sunder,In rapture I am dying,Distraught with throes of love.
In transports I am dying,
Oh! Love's astounding wonder!—
For love, his fell spear plying,
Has cleft my heart asunder.
Around the blade are lying
Sharp teeth, my life to sunder,
In rapture I am dying,
Distraught with throes of love.
And:
Oh, Love! oh, Love! oh, Jesus, my desire,Oh, Love! I hold thee clasped in sweet embrace!Oh, Love! embracing thee, could I expire!Oh, Love! I'd die to see thee face to face.Oh, Love! oh, Love! I burn in rapture's fire,I die, enravished in the soul's embrace.
Oh, Love! oh, Love! oh, Jesus, my desire,Oh, Love! I hold thee clasped in sweet embrace!Oh, Love! embracing thee, could I expire!Oh, Love! I'd die to see thee face to face.Oh, Love! oh, Love! I burn in rapture's fire,I die, enravished in the soul's embrace.
Oh, Love! oh, Love! oh, Jesus, my desire,
Oh, Love! I hold thee clasped in sweet embrace!
Oh, Love! embracing thee, could I expire!
Oh, Love! I'd die to see thee face to face.
Oh, Love! oh, Love! I burn in rapture's fire,
I die, enravished in the soul's embrace.
The legend has it that the heart of Jacopone broke with the intensity of love. This would have been a love-death of cosmic grandeur.
Before Jacopone St. Bernard, in whom all the radiations of metaphysical eroticism are traceable, was consumed by similar emotions. Some of his Latin poems very much resemble the poems of his successor:
Oh, most sweet Jesu, Saviour blest,My yearning spirit's hope and rest,To thee mine inmost nature cries,And seeks thy face with tears and sighs.Thou, my heart's joy where'er I rove,Thou art the perfecting of love;Thou art my boast—all praise be thine,Jesu, the world's salvation, mine!Then his embrace, his holy kiss,The honeycomb were naught to this!'Twere bliss fast bound to Christ for aye,But in these joys is little stay.This love with ceaseless ardour burns,How wondrous sweet no stranger learns;But tasted once, the enraptured wight,Is filled with ever new delight.Now I behold what most I sought;Fulfilled at last my longing thought;Lovesick, my soul to Jesus turns,And all my heart within me burns.(Transl. byT.G. Crippen.)
Oh, most sweet Jesu, Saviour blest,My yearning spirit's hope and rest,To thee mine inmost nature cries,And seeks thy face with tears and sighs.
Oh, most sweet Jesu, Saviour blest,
My yearning spirit's hope and rest,
To thee mine inmost nature cries,
And seeks thy face with tears and sighs.
Thou, my heart's joy where'er I rove,Thou art the perfecting of love;Thou art my boast—all praise be thine,Jesu, the world's salvation, mine!
Thou, my heart's joy where'er I rove,
Thou art the perfecting of love;
Thou art my boast—all praise be thine,
Jesu, the world's salvation, mine!
Then his embrace, his holy kiss,The honeycomb were naught to this!'Twere bliss fast bound to Christ for aye,But in these joys is little stay.
Then his embrace, his holy kiss,
The honeycomb were naught to this!
'Twere bliss fast bound to Christ for aye,
But in these joys is little stay.
This love with ceaseless ardour burns,How wondrous sweet no stranger learns;But tasted once, the enraptured wight,Is filled with ever new delight.
This love with ceaseless ardour burns,
How wondrous sweet no stranger learns;
But tasted once, the enraptured wight,
Is filled with ever new delight.
Now I behold what most I sought;Fulfilled at last my longing thought;Lovesick, my soul to Jesus turns,And all my heart within me burns.
Now I behold what most I sought;
Fulfilled at last my longing thought;
Lovesick, my soul to Jesus turns,
And all my heart within me burns.
(Transl. byT.G. Crippen.)
(Transl. byT.G. Crippen.)
