FOOTNOTES:

If each the other love, himself foregoing,With such delight, such savour and so wellThat both to one sole end their wills combine.(Transl. byJ.A. Symonds.)

If each the other love, himself foregoing,With such delight, such savour and so wellThat both to one sole end their wills combine.

If each the other love, himself foregoing,

With such delight, such savour and so well

That both to one sole end their wills combine.

(Transl. byJ.A. Symonds.)

Michelangelo painted "Ganymede" for Tommaso, and even at a ripe old age he addressed poems to Cechino Bracci, who died at the age of seventeen.

His contempt of woman, without which the spirit of classical Greece, too, is unthinkable, formed a parallel to his male friendships.

In the prime of his life the Platonic element was superseded by the other great element which stirred his soul so profoundly. Exceeding the perfection of form of antique statuary, his later works throb with a spiritual and passionate life quite peculiar to him; an inward fire seems to consume his ardent figures. They are not creatures of this earth, a breath of eternity has touched them; they are an embodiment of the Platonic heritage which accounts all earthly things as symbols of eternal beauty, fertilised and glorified by a deep mourning over human destiny and a longing for deliverance. And when his years were already beginning to decline, Vittoria Colonna came into his life, a semblance and symbol of divine perfection. The love which took possession of him transformed his whole life and lifted it into religion. In his tempestuous soul this first love, coming so late in life, far exceeded human limits; it became adoration and religious ecstasy. Michelangelo, who could not tolerate in friendship any other relationship than that of complete self-surrender and equality, threw himself into the very dust before his love and debased himself almost to self-destruction.

His book of poems is filled with an unspeakable longing for the perfection of earthly beauty and for eternity; and his beloved mistress is the sole symbol of this metaphysical climax. Earthly beauty is but an imperfect semblance of the divine beauty, the embodiment of which is his love. We meet all the familiar motives; he is nothing before her; he is unworthy of existence; he is like the moon receiving her light from the sun; love has raised him from his base condition and is teaching him the futility of all he had hitherto valued.

Yea, well I see what folly 'twere to thinkThat largess dropped from thee like dews from heavenCould ever be paid by work so frail as mine.(Transl. byJ.A. Symonds.)

Yea, well I see what folly 'twere to thinkThat largess dropped from thee like dews from heavenCould ever be paid by work so frail as mine.

Yea, well I see what folly 'twere to think

That largess dropped from thee like dews from heaven

Could ever be paid by work so frail as mine.

(Transl. byJ.A. Symonds.)

And of love he says:

From loftiest stars shoots down a radiance all their own,Drawing the soul above,And such, we say, is love.(Transl. byHarford.)

From loftiest stars shoots down a radiance all their own,Drawing the soul above,And such, we say, is love.

From loftiest stars shoots down a radiance all their own,

Drawing the soul above,

And such, we say, is love.

(Transl. byHarford.)

His poems, which would proclaim him a great poet if he were not an even greater sculptor, breathe an emotion unsurpassed in its intensity. They reveal to us in an almost unique manner the emotional process which culminated in the deification of the beloved. If we did not know that Vittoria Colonna was an historical individual, not much younger than Michelangelo himself, and (if we are to credit her portrait) a very plain woman with a large masculine nose, we might be tempted to believe her to be a mythical personage like Beatrice Portinari, or Margaret inFaust. But the conviction that all true perfection was centred only in her, now faced his art and threw its terrible shadow over it.

"Michelangelo conceived love in the Platonic sense," wrote his friend and biographer, Condivi; but this is only a part of the truth. In the heart of Michelangelo there took place the tremendous reconciliation between the Greek cult of beauty and the religion of the beyond; he blended the finest blossom of Hellenism with the profoundest spirit of Christianity; he sublimated Plato and Dante into a higher intuition; theeroico furoreof his contemporary, Giordano, had found an embodiment. The two great rays which illuminated his life: the perfect earthly beauty to which destiny had called him, and the boundless religious longing, the last fundamental force of his soul, converged in the glorified woman. Vittoria appeared to him as the solution of the world-discord, a solution which he had no right to expect, a miracle. She was the greatest experience of his great life, an experience which almost broke him. More than once the thought of Vittoria filled him with sudden dread. In her he had seen God and the world in one. The powerful effect of this on so self-reliant a character, a man who had been unable to find much sympathy with patrons and friends, to whom women had meant nothing, may easily be imagined. All at once he had found a centre, and more than that—a solution of all the discords of life, of the eternal dualism of the earthly and the divine. His love was not the love of a youth stretching out feelers to the world beyond, but the final creed of a lonely life which had known nothing but beauty and divinity. With the passion characteristic of him, he threw himself into this new experience and made it his fate, flinging world and art aside. Before Vittoria he ceased to be a sculptor and became a worshipper.

We realise the great difference between this worship and the worship of Dante. The latter formed the consciousness of eternity, and became a poet, early in life. He never doubted the profoundest truth, the metaphysical importance of his love; but in the case of Michelangelo, the love of an old man was the last event in a life consumed by restlessness. The adoration of this mysogynist was almost an act of despair; not a sweet delivery from doubt, but asource of fresh shocks. It problematised his whole previous existence and nullified the work of his life. For before this new experience—perfection, met in the flesh—art broke down. The greatest of sculptors never made an attempt to imprison the beauty which had appeared to his soul in marble or in canvas, deeply convinced that such an achievement was beyond the power of earthly endeavour.

