The Evolution of Love Part 12

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.)

The death of Beatrice is accompanied by the same phenomena as was the death of Christ: the sun lost its brilliance, stars appeared in the sky, birds fell to the ground, dead, the earth trembled; G.o.d visibly intervened in the course of nature.

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. by_ D.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 pa.s.sages from the _Divine Comedy_: It was never Dante's intention to write fict.i.tious 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 the _Vita Nuova_, Beatrice is a divine being, devoid of all emotion--enthroned in Heaven; in the _Comedy_ she 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 G.o.d. Now she responds to his love; she has even wept for him. This ultimately fulfilled, but always chastely hidden longing for love in return, gives the woman-wors.h.i.+p of Dante a peculiarly n.o.ble 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 of _Faust_, which reveals the poet's deepest conviction, his final judgment of life. The confessions of both poets are identical to the smallest detail. The _Divine Comedy_ represents 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 of _Faust_ is 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. h.e.l.l, 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 of _Faust_ is 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 the saving grace of love.

Faust has no longer a specific name; he has dropped everything subjective, and is briefly styled _a 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 the _Eternal-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 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!

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 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 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.

As Beatrice approaches, the angels sing:

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's _Divine Comedy_ Faust concludes:

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 the _Eternal-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, gradually awoke 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 wors.h.i.+pper.

St. Bernard, the _Doctor Maria.n.u.s_ of Dante, prostrating himself before her, addresses to her the sublime prayer which begins:

Oh, Virgin! Mother! Daughter of thy Son!

and in _Faust_ we meet again the _Doctor Maria.n.u.s_ burning--as the representative of the totality of her wors.h.i.+ppers--with the "sacred joy of love" (Dante says

The Queen of Heaven for whom my soul Burns with love's rapture)

and p.r.o.nouncing 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 G.o.dhead one by birth, Queen, we bow before thee!

And, prostrated before her:

Penitents, her saviour-glance Gratefully beholding, To beat.i.tude 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 not To thee for aidence, fain would have desire Fly without wings.

The _Chorus mysticus_ could equally well form the conclusion of the _Comedy_. The _inadequate_ which to _fulness groweth_, is what the Provencals already, in their time, realised as _folly_, as a paradox: the metaphysical love of woman, for ever remaining dream and longing, always unfulfilled, the eternal-feminine.

As the _Mater Gloriosa_ appears, Dante exclaims:

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 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, wors.h.i.+ps her. Goethe's _Faust_ concludes 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 of _Faust_ was 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, G.o.d giving His Son to the world for love of humanity; G.o.d 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 princ.i.p.al function than that of love; for love is the deepest and profoundest emotion of the human 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; "G.o.d 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 in _Faust_ the _Pater Profundus_ confesses:

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, G.o.d! 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 G.o.d, the lover who no longer knows the difference between pain and delight, is represented by the _Pater 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!

Darts pierce me through and through, Lances my flesh subdue, Clubs me to atoms dash, Lightnings athwart me flash, That all the worthless may Pa.s.s like a cloud away, While s.h.i.+neth from afar, Love's gem, a deathless star!