We read in his writings: "Blessed and sacred is he to whom it has been given to experience this in his earthly life; even if he have experienced it only once, for the space of a fleeting minute. For to melt away completely, as it were, as if one had ceased to exist, to be emptied of self, dissolved in holy emotion, has not been given to mortal life, but is the state of the blessed."
I shall have to refer to both men in a future chapter, when I shall examine the degenerate growths of metaphysical eroticism; for the ardour of their souls was frequently kindled by sexual imaginings; in the case of emotional mystics it is often difficult to distinguish between sensual conceptions and the pure love of God (a fact which does not, however, justify the superficial opinion that all mysticism is diverted sexuality).
It is obvious that this love of God is not the original creation of the lover, as is the deifying love of woman, but the mystic love whose self-evident object is God or eternity. Jacopone's (and later on Zinzendorf's) love of Jesus, though projected on a historical personality, was fundamentally the same thing. The love of God also—and in this connection I might mention Jacob Boehme, Alphonso da Liguori, Novalis—is metaphysical eroticism; but I have restricted my subject to the metaphysical love of woman, and shall not overstep my limits. I will merely elucidate a little more the last scene ofFaust.
Pater seraphicus, a title given both to St. Francis and to Bonaventura—requires but a few words: he, too, praises metaphysical love, the essence of the supreme spirits.
Thus the spirits' nature stealingThrough the ether's depths profound;Love eternal, self-revealing,Sheds beatitude around.
Thus the spirits' nature stealingThrough the ether's depths profound;Love eternal, self-revealing,Sheds beatitude around.
Thus the spirits' nature stealing
Through the ether's depths profound;
Love eternal, self-revealing,
Sheds beatitude around.
But even themore perfect angelscannot free themselves from the dualism of all things human (body and soul)—an unmistakable confession of metaphysical dualism:
Parts them God's love alone,Their union ending.
Parts them God's love alone,Their union ending.
Parts them God's love alone,
Their union ending.
The identity of the last scene ofFaust, Goethe's masterpiece, and the conclusion of Dante'sDivine Comedy, is so obvious that I do not think any one could deny it. I have pointed out the thought underlying both works, and could easily advance further proof of their similarity, but I will keep within the limits of the last scene which contains the totality of metaphysico-erotic yearning, and I contend that it is very remarkable that a lifetime after the composition of Margaret, Faust (and with him Goethe) very old, very wise, and a little cold, having had love-affairs with demi-goddesses, and having finally renounced the love of woman, found his mission and his happiness in uninterrupted, productive activity. He has discovered the final value in work. But the long-forgotten heaven opens and the love of his youth comes to meet him. Stripped of everything earthly, a divine being, she still loves him and shows him the way to salvation, presented under the aspect of theEternal-Feminine—exactly as in theDivine Comedy. There must be a reason for the uniformity of feeling in the case of the two greatest subjective poets of Europe (Shakespeare was greater than either, but he was quite impersonal), for the logical possibility that Goethe imitated Dante, and borrowed his supreme values from him, cannot be maintained for a moment. Their mutual characteristic is the longing for metaphysical love. When these great lovers experienced for the first time the sensation of love, their hearts were thrown open to the universe, they had the first powerful experience of eternity, and they became poets. The first love and the cosmic consciousness of genius were simultaneously present, they were one in their inmost soul. (With the philosopher it is a different matter, for to him the love of woman is not fraught with the same tremendous significance.) This experience of first love, awakening the consciousness of eternity, remained to them for all time interwoven with religion and metaphysics—interwoven, that is to say, with all transcendent longing. And though the aged Faust had believed it to be buried in the dark night of forgotten things, it was still alive in his inmost heart, and the dying man's vision of the Divine took colour and shape from it.
