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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/31304-8.txt b/31304-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2510120 --- /dev/null +++ b/31304-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5507 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Euphorion, by Vernon Lee + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Euphorion + Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the + Renaissance - Vol. II + +Author: Vernon Lee + +Release Date: February 17, 2010 [EBook #31304] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EUPHORION *** + + + + +Produced by Marc D'Hooghe + + + + +EUPHORION: BEING STUDIES OF THE ANTIQUE AND THE MEDIEVAL IN THE RENAISSANCE + +BY + +VERNON LEE + +_Author of "Studies of the 18th Century in Italy," "Belcaro," etc._ + +_VOL. II._ + + + +TABLE OF CONTENTS. + + +THE PORTRAIT ART + +THE SCHOOL OF BOIARDO + +MEDIĘVAL LOVE + +EPILOGUE + +APPENDIX + + + * * * * * + + +THE PORTRAIT ART + + +I. + +Real and Ideal--these are the handy terms, admiring or disapproving, +which criticism claps with random facility on to every imaginable +school. This artist or group of artists goes in for the real--the +upright, noble, trumpery, filthy real; that other artist or group of +artists seeks after the ideal--the ideal which may mean sublimity or +platitude. We summon every living artist to state whether he is a +realist or an idealist; we classify all dead artists as realists or +idealists; we treat the matter as if it were one of almost moral +importance. Now the fact of the case is that the question of realism and +idealism, which we calmly assume as already settled or easy to settle by +our own sense of right and wrong, is one of the tangled questions of +art-philosophy; and one, moreover, which no amount of theory, but only +historic fact, can ever set right. For, to begin with, we find realism +and idealism coming before us in different ways and with different +meaning and importance. All art which is not addressing (as decrepit art +is forced to do) faculties to which it does not spontaneously and +properly appeal--all art is decorative, ornamental, idealistic +therefore, since it consciously or unconsciously aims, not merely at +reproducing the already existing, but at producing something which shall +repay the looking at it, something which shall ornament, if not a place, +at least our lives; and such making of the ornamental, of the worth +looking at, necessarily implies selection and arrangement--that is to +say idealism. At the same time, while art aims definitely at being in +this sense decorative, art may very possibly aim more immediately at +merely reproducing, without, selection or arrangement, the actually +existing things of the world; and this in order to obtain the mere power +of representation. In short, art which is idealistic as a master will +yet be realistic as a scholar: it decorates when it achieves, it copies +when it studies. But this is only half the question. Certain whole +schools may be described as idealistic, others as realistic, in +tendency; and this, not in their study, but in their achievement. One +school will obviously be contented with forms the most unselected and +vulgar; others will go but little out of their way in search of +form-superiority; while yet others, and these we must emphatically call +idealistic, are squeamish to the last degree in the choice and +adaptation of form, anxious, to get the very best, and make the very +best of it. Yet, on thinking over it, we shall find that realistic and +idealistic schools are all, in their achievements, equally striving +after something which is not the mere reproduction of the already +existing as such--striving, in short, after decoration. The pupil of +Perugino will, indeed, wait patiently to begin his work until he can +find a model fit for a god or goddess; while the fellow-craftsman of +Rembrandt will be satisfied with the first dirty old Jew or besotten +barmaid that comes to hand. But the realistic Dutchman is not, +therefore, any the less smitten with beauty, any the less eager to be +ornamental, than the idealistic Italian: his man and woman he takes +indeed with off-hand indifference, but he places them in that of which +the Italian shall perhaps never have dreamed, in that on which he has +expended all his science, his skill, his fancy, in that which he gives +as his addition to the beautiful things of art--in atmosphere, in light, +which are to the everyday atmosphere and light what the patiently sought +for, carefully perfected god or goddess model of Raphael is to the +everyday Jew, to the everyday barmaid, of Rembrandt. + +The ideal, for the man who is quite coarsely realistic in his figures, +exists in the air, light, colour; and in saying this I have, so to +speak, turned over the page too quickly, forestalled the expression of +what I can prove only later: the disconnection of such comparative +realism and idealism as this (the only kind of realism, let us remember, +which can exist in great art) with any personal bias of the artist, its +intimate dependence upon the constitution and tendency of art, upon its +preoccupations about form, or colour, or light, in a given country and +at a given moment. And now I should wish to resume the more orderly +treatment of the subject, which will lead us in time to the second half +of the question respecting realism and idealism. These considerations +have come to me in connection with the portrait art of the Renaissance; +and this very simply. For portrait is a curious bastard of art, sprung +on the one side from a desire which is not artistic, nay, if anything, +opposed to the whole nature and function of art: the desire for the mere +likeness of an individual. The union with this interloping tendency, so +foreign to the whole aristocratic temper of art, has produced portrait; +and by the position of this hybrid, or at least far from regularly bred +creature; by the amount of the real artistic quality of beauty which it +is permitted to retain by the various schools of art, we can, even as by +the treatment of similar social interlopers we can estimate the +necessities and tendencies of various states of society, judge what are +the conditions in which the various schools of art struggle for the +object of their lives, which is the beautiful. + +I have said that art is realistic in its periods or moments of study; +and this is essentially the case even with the school which in many +respects was the most unmistakably decorative and idealistic in +intention: the school of Giotto. The Giottesques are more than +decorative artists, they are decorators in the most literal sense. +Painting with them is merely one of the several arts and crafts enslaved +by medięval architecture and subservient to architectural effects. Their +art is the only one which is really and successfully architecturally +decorative; and to appreciate this we must contrast their fresco-work +with that of the fifteenth century and all subsequent times. Masaccio, +Ghirlandajo, Signorelli, turn the wall into a mere badly made frame; a +gigantic piece of cardboard would do as well, and better; the colours +melt into one another, the figures detach themselves at various degrees +of relief; those upon the ceiling and pendentives are frequently upside +down; yet these figures, which are so difficult to see, are worth seeing +only in themselves, and not in relation to their position. The masonry +is no longer covered, but carved, rendered uneven with the cavities and +protrusions of perspective. In Mantegna's frescoes the wall becomes a +slanting theatre scene, cunningly perspectived like Palladio's Teatro +Olimpico; with Correggio, wall, masonry, everything, is dissolved, the +side or cupola of a church becomes a rent in the clouds, streaming with +light. + +Not so with the Giottesque frescoes: the wall, the vault, the triumphant +masonry is always present and felt, beneath the straight, flat bands of +uniform colour; the symmetrical compartments, the pentacles, triangles, +and segments, and borders of histories, whose figures never project, +whose colours are separate as those in a mosaic. The Giottesque +frescoes, with their tiers and compartments of dark blue, their vague +figures dressed in simple ultramarines, greens, dull reds, and purples; +their geometrical borders and pearlings and dog-tooths; cover the walls, +the ribbed and arched ceilings, the pointed raftering almost like some +beautiful brown, blue, and tarnished gold leather-hangings; the figures, +outlined in dark paint, have almost the appearance of being stencilled, +or even stamped on the wall. Such is Giottesque painting: an art which +is not merely essentially decorative, but which is, moreover, what +painting and sculpture remained throughout the Gothic period, +subservient to the decorative effect of another art; an art in which all +is subordinated to architectural effect, in which form, colour, figures, +houses, the most dramatic scenes of the most awful of all dramas, +everything is turned into a kind of colossal and sublime wall-paper; and +such an art as this would lead us to expect but little realism, little +deliberate and slavish imitation of the existing. Yet wherever there is +life in this Gothic art (which has a horrible tendency, piously +unobserved by critics, to stagnate into blundering repetition of the +same thing), wherever there is progress, there is, in the details of +that grandiose, idealistic decoration, realism of the crudest kind. +Those Giottesque workers, who were not content with a kind of Gothic +Byzantinism; those who really handed over something vital to their +successors of the fifteenth century, while repeating the old +idealistical decorations; were studying with extraordinary crudeness of +realism. Everything that was not conventional ornament or type was +portrait; and portrait in which the scanty technical means of the +artist, every meagre line and thin dab of colour, every timid stroke of +brush or of pencil, went towards the merciless delineation not merely of +a body but of a soul. And the greater the artist, the more cruel the +portrait: cruellest in representation of utter spiritual baseness in the +two greatest of these idealistic decorators; Giotto, and his latest +disciple, Fra Angelico. Of this I should like to give a couple of +examples. + +In Giotto's frescoes at Santa Croce--one of the most lovely pieces of +mere architectural decoration conceivable--there are around the dying +and the dead St. Francis two groups of monks, which are astoundingly +realistic. The solemn ending of the ideally beautiful life of sanctity +which was so fresh in the memory of Giotto's contemporaries, is nothing +beyond a set of portraits of the most absolutely mediocre creatures, +moral and intellectual, of creatures the most utterly incapable of +religious enthusiasm that ever made religion a livelihood. They gather +round the dying and the dead St. Francis, a noble figure, not at all +ecstatic or seraphic, but pure, strong, worn out with wise and righteous +labour, a man of thought and action, upon whose hands and feet the +stigmata of supernatural rapture are a mere absurdity. The monks are +presumably his immediate disciples, those fervent and delicate poetic +natures of whom we read in the "Fioretti di San Francesco." To represent +them Giotto has painted the likeness of the first half-dozen friars he +may have met in the streets near Santa Croce: not caricatures, nor +ideals, but portraits Giotto has attempted neither to exalt nor to +degrade them into any sort of bodily or spiritual interestingness. They +are not low nor bestial nor extremely stupid. They are in various +degrees dull, sly, routinist, prosaic, pedantic; their most noteworthy +characteristic is that they are certainly the men who are not called by +God. They are no scandal to the Church, but no honour; they are sloth, +stupidity, sensualism, and cunning not yet risen to the dignity of a +vice. They look upon the dying and the dead saint with indifference, +want of understanding, at most a gape or a bright look of stupid +miscomprehension at the stigmata: they do not even perceive that a saint +is a different being from themselves. With these frescoes of Giotto I +should wish to compare Fra Angelico's great ceremonial crucifixion in +the cloister chapel of San Marco of Florence; for it displays to an +extraordinary degree that juxtaposition of the most conventionally +idealistic, pious decorativeness with the realism straightforward, +unreflecting, and heartless to the point of becoming perfectly +grotesque. The fresco is divided into two scenes: on the one side the +crucifixion, the mystic actors of the drama, on the other the holy men +admitted to its contemplation. A sense that holy things ought to be +old-fashioned, a respect for Byzantine inanity which invariable haunted +the Giottesques in their capacity of idealistic decorators, of men who +replaced with frescoes the solemn lifeless splendours of mosaic; this +kind of artistico-religious prudery has made Angelico, who was able to +foreshorten powerfully the brawny crucified thieves, represent the +Saviour dangling from the cross bleached, boneless, and shapeless, a +thing that is not dead because it has never been alive. The holy persons +around stand rigid, vacant, against their blue nowhere of background, +with vague expanses of pink face looking neither one way nor the other; +mere modernized copies of the strange, goggle-eyed, vapid beings on the +old Italian mosaics. This is not a representation of the actual reality +of the crucifixion, like Tintoret's superb picture at S. Rocco, or +Dürer's print, or so many others, which show the hill, the people, the +hangman, the ladders and ropes and hammers and tweezers: it is a sort of +mystic repetition of it; subjective, if I may say so; existing only in +the contemplation of the saints on the opposite side, who are spectators +only in the sense that a contemplative Christian may be said to be the +mystic spectator of the Passion. The thing for the painter to represent +is fervent contemplation, ecstatic realization of the past by the force +of ardent love and belief; the condition of mind of St. Francis, St. +Catherine of Siena, Madame Guyon: it is the revelation of the great +tragedy of heaven to the soul of the mystic. Now, how does Fra Angelico +represent this? A row of saints, founders of orders, kneel one behind +the other, and by their side stand apostles and doctors of the Church; +admitting them to the sight of the super-human, with the gesture, the +bland, indifferent vacuity of the Cameriere Segreto or Monsignore who +introduces a troop of pilgrims to the Pope; they are privileged persons, +they respect, they keep up decorum, they raise their eyes and compress +their lips with ceremonious reverence; but, Lord! they have gone through +it all so often, they are so familiar with it, they don't look at it any +longer; they gaze about listlessly, they would yawn if they were not too +well bred for that. The others, meanwhile, the sainted pilgrims, the men +whose journey over the sharp stones and among the pricking brambles of +life's wilderness finds its final reward in this admission into the +presence of the Holiest, kneel one by one, with various expressions: one +with the stupid delight of a religious sightseer; his vanity is +satisfied, he will next draw a rosary from his pocket and get it blessed +by Christ Himself; he will recount it all to his friends at home. +Another is dull and gaping, a clown who has walked barefoot from +Valencia to Rome, and got imbecile by the way; yet another, prim and +dapper; the rest indifferent looking restlessly about them, at each +other, at their feet and hands, perhaps exchanging mute remarks about +the length of time they are kept waiting; those at the end of the +kneeling procession, St. Peter Martyr and St. Giovanni Gualberto +especially, have the bored, listless, devout look of the priestlets in +the train of a bishop. All these figures, the standing ones who +introduce and the kneeling ones who are being introduced, are the most +perfect types of various states of dull, commonplace, mediocre routinist +superstition; so many Camerlenghi on the one hand, so many Passionist or +Propagandists on the other: the first aristocratic, bland and bored; the +second, dull, listless, mumbling, chewing Latin Prayers which never +meant much to their minds, and now mean nothing; both perfectly +reverential and proper in behaviour, with no more possibility of +individual fervour of belief than of individual levity of disbelief: the +Church, as it exists in well-regulated decrepitude. And thus does the +last of the Giottesques, the painter of glorified Madonnas and dancing +angels, the saint, represent the saints admitted to behold the supreme +tragedy of the Redemption. + +Thus much for the Giottesques. The Tuscans of the early Renaissance +developed up to the utmost, assisted by the goldsmiths and sculptors, +who taught them modelling and anatomy, that realistic element of +Giottesque painting. Its ideal decorative part had become impossible. +Painting could no longer be a decoration of architecture, and it had not +yet the means of being ornamental in itself; it was an art which did +not achieve, but merely studied. Among its exercises in anatomy, +modelling, perspective, and so forth, always laborious and frequently +abortive, its only spontaneous, satisfactory, mature production was its +portrait work, Portraits of burghers in black robes and hoods; of +square-jawed youths with red caps stuck on to their fuzzy heads, of bald +and wrinkled scholars and magnificoes; of thinly bearded artizans; +people who stand round the preaching Baptist or crucified Saviour, look +on at miracle or martyrdom, stolid, self-complacent, heedless, against +their background of towered, walled, and cypressed city--of buttressed +square and street; ugly but real, interesting, powerful among the +grotesque agglomerations of bag-of-bones nudities, bunched and taped-up +draperies and out-of-joint architecture of the early Renaissance +frescoes; at best among its picture-book and Noah's-ark prettinesses of +toy-box cypresses, vine trellises, inlaid house fronts, rabbits in the +grass, and peacocks on the roofs; for the early Renaissance, with the +one exception of Masaccio, is in reality a childish time of art, giving +us the horrors of school-hour blunders and abortions varied with the +delights of nursery wonderland: maturity, the power of achieving, the +perception of something worthy of perception, comes only with the later +generation, the one immediately preceding the age of Raphael and Michael +Angelo; with Ghirlandajo, Signorelli, Filippino, Botticelli, Perugino, +and their contemporaries. + +But this period is not childish, is not immature in everything. Or, +rather, the various arts which exist together at this period are not all +in the same stage of development. While painting is in this immature +ugliness, and ideal sculpture, in works like Verrocchio's and +Donatello's David, only a cleverer, more experienced, but less +legitimate kind of painting, painting more successful in the present, +but with no possible future; the almost separate art of +portrait-sculpture arises again where it was left by Gręco-Roman +masters, and, developing to yet greater perfection, gives in marble the +equivalent of what painting will be able to produce only much later: +realistic art which is decorative; beautiful works made out of ugly +materials. + +The vicissitudes of Renaissance sculpture are strange: its life, its +power, depend upon death; it is an art developed in the burying vault +and cloister cemetery. During the Middle Ages sculpture had had its +reason, its vital possibility, its something to influence, nay, to keep +it alive, in architecture; but with the disappearance of Gothic building +disappears also the possibility of the sculpture which covers the +portals of Chartres and the belfry of Florence. The pseudo-classic +colonnades, entablatures, all the thin bastard Ionic and Corinthian of +Aberti and Bramante, did not require sculpture, or had their own little +supply of unfleshed ox-skulls, greengrocer's garlands, scallopings and +wave-linings, which, with a stray siren and one or two bloated emperors' +heads, amply sufficed. On the other hand, medięval civilization and +Christian dogma did not encourage the production of naked of draped +ideal statues like those which Antiquity stuck on countless temple +fronts, and erected at every corner of square, street, or garden. The +people of the Middle Ages were too grievously ill grown, distorted, +hideous, to be otherwise than indecent in nudity; they may have had an +instinct of the kind, and, ugly as they knew themselves to be, they must +yet have found in forms like those of Verrocchio's David insufficient +beauty to give much pleasure. Besides, if the Middle Ages had left no +moral room for ideal sculpture once freed from the service of +architecture; they had still less provided it with a physical place. +Such things could not be set up in churches, and only a very moderate +number of statues could be wanted as open-air monuments in the narrow +space of a still Gothic city; and, in fact, ideal heroic statues of the +early Renaissance are fortunately not only ugly, but comparatively few +in number. There remained, therefore, for sculpture, unless contented to +dwindle down into brass and gold miniature work, no regular employment +save that connected with sepulchral monuments. During the real Middle +Ages, and in the still Gothic north, the ornamentation of a tomb +belonged to architecture: from the superb miniature minsters, pillared +and pinnacled and sculptured, cathedrals within the cathedral, to the +humbler foliated arched canopy, protecting a simple sarcophagus at the +corner of many a street in Lombardy. The sculptor's work was but the +low relief on the church flags, the timidly carved, outlined, +cross-legged knight or praying priest, flattened down on his pillow as +if ashamed even of that amount of prominence, and in a hurry to be +trodden down and obliterated into a few ghostly outlines. But to this +humiliated prostrate image, to this flat thing doomed to obliteration, +came the sculptor of the Renaissance, and bade the wafer-like simulacrum +fill up, expand, raise itself, lift itself on its elbow, arise and take +possession of the bed of state, the catafalque raised high above the +crowd, draped with brocade, carved with rich devices of leaves and +beasts of heraldry, roofed over with a daļs, which is almost a triumphal +arch, garlanded with fruits and flowers, upon which the illustrious dead +were shown to the people; but made eternal, and of eternal magnificence, +by the stone-cutter, and guarded, not for an hour by the liveried pages +or chaunting monks, but by winged genii for all eternity. Some people, I +know, call this a degradation, and say that it was the result of corrupt +pride, this refusal to have the dear or illustrious dead scraped out