Before Vittoria Michelangelo became deeply conscious of his inmost self; she gave direction to his longing and was its symbol; she was the perfection for which he had always striven—and he despaired of his art.

Thy beauty it befell in yonder spheres:A symbol of salvation, bright'ning heavenTh' Eternal Artist sent it down to earth;If it diminish, years succeeding years,My love will lend it but a greater worth.Age cannot fade the beauty God has given.

Thy beauty it befell in yonder spheres:

A symbol of salvation, bright'ning heaven

Th' Eternal Artist sent it down to earth;

If it diminish, years succeeding years,

My love will lend it but a greater worth.

Age cannot fade the beauty God has given.

And the conviction that only the idea of eternal beauty has any value, and that all earthly things are as nothing before it, became stronger and more tormenting. One instance from many:

As heat from fire, from loveliness divineThe mind that worships what recalls the sun,From whence she sprang, can be divided never.(Transl.byJ.A. Symonds.)

As heat from fire, from loveliness divineThe mind that worships what recalls the sun,From whence she sprang, can be divided never.

As heat from fire, from loveliness divine

The mind that worships what recalls the sun,

From whence she sprang, can be divided never.

(Transl.byJ.A. Symonds.)

In the same way he realised the futility of earthly love compared to metaphysical love:

The one love soars, the other downward tends,The soul lights this while that the senses stir.

The one love soars, the other downward tends,

The soul lights this while that the senses stir.

And:

The highest beauty only I desire.

It is extraordinary, however, that even this ecstatic adorer vaguely suspected that he himself might be the creator of the beauty which he saw in his mistress. In a sonnet he asks Cupid whether her beauty reallyexists, or whether it is a delusion of his senses, and he receives the reply:

The beauty thou discernest all is hers;But grows in radiance as it soars on high.(J.A. Symonds.)

The beauty thou discernest all is hers;But grows in radiance as it soars on high.

The beauty thou discernest all is hers;

But grows in radiance as it soars on high.

(J.A. Symonds.)

It is indescribably tragic to watch Michelangelo slowly despairing of his own genius and art, and becoming more and more dominated by the thought of the futility of all earthly things and all earthly beauty. The religious conception of eternity and transcendent beauty, theforma universalebecame his last refuge. After Vittoria's death Michelangelo said to Condivi: "I have only one regret and that is that I never kissed Vittoria's brow or lips when she lay dying." More and more he brooded on sin and salvation, incarnation and crucifixion. The beloved mistress had become the sole herald of eternal truths. Melancholy and mourning took possession of his soul with an iron grip; he could conceive of only one happiness, death closely following on birth. But the thought of death again was seized and symbolised with the old artistic passion:

And cleansed by fire, I shall live for ever.And as the flames are soaring to the sky,I, changed and purified, shall soar to heaven.Oh, blissful day! When in a single flashTime slips away into eternity—The sun no longer rides across the skies. . . .

And cleansed by fire, I shall live for ever.

And as the flames are soaring to the sky,I, changed and purified, shall soar to heaven.

And as the flames are soaring to the sky,

I, changed and purified, shall soar to heaven.

Oh, blissful day! When in a single flashTime slips away into eternity—The sun no longer rides across the skies. . . .

Oh, blissful day! When in a single flash

Time slips away into eternity—

The sun no longer rides across the skies. . . .

Michelangelo was conscious of his near kinship with Dante; he illustrated a copy of theDivine Comedywhich, unfortunately, is lost, and wrote a poem on Dante in which the following lines occur:

Were I but he! Born for like lingering pains,Against his exile, coupled with his good,I'd gladly change the world's inheritage.(Transl. byJ.A. Symonds.)

Were I but he! Born for like lingering pains,Against his exile, coupled with his good,I'd gladly change the world's inheritage.

Were I but he! Born for like lingering pains,

Against his exile, coupled with his good,

I'd gladly change the world's inheritage.

(Transl. byJ.A. Symonds.)

The paintings in the Sistine Chapel, with their materialised thoughts of destiny, retribution and eternity, originated in a feeling akin to the feeling underlying theDivine Comedy. Both here and there the creation of celestial and infernal spirits was the outcome of the infinite longing of the artistic imagination. Both men could spend the human and creative passions with which their souls were thrilled only on the supreme and universal. The eternal destiny of man, fate, sin, the futility of all earthly things, the relationship of the world to God, love surpassing all human limits and aspiring to the eternal—these are the common objects over which they brooded. But while it was given to Dante to create his picture of the world in harmony with his own soul, and account it a true representation of the world-system; while his world was a definite place with a beginning and an end, and his life-work remained in harmony with his own soul, and the universe, Michelangelo's lacerated soul could find peace only in the ultimate truth, which filled his heart, and to which he yearned to give plastic life, only to be unsatisfied after achieving it. George Simmel, in a profound work, draws our attention to the infinite melancholy which overshadows all Michelangelo's figures, because his genius aspired to express the inexpressible. Even the supremest plastic representation of the passion and longing for the transcendental which thrilled his soul did not satisfy him. This tragedy is the tragedy of the metaphysical erotic overflowing its own specific domain. Dante's faith in the absolute value of his work and in the truth of the consummation of his love in eternity—which was the sustaining power of his life—remained unshaken, but Michelangelo lost his faith in his work; art and love forsook him and withdrew into a transcendental world which he could divine, but could not grasp. His faith was no blissful certainty; he knew no more than the dark aspect of things; the imperfection of even the sublimest, of his art and his love.