The source of both great poems was the poet's will to assimilate the world and recreate it, impregnated with his own soul; the secret motive powers were the mystic love of eternity and the love of woman which had outgrown this world and aspired to the next. To Goethe, thirsting to give a concrete shape to his yearning, God and eternity were too intangible, too remote and incomprehensible—but the woman he loved with religio-erotic intensity was familiar to him. The Eternal-Feminine is thus not fraught with incomprehensibility, but is rather, and this necessarily, the final conclusion. For this conclusion is a profession of metaphysical eroticism, that is to say, theEternal-Femininein contradistinction to theTransitory-Feminine. Both Dante, the devout son of the Middle Ages, and Goethe, the champion of modern culture, demand, in virtue of the inherent right of their genius, the consummation of their mystic yearning for love in another life, and achieve the creation of the divine woman. Precisely because Margaret was nothing but a little provincial, Goethe could sublimate her into a new being, for the greater the tension between reality and the vision of the soul, the greater is the task and the more gigantic the creative power which such a task may develop. It has been said that, in this scene, Goethe revealed leanings towards Catholicism. I do not pretend to deny it offhand, but I must insist on these leanings being understood in the sense of my premises. Goethe took from tradition those elements which were able to materialise his spiritual life and gave them a new interpretation. We are justified in believing that he accepted nothing but what was conformable to his nature; the Madonna represented his profoundest feeling and, like Dante (I attribute the greatest importance to this), he created a new deity, moulded in the shape of his first love, and placed it by the side of the universal Queen of Heaven, the Madonna of the Catholic Church, transformed by love.
The emotional life of both poets agrees fundamentally. They differ not so much in feeling as in thought and in faith. Dante possessed unshakable faith in the reality of his visions; eternal love in the shape of Beatrice was awaiting him; his vision was pure, eternal truth. The vision of Goethe, on the other hand, was poetic longing, tragical, because the vision of the transcendent came to the modern poet only in rare hours. Where Dante possessed, Goethe must seek, strive and err.
The deifying love of woman is, as we have seen, the extreme development of the second stage, in which sexual impulse and spiritual love are strictly separated, in which man despises and fights hisnatural instinct, or abandons himself to it—which is the same in principle—while his soul, worshipping love, soars heavenward. This dualism of feeling corresponds to the persistent dualism of Christianity and the whole mediaeval period. But as Goethe is frequently looked upon as amonist, my proposition that he was a dualistin eroticiswill possibly be rejected, in spite of the fact that his emotional life is revealed to us with great lucidity. His first important work, hisWerther, which is also one of the most important monuments of sentimental love, contains the germs of love as we understand it; the love which is no longer content to look upon sexuality and soul as two opposed principles, but strives to blend them in the person of the beloved. I will revert toWertherlater on. This third stage, love in the modern sense, is programmatically established (as it were) inElective Affinities, but all the rest of the very abundant evidence of his emotional life exhibits the typically dualistic feeling. Many of his early poems evidence sexuality pure and simple; in theVenetian Epigramsand in theRoman Elegiesit is even held up as a positive value. In the third Elegy, for instance, the poet's sensuality is linked directly to the famous lovers of antiquity, and everything which aspires beyond it is rejected. In the same way hisWest-Eastern Divanis characterised by a gay sensuality with homo-sexual tendencies.
The sensual quality of Goethe's eroticism was partly spent in his relationship with Christiane Vulpius. The following passage, which forms an interesting counterpart to Goethe's famous correspondence with Charlotte von Stein, is taken from a letter written to Christiane Vulpius during his absence from home. "The beds everywhere are very wide, and you would have no reason for complaint, as you sometimes have at home. Oh, my sweet heart! There is no such happiness on earth as being together."