any +longer by the shoe-nails of every ruffian, rubbed out by the knees of +every kitchen wench; but to me it seems that it was due merely to the +fact that sculpture had lost its former employment, and that a great art +cannot (thank Heaven!) be pietistically self-humiliating. Be this as it +may, the sculpture of the Renaissance had found a new and singularly +noble line of work, the one in which it was great, unique, unsurpassed, +because untutored. It worked here without models, to suit modern +requirements, with modern spirit; it was emphatically-modern sculpture; +the only modern sculpture which can be talked of as something original, +genuine, valuable, by the side of antique sculpture. Greek Antiquity had +evaded death, and neglected the dead; a garland of męnads and fauns +among ivy leaves, a battle of amazons or centaurs; in the late +semi-Christian, platonic days, some Orphic emblem, or genius; at most, +as in the exquisite tombs of the Keramikos of Athens, a figure, a youth +on a prancing steed, like the Phidian monument of Dexileus; a maiden, +draped and bearing an urn; but neither the youth nor the maiden is the +inmate of the tomb: they are types, living types, no portraits. Nay, +even where Antiquity shows us Death or Hermes, gently leading away the +beloved; the spirit, the ghost, the dead one, is unindividual. +"Sarkophagen und Urnen bekränzte der Heide mit Leben," said Goethe; but +it was the life which was everlasting because it was typical: the life +not which had been relinquished by the one buried there, but the life +which the world danced on, forgetful, round his ashes. The Romans, on +the contrary, graver and more retentive folk than the Greeks, as well as +more domestic, less coffee-house living, appear to have inherited from +the Etruscans a desire to preserve the effigy of the dead, a desire +unknown to the Greeks. But the Etrusco-Roman monuments, where husband +and wife stare forth togaed and stolaed, half reduced to a conventional +crop-headedness, grim and stiff as if sitting unwillingly for their +portrait; or reclining on the sarcophagus-lid, neither dead, nor asleep, +nor yet alive and awake, but with a hieratic mummy stare, have little of +ęsthetic or sympathetic value. The early Renaissance, then, first +bethought it of representing the real individual in the real death +slumber. And I question whether anything more fitting could be placed on +a tomb than the effigy of the dead as we saw them just before the +coffin-lid closed down; as we would give our all to see them but one +little moment longer; as they continue to exist for our fancy within the +grave; for to any but morbid feelings the beloved can never suffer +decay. Whereas a portrait of the man in life, as the throning popes in +St. Peter's, seems heartless and derisive; such monuments striking us as +conceived and ordered by their inmates while alive, like Michael +Angelo's Pope Julius, and Browning's Bishop, who was so preoccupied +about his tomb in St. Praxed's Church. The Renaissance, the late Middle +Ages, felt better than this: on the extreme pinnacle, high on the roof, +they might indeed place against the russet brick or the blue sky, amid +the hum of life and the movement of the air, the living man, like the +Scaligers, the mailed knight on his charger, lance in rest: but in the +church below, under the funereal pall, they could place only the body +such as it may have lain on the bier. + +And that figure on the bier was the great work of Renaissance sculpture. +Inanimate and vulgar when in heroic figures they tried to emulate the +ancients, the sculptors of the fifteenth century have found their own +line. The modesty, the simplicity, the awful and beautiful repose of the +dead; the individual character cleared of all its conflicting meannesses +by death, simplified, idealized as it is in the memory of the +survivors--all these are things which belong to the Renaissance. As the +Greeks gave the strong, smooth life-current circulating through their +heroes; so did these men of the fifteenth century give the gentle and +harmonious ebbing after-life of death in their sepulchral monuments. +Things difficult to describe, and which must be seen and remembered. +There is the monument, now in the museum at Ravenna, by a sculptor whose +name, were it known, would surely be among the greatest, of the +condottiere, Braccioforte: the body prone in its heavy case of armour, +not yet laid out in state, but such as he may have been found in the +evening, when the battle was over, under a tree where they had carried +him to die while they themselves went back to fight; the head has fallen +back, side-ways, weighed down by the helmet, which has not even been +unbuckled, only the face, the clear-cut, austere features, visible +beneath the withdrawn vizor; the eyes have not been closed; and there +are few things more exquisite and solemn at once in all sculpture, than +the indication of those no longer seeing eyes, of that broken glance, +beneath the half-closed lids. There is Rossellino's Cardinal of Portugal +at S. Miniato a Monte: the slight body, draped in episcopal robes, lying +with delicate folded hands, in gracious decorum of youthful sanctity; +the strong delicate head, of clear feature and gentle furrow of +suffering and thought, a face of infinite purity of strength, strength +still ungnarled by action: a young priest, who in his virginal dignity +is almost a noble woman. And there is the Ilaria Guinigi of Jacopo della +Quercia (the man who had most natural affinity with the antique of all +these sculptors, as one may see from the shattered remains of the Fonte +Gaia of Siena), the lady stretched out on the rose-garlanded bed of +state in a corner of Lucca Cathedral, her feet upon her sleeping dog, +her sweet, girlish head, with wavy plaits of hair encircled by a +rose-wreathed, turban-like diadem, lying low on round cushions; the bed +gently giving way beneath the beautiful, ample-bosomed body, round which +the soft robe is chastely gathered, and across which the long-sleeved +arms are demurely folded; the most beautiful lady (whose majestic tread +through the palace rooms we can well imagine) that the art of the +fifteenth century has recorded. There is, above all, the Carlo +Marsuppini of Desiderio da Settignano, the humanist Secretary of the +Commonwealth, lying on the sarcophagus, superb with shell fretwork and +curling acanthus, in Santa Croce of Florence. For the youthful beauty +of the Cardinal of Portugal and of the Lady Ilaria are commonplace +compared with the refinement of this worn old face, with scant wavy hair +and thin, gently furrowed, but by no means ploughed-up features. The +slight figure looks as if in life it must have seemed almost +transparent; and the hands are very pathetic: noble, firm hands, subtle +of vein and wrist, crossed simply, neither in prayer nor in agony, but +in gentle weariness, over the book on his breast. That book is certainly +no prayer-book; rather a volume of Plato or Cicero: in his last moments +the noble old man has longed for a glance over the familiar pages; they +have placed the book on his breast, but it has been too late; the +drowsiness of death has overtaken him, and with his last sigh he has +gently folded his hands over the volume, with the faint, last clinging +to the things beloved in this world. + +Such is that portrait sculpture of the early Renaissance, its only +sculpture, if we except the exquisite work in babies and angels just out +of the nursery of the Robbias, which is a real achievement. But how +achieved? This art is great just by the things which Antiquity did not. +And what are those things? Shall we say that it is sentiment? But all +fine art has tact, antique art most certainly; and as to pathos, why, +any quiet figure of a dead man or woman, however rudely carved, has +pathos; nay, there is pathos in the poor puling hysterical art which +makes angels draw the curtains of fine ladies' bedchambers, and fine +ladies, in hoop or limp Grecian dress, faint (the smelling bottle, +Betty!) over their lord's coffin; there is pathos, to a decently +constituted human being, wherever (despite all absurdities) we can +imagine that there lies some one whom it was bitter to see departing, to +whom it was bitter to depart. Pathos, therefore, is not the question; +and, if you choose to call it sentiment, it is in reality a sentiment +for line and curve, for stone and light. The great question is, How did +these men of the Renaissance make their dead people look beautiful? For +they were not all beautiful in life, and ugly folk do not grow beautiful +merely because they are dead. The Cardinal of Portugal, the beautiful +Ilaria herself, were you to sketch their profile and place it by the +side of no matter what ordinary antique, would greatly fall short of +what we call sculpturesque beauty; and many of the others, old humanists +and priests and lawyers, are emphatically ugly: snub or absurdly hooked +noses, retreating or deformedly overhanging foreheads, fleshy noses, and +flabby cheeks, blear eyes and sunk-in mouths; and a perfect network of +wrinkles and creases, which, hard as it is to say, have been scooped out +not merely by age, but by low mind, fretting and triumphant animalism. +Now, by what means did the sculptor--the sculptor, too unacquainted with +sculptural beauty (witness his ugly ideal statues), to be able, like the +man who turned the successors of Alexander into a race of leonine though +crazy demi-gods--to insidiously idealize these ugly and insignificant +features; by what means did he turn these dead men into things beautiful +to see? I have said that he took up art where Gręco-Roman Antiquity had +left it. Remark that I say Gręco-Roman, and I ought to add much more +Roman than Greek. For Greek sculpture, nurtured in the habit of perfect +form, art to whom beauty was a cheap necessity, invariably idealized +portrait, idealized it into beauty or inanity. But when Greek art had +run its course; when beauty of form had well-nigh been exhausted or +begun to pall; certain artists, presumably Greeks, but working for +Romans, began to produce portrait work of quite a new and wonderful +sort: the beautiful portraits of ugly old men, of snub little boys, work +which was clearly before its right time, and was swamped by idealized +portraits, insipid, nay, inane, from the elegant revivalist busts of +Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius down to the bonnet blocks of the lower +empire. Of this Roman portrait art, of certain heads of half-idiotic +little Cęsar brats, of sly and wrinkled old men, things which ought to +be so ugly and yet are so beautiful, we say, at least, perhaps +unformulated, we think, "How Renaissance!" And the secret of the beauty +of these few Gręco-Roman busts, which is also that of Renaissance +portrait sculpture, is that the beauty is quite different in kind from +the beauty of Greek ideal sculpture, and obtained by quite different +means. + +It is, essentially, that kind of beauty which I began by saying +belonged to realistic art, to the art which is not squeamish about the +object which it represents, but is squeamish about the manner and medium +in which that indifferent object is represented; it is a kind of beauty, +therefore, more akin to that of Rembrandt and Velasquez than to that of +Michael Angelo or Raphael. It is the beauty, not of large lines and +harmonies, beauty residing in the real model's forms, beauty real, +wholesale, which would be the same if the man were not marble but flesh, +not in a given position but moving; but it is a beauty of combinations +of light and surface, a beauty of texture opposed to texture, which +would probably be unperceived in the presence of the more regal beauty +of line and colour harmonies, and which those who could obtain this +latter would employ only as much as they were conducive to such larger +beauties. And this beauty of texture opposed to texture and light +combined with surface is a very real thing; it is the great reality of +Renaissance sculpture: this beauty, resulting from the combination, for +instance, in a commonplace face, of the roughness and coarser pore of +the close shaven lips and chin with the smoothness of the waxy hanging +cheeks; the one catching the light, the other breaking it into a ribbed +and forked penumbra. The very perfection of this kind of work is +Benedetto da Maiano's bust of Pietro Mellini in the Bargello at +Florence. The elderly head is of strongly marked osseous structure, yet +fleshed with abundant and flaccid flesh, hanging in folds or creases +round the mouth and chin, yet not flobbery and floppy, but solid, though +yielding, creased, wrinkled, crevassed rather as a sandy hillside is +crevassed by the trickling waters; semi-solid, promising slight +resistance, waxy, yielding to the touch. But all the flesh has, as it +were, gravitated to the lower part of the face, conglomerated, or rather +draped itself, about the mouth, firmer for sunken teeth and shaving; and +the skin has remained alone across the head, wrinkled, yet drawn in +tight folds across the dome-shaped skull, as if, while the flesh +disappeared, the bone also had enlarged. And on the temples the flesh +has once been thick, the bone (seemingly) slight; and now the skin is +being drawn, recently, and we feel more and more every day, into a +radiation of minute creases, as if the bone and flesh were having a last +struggle. Now in this head there is little beauty of line (the man has +never been good-looking), and there is not much character in the sense +of strongly marked mental or moral personality. I do not know, nor care, +what manner of man this may have been. The individuality is one, not of +the mind but of the flesh. What interests, attaches, is not the +character or temperament, but the bone and skin, the creases and folds +of flesh. And herein also lies the beauty of the work. I do not mean its +interest or mere technical skill, I mean distinctly visible and artistic +beauty. + +Thus does the sculptor of the Renaissance get beauty, visible beauty, +not psychologic interest, out of a plain human being; but the beauty +(and this is the distinguishing point of what I must call realistic +decorative art) does not exist necessarily in the plain human being: he +merely affords the beginning of a pattern which the artist may be able +to carry out. A person may have in him the making of a really beautiful +bust and yet be ugly; just as the same person may afford a subject for a +splendid painting and for an execrable piece of sculpture. The wrinkles +and creases in a face like that of Benedetto da Maiano's Mellini would +probably be ugly and perhaps disgusting in the real reddish, flaccid, +discoloured flesh; while they are admirable in the solid and +supple-looking marble, in its warm and delicate bistre and yellow. +Material has an extraordinary effect upon form; colour, though not a +positive element in sculpture, has immense negative power in +accentuating or obliterating the mere line. All form becomes vague and +soft in the dairy flaccidness of modern ivory; and clear and powerful in +the dark terra cotta, which can ennoble even the fattest and flattest +faces with its wonderful faculty for making mere surface markings, mere +crowsfeet, interesting. Thus also with bronze: the polished, worked +bronze, of fine chocolate burnish and reddish reflections, mars all +beauty of line; how different the unchased, merely rough cast, greenish, +with infinite delicate greys and browns, making, for instance, the head +of an old woman like an exquisite withered, shrivelled, veined autumnal +leaf. It is moreover, as I have said, a question of combination of +surface and light, this art which makes beautiful busts of ugly men. The +ideal statue of the Greeks intended for the open air; fit to be looked +at under any light, high or low, brilliant or veiled, had indeed to be +prepared to look well under any light; but to look well under any light +means not to use any one particular relation of light as an ally; the +surface was kept modestly subordinated to the features, the features +which must needs look well at all moments and from all points of view. +But the Renaissance sculptor knew where his work would be placed; he +could calculate the effect of the light falling invariably through this +or that window; he could make a fellow-workman of that light, present +for it to draw or to obliterate what features he liked, bid it sweep +away such or such surfaces with a broad stream, cut them with a deep +shadow, caress their smooth chiselling or their rough grainings, mark as +with a nail the few large strokes of the point which gave the firmness +to the strained muscle or stretched skin. Out of this model of his, this +plain old burgess, he and his docile friend the light, could make quite +a new thing; a new pattern of bosses and cavities, of smooth sweeps and +tracked lines, of creases and folds of flesh, of pliable linen and rough +brocade of dress: something new, something which, without a single +feature being straightened or shortened, yet changed completely the +value of the whole assemblage of features; something undreamed of by +nature in moulding that ugly old merchant or humanist. With this art +which produced works like Desiderio da Settignano's Carlo Marsuppini and +Benedetto da Maiano's Pietro Mellini, is intimately connected the art of +the great medallists of the Renaissance--Pasti, Guacialotti, Niccolņ +Fiorentino, and, greatest of all, Pisanello. Its excellence depends +precisely upon its independence of the ideal work of Antiquity; nay, +even upon the fact that, while the ancients, striking their coins in +chased metal dies, obtained an astonishing minuteness and clearness of +every separate little stroke and dint, and were therefore forced into an +almost more than sculptural perfection of mere line, of mere profile and +throat and elaborately composed hair, a sort of sublime abstraction of +the possible beauty of a human face, as in the coins of Syracuse and +also of Alexander; the men of the fifteenth century employed the process +of casting the bronze in a concave mould obtained by the melting away of +a medallion in wax; in wax, which taking the living impress of the +artist's finger, and recalling in its firm and yet soft texture the real +substance of the human face, insensibly led the medallist to seek, not +sharp and abstract lines, but simple, strongly moulded bosses; not ideal +beauty, but the real appearance of life. It is, moreover, a significant +fact that while the men who, half a century or so later, made fine, +characterless die-stamped medals in imitation of the antique, Caradossi +and Benvenuto for instance, were goldsmiths and sculptors, workers with +the chisel, artists seeking essentially for abstract elegance of line; +the two greatest medallists of the early Renaissance, Vittore Pisano and +Matteo di Pasti, were both of them painters; and painters of the +Northern Italian school, to whom colour and texture were all important, +and linear form a matter of indifference. And indeed, if we look at the +best work of what I may call the wax mould medallists of the fifteenth +century, even at the magnificent marble medallions of the +laurel-wreathed head of Sigismund Malatesta on the pillars of his church +at Rimini, modelled by Pasti, we shall see that these men were +preoccupied almost exclusively with the almost pictorial effect of the +flesh in its various degrees of boss and of reaction of the light; and +that the character, the beauty even, which they attained, is essentially +due to a skilful manipulation of texture, and surface, and light--one +might almost say of colour. We all know Pisanello's famous heads of the +Malatesti of Rimini: the saturnine Sigismund, the delicate dapper +Novello, the powerful yet beautiful Isotta; but there are other +Renaissance medals which illustrate my meaning even better, and connect +my feelings on the subject of this branch of art more clearly with my +feelings towards such work as Benedetto's Pietro Mellini. Foremost among +these is the perhaps somewhat imperfect and decidedly grotesque, but +astonishingly powerful, naļf and characteristic Lorenzo dei Medici by +Niccolņ real grandeur of whose conception of this coarse yet imaginative +head may be profitably contrasted with the classicizing efforts after +the demi-god or successor of Alexander in Pollaiolo's famous medal of +the Pazzi conspiracy. Next to this I would place a medal by Guacialotti +of Bishop Niccolņ Palmieri, with the motto, "Nudus egressus sic +redibo"--singularly appropriate to the shameless fleshliness of the +personage, with his naked fat chest and shoulders, his fat, pig-like +cheeks and greasy-looking bald head; a hideous beast, yet magnificent in +his bestiality like some huge fattened porker. These medals give us, as +does the bust of Pietro Mellini, beauty of the portrait despite ugliness +of the original. But there are two other medals, this time by Pisanello, +and, as it seems to me, perhaps his masterpieces, which show the quite +peculiar way in which this homely charm of portraiture amalgamates, so +as to form a homogeneous and most seemingly simple whole, with the +homely charm of certain kinds of pure and simple youthful types. One of +these (the reverse of which fantastically represents the four elements, +the wooded earth, the starry sky, the rippled sea, the sun, all in one +sphere) is the portrait of Don Inigo d'Avalos; the other that of Cecilia +Gonzaga. This slender beardless boy in the Spanish shovel hat and wisp +of scarf twisted round the throat; and this tall, long-necked girl, with +sloping shoulders and still half-developed bosom; are, so to speak, +brother and sister in art, in Pisanello's wonderful genius. The relief +of the two medals is extremely low, so that in certain lights the +effigies vanish almost completely, sink into the pale green surface of +the bronze; the portraits are a mere film, a sort of haze which has +arisen on the bronze and gathered into human likeness; but in this film, +this scarce perceptible relief, we are made to perceive the slender +osseous structure, the smooth, sleek, childish blond flesh and hair, the +delicate, undecided pallor of extreme youth and purity, even as we might +in some elaborate portrait by Velasquez, but with a spring-like +healthiness which Velasquez, painting his lymphatic Hapsburgs, rarely +has. + +Such is this Renaissance art of medals, this side branch of the great +realistic portraiture in stone of the Benedettos, Desiderios, and +Rossellinos; a perfect thing in itself; and one which, if we muse over +it in connection with the more important works of fifteenth century +sculpture, will perhaps lead us to think that, as the sculpture of +Antiquity, in its superb idealism, its devotion to the perfect line and +curve of beauty, achieved the highest that mere colourless art can +achieve--thanks to the very purity, sternness, and narrowness of its +sculpturesque feeling--so also, perhaps, modern sculpture, should it +ever re-arise, must be a continuation