Shakespeare's genius could breathe life into all things human, and he found satisfaction in doing so. Michelangelo's creative, plastic power seemed illimitable; he possessed all the gifts an artist could possibly have, but from year to year his conviction of the futility of all earthly things grew to a profounder certainty. He had knocked at the iron gate of humanity with his hammer and his chisel; they had broken into fragments and sorrow made him dumb. There is a stage in the life of every genius when he comes to this gate, when he has to show his credentials and reveal the inmost kernel of his being. Dante attempted to grasp the transcendental in one gigantic vision, Goethe timidly shrank back from it.

In examining the prophets and youths in the Sistine Chapel, or the chained men in the Louvre, who seem unable to bear existence, and are therefore "slaves" of the earth; or in contemplating the half-finished slaves in the Boboli Gardens, who seem almost to burst the stone in their wild longing for a higher life; or in reading his last sonnets, we can conceive a vague idea of the deep melancholy darkening the life of this man, a gloom which was not the melancholy of the individual, but of all humanity, unable and unwilling to deceive itself further. Can there be a greater tragedy than the tragedy of this incomparable artist, looking back at the work of his lifetime with despair?

For art and wit and passion fade and vanish,Countless achievements, ever new and great,Are naught but dross within the sight of heaven.

For art and wit and passion fade and vanish,

Countless achievements, ever new and great,

Are naught but dross within the sight of heaven.

To Vasari he sent a sonnet denouncing the artistic passion which abandons itself completely to art:

Now know I well that that fond phantasyWhich made my soul the worshipper and thrallOf earthly art is vain.(Transl. byJ.A. Symonds.)

Now know I well that that fond phantasyWhich made my soul the worshipper and thrallOf earthly art is vain.

Now know I well that that fond phantasy

Which made my soul the worshipper and thrall

Of earthly art is vain.

(Transl. byJ.A. Symonds.)

Faith, is to him "the mercy of mercies," for he has never possessed its deepest conviction.

But the passion which burned in him remained unquelled to the last: his soul is torn between love and the thought of death.

Flames of loveAnd chill of death are battling in my heart.

Flames of love

And chill of death are battling in my heart.

He longed to break away from love and find peace, and he called on death for delivery, but in vain:

Burdened with years and full of sinfulnessWith evil customs grown inveterate,Both deaths I dread that both before me wait,Yet feed my heart on poisonous thoughts no less.(Transl. byJ.A. Symonds.)

Burdened with years and full of sinfulnessWith evil customs grown inveterate,Both deaths I dread that both before me wait,Yet feed my heart on poisonous thoughts no less.

Burdened with years and full of sinfulness

With evil customs grown inveterate,

Both deaths I dread that both before me wait,

Yet feed my heart on poisonous thoughts no less.

(Transl. byJ.A. Symonds.)

And later on he thanks love again for being his deliverer, and not death.

Michelangelo poured all his heart into these last sonnets. We see his solitary and heroic age overshadowed by the thought of death. His whole soul is wrapped in gloom; art is vanity, love is sorrow, the thought of the futility of all things frames the portrait of his love with a wreath of black laurel. He ponders on his life, and comes to the conclusion that

Among the many years not one was his.

This man, the supremest creative genius the world has known, accused himself of having wasted his life.

No song of praise ever rose to the Deity from Michelangelo's heart, as it did at least once or twice during his lifetime from the heart of Beethoven. He never had one hour of true inward peace. He represents the metaphysical world-feeling which (in addition to love) is the foundation of the deification of woman, but it has grown into immensity, and has been lifted to a higher plane; not only love, but all life is felt as fragmentary and pointing to aworld beyond. If at an earlier stage it was the love of woman which could not find its consummation on earth, it is now the whole of our earthly life and all our aspirations which can only attain to their highest meaning and to final truth in a metaphysical existence. The tragedy of metaphysical love has deepened into the supreme tragedy of life.

FOOTNOTES:[2]The quotations fromFaustare from the translation of Anna Swanwick.[3]The quotations from theDivine Comedyare from the translation of Henry Francis Cary.[4]The quotations from Tasso are from the translation of Anna Swanwick.

[2]The quotations fromFaustare from the translation of Anna Swanwick.

[3]The quotations from theDivine Comedyare from the translation of Henry Francis Cary.

[4]The quotations from Tasso are from the translation of Anna Swanwick.

(a) The Brides of Christ

Hitherto I have confined myself to the analysis of the emotional life of man, but there are two other points which must be taken into account. The first is the question of woman's attitude towards the lofty position assigned to her by man; the second and more important one is the question as to whether the women of that period exhibit in their emotional life any traces of a feeling akin to the deification of their sex? The reply to the first question is simple enough. Naturally the adoration and worship of their lovers could not have been anything but pleasant to women. There is a poem by the talented Provençal Countess Beatrix de Die, which betrays genuine sorrow at the infidelity of her friend, and at the same time leaves no doubt that she—and probably a great many others—took the eulogies showered upon them by the enraptured poets, literally. Once again woman accepts the position thrust upon her by man, not this time the position of a drudge, but that of a perfect and godlike being. Countess Beatrix credits herself with all the qualities with which the imagination of her worshipper had endowed her, as if they were unquestionable facts.