If Christiane represented sensuality, unrelieved by any other feeling, Frau von Stein represented the most important object of Goethe's craving for spiritual love. These two liaisons were to some extent contemporaneous; theRoman Elegiesand the famous letters to Charlotte von Stein were written at the same period. When she reproached him with his love-affair with Christiane, he replied with consistent dualism: "And what sort of an affair is it? Whose interests are suffering by it?" Frau von Stein, his senior by seven years, was thirty-four years old, and mother of seven children when Goethe first met her. According to Schiller she "can never have been beautiful," and in a letter to Koerner the latter says: "They say that their relationship (Goethe's and Charlotte von Stein's) is absolutely pure and irreproachable." It was a great mistake ever to regard this relationship as anything but a purely spiritual one; Goethe never felt any passion for Charlotte; he called her "his sister," the "guide of his soul"; he told her of his little love-affairs and was never jealous of her husband. The following are a few typical passages culled from his letters, arranged chronologically: "My only love whom I can love without torment!" Then, quite in the spirit of thedolce stil nuovo: "Your soul, in which thousands believe in order to win happiness," "The purest, truest and most beautiful relationship which (with the exception of my sister) ever existed between me and any woman." "The relationship between us is so strange and sacred, that I strongly felt, on that occasion, that it cannot be expressed in words, that men cannot realise it." The following passage written by Goethe when he was thirty, might have been written by Guinicelli or by Dante: "You appeared to me like the Madonna ascending into heaven; in vain did the abandoned mourner stretch out his arms, in vain did his tearful glance plead for a last return—she was absorbed in the splendoursurrounding her, longing only for the crown hovering above her head." "I long to be purified in triple fire so as to be worthy of you." He addresses a prayer to her and says: "On my knees I implore you to complete your work and make a good man of me." "While writing Tasso, I worshipped you." Charlotte knew intuitively what he desired of her, and remained silent and passive like the Madonna. Not a single sensual, or even passionate word, replied to all these utterances.
In the course of time the relationship between the lovers became one of equality; the note of adoration disappeared, and the keynote of his letters became friendship and familiarity. "Farewell, sweet friend and beloved, whose love alone makes me happy." In another letter he said that all the world held no further prize for him, since he had found everything in her. And just as spiritual love approached more and more the mean of a familiar friendship, so was his sexuality concentrated on a single woman, on Christiane, in this connection, too, seeking a mean. But it is an important point that the fundamental dualistic feeling remained unchanged. There was no woman in Goethe's life in regard to whom he arrived at, or even aspired to, the blending of both emotions in a higher intuition.
Even before his friendship with Frau von Stein, at the time of his engagement to Lili Schoenemann, Goethe experienced a spiritual love for a girl he had never seen. He calls Countess Auguste Stolberg "his angel," "his only, only maiden," "his golden child," and says: "I have an intuition that you will save me from great tribulation, and that no other being on earth could do it." These letters also contain the significant passage: "Miserable fate which has denied me a happy mean." And touching the love of his youth, Lotte, Goethe wrote to Kestner: "I really had no idea that all that was in her, for I always loved her far too much to observe her."
The Princess in "Tasso" and "Iphigenia" who delivers Orestes from unrest and insanity, are modelled on Charlotte. Tasso is unmistakably a fantastic woman-worshipper, a fact of which Leonore is fully aware:
Now he exalts her to the starry heavens,In radiant glory, and before that formBows down like angels in the realms above.Then, stealing after her, through silent fields,He garlands in his wreath each beauteous flower.He loves not us—forgive me what I say—His lov'd ideal from the spheres he bringsAnd does invest it with the name we bear.He has relinquished passion's fickle sway,He clings no longer with delusion sweetTo outward form and beauty to atoneFor brief excitement by disgust and hate.[4]
Now he exalts her to the starry heavens,In radiant glory, and before that formBows down like angels in the realms above.Then, stealing after her, through silent fields,He garlands in his wreath each beauteous flower.
Now he exalts her to the starry heavens,
In radiant glory, and before that form
Bows down like angels in the realms above.
Then, stealing after her, through silent fields,
He garlands in his wreath each beauteous flower.
He loves not us—forgive me what I say—His lov'd ideal from the spheres he bringsAnd does invest it with the name we bear.He has relinquished passion's fickle sway,He clings no longer with delusion sweetTo outward form and beauty to atoneFor brief excitement by disgust and hate.[4]
He loves not us—forgive me what I say—
His lov'd ideal from the spheres he brings
And does invest it with the name we bear.