of the tendencies of the +Renaissance, must be the humbler sister of painting, must seek for the +realistic portrait and begin, perhaps, with the realistic medal. + + + + +II. + + +This kind of realism, where only the model is ugly, while the portrait +is beautiful; which seeks decorative value by other means than the +intrinsic excellence of form in the object represented, this kind of +realism is quite different in sort from the realisms of immature art, +which, aiming at nothing beyond a faithful copy, is content with +producing an ugly picture of an ugly thing. Now this latter kind of +realism endured in painting some time after decorative realism such as I +have described had reached perfection in sculpture. Nor was it till +later, and when the crude scholastic realism had completely come to an +end, that there became even partially possible in painting decorative +realism analogous to what we have noticed in sculpture; while it was not +till after the close of the Italian Renaissance period that the painters +arose in Spain and the Netherlands who were able to treat their subjects +with the uncompromising decorative realism of Desiderio or Rosellino or +Benedetto da Maiano. For the purely imitative realism of the painters of +the early Renaissance was succeeded in Italy by idealism, which matured +in the great art of intrinsically beautiful linear form of Michael +Angelo and Raphael, and the great art of intrinsically beautiful colour +form of Giorgione and Titian. These two schools were bound to be, each +in its degree, idealistic. Complete power of mere representation in +tint and colour having been obtained through the realistic drudgery of +the early Renaissance, selection in the objects thus to be represented +had naturally arisen; and the study of the antique had further hastened +and directed this movement of art no longer to study but to achieve, to +be decorative once more, decorative no longer in subservience to +architecture, but as the separate and self-sufficing art of painting. +Selection, therefore, which is the only practical kind of idealism, had +begun as soon as painting was possessed of the power of representing +objects in their relations of line and colour, with that amount of light +and shadow requisite to the just appreciation of the relations of form +and the just relations of colour. Now art which stops short at this +point of representation must inevitably be, if decorative at all, +idealistically decorative; it must be squeamish respecting the objects +represented, respecting their real structure, colour, position, and +grouping. For, of the visible impressions received from an object, some +are far more intrinsic than others. Suppose we see a woman, beautiful in +the structure of her body, and beautiful in the colour of her person and +her draperies, standing under a light which is such as we should call +beautiful and interesting: of these three qualities one will be +intrinsic in the woman, the second very considerably so, the third not +at all. For, let us call that woman away and replace her immediately by +another woman chosen at random. We shall immediately perceive that we +have lost one pleasurable impression, that of beautiful bodily +structure: the woman has taken away her well-shapen body. Next we shall +perceive a notable diminution in the second pleasurable impression: the +woman has taken with her, not indeed her well-tinted garments, which we +may have bestowed on her successor, but her beautifully coloured skin +and hair, so that of the pleasing colour-impression will remain only as +much as was due to, and may have been retained with, the original +woman's clothes. But if we look for our third pleasurable impression, +our beautiful light, we shall find that unchanged, whether it fall upon +a magnificently arrayed goddess or upon a sordid slut And, conversely, +the beautiful woman, when withdrawn from that light and placed in any +other, will be equally lovely in form, even if we cast her in plaster, +and lose the colour of her skin and hair; or if we leave her not only +the beautiful tints of her flesh and hair, but her own splendidly +coloured garments, we shall still have, in whatsoever light, a +magnificent piece of colour. But if we recall the poor ugly creature who +has succeeded her from out of that fine effect of light, we shall have +nothing but a hideous form invested in hideous colour. + +This rough diagram will be sufficient to explain my thought respecting +the relative degree to which the art dealing with linear form, that +dealing with colour and that dealing with light, with the medium in +which form and colour are perceived; is each respectively bound to be +idealistically or realistically decorative. Now painting was +ęsthetically mature, possessed the means to achieve great beauty, at a +time when of the three modes of representation there had as yet +developed only those of linear form and colour; and the very possibility +and necessity of immediately achieving all that could be achieved by +these means delayed for a long time the development of the third mode of +representation: the representation of objects as they appear with +reference to the light through which they are seen. A beginning had +indeed been made. Certain of Correggio's effects of light, even more an +occasional manner of treating the flesh and hair, reducing both form and +colour to a kind of vague boss and vague sheen, such as they really +present in given effects of light, a something which we define roughly +as eminently modern in the painting of his clustered cherubs; all this +is certainly a beginning of the school of Velasquez. Still more so is it +the case with Andrea del Sarto, the man of genius whom critics love to +despatch as a mediocrity, because his art, which is art altogether for +the eyes, and in which he innovated more than any of his contemporaries, +does not afford any excuse for the irrelevancies of ornamental +criticism; with him the appearance of form and colour, acted upon by +light, the relative values of which flesh and draperies consist with +reference to the surrounding medium, all this becomes so evident a +preoccupation and a basis for decorative effects, as to give certain of +his works an almost startling air of being modern. But this tendency +comes to nothing: the men of the sixteenth century appear scarcely to +have perceived wherein lay the true excellence of this "Andrea senza +errori," deeming him essentially the artist of linear perfection; while +the innovations of Correggio in the way of showing the relations of +flesh tones and light ended in the mere coarse gala illuminations in +which his successors made their seraphs plunge and sprawl. There was too +much to be done, good and bad, in the way of mere linear form and mere +colour; and as art of mere linear form and colour, indifferent of all +else, did the art of the Italian Renaissance run to seed. + +I said at the beginning of this paper that the degree to which any art +is strictly idealistic, can be measured by the terms which it will make +with portrait. For as portrait is due to the desire to represent a +person quite apart from that person affording material for decoration, +it is evident that only the art which can call in the assistance of +decorative materials, independent of the represented individual, can +possibly make a beautiful picture out of an ugly man; while the art +which deals only with such visible peculiarities as are inherent in the +individual, has no kind of outlet, is cornered, and can make of a +repulsive original only a repulsive picture. The analogy to this we have +already noticed in sculpture: antique sculpture, considering only the +linear bosses which existed equally in the living man and in the statue, +could not afford to represent plain people; while Renaissance sculpture, +extracting a large amount of beauty out of combinations of surface and +light, was able, as long as it could arrange such an artificial +combination, to dispense with great perfection in the model. Nay, if we +except Renaissance statuary as a kind of separate art, we may say that +this independence of the object portrayed is a kind of analytic test, +enabling us to judge at a glance, and by the degree of independence from +the model, the degree to which any art is removed from the mere line and +boss of antique sculpture. In the statue standing free in any light that +may chance to come, every form must be beautiful from every point; but +in proportion as the new elements of painting enter, in proportion as +the actual linear form and boss is marked and helped out by grouping, +colour, and light and shade, does the actual perfection of the model +become less important; until, under the reign of light as the chief +factor, it becomes altogether indifferent. In this fact lies the only +rational foundation for the notion, made popular by Hegel, that painting +is an art in which beauty is of much less account than in sculpture; +failing to understand that the sum total of beauty remained the same, +whether dependent upon the concentration of a single element or obtained +by the co-operation of several consequently less singly important +elements. + +But to return to the question of portrait art. From what we have seen, +it is clear that art which requires perfection of form will be reduced +to ugliness if cramped in the obtaining of such perfection, whereas art +which can obtain beauty by other means will still have a chance when +reduced to imitate ugly object? Hence it is that while the realistically +decorative art of the seventeenth century can make actually beautiful +things of the portraits of ugly people, the idealistically decorative +art of the Renaissance produces portraits which are cruelly ugly in +proportion as the art is purely idealistic. Yet even in idealism there +are degrees: the more the art is confined to mere linear form, to the +exclusion of colour, the uglier will be the portraits. With Michael +Angelo the difficulty was simplified to impossibility: he could not +paint portrait at all; and in his sculptured portraits of the two +Medicean dukes at S. Lorenzo he evaded all attempt at likeness, making +those two men into scarcely more than two architectural monsters, +half-human cousins of the fantastic creatures who keep watch on the +belfries and gurgoyles of a Gothic cathedral. It is almost impossible to +think of Michael Angelo attempting portrait: the man's genius cannot be +constrained to it, and what ought to be mere ugliness would come out +idealized into grandiose monstrosity. Men like Titian and Tintoret are +at the other end of the scale of ideal decoration: they are bordering +upon the domain of realism. Hence they can raise into interest, by the +mere power of colour, many an insignificant type; yet even they are +incapable of dealing with absolute ugliness, with absence of fine +colour, or, if they do deal with it, there is an immediate improvement +upon the model, and the appearance of truthfulness goes. Between the +absolute incapacity for dealing with ugliness of Michael Angelo, and the +power of compromising with it of Titian and Tintoret, Raphael stands +half-way: he can call in the assistance of colour just sufficiently to +create a setting of carefully harmonized draperies and accessories, +beautiful enough to allow of his filling it up with the most cruelly +ugly likeness which any painter ever painted. Far too much has been +written about Raphael in general, but not half enough about Raphael as a +portrait-painter; for by the side of the eclectic idealist, who combined +and balanced beauty almost into insipidity, is the most terribly, +inflexibly veracious portrait-painter that ever was. Compared with those +sternly straightforward portraits of his Florentine and Roman time, +where ugliness and baseness are never attenuated by one tittle, and +alloyed nobility or amiability, as with his finer models, like the two +Donis, husband and wife, and Bibbiena, is never purified of its +troubling element; compared with them the Venetian portraits are mere +insincere, enormously idealized pieces of colour-harmony; nay, the +portraits of Velasquez are mere hints--given rapidly by a sickened +painter striving to make those scrofulous Hapsburgs no longer mere men, +but keynotes of harmonies of light--of what the people really are. For +Velasquez seems to show us the temperament, the potentiality of his +people, and to leave us, with a kind of dignified and melancholy silence +as to all further, to find out what life, what feelings and actions, +such a temperament implies. But Raphael shows us all: the temperament +and the character, the real active creature, with all the marks of his +present temper and habits, with all the indications of his immediate +actions upon him: completely without humour or bitterness, without the +smallest tendency to twist the reality into caricature or monstrosity, +nay, perhaps without much psychologic analysis to tell him the exact +meaning of what he is painting, going straight to the point, and utterly +ruthless from sheer absence of all alternative of doing otherwise than +he does. There is nothing more cruelly realistic in the world, cruel not +only to the base originals but to the feelings of the spectator, than +the harmony of villainies, of various combinations of black and hog-like +bestiality, and fox and wolf-like cunning and ferocity with wicked human +thought and self-command, which Raphael has enshrined in that splendid +harmony of scarlet silk and crimson satin, and purple velvet and dull +white brocade, as the portraits of Leo X. and his cardinals Rossi and +Dei Medici. + +The idealistic painter, accustomed to rely upon the intrinsic beauty +which he has hitherto been able to select or create; accustomed also to +think of form as something quite independent of the medium through which +it is seen, scarcely conscious of the existence of light and air in his +habit of concentrating all attention upon a figure placed, as it were, +in a sort of vacuum of indifference;--this idealistic artist is left +without any resources when bid to paint an ugly man or woman. With the +realistic artist, to whom the man or woman is utterly indifferent, to +whom the medium in which they are seen is everything, the case Is just +reversed: let him arrange his light, his atmospheric effect, and he will +work into their pattern no matter what plain or repulsive wretch. To +Velasquez the flaccid yellowish fair flesh, with its grey downy shadows, +the limp pale drab hair, which is grey in the light and scarcely +perceptibly blond in the shade, all this unhealthy, bloodless, feebly +living, effete mass of humanity called Philip IV. of Spain, shivering in +moral anęmia like some dog thorough bred into nothingness, becomes +merely the foundation for a splendid harmony of pale tints. Again, the +poor little baby princess, with scarce visible features, seemingly +kneaded (but not sufficiently pinched and modelled) out of the wet ashes +of an _auto da fč_, in her black-and-white frock (how different from the +dresses painted by Raphael and Titian!), dingy and gloomy enough for an +abbess or a cameriera major, this childish personification of courtly +dreariness, certainly born on an Ash Wednesday, becomes the principal +strands for a marvellous tissue of silvery and ashy light, tinged +yellowish in the hair, bluish in the eyes and downy cheeks, pale red in +the lips and the rose in the hair; something to match which in beauty +you must think of some rarely seen veined and jaspered rainy twilight, +or opal-tinted hazy winter morning. Ugliness, nay, repulsiveness, +vanish, subdued into beauty, even as noxious gases may be subdued into +health-giving substances by some cunning chemist. The difference between +such portraits as these and the portraits by Raphael does not however +consist merely in the beauty: there is also the fact that if you take +one of Velasquez's portraits out of their frame, reconstitute the living +individual, and bid him walk forth in whatsoever light may fall upon +him, you will have something infinitely different from the portrait, and +of which your only distinct feeling will be that a fine portrait might +be made of the creature; whereas it is a matter of complete indifference +whether you see Raphael's Leo X. in the flesh or in his gilded frame. + +Whatever may fairly be said respecting the relative value of idealistic +and realistic decorative art is really also connected with this latter +point. Considering that realistic art is merely obtaining beauty by +attention to other factors than those which preoccupy idealistic art, +that the one fulfils what the other neglects--taking the matter from +this point of view, it would seem as if the two kinds of arts were, so +to speak, morally equal; and that any vague sense of mysterious +superior dignity clinging to idealistic art was a mere shred of long +discarded pedantry. But it is not so. For realistic art does more than +merely bring into play powers unknown to idealistic art: it becomes, by +the possession of these powers, utterly indifferent to the intrinsic +value of the forms represented: it is so certain of making everything +lovely by its harmonies of light and atmosphere that it almost prefers +to choose inferior things for this purpose. I am thinking at present of +a picture by I forget what Dutchman in our National Gallery, +representing in separate compartments five besotten-looking creatures, +symbolical of the five senses: they are ugly, brutish, with I know not +what suggestion of detestable temperament in their bloodshot flesh and +vermilion lips, as if the whole man were saturated with his appetite. +Yet the Dutchman has found the means of making these degraded types into +something which we care to look at, and to look at on account of its +beauty; even as, in lesser degree, Rubens has always managed to make us +feel towards his flaccid, veal-complexioned, fish-eyed women, something +of what we feel towards the goddesses of the Parthenon; towards the +white-robed, long-gloved ladies, with meditative face beneath their +crimped auburn hair, of Titian. + +Viewed in one way, there is a kind of nobility in the very fact that +such realistic art can make us pardon, can redeem, nay almost sanctify, +so much. But is it right thus to pardon, redeem, and sanctify; thus to +bring the inferior on to the level of the superior? Nay, is it not +rather wrong to teach us to endure so much meanness and ugliness in +creatures, on account of the nobility with which they are represented? +Is this not vitiating our feelings, blunting our desire for the better, +our repugnance for the worse? + +A great and charitable art, this realistic art of the seventeenth +century, and to be respected for its very tenderness towards the scorned +and castaway things of reality; but accustoming us, perhaps too much, +like all charitable and reclaiming impulses, to certain unworthy +contacts: in strange contrast herein with that narrow but ascetic and +aristocratic art of idealism, which, isolated and impoverished though it +may be, has always the dignity of its immaculate purity, of its +unswerving judgment, of its obstinate determination to deal only with +the best. A hard task to judge between them. But be this as it may, it +is one of the singular richnesses of the Italian Renaissance that it +knew of both tendencies; that while in painting it gave the equivalent +of that rigid idealism of the Greeks which can make no compromise with +ugliness; in sculpture it possessed the equivalent of the realism of +Velasquez, which can make beauty out of ugly things, even as the chemist +can make sugar out of vitriol. + + + * * * * * + + +THE SCHOOL OF BOIARDO. + +"Le donne, i cavalieri, l' armi, gli amori." + + + +I. + +Throughout the tales of Charlemagne and his warriors, overtopping by far +the crowd of paladins and knights, move two colossal mailed and vizored +figures--Roland, whom the Italians call Orlando and the Spaniards +Roldan, the son of Milon d'Angers and of Charlemagne's sister; and +Renaud or Rinaldo, the lord of Montauban, and eldest of the famous four +sons of Aymon. These are the two representative heroes, equal but +opposed, the Achilles and Odysseus, the Siegfried and Dietrich, of the +Carolingian epic; and in each is personified, by the unconscious genius +of the early Middle Ages, one of the great political movements, of the +heroic struggles, of feudalism. For there existed in feudalism two +forces, a centripetal and a centrifugal--a force which made for the +supremacy of the kingly overlordship, and a force which made for the +independence of the great vassals. Hence, in the poetry which is the +poetry of feudalism, two distinct currents of feeling, two distinct +epics---the epic of the devoted loyalty of all the heroes of France to +their wise and mighty emperor Charlemagne, triumphant even in +misfortune; and the epic of the hopeless resistance against a craven and +capricious despot Charles of the most righteous and whole-hearted among +his feudatories: the epic of Roland, and the epic of Renaud. Of the +first there remains to us, in its inflexible and iron solemnity, an +original rhymed narrative, "The Chanson de Roland," which we may read +perhaps almost in the self-same words in which it was sung by the +Normans of William in their night watch before the great battle. The +centripetal force of feudalism gained the upper hand, and the song of +the great empire, of the great deeds of loyal prowess, was consecrated +in the feudal monarchy. The case was different with the tale of +resistance and rebellion. The story of Renaud soon became a dangerous +lesson for the great barons; it fell from the hands of the nobles to +those of humbler folk; and it is preserved to us no longer in medięval +verse, but in a prose version, doubtless of the fifteenth century, under +the name, familiar on the stalls of village fairs, of "The Quatre Fils +Aymon." But, as Renaud is the equal of Roland, so is this humble prose +tale nevertheless the equal of the great song of Roncevaux; and even +now, it would be a difficult task to decide which were the grander, the +tale of loyalty or the tale of resistance. + +In each of these tales,"The Chanson de Roland" and "The Quatre Fils +Aymon," there is contained a picture of its respective hero, which sums +up, as it were, the whole noble character of the book; and which, the +picture of the dying Roland and the picture of the dying Renaud, I would +fain bring before you before speaking of the other Roland and the other +Renaud, the Orlando of Ariosto and the Rinaldo of Boiardo. The traitor +Ganelon has enabled King Marsile to overtake with all his heathenness +the rear-guard of Charlemagne between the granite walls of Roncevaux; +the Franks have been massacred, but the Saracens have been routed; +Roland has at last ceded to the prayers of Oliver and of Archbishop +Turpin; three times has he put to his mouth his oliphant and blown a +blast to call back Charlemagne to vengeance, till the blood has foamed +round his lips and his temple has