Hence all my songs will be with sadness fraught.My lover fills my soul with bitter woe,And yet is all the happiness I know.My grace and favour all avail me naught.My sparkling wit, my loveliness supreme,They cannot hold his love and tender thought,Of all my lofty worth bereft I seem.

Hence all my songs will be with sadness fraught.

My lover fills my soul with bitter woe,

And yet is all the happiness I know.

My grace and favour all avail me naught.

My sparkling wit, my loveliness supreme,

They cannot hold his love and tender thought,

Of all my lofty worth bereft I seem.

But far more interesting than this psychological misunderstanding on the part of the much-lauded sex, is the question as to whether the emotional life of woman matured anything that can be called a worship of man? The answer to this is a decided "no." At no time in the history of woman do we find even the smallest indication of a parallel phenomenon; the profound and tragic dualism of the Middle Ages—one result of which was the spiritual love of woman—passed her by without touching her. In the feminine soul conflict apparently results not in tragedy and productivity, but in morbidness and hysteria.

It may be argued that the love of Jesus, which inspired both the nuns of the Middle Ages and those of a later period, represents a type of man-worship; but in examining all these more or less famous nuns and ascetics we find, instead of genuine spirituality, a concealed and often morbid condition, which in some cases degenerated into hysteria. The dualistic period, the age of metaphysical love, made no impression upon the female soul. There can be no doubt that the emotional life of woman, in strict contrast to the emotional life of man, has had no evolution, and can therefore have no history. It is unadulterated nature and, in its way, it is perfect.

In studying the female mystics, we find an imitation of metaphysical eroticism sufficiently transparent to be easily recognised, even by the layman, as belonging to the domain of pathology. These ecstatics were animated not by a pure, but by an impure spirit. Perverted sensualists, they believed their hearts to be filled with spiritual love. Contrary to the striving of the greater number of the men, who raised their love into heaven so as to keep it pure, and made it one with their religious aspirations, all the figures and symbols of religion were used by these women as an outlet and a foil to their sexuality. The loving soul repairing to the nuptial chamberis the transparent veil of desire half-concealed by religious conceptions. Women have described similar situations in metaphors which—for sensuous passion—leave nothing to be desired, even the famous love-potion of Tristan is not wanting.

The material is abundant, and I have repeatedly touched upon it in previous chapters. At the period of great mystical enthusiasm (the twelfth and thirteenth centuries) this morbid love of God was a sinister attendant phenomenon of true mysticism. Whole convents were seized by epidemics of hysteria, the women writhed in convulsions, flogged each other, sang hymns day and night and had hallucinations—for all of which the love of God, or the temptation of the devil, were made responsible.

Among the more notable of these pseudo-mystics are Christine Ebner (the author of a book entitled,On the Fullness of Mercy), and Mary of Oignies, a passionate worshipper of Christ who mutilated herself in her ecstasies and who, on her deathbed, still sang: "How beautiful art Thou, oh, my Lord God!"

A shining exception among the German nuns of that time was Mechthild of Magdeburg, a woman of rare gifts. She was a genuine mystic, but she, too, revelled in fervent, sensuous metaphors, and it would be an interesting task to separate the two elements in her case; but, having admitted her genuine mysticism in a previous chapter, I will here restrict myself to a few quotations which show her from her other side. HerDialogue between Love and the Soulabounds in passages like the following: "Tell my beloved that his chamber is prepared, and that I am sick with love of him." "The closer the embrace, the sweeter the kisses." "Then He took the soul into His divine arms, and placing His fatherly hand on her bosom, He gazed into her face and kissed her right well." Mechthild, too, was ready to die with love.

Everyone of the most celebrated Brides of Christ belonged to the Latin race; they were hysterics, and as such have long been claimed by the psychopathist.

The love of Jesus professed by Catherine of Siena (1347-1388), a clever politician, who was in correspondence with the leading statesmen of her time, found vent in passages like the following:

"I desire, then, that you withdraw into the open side of the Son of God, who is a bottle so full of perfume that even the things which are sinful become fragrant. There the bride reclines on a bed of fire and blood. There the secret of the heart of the Son of God is revealed and made manifest. Oh! Thou overflowing cup, refreshing and intoxicating every loving and yearning heart." "I long to behold the body of my Lord!" And straightway the bridegroom appeared to her, opened his side and said to her: "Now drink as much of my blood as thou desirest."