He has relinquished passion's fickle sway,
He clings no longer with delusion sweet
To outward form and beauty to atone
For brief excitement by disgust and hate.[4]
And Tasso says:
My very kneesTrembled beneath me and my spirit's strengthWas all required to hold myself erect,And curb the strong desire to throw myselfProstrate before her. Scarcely could I quellThe giddy rapture.
My very kneesTrembled beneath me and my spirit's strengthWas all required to hold myself erect,And curb the strong desire to throw myselfProstrate before her. Scarcely could I quellThe giddy rapture.
My very knees
Trembled beneath me and my spirit's strength
Was all required to hold myself erect,
And curb the strong desire to throw myself
Prostrate before her. Scarcely could I quell
The giddy rapture.
The significant avowal addressed by Dante to Beatrice: "Into a free man thou transform'st a slave," the seal of all great spiritual love, was repeated by Goethe in his letters to Charlotte, and is again repeated in Tasso:
Over my spirit's depths there comes a change;Relieved from dark perplexity I feel,Free as a god, and all I owe to you.
Over my spirit's depths there comes a change;Relieved from dark perplexity I feel,Free as a god, and all I owe to you.
Over my spirit's depths there comes a change;
Relieved from dark perplexity I feel,
Free as a god, and all I owe to you.
Very interesting is also a remark which Goethe made to Eckermann: "Woman is a silver vessel in which we men lay golden apples. I did not deduce my idea of woman from reality, but I wasborn with it, or I conceived it—God knows how." These notable words, deliberately pronounced, reveal Goethe's feeling very clearly; he knows that there is a little self-deception in his attitude towards woman, but he consciously and lovingly clings to it. His pronouncements are not contradictions; it is natural, almost essential, that in the soul of the highly-gifted and highly-developed representative of a mature civilisation the whole wealth of human emotions should be revivified. He possesses all psychical qualities—at least potentially—and one element after the other regains life and becomes productive. We shall see this with startling clearness when we come to examine the emotional life of Richard Wagner. The intimate connection between the individual and the entire evolutionary process of the race will then become evident.
It is remarkable that Dante, too, wrote a poem clearly expressive of the fact that the beloved woman does not actually possess the qualities ascribed to her, but that she has been endowed with them by the imagination of her lover.
I shall discuss the emotional life of only one other poet in detail, and that one is Michelangelo. For the most part the poets whose emotions were akin to that of Dante and Goethe were men who created their ideal woman because reality left them unsatisfied. In passing I will mention Beethoven, and his touching letter to his "immortal love" ("My angel, my all, my I!"), whose name, in spite of all the strenuous attempts to discover it, is to this day not known with any certainty; even if it should ever be discovered, Beethoven's "immortal love" will yet remain a figment of his brain, based on a human woman.
Together with Beethoven, we may notice the other great "old bachelor" Grillparzer, and his eternal fiancée Kathi Fröhlich, and the critical Hebbel, who at the time of composing "Genovefa" wrote inhis diary: "All earthly love is merely the road to the heavenly love."
Before closing this chapter, I must draw attention to a strange fact in connection with the psychology of races. All nations endowed with fair mental gifts and a sympathetic understanding of nature, have in the period of their youth and anthropomorphistic and animistic thought worshipped light, and its source, the sun, as the supreme deity, the giver of joy and abundance. All the benevolent deities of the Arians were celestial beings, all the malevolent divinities spirits of darkness: Olympian gods and the demons of the netherworld—Aesir and Giants. To the naïve mind of the Indo-Germanic races it appeared a matter of course that the sun, the conqueror of night and winter, the fertilizing, life-giving deity, should be worshipped as the active male principle, and represented as a god, while on the other hand the moon was usually conceived as a female deity. In primitive Christianity Christ, as the bringer of light, was worshipped under the symbol of the sun. Thus we naturally find in the old and new Indo-Germanic languages the designation of the sun—or the sun-god—of the masculine gender. In the following words our wordsunis easily recognisable:
Savar and svari (the oldest Indo-Germanic tongue).svar and surya (Sanscrit; savitar—the sungod).saval (the oldest European language).savel (Gracco-Italian).sol (Latin and related languages).