burst. Oliver is dead, the archbishop +is dying, Roland himself is slowly bleeding to death. He goes down into +the defile, heaped with corpses, and seeks for the bodies of the +principal paladins, Ivon and Ivaire, the Gascon Engelier, Gérier and +Gérin, Bérenger and Otho, Anseis and Salamon, and the old Gerard of +Rousillon; and one by one drags them to where the archbishop lies dying. +And then, when to these knights Roland has at last added his own beloved +comrade Oliver, he bids the archbishop bless all the dead, before he die +himself. Then, when he has reverently crossed Turpin's beautiful +priestly hands over his breast, he goes forth to shatter his sword +Durendal against the rocks; but the good sword has cut the rock without +shivering; and the coldness of death steals, over Roland. He stretches +himself upon a hillock looking towards Spain, and prays for the +forgiveness of his sins; then, with Durendal and his ivory horn by his +side, he stretches out the glove of his right hand to God. "He has +stretched forth to God the glove of his right hand; St. Gabriel has +received it... Then his head has sunk on his arm; he has gone, with +clasped hands, to his end. God sends him one of his cherubim and St. +Michael of Peril. St. Gabriel has come with them. They carry the soul of +the Count: up to paradise." + +More solitary, and solemn and sad even, is the end of the other hero, of +the great rebel Renaud of Montauban. At length, after a lifetime wasted +in fruitless, attempts to resist the iniquity of the emperor, to baffle +his power, to shame him by magnanimity into, justice, the four sons of +Aymon, who have given up their youth, their manhood, the dearest things +to their heart, respect to their father and loyalty to their sovereign, +rather than countenance the injustice of Charlemagne to their kinsman, +have at last obtained to be pardoned; to be pardoned, they, heroes, by +this, dastardly tyrant, and to quietly sink, broken-hearted into +nothingness. The eldest, Renaud, returning from his exile and the Holy +Land, finds that his wife Clarisse has pined for him and died; and +then, putting away his armour from him, and dressing in a pilgrim's +frock made of the purple serge of the dead lady's robe, he goes forth to +wander through the world; not very old in years, but broken-spirited; at +peace, but in solitude of heart. And one evening he arrives at Cologne. +We can imagine the old knight, only half aware of the sunshine of the +evening, the noise of the streets, the looks of the crowd, the great +minster rising half-finished in the midst of the town by the Rhine, the +cries and noise and chipping of the masons; unconscious of all this, +half away: with his brothers hiding in the Ardennes, living on roots and +berries, at bay before Charlemagne; or wandering ragged and famishing +through France; with King Yon brilliant at Toulouse, seeing perhaps for +the first time his bride Clarisse, or the towers of Montauban rising +under the workmen's hands; thinking perhaps of the frightful siege, when +all, all had been eaten in the fortress, and his children Aymonnet and +Yonnet, all thin and white, knelt down and begged him to slaughter his +horse Bayard that they might eat; perhaps of that journey, when he and +his brothers, all in red-furred robes with roses in their hands, rode +prisoners of King Charles across the plain of Vaucouleurs; perhaps of +when he galloped up to the gallows at Montfaucon, and cut loose his +brother Richard; or of that daring ride to Paris, where he and his horse +won the race, snatched the prize from before Charlemagne and sped off +crying out that the winner was Renaud of Montauban; or, perhaps, seeing +once more the sad, sweet face of the Lady Clarisse, when she had burned +all her precious stuffs and tires in the castle-yard, and lay dead +without him to kiss her cold mouth; of seeing once more his good horse +Bayard, when he kissed him in his stall before giving him to be killed +by Charlemagne. Thinking of all that past, seeing it all within his +mind, and seeing but little of the present; as, in the low yellow light, +he helped, for his bread, the workmen to heave the great beams, to carry +the great stones of the cathedral, to split the huge marble masses while +they stared in astonished envy; as he sat, unconscious of their +mutterings, eating his dry bread and porridge in the building docks by +the river. And then, when wearied, he had sunk to sleep in the hay-loft, +dreaming perchance that all this evil life was but a dream and the +awakening therefrom to happiness and strength; the jealous workmen came +and killed him with their base tools, and cast him into the Rhine. They +say that the huge body floated on the water, surrounded by a great halo; +and that when the men of the banks, seeing this, reverently fished it +out, they found that the noble corpse was untouched by decay, and still +surrounded by a light of glory. And thus, it seems to me, this Renaud, +this rebel baron of whose reality we know nothing, has floated +surrounded by a halo of poetry down the black flood of the Middle Ages +(in which so much has sunk); and when we look upon his face, and see +its beauty and strength and solemness, we feel, like the people of the +Rhine bank, inclined to weep, and to say of this mysterious corpse, +"Surely this is some great saint." + +Of each of these heroes thus shown us by the Middle Ages, the Italian +Renaissance also, by the hand of two of her greatest poets, has given us +a picture. And first, of Roland. Of him, of Count Orlando, we are told +by Messer Lodovico Ariosto, that in consequence of his having +discovered, in a certain pleasant grotto among the ferns and maidenhair, +words graven on the rock (interrupted, doubtless, by the lover's kisses) +which revealed that the Princess Angelica of Cathay had disdained him +for Medoro, the fair-haired page of the King of the Moors; Count Orlando +went straightway out of his mind, and hanging up his armour and +stripping off his clothes, galloped about on his bare-backed horse, +slaughtering cows and sheep instead of Saracens; until it pleased God, +moved by the danger of Christendom and the prayers of Charlemagne, to +permit Astolfo to ride on the hippogriffs back up to the moon, and bring +back thence the wits of the great paladin contained in a small phial. We +all know that merry tale. What the Renaissance has to say of Renaud of +Montauban is even stranger and more fantastic. One day, says Matteo +Boiardo, in the fifteenth canto of the second part of his "Orlando +Innamorato," as Rinaldo of Montalbano, the contemner of love, was riding +in the Ardennes, he came to a clearing in the forest, where, close to +the fountain of Merlin, a wonderful sight met his eyes. On a flowery +meadow were dancing three naked damsels, and singing with them danced +also a naked youth, dark of eyes and fair of hair, the first down on his +lips, so that some might have said it was and others that it was not +there. On Rinaldo's approach they broke through their singing and +dancing, and rushed upon him, pelting him with roses and hyacinths and +violets from their baskets, and beating him with great sheaves of +lilies, which burnt like flames through the plates of his armour to the +very marrow of his bones. Then when they had dragged him, tied with +garlands, by the feet round and round the meadow; wings, eyed not with +the eyes of a peacock but with the eyes of lovely damsels, suddenly +sprouted out of their shoulders, and they flew off, leaving the poor +baron, bruised on the grass, to meditate upon the vanity of all future +resistance to love. + +Such are the things which the Middle Ages and the Renaissance found to +tell us of the two great heroes of Carolingian poetry. And the +explanation of how it came to pass, that for the Roland of the song of +Roncevaux was substituted the Orlando of Ariosto, and for the Renaud of +"The Quatre Fils Aymon" the Rinaldo of Matteo Boiardo--means simply that +which I desire here to study: the metamorphoses of medięval romance +stuffs, and, more especially, the vicissitudes of the cycle of +Charlemagne. + + + + +II. + + +We are apt to think of the Middle Ages as if they were the +companion-piece to Antiquity; but no such ideal correspondence exists +between the two periods. Antiquity is all of a piece, and the Middle +Ages, on the contrary, are heterogeneous and chaotic. For Antiquity is +the steady and uniform development of civilization in one direction and +with one meaning; there are great differences between its various +epochs, but they are as the differences between the budding, the +blossoming, and the fading stages of one plant: life varies, but is one. +The Middle Ages, on the other hand, are a series of false starts, of +interruptions and of new departures; a perpetual confusion. For, if we +think over them, we shall see that these centuries called medięval are +occupied by the effort of one people, or one generation, to put to +rights and settle down among as much as it can save of the civilization +of Antiquity. And the sudden overwhelming of this people or this +generation by another, which puts all the elaborate arrangements into +disarray, adds to the ruins of Antiquity the ruins of more recent times; +and then this destroying generation tries to put things straight, to +settle down, and is in its turn interrupted by the advent of some new +comer who begins the game afresh. + +As it is with peoples, so also is it with ideas; scarcely has a scheme +of life or of philosophy or of art taken shape and consistence before, +from out of the inexhaustible chaos of medięval thought and feeling, +there issue new necessities, new aspirations, which put into confusion +all previous ones. The Middle Ages were like some financial crisis: a +little time, a little credit, money will fructify, wealth will reappear, +the difficult moment will be tided over; and so with civilization. But +unfortunately the wealth of ideas began to accumulate in the storehouse +only just long enough to bring down a rout of creditors, people who +rifled the bank, and went home to consume or invest their money in order +to be succeeded by others. Hence, in the matter of civilization, the +Middle Ages ended in an extraordinary slow ruin, a bankruptcy like that +which overtook France before '89, and from which, as France was restored +by the bold seizure and breaking up of property of the revolution, the +world was restored by the bold breaking of feudal and spiritual +mortmain, the restoring of wasted energies to utility, of that great +double revolution, the Renaissance and the Reformation. Be this as it +may, mankind throughout the Middle Ages appears to have been in a +chronic condition of packing up and unpacking, and packing up again; one +after another a nation, a race, a philosophy, a political system came to +the front and was pushed back again into limbo: Germans and Kelts and +Latins, French civilization of the day of Abélard, Provenēal +civilization of the days of the Raymonds, brilliant and evanescent +Hohenstauffen supremacy, papacy at Canossa and at Avignon, Templars +triumphant and Templars persecuted; scholasticism, mysticism, feudalism, +democracy, communism: influences all these perpetually rising up and +being trodden down, till they all rotted away in the great stagnation of +the fifteenth century; and only in one part of the world, where the +conflict was more speedily ended, where one set of tendencies early +triumphed, where stability was temporarily obtained, in Italy alone did +civilization continue to be nurtured and developed for the benefit of +all mankind. In such a state of affairs only such things could flourish +and mature as were safe from what I have called, for want of a better +expression, the perpetual unpacking and repacking, the perpetual being +on the move, of the Middle Ages; and among such things foremost was art, +the essential art of the times, architecture, which, belonging to the +small towns, to the infinite minority of the democracy, who worked and +made money and let the great changes pass over their heads, thrived +almost as something too insignificant for notice. But it was different +with literature. Cathedrals once built cannot so easily be changed; new +peoples, new ideas, must accept them. But poetry--the thing which every +nation insists upon having to suit its own taste, the thing which every +nation and every generation carries about with it hither and thither, +the thing which can be altered to suit every passing whim--poetry was, +of all the fluctuating things of the Middle Ages, perhaps the most +fluctuating. And fluctuating also because, as none of these various +nations, tendencies, aspirations, dominated sufficiently long to produce +any highly organized art, there remained no standard works, nothing +recognizedly perfect, which would be kept for its perfection and gather +round it imitations, so as to form the nucleus of any homogeneous +tradition. The Middle Ages, so full of fashions in literary matters, +possessed no classics; the minnesingers knew nothing of the stern old +Teutonic war songs; the meistersängers had forgotten the minnesingers; +the trouvčres and troubadours knew nothing of "The Chanson de Roland," +and Villon knew nothing of them; only in Italy, where the Middle Ages +came to an end and the Renaissance began with the Lombard league, was +there established a tradition of excellence, with men like Dante, +Petrarch, and Boccaccio, handed down from generation to generation; even +as, while in the north there came about the strange modification which +substituted the French of Rabelais for the French of Chrestien de +Troyes, the German of Luther for the German of Wolfram von Eschenbach, +the Italian language, from Ciullo d'Alcamo almost to Boiardo and Lorenzo +dei Medici, remained virtually identical. The result of this, which I +may call the heterogeneousness and instability of the Middle Ages was +that not merely literary forms were for ever arising and being +superseded, but literary subject matter was continually undergoing a +process of transformation. While in Antiquity the great epic and tragic +stuffs remained well-nigh unaltered, and the stories of Valerius Flaccus +and Apollonius Rhodius were merely the stories which had been current +since the days of Homer, during the course of the Middle Ages every epic +cycle, and every tale belonging thereunto, was gradually adulterated, +mingled with, swamped by, some other cycle or tale; nay, rather, every +other, cycle and every other tale, the older ones trying to save their +popularity by admixture with the more recent, till at last all mythical +significance, all historical meaning, all national character, all +psychological reality, were lost in the chaotic result. And meanwhile, +in the absence of any stable language, of any durable literary fashion, +the Middle Ages were unable to give to these epic stuffs, at any one +period of their life of metamorphose, a form sufficiently artistically +valuable to secure anything beyond momentary vogue, to secure for them +the immortality of the great Greek tales of adventure and warfare and +love. Thus it came about that the epic cycle of Charlemagne, after +supplanting in men's minds the grand sagas of the pagan North, was +itself supplanted by the Arthurian cycle; that the Frankish stories +absorbed the wholly discrepant elements of their more fortunate Keltic +rivals; that both cycles, having lost all character through fusion and +through obliteration by time, became more meaningless generation by +generation and year by year, until when the Middle Ages had come to an +end, and the great poets of the Renaissance were ready to give this old +medięval epic stuff a definitive and durable artistic shape, there came +to the hands of Boiardo and Ariosto, of Tasso and Spenser, only a +strange, trumpery material, muddled by jongleurs and romance writers, +and reduced to mere fairy stuff, taken seriously only by Don Quixote, +and by the authors of the volumes of insane twaddle called after Amadis +of Gaul and all his kinsmen. + +Such a condition of perpetual change as explains, in my belief, why the +medięval epic subjects were wanted, can be made clear only by examples. +I shall therefore try to show the transformations which were undergone +by one or two principal medięval epic subjects as a result of a mixture +with other epic cycles; of a gradual adaptation to a new state of +civilization; and finally of their gradual separation from all kind of +reality and real interests. + +First of all, let us look at the epic cycle, which, although known to us +only in poems no older than those of the trouvčres and minnesingers who +sang of Charlemagne and Arthur, is in reality far more ancient, and on +account of its antiquity and its consequent disconnection with medięval +religious and political interests, was thrown aside even by the nations +to which it belonged, by the Scandinavians who took to writing sagas +about the wars of Charlemagne against Saracens, and by the Germans who +preferred to hear the adventures of Welsh and Briton, Launcelots and +Tristrams. I am alluding to the stories connected with the family and +life of the hero called Sigurd by the Scandinavians, and Siegfried by +the Germans. Of these we possess a Norse version called the Volsunga +Saga, magnificently done into English by Mr. William Morris; which, +although written down at the end of the twelfth century, in the very +time therefore of Chrestien de Troyes, Wolfram von Eschenbach, and +Gottfried von Strassburg, and subsequently to the presumed writing of +"The Chanson de Roland" and the Nibelungenlied, shows us in reality the +product of a people, the distant Scandinavians of Iceland, who were five +or six hundred years behind the French, Germans, and English of the +twelfth century. In the Volsunga Saga, neither Christianity nor +feudalism is yet dreamed of; and it is for this reason that I wish to +compare it with the Nibelungenlied, in order to show how enormously the +old epic stuff was altered by the new civilization. The whole social and +moral condition of the two versions is different. In the old +Scandinavian civilization, where the Viking is surrounded and served by +clansmen, the feeling of blood relationship is the strongest in people's +hearts; strangely and fearfully shown in the introductory tale of Signy, +who, in order to avenge her father Volsung, killed by her husband, +murders her children by the latter, and then, altered in face by magic +arts, goes forth to the woods to her brother Sigmund, that, +un-wittingly, he may beget with her the only man fit to avenge the +Volsungs. And then she sends the boy Sinfjotli to the man he has +hitherto considered merely as his uncle, bidding the latter kill him if +he prove unworthy of his incestuous birth, or train him to vengeance. +The three together murder the husband and legitimate children of Signy, +and set the palace on fire; which, being done, the queen, having +accomplished her duty to her kin, accomplishes that towards her husband, +and calmly returns to die in the burning hall. Here (and apparently +again in the case of the children of Sigurd and Brynhilt) incest becomes +a family virtue. This being the frightful preponderance of the feeling +of blood relationship, it is quite natural that the Scandinavian +Chriemhilt (called in the Volsunga Saga, Gudrun) should not resent the +murder of her husband Siegfried or Sigurd by her brothers at the +instigation of the jealous Brynhilt (who has in a manner been Sigurd's +wife before he made her over to Chriemhilt's eldest brother); and that, +so far from seeking any revenge against them, she should, when her second +husband Atli sends for her brothers in order to rob and murder them, +first vainly warn them of the plot, and then, when they have been +massacred, kill Atli and her children by him in order to avenge her +brothers. The slackening of the tribal feeling, the idea of fidelity in +love and sanctity of marriage belonging to Christianity and feudalism, +rendered such a story unintelligible to the Germans of the Othos and +Henrys. In the Nibelungenlied, the whole story of the massacre of the +brothers is changed. Chriemhilt never forgives the murder of Siegfried, +and it is not Etzel--Atli for the sake of plunder, but she herself for +the sake of revenge, who decoys her brothers and murders them; it is she +who with her own hand cuts off the head of Gunther to expiate his murder +of Siegfried. To our feelings, more akin to those of the feudal +Christians of Franconia than to those of the tribal Scandinavians of the +Edda, the second version is far more intelligible and interesting--the +story of this once gentle and loving Chriemhilt, turned by the murder of +her beloved into a fury, and plotting to avenge his death by the death +of all his kinsfolk, must be much grander and more pathetic than the +story of this strange Gudrun, who sits down patiently beneath the injury +done to her by her brothers, but savagely avenges them on her new +husband, and her own and his innocent children; to us this persistence +of tribal feeling, destroying all indignation and love, is merely +unnatural, confusing, and repulsive. But this alteration for the better +in one of the incidents of the tale is a mere fluke; and the whole main +plot of the originally central figures are completely obliterated by the +new state of civilization, and rendered merely trivial and grotesque. In +the Volsunga Saga Sigurd, overcome by enchantments, has forgotten his +wife (or mistress, a vague mythical relationship); and, with all sense +of the past obliterated, has made her over to the brother of his new +wife Gudrun; and Brynhilt kills her faithless love to dissolve the +second marriage and be reunited with him in death. In the Nibelungenlied +Siegfried, although the flower of knighthood, conquers by foul play the +Amazon Brunhilt to reward Gunther for the hand of his sister; nay, in a +comic and loathsome scene he forces her into the embraces of the craven +Gunther; and then he gets killed by Brunhilt's machinations; when, after +most unqueenly bickerings, the proud Amazon is brutally told by +Siegfried's wife of the dirty trick which has given her to Gunther. +After this, it is impossible to realize, when Siegfried is murdered and +all our sympathies called on to his side, the utterly out-of-character, +blackguardly behaviour which has brought the hero to his death. +Similarly the conception of the character and position of Brynhilt is +entirely disfigured and rendered inane in the Nibelungenlied: of that +superb demi-goddess of the Scandinavians, burnt on the pyre with her +falcons and dogs and horses and slaves, by the side of the demi-god +Sigurd, whom she has loved and killed, lest the door of Valhalla, +swinging after him, should shut her out from his presence; of her there +remains in the German medięval poem only a virago (more like the +giantesses of the Amadis romances) enraged at having been defeated and +grotesquely and grossly pummelled into wedlock by a man not her husband, +and then slanged like a fishwife by her envious sister-in-law. + +The old, consistent, grandly tragic tale of the mysterious incests and +revenges of a race of demi-gods has lost its sense, its point in the +attempt to arrange it to suit Christian and feudal ideas. The really +fine portions of the Nibelungenlied are exactly those which have no real +connection with the original story, gratuitous additions by medięval +poets. The delicately indicated falling in love of Siegfried and +Chriemhilt, the struggles of Markgraf Rüdger between obedience to his +feudal superior and fidelity towards his friends and guests; and, above +all, the canto of the death of Siegfried. This last is different, +intensely different, from the rugged and dreary monotony of the rest; +this most poetical, almost Spenserian or Ariostesque realization of the +scene; this beautiful picture (though worked with the needle of the +arras-worker rather than with pencil or brush) of the wood, the hunt, +the solitary fountain in the Odenwald, where, with his spear leaned +against the lime-tree, Siegfried was struck down into the clover and +flowers, and writhed with Hagen's steel through his back. This canto is +certainly interpolated by some first-rate poet, at least a Gottfried or +a Walther, to whom that passage of the savage old droning song of death +had suggested a piece of new art; it is like the fragments of +exquisitely chiselled leafage and figures which you sometimes find +encrusted--by whom? wherefore?