But the saint who enjoyed the greatest fame—partly on account of her frequent portrayal by the plastic arts—was doubtless St. Teresa (Teresia de Jesus), a Spanish nun (1515-1582). During childhood and early youth she suffered from serious illnesses, and on one occasion was even believed to be dead. "Before I felt the presence of God," she says in her biography, "I experienced for some time a very delightful sensation, a sensation which I believe one is partly able to produce at will (!), a pleasure which is neither quite sensuous, nor quite spiritual, but which comes from God." She describes in her "Life" four stages of prayer, which gradually lead the soul to God: "There is no joy to be compared with the joy which the Lord giveth to the soul in its exile. So great is this delight that frequently it seems that the least thing would make it forsake the body for ever." "When the soul seeks God in this way," the saint feels with supreme delight her strength ebbing away and a trance stealing over her until,devoid of breath and all physical strength she can only move her hand with great pain. The delights experienced by her are described in great detail and very sensuous language; hysterical conditions, such as painful convulsions, and hallucinations, are represented as religious phenomena. "It is dreadful what one has to suffer from confessors who do not understand these things," she says in one of her writings with deep regret.

St. Teresa relates her life with the well-known long-winded self-complacency of the hysterical subject. She frequently had visions of Jesus, and again and again she emphasised the beauty of his hands. "Standing by my side, he said to me: 'I have come to thee, my daughter, I am here; it is I; show me thy hands.' And it seemed to me that he took my hands in his, and laid them in his side. 'Behold my wound,' he said, 'thou art not separated from me; bear this brief exile on earth....'" etc.

On one occasion she had a vision of an angel whom she describes as follows: "He was not tall but small, very beautiful, his face so radiant that he seemed to be one of the highest angels, who are, I believe, all fire ... in his hand he held a golden spear, at the point of which was a little flame; he appeared to thrust this spear into my heart again and again; it penetrated my entrails, and as he drew it out he seemed to draw them out also, and leave me on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so intense that I could not but sigh deeply; yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this pain that it made me wish never to be without it. It is not physical, but spiritual pain, although the body often suffers greatly from it. The caressing love between God and the soul is so sweet that I implore Him of His mercy to let all those experience it who believe that I am lying."

The treatiseThoughts of the Love of God on some Words of the Song of Songsis crowded with purelysensuous passages. In accordance with the general custom, she interprets this naïvely sensual Semitic poem allegorically, becomes tremendously excited in meditating on the kiss of the beloved and discusses the question of what the soul should do to "satisfy so sweet a bridegroom."

In the pamphletThe Fortress of the Soul and its Seven Dwellings, St. Teresa describes similar states of mind: "The bridegroom commands the doors of the dwellings to be closed and also the gates of the fortress and its surrounding walls. In freeing the soul from the body, he stops the body's breathing so that, even if the other senses are not quite deadened, speech is impossible. At other times all sensuous perceptions disappear simultaneously; body and hands grow rigid and it seems as if the soul had left the body, which is scarcely breathing. This condition is of short duration. The rigidity passes away to some extent, the body slowly regains life, the breath comes and goes, only to die away again and thus endow the soul with greater freedom. But this deep trance does not endure long." She continues to describe her ecstasies and is careful to point out the complete fusion of supreme delight and bodily pain. Perhaps no hysterical subject has ever described her states of mind so well. Her avowal (made in a letter to Father Rodrigue Alvarez) of her complete unconsciousness of her body is quite in harmony with those states of rapture. She wrote a number of spiritual love-songs which are said to be conspicuous for their ardour and beauty; probably they have never been translated from the original Spanish.

Finally there is the famous Madame Guyon (1648-1717), who—in addition to many other works—wrote a very detailed autobiography. She lived with her husband, whom she treated with coldness, finding her sole joy in her spiritual intercourse with God. "I desire only the divine love which thrills the soul with inexpressible bliss, the love which seems to melt mywhole being." God burns her with His fire and still trembling with delight, she says to Him: "Oh, Lord! The greatest libertine, if Thou didst make him experience Thy love as Thou didst make me experience it, would forswear carnal pleasure and strive only after Thy divine love." "I was like a person intoxicated with wine or love, unable to think of anything but my passion," etc. The fact that she sought in this love the pleasure of the senses is very apparent.

We are not concerned here with the problem of how far these women may be regarded as pathological cases; all of them were filled with a vague feminine desire for self-surrender, which they projected on a celestial being, either because they did not come into contact with a suitable terrestrial object, or because the impulse was abnormal from the beginning. But their spiritual love never rose above empty sentimentality and hysterical rapture. All of them, and some of them were highly gifted, were thrilled with the love of Jesus, they had visions of the "sweet wounds of the Saviour," and so on; but their emotion did not kindle the smallest spark of creative power. The Queen of Heaven, on the other hand, was a free creation of spiritually loving poets and monks.

The women imitated metaphysical love and distorted it; sexual impulse, arrogantly attempting to reach beyond the earth, reigned in the place of spiritual, deifying love.

I have included these phenomena not for their own sakes, but to indicate my boundary-line, for very frequently these women are cited as genuine mystics. Even Schopenhauer mentions these "saints" in one breath with German mystics and Indian philosophers; he calls Madame Guyon "a great and beautiful soul whose memory I venerate." And yet there can be no doubt that it is not the fictitious object of love which is conclusive, but the emotion of the lover: the sensualist can approach God and the Virgin withinflamed senses, but to the lover every woman is divine.

The result of this chapter is as far as our investigation is concerned, negative. The deifying love of man has no parallel phenomenon in the emotional life of woman.

(b)Sexual Mystics.