Savar and svari (the oldest Indo-Germanic tongue).svar and surya (Sanscrit; savitar—the sungod).saval (the oldest European language).savel (Gracco-Italian).sol (Latin and related languages).
Savar and svari (the oldest Indo-Germanic tongue).
svar and surya (Sanscrit; savitar—the sungod).
saval (the oldest European language).
savel (Gracco-Italian).
sol (Latin and related languages).
In the Germanic languages and in the Prussian-Lithuanian both genders occur. (Gothic sunnan and Old High-German sunno).Solin the Norse Edda is a female deity, and the Anglo-Saxonsolis also feminine. The transition from the male to the female gender was achieved in the Middle-High-German language of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and the German language is the only one in which thewordsunis feminine. As the old Teutonic deities of light were male (Baldur and Sigurd), this change of gender must seem strange. The Germanic tribes at all times observed natural phenomena with the greatest attention, borrowed their ethical symbols from nature and used natural objects to represent their highest values. The change of gender of the supreme symbol of divinity, the sun, can only be explained by the fact that in the period of woman-worship the highest value was no longer felt as male but as female, that secretly a goddess had usurped the place of a god. Very likely the minnesingers finally fixed the female gender when it had become problematical, and worshipped the loved woman under the divine symbol of "Lady Sun."
The great erotic, Heinrich of Morungen, says in one of his poems that his lady is radiant "as the sun at break of day." And also:
My lady shines into the heartAs through the glass the sun does shine;Thus the beloved lady mineIs sweet as May, full of delight,Unclouded sunshine, golden light.
My lady shines into the heartAs through the glass the sun does shine;Thus the beloved lady mineIs sweet as May, full of delight,Unclouded sunshine, golden light.
My lady shines into the heart
As through the glass the sun does shine;
Thus the beloved lady mine
Is sweet as May, full of delight,
Unclouded sunshine, golden light.
Mary, who had been calledMaris Stella, the morning star, gradually assumed the symbol of the all-conquering sun. Suso, in one of his poems, still clinging to the older epithet, makes use of a metaphor corresponding to the breaking of the sun through clouds. "When the radiant morning star, Mary, broke through the suffering of thy darkened heart, it was saluted with gladness and with these words: Greeting, beautiful, rising morning star, from the fathomless depths of all loving hearts!" But he also calls Mary: "Thou dazzling mirror of the Eternal Sun!" And his Biography contains the following beautiful passage: "And his eyes were opened and he fell on his knees, saluting the rising morning star, the tender queen of the light of heaven;as the little birds in the summer time salute the day, so he saluted the luminous bringer of the eternal day, and he spoke his salutation not mechanically, but with a sweet low singing of his soul." This is pure and genuine nature-worship mingled with the worship of Mary.
So much for Suso. In Goethe'sFaust, Doctor Marianus prays:
In thy tent of azure blue,Queen supremely reigning,Let me now thy secret view,Vision high obtaining.
In thy tent of azure blue,Queen supremely reigning,Let me now thy secret view,Vision high obtaining.
In thy tent of azure blue,
Queen supremely reigning,
Let me now thy secret view,
Vision high obtaining.
It is obvious that here the Queen of Heaven and the sun are conceived as one. Eichendorff makes use of the metaphor:
The sun is smiling languidlyLike to a woman wondrous sweet.
The sun is smiling languidlyLike to a woman wondrous sweet.
The sun is smiling languidly
Like to a woman wondrous sweet.
The typically un-Teutonic modern poet, Alfred Mombert, on the other hand, conceives the sun as a youth, and contrary to all custom, calls a poem:DerSonnengeist (the sun-spirit).