--quite isolated in the midst of the rough +and lichen-stained stones of some rude Lombard church. All the rest of +the Nibelungenlied gives an impression of effeteness; there is no +definiteness of idea such as that of the Volsunga Saga; the battles are +mere vague slaughter, no action, no realized movement, or (excepting +Rüdger) no realized motive of conduct. Shape and colour would seem to +have been obliterated by repetition and alteration. Yet even these +alterations could not make the tale of Siegfried survive among the +Germans of the Middle Ages; nay, the more the alterations the less the +interest; the want of consistency and colour due to rearrangement merely +accelerated the throwing aside of a subject which, dating from pagan and +tribal times, had become repugnant to the new generations. All the +mutilations in the world could not make the old Scandinavian tales of +betrayed trust, of revenge and triumphant bloodshed, at all sympathetic +to men whose religious and social ideals were those of forgiveness and +fidelity; even stripped of its incestuous mysteries and of its fearful +tribal love, the tale of Sigurd and Brynhilt, reduced to the tale of +Chriemhilt's revenge, was unpalatable: no more attempts were made at +re-writing it, and the poems of Walther, of Gottfried, of Wolfram, of +Ulrich, and of Tannhäuser, full as they are of references to stories of +the Carolingian and Arthurian cycles, nay, to Antique and Oriental +tales, contain no allusion to the personages of the Nibelungenlied. The +old epic of the Gothic races had been pushed aside by the triumphant +epic of the obscure and conquered Kelts. + +There are few phenomena in the history of ideas and forms more singular +than that of the sudden conquest of the poetry of dominant or distant +nations by the poetic subjects of a comparatively small race, sheared of +all political importance, restricted to a trifling territory, and +well-nigh deprived of their language; and of this there can be found no +more striking example than the sudden ousting of the Carolingian epic by +the cycle of Arthur. + +The Kelts of Britain and Ireland possessed an epic cycle of their own, +which came to notice only when they were dispossessed of their last +strongholds by Saxons and Normans, and which immediately spread with +astounding rapidity all over Europe. The vanquished race became +fashionable; themselves, their art and their poetry, began to be sought +for as a precious and war-enhanced loot. The heroic tales of the Kelts +were transcribed in Welsh, and translated into Latin, by order of the +Norman and Angevine kings, glad, it would seem, to oppose the Old Briton +to the Saxon element. The Keltic songs were carried all over France by +Breton bards, to whose music and rhymes, with only a general idea of the +subjects, the neo-Latin-speaking Franks listened with the sort of stolid +satisfaction with which English or Germans of a hundred years ago +listened to Italians singing Metastasio's verses. But soon the songs and +tales were translated; and French poets imitated in their language, +northern and southern, the graceful metres of the Keltic lays, and +altered and arranged their subjects. So that, in a very short time, +France, and through it Germany, was inundated with Keltic stories. This +triumph of the vanquished race was not without reason. The Kelts, early +civilized by Rome and Christianity, had a set of stories and a set of +heroes extremely in accordance with medięval ideas, and requiring but +very little alteration. The considerable age of their civilization had +long obliterated all traces of pagan and tribal feeling in their tales. +Their heroes, originally, like those of all other people, divinities +intimately connected with natural phenomena, had long lost all cosmic +characteristics, long ceased to be gods, and, manipulated by the fancy +of a race whose greatness was quite a thing of the past, had become a +sort of golden age ideals--the men of a distant period of glory, which +was adorned with every kind of perfection, till it became as unreal as +fairyland. Fairyland, in good sooth, was this country of the Keltic +tales; and there is a sort of symbolical significance in the fact of its +lawgiver Merlin, and its emperor Arthur, being both of them not dead, +like Sigurd, like Dietrich, like Charlemagne and Roland, but lying in +enchanted sleep. Long inaction and the day-dreaming of idleness had +refined and idealized the heroes of this Keltic race--a race of +brilliant fancy and almost southern mobility, and softened for a long +time by contact with Roman colonists and Christian priests. They were +not the brutal combatants of an active fighting age, like the heroes of +the Edda and of the Carolingian cycles; nor had they any particular +military work to do, belonging as they did to a people huddled away into +inactivity. Their sole occupation was to extend abroad that ideal +happiness which reigned in the ideal court of Arthur; to go forth on the +loose and see what ill-conditioned folk there might yet be who required +being subdued or taught manners in the happy kingdom, which the poor +insignificant Kelts connected with some princelet of theirs who +centuries before may have momentarily repelled the pagan Saxons. Hence +in the Keltic stories, such as they exist in the versions previous to +the conquest by the Norman kings, and previous also to any +communications with other peoples, the distinct beginning of what was +later to be called knight-errantry; of heroes, creations of an inactive +nation, having no special military duties, going forth to do what good +they may at random, unforced by any necessity, and following a mere +ęsthetico-romantic plan of perfecting themselves by deeds of valour to +become more worthy of their God, their King, and their Lady: religion, +loyalty, and love, all three of them mere ęsthetic abstractions, +becoming the goal of an essentially ęsthetic, unpractical system of +self-improvement, such as was utterly incompatible with any real and +serious business in life. Idle poetic fancies of an inert people, the +Knights of the Round Table have no mission save that of being +poetically perfect. Such was the spirit of Keltic poetry; and, as it +happened, this spirit satisfied the imaginative wants of medięval +society just at the moment when political events diffused in other +countries the knowledge of the Arthurian legends. The old Teutonic tales +of Sigurd, Gudrun, and Dietrich, had long ceased to appeal, in their +mutilated and obliterated condition, to a society to whom tribal feeling +and pagan heroism were odious, and whose religion distinctly reproved +revenge. These semi-mythological tales had been replaced by another +cycle: the purely realistic epic, which had arisen during the struggles +between the Christian west against the pagan north-east and the +Mohammedan south, and which, originating in the short battle-songs +narrating the exploits of the predecessors and help-mates of +Charlemagne, had constituted itself into large narratives of which the +"Song of Roland" represents artistic culmination. These narratives of +mere military exploits, of the battles of a strong feudal aristocracy +animated by feudal loyalty and half-religious, half-patriotic fury +against invading heathenness, had perfectly satisfied the men of the +earliest Middle Ages, of the times when feudalism was being established +and the church being reformed; when the strong military princelets of +the North were embarking with their barons to conquer new kingdoms in +England and in Italy and Greece; when the whole of feudal Europe hurled +itself against Asia in the first Crusades. But the condition of things +soon altered: the feudal hierarchy was broken up into a number of +semi-independent little kingdoms or principalities, struggling, with the +assistance of industrial and mercantile classes, to become absolute +monarchies; princes who had been mere generals became stay-at-home +diplomatists, studious of taxation and intrigue, surrounded no longer by +armed vassals, but by an essentially urban court, in constant +communication with the money-making burghers. Religion, also, instead of +being a matter of fighting with infidel invaders, turned to fantastic +sectarianism and emotional mysticism. With the sense of futility, of +disappointment, attendant on the later Crusades, came also a habit of +roaming in strange countries, of isolated adventure in search of wealth +or information, a love of the distant, the half-understood, the +equivocal; perhaps even a hankering after a mysterious compromise +between the religion of Europe and the religions of the East, such as +appears to have existed among the Templars and other Franks settled in +Asia. + +There was, throughout feudal society, a sort of enervated languor, a +morbid longing for something new, now that the old had ceased to be +possible or had proved futile; after the great excitement of the +Crusades it was impossible to be either sedately idle or quietly active, +even as it is with all of us during the days of weariness and +restlessness after some long journey. To such a society the strongly +realistic Carolingian epic had ceased to appeal: the tales of the Welsh +and Breton bards, repeated by trouvčre and jongleur, troubadour and +minnesinger, came as a revelation. The fatigued, disappointed, morbid, +imaginative society of the later Crusades recognized in this fairyland +epic of a long refined, long idle, nay, effete race, the realization of +their own ideal: of activity unhampered by aim or organization, of +sentiment and emotion and action quite useless and unnecessary, purely +subservient to imaginative gratification. These Arthurs, Launcelots, +Tristrams, Kays, and Gawains, fantastic phantoms, were also far more +artistically malleable than the iron Rolands, Olivers, and Renauds of +earlier days; that unknown kingdom of Britain could much more easily be +made the impossible ideal, in longing for which squeamish and lazy minds +might refuse all coarser reality. Moreover, those who listened to the +tales of chivalry were different from those who had listened to the +Carolingian stories; and, therefore, required something different. They +were courtiers, and one half of them were women. Now the Carolingian +tales, originally battle-songs, sung in camps and castles to mere +soldiers, had at first possessed no female characters at all; and when +gradually they were introduced, it was in the coarsest barrack or +tap-room style. The Keltic tales, on the contrary, whether from national +tradition, or rather from longer familiarity with Christian culture and +greater idleness of life, naturally made women and women's love the +goal of a great many adventures which an effete nation could no longer +ascribe to patriotic movements. But this was not all. The religious +feeling of the day was extremely inclined to mysticism, in which +ęsthetic, erotic, and all kinds of morbid and ill-defined tendencies +were united, which was more than anything else tinged with a +semi-Asiatic quietism, a longing for the passive ecstasy of Nirvāna. +This religious side of medięval life was also gratified by the Arthurian +romances. Oddly enough, there existed an old Welsh or Breton tale about +the boy Peredur, who from a complete simpleton became the prince of +chivalry, and his many adventures connected with a certain mysterious +blood-dripping lance, and a still more mysterious basin or _grail_ (an +allusion to which is said by M. de la Villemarqué to be contained in the +originally Keltic name of Percival), which possessed magic properties +akin to those of the purse of Fortunatus, or the pipkin in the story of +"Little pot, boil!" The story, whose original mythical meaning had been +lost in the several centuries of Christianity, was very decayed and +obscure; and the fact of the blood on the lance being that of a murdered +kinsman of Peredur, and of the basin containing the head of the same +person cut off by Gloucester witches, was evidently insufficient to +account for all the mystery with which these objects were surrounded. +The French poets of the Middle Ages, strongly imbued with Oriental +legends brought back by the Crusaders, saw at a glance the meaning of +the whole story: the lance was the lance with which Longinus had pierced +the Saviour's side; the Grail was the cup which had received His blood, +nay, it was the cup of the Last Supper. A tale about the preservation of +these precious relics by Joseph of Arimathęa, was immediately connected +therewith; a theory was set up (doubtless with the aid of quite +unchristian, Oriental legends) of a kind of kingdom of the keepers of +the Grail, of a vague half-material, half-spiritual state of bliss +connected with the service of the Grail, which fed its knights (and here +the Templars and their semi-oriental mysteries, for which they were +later so frightfully misused, certainly come into play) with food which +is at once of the body and of the soul. Thus the Keltic Peredur, bent +upon massacring the Gloucester witches to avenge his uncle, was turned +into a saintly knight, seeking throughout a more and more perfect life +for the kingdom of the Grail: the Perceval of Chrestien de Troyes, the +Parzifal of Wolfram von Eschenbach, whom later romance writers (wishing +to connect everything more closely with Arthur's court) replaced by the +Sir Galahad of the "Morte d'Arthur," while the guest of the Grail became +a sort of general mission of several knights, a sort of spiritual +crusade to whose successful champions Percival, Bors, and Galahad, the +Middle Ages did not hesitate to add the arch-adulterer Launcelot. + +Thus did the Arthurian tales answer the requirements of the languid, +dreamy, courtly, lady-serving and religiously mystic sons and grandsons +of those earlier Crusaders whose aspirations had been expressed by the +rough and solemn heroes of Carolingian tales. The Carolingian tales were +thrown aside, or were kept by the noble medięval poets only on condition +of their original meaning being completely defaced by wholesale +admixture of the manners and adventures belonging to the Arthurian +cycles. The paladins were forced to disport themselves in the same +fairyland as the Knights of the Round Table; and many medięval poems the +heroes of which, like Ogier of Denmark and Huon of Bordeaux, already +existed in the Carolingian tales, are in reality, with their romantic +loves, their useless adventures, their Morgana's castles and Oberon's +horns, offshoots of the Keltic stories, which were as rich in every kind +of supernatural (being, in fact, pagan myths turned into fairy tales) as +the genuine Carolingian subjects, whose origin was entirely historical, +were completely devoid of such things. Arthur and his ladies and +knights: Guenevere, Elaine, Enid, Yseult, Launcelot, Geraint, Kay, +Gawain, Tristram, and Percival-Galahad, were the real heroes and +heroines of the courtly nobles and the courtly poets of this second +phase of medięval life. The Teuton Charlemagne, Roland and Oliver were +as completely forgotten of the poets who met in that memorable combat of +the Wartburg, as were the Teuton Sigurd and Dietrich. And if the +Carolingian cycle survived, however much altered, I think it must have +been thanks to the burghers and artizans of the Netherlands and of +Provence, to whom the bluff, matter-of-fact heroism, the simple, gross, +but not illegitimate amours of Carolingian heroes, were more +satisfactory than any mystic quest of the Grail, any refined adultery of +Guenevere or Yseult. + +But the inevitable fate of all medięval epics awaited this triumphant +Arthurian cycle: the fate of being obliterated by passing from one +nation and civilization to another, long before the existence of any +poetic art adequate to its treatment. Of this I will take as an example +one of the medięval poems which has the greatest reputation the +masterpiece (according to most critics, with whom I find it difficult, +in the presence of a poet like Gottfried von Strassburg, to agree) of +probably the most really poetical and earnest school of poetry which the +pre-Dantesque Middle Ages possessed--the "Parzifal" of Wolfram von +Eschenbach. + +The paramount impression (I cannot say the strongest, for strong +impressions are incompatible with such work as this) left by the +masterpiece of Wolfram von Eschenbach, is that of the most astonishing +vagueness, fluidity, haziness, vaporousness. In reading it one looks +back to that rudely hewn and extremely obliterated Nibelungenlied, as to +something quite astonishingly clear, detailed and strongly marked as to +something distinctly artistic. Indeed by the side of "Parzifal" +everything seems artistic; Hartmann von Aue reads like Chaucer, +"Aucassin et Nicolette" is as living as "Cymbeline," "Chevy Chase" seems +as good as the battles of Homer. It is not a narrative, but a vague +mooning; a knight illiterate, not merely like his fellow minnesingers, +in the way of reading and writing, but in the sense of complete absence +of all habit of literary form; extremely noble and pure of mind, chaste, +gentle, with a funny, puzzled sense of humour, reminding one distantly +of Jean Paul in his drowsy moments; a hanger-on of courts, but perfectly +simple-hearted and childlike; very poor and easily pleased: such is, for +good and for bad, Herr Wolfram von Eschenbach, the only real personality +in his poem. And he narrates, in a mooning, digressive, good-natured, +drowsy tone, with only a rare awaking of interest, a story which he has +heard from some one else, and that some one else from a series of other +some one elses (Chrestien de Troyes, a legendary Provenēal Chiot or +Guyot, perhaps even the original Welsh bard); all muddled, monotonous, +and droning; events and persons ill-defined, without any sense of the +relative importance of anything, without clear perception of what it is +all about, or at least without the power of keeping the matter straight +before the reader. A story, in point of fact, which is no story at all, +but a mere series of rambling adventures (adventures which are scarcely +adventures, having no point or plot) of various people with not much +connection and no individuality--Gachmuret, Parzifal, Gawain, +Loherangrein, Anfortas, Feirefis--pale ghosts of beings, moving in a +country of Kennaqwhere, Aquitaine, Anjou, Brittany, Wales, Spain, and +heaven knows what wondrous Oriental places; a misty country with woods +and towns and castles which are infinitely far apart and yet quite near +each other; which seem to sail about like cloud castles round the only +solid place in the book, Plimizöl, where Arthur's court, with round +table constantly spread, is for ever established. A no place, nowhere; +yet full of details; minute inventories of the splendid furniture of +castles (castles where? how reached?); infinitely inferior in this +matter even to the Nibelungenlied, where you are made to feel so vividly +(one of the few modern and therefore clear things therein) the long, +dreary road from Worms to Bechlarn, and thence to Etzelburg, though of +none of them is there anything beyond a name. For the Nibelungen story +had been localized in what to narrator and audience was a reality, the +country in which themselves lived, where themselves might seek out the +abbey in which Siegfried was buried, the well in the Odenwald near which +he was stabbed; where they knew from merchant and pilgrim the road taken +by the Nibelungs from Santen to Worms, by the Burgundians from Worms to +Hungary. But here in "Parzifal" we are in a mere vague world of +anywhere, the world of Keltic and Oriental romance become mere cloudland +to the Thuringian knight. And similarly have the heroes of other +nations, the Arthurs, Gawains, Gachmurets, of Wales and Anjou, become +mere vague names; they have become liquified, lost all shape and local +habitation. They are mere names, these ladies and knights of Herr +Wolfram, names with fair pink and white faces, names magnificently +draped in bejewelled Oriental stuffs and embossed armour; they have no +home, no work, nothing to do. This is the most remarkable characteristic +of "Parzifal," and what makes it so typical of the process of growing +inane through overmuch alteration, which prevented the medięval epics +ever turning into an Iliad or an Odyssey; this that it is essentially +idle and all about nothing. The feudal relations strongly marked in the +German Nibelungenlied have melted away like the distinctions of race: +every knight is independent, not a vassal nor a captain, a Volker or +Hagen, or Roland or Renaud followed by his men; but an isolated +individual, without even a squire, wandering about alone through this +hazy land of nowhere. Knight-errantry, in the time of the great Guelph +and Ghibelline struggles, every bit as ideal as that of Spenser or +Cervantes; and with the difference that Sir Calidore and Sir Artegal +have an appointed task, some Blatant Beast or other nuisance to +overcome; and that Don Quixote has the general rescuing of all the +oppressed Princesse Micomiconas, and the destruction of all windmills, +and the capturing of all helmets of Mambrino, and the establishing all +over the world of the worship of Dulcinea. But these knights of Wolfram +von Eschenbach have no more this mission than they have the +politico-military missions, missions of a Rüdger or a Roland. They are +all riding about at random, without any particular pagans, necromancers, +or dragons to pursue. The very service of the Holy Grail, which is the +main interest of the poem, consists in nothing apparently except living +virtuously