Sexual mysticism is a contradiction in itself, because true mysticism has nothing whatever to do with sexuality. But frequently suppressed sexuality, secretly luxuriating, takes possession of the whole soul, and a religious construction is put on the results. The sexually excited subject attributes religious motives to his ecstasy. I have no hesitation in asserting that the majority of these ecstasies—especially in the case of women—are rooted in sexuality, and that this so-called mysticism is nothing but a deviation or wrong interpretation of the sexual impulse. The same thing applies to the flagellants of the declining Middle Ages, and some Protestant sects of modernity. The raptures of St. Teresa and Madame Guyon, also, belong to this category, however much the fact may be concealed by pseudo-religious conceptions. I have no doubt that Eastern mysticism, too, grew up on a sexual foundation, but (as I have done all along) I will limit my subject to the civilisation of Europe.

This counterfeit mysticism, fed from dubious sources and calling itself love of God, taints the pure intuitions of some of the genuine mystics and metaphysical erotics; they were not always able to steer clear of spurious outgrowths. (Here, too, the psychological naïveté of mediaeval times must to some extent be held responsible.) Conspicuous amongst these is St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who in hisSermones in Canticumtook the "Song of Songs" as a base for mystically-sexual imaginings.

There is nothing really new in this direction. ButI will cite a few stanzas written by St. Bernard which might equally well have come from one of the amorous nuns:

To the Side-wound of Christ.Lord, with my mouth I touch and worship Thee,With all the strength I have I cling to Thee,With all my love I plunge my heart in Thee,My very life blood would I draw from Thee,Oh, Jesus! Jesus! Draw me unto Thee!How sweet Thy savour is! Who tastes of Thee,Oh, Jesus Christ, can relish naught but Thee!Who tastes Thy living sweetness lives by Thee;All else is void; the soul must die for Thee,So faints my heart—so would I die for Thee!(Transl. byEmily Mary Shapcote.)

To the Side-wound of Christ.

Lord, with my mouth I touch and worship Thee,With all the strength I have I cling to Thee,With all my love I plunge my heart in Thee,My very life blood would I draw from Thee,Oh, Jesus! Jesus! Draw me unto Thee!

Lord, with my mouth I touch and worship Thee,

With all the strength I have I cling to Thee,

With all my love I plunge my heart in Thee,

My very life blood would I draw from Thee,

Oh, Jesus! Jesus! Draw me unto Thee!

How sweet Thy savour is! Who tastes of Thee,Oh, Jesus Christ, can relish naught but Thee!Who tastes Thy living sweetness lives by Thee;All else is void; the soul must die for Thee,So faints my heart—so would I die for Thee!

How sweet Thy savour is! Who tastes of Thee,

Oh, Jesus Christ, can relish naught but Thee!

Who tastes Thy living sweetness lives by Thee;

All else is void; the soul must die for Thee,

So faints my heart—so would I die for Thee!

(Transl. byEmily Mary Shapcote.)

The greatest religious poet of all times after St. Bernard was Jacopone da Todi, who also, though rarely, revelled in fervid utterances. The Latin hymn,Stabat Mater Speciosa, ascribed to him, is spurious. I quote a translation taken from the Rosary of the B.V.M.

Other Virgins far transcending,Virgin, be not thou unbending,To thy humble suppliant's suit.Grant me then, to thee united,By the love of Christ excited,Here to sing my jubilee.

Other Virgins far transcending,Virgin, be not thou unbending,To thy humble suppliant's suit.

Other Virgins far transcending,

Virgin, be not thou unbending,

To thy humble suppliant's suit.

Grant me then, to thee united,By the love of Christ excited,Here to sing my jubilee.

Grant me then, to thee united,

By the love of Christ excited,

Here to sing my jubilee.

But he is undoubtedly the author of the following stanzas:

Soaring upwards love-enkindled,Does the soul rejoice, afireIn her glad triumphant flight.Earthly cares to naught have dwindled,Love's sweet footfall's drawing nigh herTo espouse his heart's delight.All transformed and naked quite,Laughing low, with joy imbued,Pure, and like a snake renewed,Love divine will ever tend her.

Soaring upwards love-enkindled,

Does the soul rejoice, afire

In her glad triumphant flight.

Earthly cares to naught have dwindled,

Love's sweet footfall's drawing nigh her

To espouse his heart's delight.

All transformed and naked quite,

Laughing low, with joy imbued,

Pure, and like a snake renewed,

Love divine will ever tend her.

But poems like the following undoubtedly originated in a truly religious and pure sentiment:

Enwrapt in love thine arms Him fast enfolding,So closely clasp Him that they loose Him never;And in thy heart His sacred image holding,Far from the path of sin thou'lt journey ever.His death in twain shall blast thy callous heartAs once the solid rock He rent apart.

Enwrapt in love thine arms Him fast enfolding,

So closely clasp Him that they loose Him never;

And in thy heart His sacred image holding,

Far from the path of sin thou'lt journey ever.

His death in twain shall blast thy callous heart

As once the solid rock He rent apart.

The most distinguished among the fervid lovers of God of later times were the saints Jean de la Croix, Alfonso da Liguori, and François de Sales. TheTract of the Love of God, written by François de Sales, surpasses everything ever achieved in this direction.