The great Italians, also, were not unaware of this change of the sex of the supreme value; at the conclusion of theParadisethere is a passage (in St. Bernard's prayer) which points to a connection in Dante's mind between the sun and the Queen of Heaven:
"The love that moves the sun in heaven!"
"The love that moves the sun in heaven!"
"The love that moves the sun in heaven!"
(d) Michelangelo.
In Michelangelo we meet the spirit of Plato and the plastic genius of Greece raised to a higher plane and lit by the peculiar glory of Christianity—the conception of the soul as an absolute value. Michelangelo was thrilled by a passionate love of beauty; beauty absolute, eternal and immutable. He feltprofoundly the need of salvation, and he possessed an unprecedented power of spiritual vision. In the end, added to all these things, came consuming love for a woman, love raised to the pitch of self-destruction, an adoration which entitles us to regard him, next to Dante, as the greatest metaphysical lover of all times.
At the court of the Medici at Florence, Ficinio had founded a Platonic Academy, where Plato's works and the writings of Plotinus—his greatest pupil—were after two thousand years translated and elucidated. Many read and a few understood, but only in Michelangelo did the spirit of Platonic Hellenism revive and become productive; the Platonic ideal of a purely masculine culture, aesthetically and spiritually perfect, illumined his soul; once again the unconditional cult of beauty and the love of the perfect male form, which speaks to us from theDialogues, quickened an imagination, and boyhood and youth were portrayed in a manner which has never since been equalled.
Nearly all Michelangelo's youthful male figures—with the exception, perhaps, of the gigantic David—deviate from the decidedly masculine and approach the mean, the human in the abstract; thus they seem to us imbued with a quality of femininity; they even exhibit decidedly female characteristics. I have in mind first and foremost the youths depicted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (the most soulful adolescent figures in the world), but also Bacchus, St. John, Adonis and the figures in the background of the Holy Family at Florence. Cupid and David Apollo (in the Bargello) are almost hermaphroditic, and even the Adam, and the unfinished Slaves in the Bobili Gardens exhibit female characteristics. Without going further into detail I would draw attention to the breasts and thighs, which positively raise a doubt on the question of sex. (I am referring to the two youths above the Erythrean Sybil.) Seen from a distance they create the impression of female figures, while the youth above Jeremiah is a perfect Hellenicephebos. On theother hand—with the exception of two of his early Madonnas and, perhaps, Eve—he has not given us one glorified female figure; all his women are characterised by something careworn and unlovely; some of his old women—most strikingly the Cumaic Sybil—are depicted with absolutely masculine features, masculine figures and gigantic musculature. His ideal was the Hellenic ideal, was a human form neither man nor woman; all extremes, but also all peculiarities and everything personal, were, if not completely suppressed, at any rate pushed into the background. We regard this ideal, which is alien to our inherent nature, with a feeling akin to contempt, for the modern ideal is male and female, but it nevertheless was of great moment in the obliteration of sex and the accentuation of the purely human. The Platonic (and also Michelangelo's) love of young men was in its essence pure love of humanity, love of the perfect human body and the perfect human soul, whose greatest harmony was achieved in the adolescent. Moreover, the superior mental endowment of the boy made an intelligent conversation—so highly appreciated by Platonists and neo-Platonists—possible, whereas with a girl a man could only jest.
Civilisations and individuals inclining to erotic male friendships are endowed with great plastic talent. Artists and poets whose genius lies in the direction of the plastic arts rather than in music, frequently have homo-sexual leanings. A musical talent, however, is as a rule accompanied by the love of woman. I know of no great musician, or great lyrical poet, inclined to erotic friendships with men. The simple song suggests the love of woman, the artificial metre, let us say the Greek rhythm, the love of man. I am, however, merely pointing out this connection, without drawing any conclusions.
The poems addressed by Michelangelo to Tommaso dei Cavalieri breathe a deep longing for friendship and complete surrender, but above all things for a returnof affection; all barriers between the friends must be thrown down, "for one soul is living in two bodies."
These poems are calm and well-balanced, and differ greatly from the rest of his poetry.