at the Castle of Montselväsche, and virtuously eating and +drinking the victuals provided miraculously. To be admitted to this +service, no initiation, no mission, nothing preliminary seems required. +Parzifal himself merely wanders about vaguely, without doing any +specified thing. The fact is that in this poem all has become purely +ideal; ideal to the point of utter vacuity: there is no connection with +any human business. Of all the heroes and heroines we hear that they are +perfectly chaste, truthful, upright; and they are never put into any +situation to test these qualities: they are never placed in the way of +temptation, never made to fight with evil, or to decide between it and +good. The very religion of the Holy Grail consists in doing nothing: not +a word about relieving the poor or oppressed, of tending the sick, of +delivering the Holy Sepulchre, of defending that great injured One, +Christ. To be Grail Knight or even Grail King means to be exactly the +same as before. Where in this vague dreamland of passive purity and +heroism, of untempted chastity and untried honour, where are the earthly +trials of Tristram, of Guenevere, of Rüdger, of Renaud? Where the moral +struggles of the Middle Ages? Where is Godfrey, or Francis, or Dominick? +Nowhere. All has disappeared, melted away; Christianity and Paganism +themselves have melted away or into each other, as in the easy meeting +of the Pagan Feirefis and the Christian Parzifal, and in the double +marriage of Gachmuret with the Indian Belakane and the Welsh Herzeloid; +there remains only a kind of Buddhistic Nirvāna of vague passive +perfection, but without any renunciation; and in a world devoid of evil +and full of excellent brocade and armour and eatables, and lovely +maidens who dress and undress you, and chastely kiss you on the mouth; a +world without desire, aspiration, or combat, vacantly happy and +virtuous. A world purely ideal, divorced from all reality, unsubstantial +like the kingdom of Gloriana, but, unlike Spenser's, quite unshadowed by +any puritan sadness, by any sense of evil, untroubled by allegorical +vices; cheerful, serene, filled with flowers and song of birds, but as +unreal as the illuminated arabesques of a missal. In truth, perhaps more +to be compared with an eighteenth century pastoral, an ideal created +almost in opposition to reality; a dream of passiveness and liberty (as +of light leaves blown about) as the ideal of the fiercely troubled, +struggling, tightly fettered feudal world. The ideal, perhaps, of only +one moment, scarcely of a whole civilization; or rather (how express my +feeling?) an accidental combination of an instant, as of spectre vapour +arisen from the mixture of Kelt and Teuton, of Frank and Moslem. Is it +Christian, Pagan, Mohammedan? None of all these. A simple-looking +vaporous chaos of incongruous, but not conflicting, elements: a poem of +virtue without object, of knighthood without work, of religion without +belief; in this like its central interest, the Grail: a mystery, a cup, +a stone; a thing which heals, feeds, speaks; animate or inanimate? Stone +of the Caaba or chalice of the Sacrament? Merely a mysterious holy of +holies and good of goods, which does everything and nothings means +nothing and requires nothing--is nothing. + + + + +III. + + +Thus was obliterated, in all its national and traditional meaning, the +heroic cycle of Arthur; and by the same process of slow adaptation to +new intellectual requirements which had completely wiped out of men's +memory the heroic tales of Siegfried, which had entirely altered the +originally realistic character of the epic of Charlemagne. But unreal +and ideal as had become the tales of the Round Table, and disconnected +with any national tradition, the time came when even these were not +sufficiently independent of reality to satisfy the capricious +imagination of the later Middle Ages. At the end of the fourteenth +century was written, most probably in Portuguese by Vasco de Lobeira, +the tale of "Amadis de Gaula," which was followed by some forty or fifty +similar books telling the adventures of all the brothers, nephews, +sons, grandsons sons, and great-grandsons, an infinite succession, of +the original Amadis; which, translated into all languages and presently +multiplied by the press, seem to have usurped the place of the Arthurian +stories in feudal countries until well-nigh the middle of the sixteenth +century; and which were succeeded by no more stories of heroes, but by +the realistic comic novels of the type of "Lazarillo de Tormes," and the +buffoon philosophic extravaganzas of "Gargantua." Further indeed it was +impossible to go than did medięval idealism in the Amadises. Compared +with them the most fairy-tale-like Arthurian stories are perfect +historical documents. There remains no longer any connection whatsoever +with reality, historical or geographical: the whole world seems to have +been expeditiously emptied of all its contents, to make room for +kingdoms of Gaul, of Rome, of the Firm Island, of Sobradisa, etc., which +are less like the Land West of the Moon and East of the Sun than they +are like Sancho Panza's island. All real mankind, past, present, and +future, has similarly been swept away and replaced by a miraculous race +of Amadises, Lisvarts, Galaors, Gradasilias, Orianas, Pintiquinestras, +Fradalons, and so forth, who flit across our vision, in company with the +indispensable necromancers, fairies, dwarfs, giants, and duennas, like +some huge ballet: things without character, passions, pathos; knights +who are never wounded or killed, princesses who always end with +marrying the right man, enchanters whose heads are always chopped off, +foundlings who are always reinstated in their kingdom, inane paper +puppets bespangled with impossible sentiment, tinsel and rags which are +driven about like chaff by the wind-puffs of romance. The advent of the +Amadises is the coming of the Kingdom of Nonsense, the sign that the +last days of chivalric romance have come; a little more, and the +Licentiate Alonzo Perez will take his seat in Don Quixote's library, and +Nicholas the Barber light his faggots in the yard. + +But, as if in compensation of the usurpation of which they had been the +victims, the Carolingian tales, pushed out of the way by the Arthurian +cycle, were not destined to perish. Thrown aside with contempt by the +upper classes, engrossed with the Round Table and the Holy Grail, the +tales of Charlemagne and his paladins, largely adulterated with +Arthurian elements, were apparently cherished by a lower class of +society: burgesses, artizans, and such-like, for whom that Arthurian +world was far too etherial and too delicately immoral; and to this +circumstance is due the fact that the humiliated Carolingian tales +eventually received an artistic embodiment which was not given to the +Arthurian stories. While troubadours and minnesingers were busy with the +court of Arthur, and grave Latinists like Rusticiano of Pisa wrote of +Launcelot and Guenevere; the Carolingian epics seem to have been mainly +sung about by illiterate jongleurs, and to have busied the pens of +prose hackwriters for the benefit of townsfolk. The free towns of the +Netherlands and of Germany appear to have been full of this +unfashionable literature: the Carolingian cycle had become democratic. +And, inasmuch as it was literature no longer for knights and courtiers, +but for artizans and shopkeepers, it went, of course, to the +pre-eminently democratic country of the Middle Ages--Italy. This was at +a time when Italian was not yet a recognized language, and when the men +and women who talked in Tuscan, Lombard, or Venetian dialects, wrote in +Latin and in French; and while Francesca and Paolo read the story of +Launcelot most probably in good medięval _langue d'oil_, as befitted +people of high birth; the jongleurs, who collected crowds so large as to +bar the streets and require the interference of the Bolognese +magistrates, sang of Roland and Oliver in a sort of _lingua Franca_ of +French Lombard. French jongleurs singing in impossible French-Italian; +Italian jongleurs singing in impossible French; Paduan penny-a-liners +writing Carolingian cyclical novels in French, not of Paris, assuredly, +but of Padua--a comical and most hideous jabber of hybrid +languages--this was how the Carolingian stories became popular in Italy. +Meanwhile, the day came when the romantic Arthurian tales had to +dislodge in Italy before the invasion of the classic epic. Troy, Rome, +and Thebes had replaced Tintagil and Cęrleon in the interest of the +cultured classes long before the beginning of the fifteenth century; +when Poggio, in the very midst of the classic revival, still told of the +comically engrossed audience which surrounded the vagabonds singing of +Orlando and Rinaldo. The effete Arthurian cycle, superseded in Spain and +France by the Amadis romances, was speedily forgotten in Italy; but the +Carolingian stories remained; and when Italian poetry arose once more +after the long interregnum between Petrarch and Lorenzo dei Medici, and +looked about for subjects, it laid its hand upon them. But when, in the +second half of the fifteenth century, those old tales of Charlemagne +received, after so many centuries of alterations and ephemeral +embodiments, that artistic form which the Middle Ages had been unable to +give them, the stories themselves, and the way in which they were +regarded, were totally different from what they had been in the time of +Theroulde, or of the anonymous author of "The Quatre Fils Aymon;" the +Renaissance, with its keen artistic sense, made out of the Carolingian +tales real works of art, but works of art which were playthings. To +begin with, the Carolingian stories had been saturated with Arthurian +colour: they had been furnished with all the knight-rrantry, all the +gallantry, all the enchantments, the fairies, giants, and necromancers +of the Keltic legends; and, moreover, they had lost, by infinite +repetition, all the political realism and meaning so striking in "The +Chanson de Roland" and "The Quatre Fils Aymon;" a confusion and +unreality further increased by the fact that the Italians had no +original connection with those tales, that to them real men and plans +were no better than imaginary ones, and that the minstrels who sang in +the market-place, and the laborious prose-writers who compiled such +collections as that called of the "Reali di Francia," were equally free +in their alterations and adaptations, creating unknown relationships, +inventing new adventures, suppressing essential historical points, with +no object save amusing their audience or readers with new stories about +familiar heroes. Such was the condition of the stories themselves. The +attitude of the public towards them was, by the middle of the fifteenth +century, one of complete incredulity and frivolous amusement; the +paladins were as unreal as the heroes of any granny's fairy tale. The +people wanted to hear of wonderful battles and adventures, of +enchantments and love-makings; but they wanted also to laugh; and, +sceptical, practical, democratic, the artizans and shopkeepers of +Florence--to whom, paying, as they did, expensive mercenaries who stole +poultry and never got wounded on any account, all chivalry or real +military honour was the veriest nursery rubbish--such people as crowded +round the _cantastoria_ of _mercato vecchio_, must indeed have found +much to amuse them in these tales of so different an age. + +And into such crowds there penetrated to listen and watch (even as the +Magnificent Lorenzo had elbowed among the carnival ragamuffins of +Florence, and had slid in among the holiday-making peasants of Poggio a +Caiano) a learned man, a poet, an intimate of the Medicis, of Politian, +Ficino, and Pico della Mirandola, Messer Luigi Pulci, the same who had +written the semi-allegorical, semi-realistic poem about Lorenzo dei +Medici's gala tournament. There was a taste in the house of the Medici, +together with those for platonic philosophy, classical erudition, +religious hymns, and Hebrew kabbala, for a certain kind of realism, for +the language and mode of thinking of the lower classes, as a reaction +from Petrarchesque conventionality. As the Magnificent Lorenzo had had +the fancy to string together in more artistic shape the quaint and +graceful love poems, hyperbolical, realistic, tender, and abusive, of +the Tuscan peasantry; so also Messer Luigi Pulci appears to have been +smitten with the notion of trying his hand at a chivalric poem like +those to which he and his friends had listened among the butchers and +pork-shops, the fishmongers and frying booths of the market, and giving +an impression, in its ideas and language, of the people to whom such +strains were sung. But Luigi Pulci was vastly less gifted as a poet than +Lorenzo dei Medici; Florentine prentices are less ęsthetically pleasing +than Tuscan peasants, and the "Morgante Maggiore" is a piece of work of +a sort utterly inferior to the "Nencia da Barberino." Still the +"Morgante Maggiore" remains, and will remain, as a very remarkable +production of grotesque art. Just as Lorenzo dei Medici was certainly +not without a deliberate purpose of selecting the quaintness and +gracefulness of peasant life; even so, and perhaps more, Luigi Pulci +must have had a deliberate intention of producing a ludicrous effect; in +both cases the deliberate attempt is very little perceptible, in the +"Nencia da Barberino" from the genius of Lorenzo, in the "Morgante +Maggiore" from the stolidity of Pulci. The "Morgante," of which parts +were probably written as a mere sample to amuse a supper party, became +interesting to Pulci, in the mere matter of inventing and stringing +together new incidents; and despite its ludicrous passages, it must have +been more seriously written by him, and more seriously listened to by +his friends, than would a similar production now-a-days. For the men of +the Renaissance, no matter how philosophized and cultured, retained the +pleasure in mere incident, which we moderns seem to have given over to +children and savages; and Lorenzo, Ficino, and Politian probably +listened to the adventures of Luigi Pulci's paladins and giants with +much the same interest, and only a little more conscious sense of +grotesqueness, with which the crowd in the market listened to Cristofano +dell' Altissimo and similar story-tellers. The "Morgante Maggiore," +therefore, is neither really comic nor really serious. It is not a piece +of realistic grotesqueness like "Gargantua" or "Pantagruel," any more +than it is a serious ideal work like "Amadis de Gaula:" the proportion +of deliberately sought effects is small; the great bulk, serious or +comic, seems to have come quite at random. It is not a caricatured +reproduction of the poems of chivalry sung in the market, for they were +probably serious, stately, and bald, with at most an occasional joke; it +is the reproduction of the joint impression received from the absurd, +harum-scarum, unpractical world of chivalry of the poet, and the real +world of prose, of good-humoured buffoonish coarseness with which the +itinerant poet was surrounded. The paladins are no Don Quixotes, the +princesses no Dulcineas, the battles are real battles; but the language +is that of Florentine wool-workers, housewives, cheese-sellers, and +ragamuffins, crammed with the slang of the market-place, its heavy jokes +and perpetual sententious aphorism. Moreover the prominence given to +food and eating is unrivalled except by Rabelais: the poet must have +lounged with delight through the narrow medięval lanes, crowded with +booths and barrows, sniffing with rapture the mingled scents of cheese, +pork, fish, spices, and a hundred strange concomitant market smells. And +the market, that classic _mercato vecchio_ (alas, finally condemned and +destroyed by modern sanitary prudishness, and which only those who have +seen can conceive in its full barbarous, nay, barbaric Pantagruelian +splendour of food, blood, and stenches) of Florence, is what we think of +throughout the poem. And, when Messer Luigi comes to narrate, with real +gravity and after the due invocation of the Virgin, the Trinity, and +the saints, the tremendous disaster of Roncevaux, he uses such words and +such similes, that above the neighing of horses and the clash of +hurtling armour and the yells of the combatants we suddenly hear the +nasal sing-song of Florentine tripe-vendors and pumpkin-pod-sellers, the +chaffer and oaths and laughter of the gluttonous crowd pouring through +the lanes of Calimala and Pellicceria; nay (horrible and grotesque +miracle), there seems to rise out of the confused darkness of the +battle-filled valley, there seems to disengage itself (as out of a mist) +from the chaos of heaped bodies, and the flash of steel among the +whirlwinds of dust, a vision, more and more distinct and familiar, of +the crowded square with its black rough-hewn, smoke-stained houses, +ornamented with Robbia-ware angels and lilies or painted madonnas; of +its black butchers dens, outside which hang the ghastly disembowelled +sheep with blood-stained fleeces, the huge red-veined hearts and livers; +of the piles of cabbage and cauli-flowers, the rows of tin ware and +copper saucepans, the heaps of maccaroni and pastes, of spices and +drugs; the garlands of onions and red peppers and piles of apples; the +fetid sliminess of the fish tressels; the rough pavement oozy and black, +slippery with cabbage-stalks, puddled with bullock's blood, strewn with +plucked feathers--all under the bright blue sky, with Giotto's +dove-coloured belfry soaring high above; a vision, finally, of one of +those deep dens, with walls, all covered with majolica plates and +dishes and flashing brass-embossed trenchers, in the dark depths of +which crackles perennially a ruddy fire, while a huge spit revolves, +offering to the flames now one now the other side of scores of legs of +mutton, rounds of beef, and larded chickens, trickling with the butter +unceasingly ladled by the white-dressed cooks. Roncisvalle, Charlemagne, +the paladins, paganism, Christendom--what of them? "I believe in capon, +roast or boiled, and sometimes done in butter; in mead and in must; and +I believe in the pasty and the pastykins, mother and children; but above +all things I believe in good wine "--as Margutte snuffles out in his +catechism; and as to Saracens and paladins, past, present, and future, a +fig for them! + +But meanwhile, for all that Florentine burgesses, artizans, and +humorists may think, there is in this Italy of the Renaissance something +besides Florence; there is a school of poetry, disconnected with the +realisms of Lorenzo and Pulci, with the Ovidian Petrarchisms of +Politian. There is Ferrara. Lying, as they do, between the Northern +Apennine slopes of Modena and the Euganean hills, the dominions of the +House of Este appear at first sight merely as part and parcel of +Lombardy, and we should expect from them nothing very different from +that which we expect from Milan or Bologna or Padua. But the truth is +different; all round Ferrara, indeed, stretches the fertile flatness of +Lombard cornfields, and they produce, as infallibly as they produce +their sacks of grain and tuns of wine and heaps of silk cocoon, the +intellectual and social equivalents of such things in Renaissance Italy: +industry, wealth, comfort, scepticism, art. But on either side, into the +defiles of the Euganean hills to the north, into the widening torrent +valleys of the Modenese Apennines to the south, the Marquisate of Este +stretches up into feudalism, into chivalry, into the imaginative kingdom +of the Middle Ages. Medięvalism, feudalism, chivalry, indeed, of a very +modified sort; and as different from that of France and Germany as +differ from the poverty-stricken plains and forests and and moors of the +north these Italian mountain slopes, along which the vines crawl in long +trellises, and the chestnuts rise in endlessly superposed tiers of +terraces, cultivated by a peasant who is not the serf, but the equal +sharer in profits with the master of the soil. And on one of those +fertile hill-sides, looking down upon a narrow valley all a green-blue +shimmer with corn and vine-bearing elms, was born, in the year 1434, +Matteo Maria Boiardo, in the village which gave him the title, one of +the highest in the Estensian dominions, of Count of Scandiano. Here, in +the Apennines, Scandiano is a fortified village, also a castle, +doubtless half turned into a Renaissance villa, but medięval and feudal +nevertheless; but the name of Scandiano belongs also, I know not for +what reason, to a certain little red-brick palace on the outskirts of +Ferrara, beautifully painted with half-allegorical, half-realistic +pageant frescoes by Cosimo Tura, and enclosing a sweet tangled +orchard-garden; to all of which, being the place to which Duke Borso and +Duke Ercole were wont to retire for amusement, the Ferrarese have given +the further name of Schifanoia, which means, "fly from cares." This +little coincidence of Scandiano the feudal castle in the Apennines, and +Scandiano the little pleasure palace at Ferrara, seems to give, by +accidental allegory, a fair idea of the double nature of Matteo Boiardo, +of the Ferrarese court to which he belonged, and of the school of poetry +(including the more notable but less original work of Ariosto) which the +genius of the man and the character of the court succeeded together in +producing. + +To understand Boiardo we must compare him with Ariosto; and to +understand Ariosto we must compare him with Boiardo; both belong to the +same school, and are men of very similar genius, and where the one +leaves off the other begins. But first, in order to understand the +character of this poetry which, in the main, is identical in Boiardo and +in his more successful but less fascinating pupil Ariosto, let us +understand Ferrara. It was, in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth +centuries, a chivalric town of Ariostesque chivalry: feudalism turned +courtly and elegant, and moreover, very liberal and comfortable by +preponderance of democratic and industrial habits; a military court, of +brave mercenary captains full of dash and adventure, not mere brigands +and marauders having studied strategy, like the little Umbrian +chieftains; a court orderly, elegant, and brilliant: a prince not risen +from behind a counter like Medicis and Petruccis, nor out of blood like +Baglionis and Sforzas, but of a noble old house whose beginnings are +lost in the mist of real chivalry and real paladinism; a duke with a +pretence of feudal honour and decorum, at whose court men were all brave +and ladies all chaste--with the little licenses of baseness and +gallantry admitted by Renaissance chivalry. A bright, brilliant court at +the close of the fifteenth century; and more stable than the only one +which might have rivalled it, the Feltrian court of Urbino, too small +and lost among the Umbrian bandits. A bright, brilliant