I will not dilate further on this barren aspect of emotionalism so easily traceable through the later centuries in many a Catholic and Protestant sentimentalist, but will conclude this chapter with a brief discussion of Novalis. If I mention this poet in this connexion it is not because I desire to depreciate his genius, but because, possessing as he did, in a rare degree, depth of feeling and power of expression, he is an important witness of an unusual type. True, here and there his poems are reminiscent of Jacopone, but he is not sufficiently ingenuous, and is altogether too morbid to be classed with that ardent fanatic. He shares with Jacopone and other poets the yearning to grasp transcendental things with the senses, to approach the Deity with a love which cannot be called anything but sensuous. Novalis'Hymns to the Nightare the most magnificent example of this perfect interpenetration of sensuous and transcendental love, and at the same time represent a complete fusion of the love he bore to his fiancée, who died young, and the worship of Mary. Night has openedinfinite eyesin us, and we behold the secret of love unfolding itself in the heart of this poet, at once unique and pathetic, lofty and morbid. The wholeuniverse he conceives as a female being for whose embrace he is longing. It is a new emotion: neither the chaste worship of the Madonna, nor the sexually-mystic striving to embrace with the soul. The night gives birth to a foreboding which excites and soothes all vague desires. The lover thus soliloquises of the night:

In infinite space.Thou'dst dissolve,If it held thee not,If it bound thee not,And thrilled thee,That afireThou begettest the world.Verily before thou art I was,With my sexThe mother sent meTo live in thy world,And to hallow itWith love.

In infinite space.

Thou'dst dissolve,

If it held thee not,

If it bound thee not,

And thrilled thee,

That afire

Thou begettest the world.

Verily before thou art I was,

With my sex

The mother sent me

To live in thy world,

And to hallow it

With love.

Here the ancient, mystical longing to become one with God is conceived under the symbol of the night. (A symbol which we shall meet again, magnified, in Wagner'sTristan.)

Lo! Love has burst its prison.No parting now shall be,And life's full tide has risenLike to a boundless sea.One night of love supernal,Only one golden song,And the face of the EternalTo light our path along.

Lo! Love has burst its prison.

No parting now shall be,

And life's full tide has risen

Like to a boundless sea.

One night of love supernal,

Only one golden song,

And the face of the Eternal

To light our path along.

In addition, Novalis was a perfect woman-worshipper. He loved the Middle Ages and Catholicism. "The reformation killed Christianity; henceforth Christianity has ceased to exist." "Catholicism preached nothing but love for the holy, beautiful Lady of Christianity, who, endowed with divine virtue, was able to deliver all loyal hearts from the most terrible dangers." He wrote hymns to Mary in the style ofthe pietists, emphasising more especially the principle of motherliness:

Oh, Mary! At thy altarA thousand hearts lie prone,In this drear life of shadowsThey yearn for thee alone.All hoping to recoverFrom life's distress and smart,If thou, oh holy Mother,Wilt take them to thy heart.

Oh, Mary! At thy altar

A thousand hearts lie prone,

In this drear life of shadows

They yearn for thee alone.

All hoping to recover

From life's distress and smart,

If thou, oh holy Mother,

Wilt take them to thy heart.

He idolised his fiancée, who died young. "Her memory shall be my better self, a sacred image in my heart before which a sanctuary lamp is ever burning, and which will save me from the temptations of the Evil One." And through the mouth of Heinrich of Ofterdingen he proclaims: "My beloved is the abbreviation of the universe; the universe is the elongation of my beloved." "Heaven has given you to me to worship. I adore you, you are a saint, you are divine glory, you are eternal life!"

This sentimental worship of woman, combined with an all-transcending insatiable sensuousness, produced the peculiar sexually-mystic world-feeling which is so characteristic of him. Night deeply moves his soul, longing, the memory of the beloved woman, adoration for the Virgin, his fantastic conception of an incarnated universe are fused into one great emotion:

Praise to the Queen of the World!The lofty heraldOf the sacred world.The patronessOf rapturous love!Thou art coming, beloved—Night has descended—My soul is ravished—Over is this earthly journeyAnd thou art mine again.I gaze into thy dark, deep eyes,And see naught but love and happiness.We sink down on the altar of the night,The soft couch—The veil falls,And kindled by the rapturous embrace,Glows the pure fireOf the sweet sacrifice.

Praise to the Queen of the World!

The lofty herald

Of the sacred world.

The patroness

Of rapturous love!

Thou art coming, beloved—

Night has descended—

My soul is ravished—

Over is this earthly journey

And thou art mine again.

I gaze into thy dark, deep eyes,

And see naught but love and happiness.

We sink down on the altar of the night,

The soft couch—

The veil falls,

And kindled by the rapturous embrace,

Glows the pure fire

Of the sweet sacrifice.

The climax and unique example of sensuousness, unsurpassed for its symbols of the physical embrace, is the hymn: "Few know the Secret of Love." It is too long to give in full. The following are a few stanzas:

Would that the oceanBlushed!And in fragrant fleshMelted the rock!Infinite is the sweet repast,Never satisfied is love;Nor close, nor fast enoughCan it hold the beloved.By ever more tender lipsTransformed, the past ecstasyGrows closer, more intimate.Rapturous loveThrills the soul;Hungrier and thirstierGrows the heart.And thus the transports of loveEndure for ever.

Would that the ocean

Blushed!

And in fragrant flesh

Melted the rock!

Infinite is the sweet repast,

Never satisfied is love;

Nor close, nor fast enough

Can it hold the beloved.