town, also, this +Ferrara: not mercantile like Florence, not mere barracks like Perugia; a +capital, essentially, in its rich green plain by the widened Po, with +its broad handsome streets (so different from the medięval exchanges of +Bologna, and the feudal alleys of Perugia), its well-built houses, so +safe and modern, needing neither _bravi_ nor iron window bars, protected +(except against some stray murder by one of the Estensi themselves), by +the duke's well-organized police; houses with well-trimmed gardens, like +so many Paris hōtels; and with the grand russet brick castle, military +with its moat and towers, urban with its belvederes and balconies, in +the middle, well placed to sweep away with its guns (the wonderful guns +of the duke's own making) any riot, tidily, cleanly, without a nasty +heap of bodies and slop of blood as in the narrow streets of other +towns Imagine this bright capital, placed, moreover, in the richest +centre of Lombardy, with glitter of chivalry from the Euganean hills and +Apennines (castellated with Este, Monselice, Canossa, and Boiardo's own +Scandiano); with gorgeous rarities of commerce from Venice and Milan--a +central, unique spot. It is the natural home of the chivalrous poets of +the Renaissance, Boiardo, Ariosto, Tasso; as Florence is of the +Politians and Pulcis (Hellenism and back-shopery); and Venice of the +literature of lust, jests, cynicism, and adventure, Aretine, Beolco, +Calmo, and Poliphilo-Colonna. In that garden, where the white +butterflies crowd among the fruit trees bowed down to the tall grass of +the palace of Schifanoia--a garden neither grand nor classic, but +elegiac and charming--we can imagine Boiardo or Ariosto reading their +poems to just such a goodly company as Giraldi Cinthio (a Ferrarese, and +fond of romance, too) describes in the prologue of his "Ecatomiti:" +gentle and sprightful ladies, with the splendid brocaded robes, and the +gold-filleted golden hair of Dosso Dossi's wonderful Alcina Circe; +graceful youths like the princely St. John of Benvenuto Garofalo; +jesters like Dosso's at Modena; brilliant captains like his St. George +and St. Michael; and a little crowd of pages with doublets and sleeves +laced with gold tags, of sedate magistrates in fur robes and scarlet +caps, of white-dressed maids with instruments of music and embroidery +frames and hand looms, like those which Cosimo Tura painted for Duke +Borso on the walls of this same Schifanoia palace. Such is the audience; +now for the poems. + +The stuff of Boiardo and Ariosto is the same: that old medięval stuff of +the Carolingian poems, coloured, scented with Arthurian chivalry and +wonder. The knight-errantry of the Keltic tales is cleverly blended with +the pseudo-historical military organization of the Carolingian cycle. +Paladins and Saracens are ingeniously manoeuvred about, now scattered in +little groups of twos and threes, to encounter adventures in the style +of Sir Launcelot or Amadis; now gathered into a compact army to crash +upon each other as at Roncevaux; or else wildly flung up by the poet to +alight in fairyland, to find themselves in the caverns of Jamschid, in +the isles where Oberon's mother kept Cęsar, and Morgana kept Ogier, in +the boats, entering subterranean channels, of Sindbad and Huon of +Bordeaux; a constant alternation of individual adventure and wholesale +organized campaigns, conceived and carried out with admirable ingenuity. +So much for the deeds of arms. The deeds of love are also compounded of +Carolingian and Arthurian, but flavoured with special Renaissance +feeling. There is a great deal of rapid love-making between too gallant +knights and too impressionable ladies; licentious amours which we +moderns lay at the door of Boiardo and Ariosto, not knowing that the +licentiousness of the Olivers and Ogiers and Guerins and Huons of +medięval poetry, of the sentimental Amadises, Galaors, and Lisvarts of +the fourteenth century, whom the Renaissance has toned down in Rogers +and Rinaldos and Ricciardettos, is by many degrees worse. A moral +improvement also (for all the immorality of the Renaissance) in the +eschewing of the never-failing adultery of the Arthurian romances, and +the appropriation to legitimately faithful love of the poetical devotion +which Tristram and Launcelot bear to other men's wives. To this are +added, and more by Ariosto than by Boiardo, two essentially Italian +elements: something of the nobility of passion of the Platonic +sonneteers; and a good dose of the ironical, scurrilous, moralizing +immoral anecdote gossiping of Boccaccio and Sacchetti. Such is the +stuff. The conception, though rarely comic, and sometimes _bond fide_ +serious, is never earnest. All this is a purely artistic world, a world +of decorative arabesque incident, intended to please, scarcely ever to +move, or to move, at most, like some Decameronian tale of Isabella and +the Basil Plant, or Constance and Martuccio. On the other hand, there is +none of the grotesque irreverence of Pulci. Boiardo and Ariosto are not +in earnest; they are well aware that their heroes and heroines are mere +modern men and women tricked out in pretty chivalric trappings, driven +wildly about from Paris to Cathay, and from Spain to the Orkneys--on +Tony Lumpkin's principle of driving his mother round and round the +garden plot till she thought herself on a heath six miles off--without +ever really changing place. But they do not, like Pulci, make fun of +their characters. They write chivalry romances not for Florentine +pork-butchers and wool-carders, but for gallant ladies and gentlemen, to +whom, with duels, tournaments, serenades, and fine speeches, chivalry is +an admired name, though no longer a respected reality. + +The heroes of Boiardo and of Ariosto are always bold and gallant and +glittering, the spirit of romance is in them; a giant Sancho Panza like +Morgante, redolent of sausage and cheese, would never be admitted into +the society of a Ferrarese Orlando. The art of Boiardo and of Ariosto is +eminently pageant art, in which sentiment and heroism are but as one +element among many; there is no pretence at reality (although there is a +good deal of incidental realism), and no thought of the interest in +subject and persons which goes with reality. It is a masquerade, and one +whose men and women must, I think, be imagined in a kind of artistic +fancy costume: a mixture of the Renaissance dress and of the antique, as +we see it in the prints of contemporary pageants, and in Venetian and +Ferrarese pictures; that Circe of Dosso's, in the Borghese gallery of +Rome, seated in her stately wine-lees and gold half-heraldically and +half-cabalistically patterned brocade, before the rose-bushes of the +little mysterious wood, is the very ideal of the Falerinas and Alcinas, +of the enchantresses of Boiardo and Ariosto. Pageant people, these of +the Ferrarese poets; they only play at being in forests and deserts, as +children play at being on volcanoes or in Green-land by the nursery +fire. It is a kind of dressing up, a masquerading of the fancy; not +disguising in order to deceive, but rather laying hold of any pretty or +brilliant impressive garb that comes to hand, and putting that on in +conjunction with many odds and ends, as an artist's guests might do with +the silks and velvets and Oriental properties of a studio. These knights +and ladies, for ever tearing about from Scotland to India, never, in +point of fact, get any further than the Apennine slopes where Boiardo +was born, where Ariosto governed the Garfagnana. They ride for ever +(while supposed to be in the Ardennes or in Egypt) across the velvet +moss turf, all patterned with minute starry clovers and the fallen white +ropy chestnut blossom, amidst the bracken beneath the slender chestnut +trees, the pale blue sky looking in between their spreading branches; at +most they lose their way in the intricacies of some seaside pineta, +where the feet slip on the fallen needles, and the sun slants along the +vistas of serried, red, scaly trunks, among the juniper and gorse and +dry grass and flowers growing in the sea sand. Into the vast medięval +forests of Germany and France, Boiardo and Ariosto's fancy never +penetrated. + +Such is the school: a school represented in its typical character only +by Boiardo and Ariosto, but to which belong, nevertheless, with whatever +differences, Tasso, Spenser, Camoens, all the poets of Renaissance +romance. Now of the two leaders thereof. Here I feel that I can speak +only personally; tell only of my own personal impressions and +preferences. Comparing together Boiardo and Ariosto, I am, of course, +aware of the infinite advantages of the latter. Ariosto is a man of far +more varied genius; he is an artist, while Boiardo is an amateur; he is +learned in arranging and ornamenting; he knows how to alternate various +styles, how to begin and how to end. Moreover, he is a scholarly person +of a more scholarly time: he is familiar with the classics, and, what is +more important, he is familiar with the language in which he is writing. +He writes exquisitely harmonious, supple, and brilliant Tuscan verse, +with an infinite richness of diction; while poor Boiardo jogs along in a +language which is not the Lombard dialect in which he speaks, and which +is very uncouth and awkward, as is every pure language for a provincial; +indeed, so much so, that the pedantic Tuscans require Berni to make +Tuscan, elegant, to _ingentilire_, with infinite loss to quaintness and +charm, the "Orlando Innamorato" of poor Ferrarese Boiardo. Moreover, +Ariosto has many qualities unknown to Boiardo; wit, malice, stateliness, +decided eloquence and power of simile and apostrophe; he is a symphony +for full orchestra, and Boiardo a mere melody played on a single fiddle, +which good authorities (and no one dare contest with Italians when they +condemn anything not Tuscan as jargon) pronounce to be no Cremona. All +these advantages Ariosto certainly has; and I do not quarrel with those +who prefer him for them. But many of them distinctly take away from my +pleasure. I confess that I am bored by the beautifully written moral and +allegorical preludes of Ariosto's cantos; I would willingly give all his +aphorism and all his mythology to get quickly to the story. Also, I +resent his admirable rhetorical flourishes about his patrons, his +Ercoles, Ippolitos, and Isabellas they ring false, dreadfully false and +studied; and Boiardo's quickly despatched friendly greeting of his +friends, his courteous knights and gentle ladies, pleases me much +better. Moreover, the all-pervading consciousness of the existence of +Homer, Virgil, nay, Statius and Lucan, every trumpery antique +epic-monger, annoys me, giving an uncomfortable doubt as to whether +Ariosto did not try to make all this nonsense serious, and this romance +into an epic; all this occasional Virgilian stateliness, alternated with +a kind of polished Decameronian gossipy cynicism, diverts my attention, +turns paladins and princesses too much into tutor-educated gentlemen, +into Bandello and Cinthio-reading ladies of the sixteenth century. The +picture painted by Ariosto is finer, but you see too much of the +painter; he and his patrons take up nearly the whole foreground, and +they have affected, idealized faces and would-be dignified and +senatorial poses. For these and many other reasons, I personally prefer +Boiardo; and perhaps the best reason for my preference is the +irrational one that he gives me more pleasure. My preferences, my +impressions, I have said, are in this matter, much less critical than +personal. Hence I can speak of Boiardo only as he affects me. + +When first I read Boiardo, I was conscious of a curious phenomenon in +myself. I must confess to reading books usually in a very ardent or +rather weary manner, either way in a hurry to finish them. As it +happened, when I borrowed Boiardo, I had a great many other things on +hand which required my time and attention; yet I could not make up my +mind to return the book until I had finished it, though my intention had +been merely to satisfy my curiosity by a dip into it. I went on, without +that eager desire to know what follows which one has in a novel; +drowsily with absolute reluctance to leave off, like the reluctance to +rise from the grass beneath the trees with only butterflies and shadows +to watch, or the reluctance to put aside some fairy book of Walter +Crane's. It was like strolling in some quaint, ill-trimmed, old garden, +finding fresh flowers, fresh bits of lichened walls, fresh fragments of +broken earthenware ornaments; or, rather, more like a morning in the +Cathedral Library at Siena, the place where the gorgeous choir books are +kept, itself illuminated like missal pages by Pinturicchio: amused, +delighted, not moved nor fascinated; finding every moment something new, +some charming piece of gilding, some sweet plumed head, some quaint +little tree or town; making a journey of lazy discovery in a sort of +world of Prince Charmings, the real realm of the "Färy Queen," quite +different in enchantment from the country of Spenser's Gloriana, with +its pale allegoric ladies and knights, half-human, half-metaphysical, +and its make-believe allegorical ogres and giants. This is the real +Fairyland, this of Boiardo: no mere outskirts of Ferrara, with real, +playfully cynical Ferrarese men and women tricked out as paladins and +Amazons, and making fun of their disguise, as in Ariosto; no wonderland +of Tasso, with enchanted gardens copied out of Bolognese pictures and +miraculous forests learned from theatre mechanicians, wonders imitated +by a great poet from the cardboard and firework wonders of Bianca +Cappello's wedding feasts. This is the real fairyland, the wonderland of +medięval romance and of Persian and Arabian tales, no longer solemn or +awful, but brilliant, sunny, only half believed in; the fairyland of the +Renaissance, superficially artistic, with its lightest, brightest +fancies, and its charming realities; its cloistered and painted courts +with plashing fountains, its tapestried and inlaid rooms, its towered +and belvedered villas, its quaint clipped gardens full of strange +Oriental plants and beasts; and all this transported into a country of +wonders, where are the gardens of the Hesperides, the fountain of +Merlin, the tomb of Narcissus, the castle of Morgan-le-Fay; every quaint +and beautiful fancy, antique and medięval, mixed up together, as in some +Renaissance picture of Botticelli or Rosselli or Filippino, where +knights in armour descend from Pegasus before Roman temples, where +swarthy white-turbaned Turks, with oddly bunched-up trousers and +jewelled caftans, and half-naked, oak-crowned youths, like genii +descended, pensive and wondering, from some antique sarcophagus, and +dapper princelets and stalwart knights, and citizens and monks, all +crowd round the altar of some wonder-working Macone or Apolline or +Trevigante; some comic, dreadful, apish figure, mummed up in +half-antique, half-oriental garb. Or else we are led into some dainty, +pale-tinted panel of Botticelli, where the maidens dance in white +clinging clothes, strewing flowers on to the flower-freaked turf; or +into some of Poliphilo's vignettes, where the gentle ladies, seated with +lute and viol under vine-trellises, welcome the young gallant, or poet, +or knight. + +Such is the world of Boiardo. Spenser has once or twice peeped in, +painted it, and given us exquisite little pictures, as that of +Malecasta's castle, all hung with mythological tapestries, that of the +enchanted chamber of Britomart, and those of Sir Calidore meeting the +Graces and of Hellenore dancing with the Satyrs; but Spenser has done it +rarely, trembling to return to his dreary allegories. Equal to these +single pictures by Spenser, Boiardo has only one or two, but he keeps us +permanently in the world where such pictures are painted. Boiardo is not +a great artist like Spenser: but he is a wizard, which is better. He +leads us, unceasingly, through the little dreamy laurelwoods, where we +meet crisp-haired damsels tied to pine-trees, or terrible dragons, or +enchanted wells, through whose translucent green waters we see brocaded +rooms full of fair ladies; he ferries us ever and anon across shallow +streams, to the castles where _gentil donzelle_ wave their kerchiefs +from the pillared belvedere; he slips us unseen into the camps and +council-rooms of the splendidly trapped Saracens, like so many figures +out of Filippino's frescoes; he conducts us across the bridges where +giants stand warders, to the mysterious carved tombs whence issue green +and crested snakes, who, kissed by a paladin, turn into lovely +enchantresses; he takes us beneath the beds of rivers and through the +bowels of the earth where kings and knights turned into statues of gold, +sit round tables covered with jewels, illumined by carbuncles more +wonderful than that of Jamschid; or through the mazes of fairy gardens, +where every ear of corn, cut off, turns into a wild beast, and every +fallen leaf into a bird, where hydras watch in the waters and lamias +rear themselves in the grass, where Orlando must fill his helmet with +roses lest he hear the voice of the sirens; where all the wonders of +Antiquity--the snake-women, the Circes, the sirens, the hydras and fauns +live, strangely changed into something infinitely quaint and graceful, +still half-antique, yet already half-Arabian or Keltic, in the midst of +the fairyland of Merlin and of Oberon--live, move, transform themselves +afresh; where the golden-haired damsels and the stripling knights, +delicate like Pinturicchio's Prince Charmings, gallop for ever on their +enchanted coursers, within enchanted armour, invincible, invulnerable, +under a sky always blue, and through an unceasing spring, ever onwards +to new adventures. Adventures which the noble, gentle Castellan of +Scandiano, poet and knight and humorist, philanthropical philosopher +almost from sheer goodness of heart, yet a little crazy, and capable of +setting all the church bells ringing in honour of the invention of the +name of Rodomonte relates not to some dully ungrateful Alfonso or +Ippolito, but to his own guests, his own brilliant knights and ladies, +with ever and anon an effort to make them feel, through his verse, some +of those joyous spring-tide feelings which bubble up in himself; as when +he remembers how, "Once did I wander on a May morning in a fair +flower-adorned field on a hillside overlooking the sea, which was all +tremulous with light; and there, among the roses of a green thorn-brake, +a damsel was singing of love; singing so sweetly that the sweetness +still touches my heart; touches my heart, and makes me think of the +great delight it was to listen;" and how he would fain repeat that song, +and indeed an echo of its sweetness runs through his verse. Meanwhile, +stanza pours out after stanza, adventure grows out of adventure, each +more wonderful, more gorgeous than its predecessor. To which listen the +ladies, with their white, girdled dresses and crimped golden locks; the +youths, with their soft beardless faces framed in combed-out hair, with +their daggers on their hips and their plumed hats between their fingers; +and the serious bearded men, in silken robes; drawing nearer the poet, +letting go lute or violin or music-book as they listen on the villa +terrace or in some darkened room, where the sunset sky turns green-blue +behind the pillared window, and the roses hang over the trellise of the +cloister. And as they did four hundred years ago, so do we now, rejoice. +The great stalwart naked forms of Greece no longer leap and wrestle or +carry their well-poised baskets of washed linen before us; the mailed +and vizored knights of the Nibelungen no longer clash their armour to +the sound of Volker's red fiddle-bow; the glorified souls of Dante no +longer move in mystic mazes of light before the eyes of our fancy. All +that is gone. But here is the fairyland of the Renaissance. And thus +Matteo Boiardo, Count of Scandiano, goes on, adding adventure to +adventure, stanza to stanza, in his castle villa, or his palace at +Ferrara. But suddenly he stops and his bright fiddle and lute music jars +and ends: "While I am singing, O Redeeming God, I see all Italy set on +fire by these Gauls, coming to ravage I know not what fresh place." + +And thus, with the earlier and more hopeful Renaissance of the fifteenth +century, Matteo Boiardo broke off with his "Orlando Innamorato." The +perfect light-heartedness, the delight in play of a gentle, serious, +eminently kindly nature, which gives half the charm to Boiardo's work, +seems to have become impossible after the ruin of Italian liberty and +prosperity the frightful showing up of Italy's moral and social and +political insignificance at the beginning of the sixteenth century. +Lombardy especially became a permanent battle-field, and its towns mere +garrison places of French, German, Spanish, and Swiss barbarians, whose +presence meant slaughter and pillage and every foulest outrage; and +then, between the horrors of the unresisted invasions and the unresisted +exactions, came plague and famine, and industry and commerce gradually +died out. A few princes, subsidised and guarded by French or +Imperialists, kept up an appearance of cheerfulness, but the courts even +grew more gloomy as the people grew more miserable. There is more +joking, more resonant laughter in Ariosto than in Boiardo, but there is +very much less serenity and cheerfulness; ever and anon a sort of +bitterness, a dreary moralizing tendency, a still more dreary fit of +prophesying future good in which he has no belief, comes over Ariosto. +Berni, who rewrote the "Orlando Innamorato" in choice Tuscan, and who +underlined every faintly marked jest of Boiardo's, with evident +preoccupation of the ludicrous effects of the "Morgante Maggiore"--Berni +even could not keep up his spirits; into the middle of Boiardo's serene +fairyland adventures he inserted a description of the sack of Rome which +is simply harrowing. All real cheerfulness departed from the people, to +be replaced only by pleasure in the debaucheries of the buffoonish +obscenity of Aretino, Bandello, and so forth, to which the men of the +dying Italy of the Renaissance listened as the roysterers of the plague +of Florence, with the mortal sickness almost upon them, may have +listened to the filthy songs which they trolled out in their +drunkenness. Or at best, the poor starved, bruised, battered, humiliated +nation may have tried to be cheerful on the principle of its harlequin +playwright Beolco, who, more honest than the Ariostos and Bibbienas, and +Aretines, came forward on his stage of planks at Padua, and after +describing the ruin and wretchedness of the country, the sense of +dreariness and desolation, which made young folk careless of marriage, +and the very nightingales (he thought) careless of song, recommended his +audience, since they could not even cry thoroughly and to feel any the +better for it, to laugh, if they