By ever more tender lips

Transformed, the past ecstasy

Grows closer, more intimate.

Rapturous love

Thrills the soul;

Hungrier and thirstier

Grows the heart.

And thus the transports of love

Endure for ever.

Here the remotest limit has been reached—sensuousness seems to flow into eternity, voluptuousness would shatter the world to pieces and create a new relationship of things. Before this poem all ecstasies of sensuousness masquerading as cosmic emotion are dull and timid. The transcendent symbols of Catholicism are used to guide the insatiable sensuous imagination to metaphysics. "Who can say that he understands the nature of blood?" Novalis may ask this question. It is truly blood, human blood, longing to gush forth and pulsate through the body of the universe.

In time to come all will be bodyOne body;In celestial blood,Float the enraptured twain.

In time to come all will be body

One body;

In celestial blood,

Float the enraptured twain.

The human blood has becomecelestial blood; the voluptuousness of man, the voluptuousness of the world, and because the whole world is one body, it needs no duality; sexuality which has become a cosmic law rules over humanity, God, Christ and the universe. This hymn is the immortalisation of voluptuousness. If the love-death is the immortalisation of love unable to find satisfaction on earth, so its counterpart, cosmic sensuousness is, in the last sense, orientalism. Only a genius could invent a new, symbolic language to express feelings so alien to the European. Earthly sensuality did not satisfy Novalis, voluptuousness detached from man, voluptuousness in itself, was his dream and his religion—the supremest creation ever achieved by sexuality intensified into a cosmic emotion.

I think that I have now made clear the fact that the emotional life of man is rooted in two elements, completely distinct from the beginning: the sexual impulse and personal love. It is in studying the love of the transcendental, that culminating point of so many feelings springing from various sources, that the inherent contrast between the two fundamental principles becomes most apparent; and that we realise why they have always been intermingled both in theory and in reality.

We have last examined the attempt of sexuality to possess itself of the whole universe; we will now turn our attention to the true union of both erotic elements. This union occurred at the time when Goethe and Novalis were bringing spiritual love and cosmic sensuousness to their highest summit.

Humanity inherited the pairing-instinct from the animal-world; but as differentiation progressed, this instinct tended to restrict itself to a few individuals—sometimes even to a single representative only—of the other sex. In the beginning of the twelfth century a new and unprecedented emotion—spiritual love of man for woman based on personality—made its appearance, and until modern times the two fundamental erotic principles existed side by side without inner relationship. Sexuality with its various manifestations has existed from the beginning; the ultimate object of sexual intercourse is pleasure; but here and there, and parallel with sexual pleasure, there have been, in varying degrees of intensity, instances of spiritual love. In the second half of the eighteenth century there appeared—timidly at first, but gradually gaining in strength and determination—a tendency to find the sole course of every erotic emotion in the personality of the beloved, a longing no longer to dissociate sexual impulse and spiritual love, but to blend them in a harmonious whole. Personality should knit body and soul together in a higher synthesis. The first signs of this longing became apparent in the period of the French revolution; (we find traces of it in the works of Rousseau and in Goethe'sWerther); it was developed by the romanticists and represents the typical form of modern lovewith all its incompleteness and inexhausted possibilities. The achievement of this eagerly desired unity, which would be synonymous with the victory of personality over the limitations of body and soul, is the great problem of modern time in the domain of eroticism. The characteristic of this third stage of eroticism is the complete triumph of love over pleasure, the neutralisation of the sexual and the generative by the spiritual and the personal. The physical and spiritual unity of the lovers has become so much supreme erotic reality, that the line of demarcation between soul and senses is completely obliterated. In extreme cases—which are not at all rare—the bodily union is not realised as anything distinct, specifically pleasurable; it does not occupy a prominent position in the complex of love; sensuous pleasure, the universal inheritance from the animal world, has been vanquished by personality, the supreme treasure of man. The characteristic of the first stage was the unquestioned sway of one of the elements of erotic life, sensual gratification (this stage has, of course, never ceased to exist), as well as the aesthetic pleasure in the beauty of the human form. The second stage gave prominence to all those spiritual qualities which were most appreciated, virtue, purity, kindness, wisdom, etc., because love rouses and embraces everything in the human soul which is perfect. In the third stage, sensuous pleasure and spiritual love no longer exist as separate elements; the personality of the beloved in its individuality is the only essential, regardless as to whether she be the bringer of weal or woe, whether she be good or evil, beautiful or plain, wise or foolish. Personality has—in principle—become the sole, supreme source of eroticism. In this stage there is no tyranny of man over woman—as in the sexual stage—no submission of man to woman—as in the stage of woman-worship; it is the stage of the complete equality of the sexes, a mutual giving and taking. If sexuality is infinite asmatter, spiritual love eternal as the metaphysical ideal, the synthesis is human and personal.

Before the eighteenth century, this new erotic union did not exist as a phenomenon of civilisation, but occasionally we find it anticipated or vaguely alluded to. Some of the early German minnesingers (such as Dietmar von Aist and Kürnberg) sometimes betray, especially when speaking through the medium of a woman, sentiments prophetic of our modern sentimental ballads. The following verses by Albrecht of Johansdorf, express the reciprocity characteristic of modern love:

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