still were able. Boiardo was forgotten; +his spirit was unsuited to the depression, gloomy brutality, gloomy +sentimentality, which grew every day as Italy settled down after its +Renaissance-Shrovetide in the cinders and fasting of the long Lent of +Spanish and Jesuit rule. + +Still the style of Boiardo was not yet exhausted; the peculiar kind of +fairy epic, the peculiar combination of chivalric and classic elements +of which the "Orlando Innamorato" and the "Orlando Furioso," had been +the great examples, still fascinated poets and public. The Renaissance, +or what remained of it, was now no longer confined to Italy; it had +spread, paler, more diluted, shallower, over the rest of Europe. To +follow the filiation of schools, to understand the intellectual +relationships of individuals, of the latter half of the sixteenth +century, it becomes necessary to move from one country to another. And +thus the two brother poets of the family of Boiardo, its two last and +much saddened representatives, came to write in very different languages +and under very different circumstances. These two are Tasso and our own +Spenser. They are both poets of the school of the "Orlando Innamorato," +both poets of a reaction, of a kind of purified Renaissance: the one of +the late Italian Renaissance emasculated by the Council of Trent and by +Spain; the other of the English Renaissance, in its youth truly, but, in +the individual case of Spenser, timidly drawn aside from the excesses of +buoyant life around. In the days of the semi-atheist dramatists, all +flesh and blood and democracy, Spenser steeps himself in Christianity +and chivalry, even as Tasso does, following on the fleshly levity and +scepticism of Boiardo, Berni, and Ariosto. There is in both poets a +paleness, a certain diaphanous weakness, an absence of strong tint or +fibre or perfume; in Tasso the pallor of autumn, in Spenser the paleness +of spring: autumn left sad and leafless by the too voluptuous heat and +fruitfulness of summer; spring still pale and pinched by winter, with +timid nipped grass and unripe stiff buds and catkins, which never +suggest the tangle of bush, grasses, and magnificent flowers and fruits, +sweet, splendid, or poisonous, which the sun will make out of them. The +Renaissance, in the past for Tasso, in the proximate and very visible +future for Spenser, has frightened both; the cynicism and bestiality of +men like Machiavelli and Aretino; the godless, muscular lustiness of +Marlowe, Greene, and Peele, seen in a glimpse by Tasso and Spenser, have +given a shock to their sensitive nature, have made them turn away and +hide themselves from a second sight of it. They both take refuge in a +land of fiction, of romance, from the realities into which they dread to +splash; a world unsubstantial, diaphanous, faint-hued, almost +passionless, which they make out of beauty and heroism and purity, which +they alembicize and refine, but into which there never enters any vital +element, anything to give it flesh and bone and pulsing life: it is a +mere soap bubble. And beautiful as is this world of their own making, it +is too negative even for them; they move in it only in imagination, +calm, serene, vacant, almost sad. There is in it, and in themselves, a +something wanting; and the remembrance of that unholy-life of reality +which jostled and splashed their delicate souls, comes back and haunts +them with its evil thought. There is no laugh--what is worse, no smile +--in these men. Incipient puritanism, not yet the terrible brawny +reality of Bunyan, but a vague, grey spectre, haunts Spenser; and the +puritanism of Don Quixote, the vague, melancholy, fantastic reverting +from the evil world of to-day to an impossible world of chivalry, is +troubling the sight of Tasso. He cannot go crazy like Don Quixote, and +instead he grows melancholy; he cannot believe in his own ideals; he +cannot give them life, any more than can Spenser give life to his +allegoric knights and ladies, because the life would have to be fetched +by Tasso out of the flesh of Ariosto, and by Spenser out of the blood of +Marlowe; and both Tasso and Spenser shrink at the thought of what might +with it be inoculated or transfused; and they rest satisfied with +phantoms. The phantoms of Spenser are more shadowy much more utterly +devoid of human character; they are almost metaphysical abstractions, +and they do not therefore sadden us: they are too unlike living things +to seem very lifeless. But the phantoms of Tasso, he would fain make +realities; he works at every detail of character, history, or geography, +which may make his people real; they are not, as with Spenser, elves and +wizards flitting about in a nameless fairyland, characterless and +passionless; they are historical creatures, captains and soldiers in a +country mapped out by the geographer; but they are phantoms all the more +melancholy, these beautiful and heroic Clorindas and Erminias and +Tancreds and Godfreys--why? because the real world around Tasso is +peopled with Brachianos and Corombonas, and Annabellas and Giovannis, +creatures for Webster and Ford; and because this world of chivalry is, +in his Italy, as false as the world of Amadis and Esplandian in Toboso +and Barcelona for poor Don Quixote. Melancholy therefore, and dreamy, +both Tasso and Spenser, with nothing they can fully love in reality, +because they see it tainted with reality and evil; without the cheerful +falling back upon everyday life of Ariosto and Shakespeare, and with a +strange fancy for fairyland, for the distant, for the Happy Islands, the +St. Brandan's Isles, the country of the fountain of youth, the country +of which vague reports have come back with the ships of Raleigh and +Ponce de Leon. Tasso and Spenser are happiest, in their calm, melancholy +way, when they can let themselves go in day-dreams, and talk of things +in which they do not believe, of diamond shields which stun monsters of +ointments which cure all ills of body and of soul of enchanted groves +whose trees sound with voices, and lutes, of boats in which, steered by +fairies, we can glide across the scarcely rippled summer sea, and +watching the ruins of the past, time and reality left behind, set sail +for some strange land of bliss. And there is in the very sensuousness +and love of beauty-of these men a vagueness and melancholy, a constant: +sense of the fleeting and of the eternal, as in that passage, translated +from the languidly sweet Italian perfection of Tasso into the timid, +almost scentless, English of Spenser--"Cosi trapassa al trapassar d'un +giorno." + + + So passeth, in the passing of a day, + + Of mortall life the leafe, the bud, the flowre + + No more doth florish after first decay, + That earst was sought to deck both bed and bowre + Of many a lady, and many a Paramowre. + Gather therefore the Rose whilest yet is prime, + For soone comes age that will her pride deflowre; + Gather the Rose of love whitest yet is time, + Whitest loving thou mayest loved be withe equall crime. + + +A sense of evanescence, of dreamlikeness, quite different from the +thoughtless enjoyment of Boiardo, from the bold and manly facing of the +future, the solemn, strong sense of life and death as of waking +realities, of the Elizabethan dramatists, even of weaklings like +Massinger and Beaumont. In Tasso and in Spenser there is no such +joyousness, no such solemnity; only a dreamy watching, a regret which is +scarcely a regret, at the evanescence of pale beauty and pale life, of +joys feebly felt and evils meekly borne. + +With Tasso and Spenser comes to a close the school of Boiardo, the small +number of real artists who finally gave an enduring and beautiful shape +to that strangely mixed and altered material of romantic epic left +behind by the Middle Ages; comes to an end at least till our own day of +appreciative and deliberate imitation and selection and rearrangement of +the artistic forms of the past. Until the revival (after much study and +criticism) by our own poets of Arthur and Gudrun and the Fortunate +Isles, the world had had enough of medięval romance. Chivalry had +avowedly ended in chamberlainry; the devotion to women in the official +routine of the _cicisbeo_; the last romance to which the late +Renaissance had clung, which made it sympathize with Huon, Ogier, +Orlando, and Rinaldo, which had made it take delight still in the +fairyland of Oberon, of Fallerina, of Alcina, of Armida, of Acrasia, the +romance of the new world, had also turned into prose, prose of +blood-stained filth. The humanistic and rationalistic men of the +Renaissance had doubtless early begun to turn up their noses in dainty +dilettantism or scientific contempt, at what were later to be called by +Montaigne, "Ces Lancelots du Lac, ces Amadis, ces Huons et tels fatras +di livres ą quoy l'enfance s'amuse;" and by Ben Jonson: + + + Public nothings, + Abortives of the fabulous dark cloister, + Sent out to poison courts, and infect manners-- + + +the public at large was more constant, and still retained a love for +medięval romance. But more than humanities, more than scientific +scepticism and religious puritanism, did the slow dispelling of the +illusion of Eldorado and the Fortunate Isles. Mankind set sail for +America in brilliant and knightly gear, believing in fountains of youth +and St. Brandan's Isles, with Ariosto, Tasso, and Spenser still in its +pockets. It returns from America either as the tattered fever-stricken +ruffian, or as the vulgar, fat upstart of Spanish comedy, returns +without honour or shame, holding money (and next to money, negroes) of +greater account than any insignia of paladinship or the Round Table; it +is brutal, vulgar, cynical; at best very sad, and it gets written for +its delectation the comic-tragic novels of rapscallions, panders, +prostitutes, and card-sharpers, which from "Lazarillo de Tormes" to "Gil +Blas," and from "Gil Blas" to "Tom Jones," finally replace the romances +of the Launcelots, Galahads, Rinaldos, and Orlandos. + + + +Thus did the medięval romantic-epic stuffs suffer alteration, +adulteration, and loss of character, throughout the long period of the +Middle Ages, without ever receiving an artistic shape, such as should +make all men preserve and cherish them for the only thing which makes +men preserve and cherish such things--that never to be wasted quality, +beauty. The Middle Ages were powerless to endow therewith their own +subjects; so the subjects had to wait, altering more and more with every +passing day, till the coming of the Renaissance. And by that time these +subjects had ceased to have any serious meaning whatever; the Roland of +the song of Roncevaux had become the crazy Orlando of Ariosto; the +Renaud of "The Quatre Fils Aymon," had become the Rinaldo, thrashed with +sheaves of lilies by Cupid, of Matteo Boiardo. The Renaissance took up +the old epic-romantic materials and made out of them works of art; but +works of art which, as I said before, were playthings gets written for +its delectation the comic-tragic novels of rapscallions, panders, +prostitutes, and card-sharpers, which, from "Lazarillo de Tormes" to +"Gil Bias," and from "Gil Bias" to "Tom Jones," finally replace the +romances of the Launcelots, Galahads, Rinaldos, and Orlandos. + + + + * * * * * + + +MEDIEVAL LOVE. + + +On laying down the "Vita Nuova" our soul is at first filled and +resounding with the love of Beatrice. Whatever habits or capacities of +noble loving may lurk within ourselves, have been awakened by the solemn +music of this book, and have sung in unison with Dante's love till we +have ceased to hear the voice of his passion and have heard only the +voice of our own. When the excitement has diminished, when we have grown +able to separate from our own feelings the feelings of the man dead +these five centuries and a half, and to realize the strangeness, the +obsoleteness of this love which for a moment had seemed our love; then a +new phase of impressions has set in, and the "Vita Nuova" inspires us +with mere passionate awe: awe before this passion which we feel to be no +longer our own, but far above and distant from us, as in some rarer +stratum of atmosphere; awe before this woman who creates it, or rather +who is its creation. Even as Dante fancied that the people of Florence +did when the bodily presence of this lady came across their path, so do +we cast down our glance as the image of Beatrice passes across our mind. +Nay, the glory of her, felt so really while reading the few, meagre +words in the book, is stored away in our heart, and clothes with a faint +aureole the lady--if ever in our life we chance to meet her--in whom, +though Dante tells us nothing of stature, features, eyes or hair, we +seem to recognize a likeness to her on whose passage "ogni lingua divien +tremando muta, e gli occhi non ardiscon di guardare." Passion like this, +to paraphrase a line of Rossetti's, is genius; and it arouses in such as +look upon it the peculiar sense of wonder and love, of awe-stricken +raising up of him who contemplates, which accompanies the contemplation +of genius. + +But it may be that one day we feel, instead of this, wonder indeed, but +wonder mingled with doubt. This ideal love, which craves for no union +with its object; which seeks merely to see, nay, which is satisfied with +mere thinking on the beloved one, will strike us with the cold and +barren glitter of the miraculous. This Beatrice, as we gaze on her, will +prove to be no reality of flesh and blood like ourselves; she is a form +modelled in the semblance of that real, living woman who died six +centuries ago, but the substance of which is the white fire of Dante's +love. And the thought will arise that this purely intellectual love of a +scarce-noticed youth for a scarce-known woman is a thing which does not +belong to life, neither sweetening nor ennobling any of its real +relations; that it is, in its dazzling purity and whiteness, in fact a +mere strange and sterile death light, such as could not and should not, +in this world of ours, exist twice over. And, lest we should ever be +tempted to think of this ideal love for Beatrice as of a wonderful and +beautiful, but scarcely natural or useful phenomenon, I would wish to +study the story of its origin and its influence. I would wish to show +that had it not burned thus strangely concentrated and pure, the poets +of succeeding ages could not have taken from that white flame of love +which Dante set alight upon the grave of Beatrice, the spark of ideal +passion which has, in the noblest of our literature, made the desire of +man for woman and of woman for man burn clear towards heaven, leaving +behind the noisome ashes and soul-enervating vapours of earthly lust. + + +I. + +The centuries have made us; forcing us into new practices, teaching us +new habits, creating for us new capacities and wants; adding, ever and +anon, to the soul organism of mankind features which at first were but +accidental peculiarities, which became little by little qualities +deliberately sought for and at lengths inborn and hereditary +characteristics. And thus, in, what we call the Middle Ages, there was +invented by the stress of circumstances, elaborated by half-conscious +effort and bequeathed as an unalienable habit, a new manner of loving. + +The women of classical Antiquity appear to us in poetry and imaginative +literature as one of two things: the wife or the mistress. The wife, +Penelope, Andromache, Alkestis, nay, even the charming young bride in +Xenophon's "Oeconomics," is, while excluded from many concerns, +distinctly reverenced and loved in her own household capacity; but the +reverence is of the sort which the man feels for his parents and his +household gods, and the affection is calm and gently rebuking like that +for his children. The mistress, on the other hand, is the object of +passion which is often very vehement, but which is always either simply +fleshly or merely fancifully ęsthetic or both, and which entirely +precludes any save a degrading influence upon the sensual and suspicious +lover. Even Tibullus, in love matters one of the most modern among the +ancients, and capable of painting many charming and delicate little +domestic idyls even in connection with a mere bought mistress, is +perpetually accusing his Delia of selling herself to a higher bidder, +and sighing at the high probability of her abandoning him for the +Illyrian prętor or some other rich amateur of pretty women. The +barbarous North--whose songs have come down to us either, like the +Volsunga Saga translated by Mr. Morris, in an original pagan version, or +else, as the Nibelungenlied, recast during the early Middle Ages--the +North tells us nothing of the venal paramour, but knows nothing also +beyond the wedded wife; more independent and mighty perhaps than her +counterpart of classical Antiquity, but although often bought, like +Brynhilt or Gudrun, at the expense of tremendous adventures, cherished +scarcely more passionately than the wives of Odysseus and Hector. Thus, +before the Middle Ages, there existed as a rule only a holy, but +indifferent and utterly unlyrical, love for the women, the equals of +their husbands, wooed usually of the family and solemnly given in +marriage without much consultation of their wishes; and a highly +passionate and singing, but completely profligate and debasing, desire +for mercenary though cultivated creatures like the Delias and Cynthlas +of Tibullus and Propertius, or highborn women, descended, like Catullus' +Lesbia, in brazen dishonour to their level, women towards whom there +could not possibly exist on the part of their lovers any sense of +equality, much less of inferiority. To these two kinds of love, chaste +but cold, and passionate but unchaste, the Middle Ages added, or rather +opposed, a new manner of loving, which, although a mere passing +phenomenon, has left the clearest traces throughout our whole mode of +feeling and writing. + +To describe medięval love is a difficult matter, and to describe it +except in negations is next to impossibility. I conceive it to consist +in a certain sentimental, romantic, idealistic attitude towards women, +not by any means incompatible however with the grossest animalism; an +attitude presupposing a complete moral, ęsthetical, and social +superiority on the part of the whole sex, inspiring the very highest +respect and admiration independently of the individual's qualities; and +reaching the point of actual worship, varying from the adoration of a +queen by a courtier to the adoration of a shrine by a pilgrim, in the +case of the one particular lady who happens to be the beloved; an +attitude in the relations of the sexes which results in love becoming an +indispensable part of a noble life, and the devoted attachment to one +individual woman, a necessary requisite of a gentlemanly training. + +Medięval love is not merely a passion, a desire, an affection, a habit; +it is a perfect occupation. It absorbs, or is supposed to absorb, the +Individual; it permeates his life like a religion. It is not one of the +interests of life, or, rather, one of life's phases; it is the whole of +life, all other interests and actions either sinking into an unsingable +region below it, or merely embroidering a variegated pattern upon its +golden background. Medięval love, therefore, never obtains its object, +however much it may obtain the woman; for the object of medięval love, +as of medięval religious mysticism, is not one particular act or series +of acts, but is its own exercise, of which the various incidents of the +drama between man and woman are merely so many results. It has not its +definite stages, like the love of the men of classical Antiquity or the +heroic time of the North: its stages of seeking, obtaining, cherishing, +guarding; it is always at the same point, always in the same condition +of half-religious, half-courtier-like adoration, whether it be +triumphantly successful or sighingly despairing. The man and the +woman--or rather, I should say, the knight and the lady, for medięval +love is an aristocratic privilege, and the love of lower folk is not a +theme for song--the knight and the lady, therefore, seem always, however +knit together by habit, nay, by inextricable meshes of guilt, somehow at +the same distance from one another. Once they have seen and loved each +other, their passion burns on always evenly, burns on (at least +theoretically) to all eternity. It seems almost as if the woman were a +mere shrine, a mysterious receptacle of the ineffable, a grail cup, a +consecrated wafer, but not the ineffable itself. For there is always in +medięval love, however fleshly the incidents which it produces, a +certain Platonic element; that is to say, a craving for, a pursuit of, +something which is an abstraction; an abstraction impossible to define +in its constant shifting and shimmering, and which seems at one moment a +social standard, a religious ideal, or both, and which merges for ever +in the dazzling, vague sheen of the Eternal Feminine. Hence, one of the +most distinctive features of medięval love, an extraordinary sameness of +intonation, making it difficult to distinguish between the _bonā fide_ +passion for which a man risks life and honour, and the mere +conventional gallantry of the knight who sticks a lady's glove on his +helmet as a compliment to her rank; nay, between the impure adoration of +an adulterous lamia like Yseult, and the mystical adoration of a +glorified Mother of God; for both are women, both are ladies, and +therefore the greatest poet of the early Middle Ages, Gottfried von +Strassburg, sings them both with the same religious respect, and the +same hysterical rapture. This medięval love is furthermore a +deliberately expected, sought-for, and received necessity in a man's +life; it is not an accident, much less an incidental occurrence to be +lightly taken or possibly avoided: it is absolutely indispensable to +man's social training, to his moral and ęsthetical self-improvement; it +is part and parcel of manhood and knighthood. Hence, where it does not +arise of itself (and where a man is full of the notion of such love, it +is rare that it does not come but too soon) it has to be sought for. +Ulrich von Liechtenstein, in his curious autobiography written late in +the twelfth century, relates how ever since his childhood he had been +aware of the necessity of the loyal love service of a lady for the +accomplishment of knightly duties; and how, as soon as he was old enough +to love, he looked around him for a lady whom he might serve; a +proceeding renewed in more prosaic days and with a curious pedantic +smack, by Lorenzo dei Medici; and then again, perhaps for the last time, +by the Knight of La Mancha, in that memorable discussion which ended in +the enthronement as his heart's queen of the unrivalled Dulcinea of +Toboso. _Frowendienst,_ "lady's service," is the name given by Ulrich +von Liechtenstein, a medięval Quixote, outshining by far the mad +Provenēals Rudel and Vidal, to the memoirs very delightfully done into +modern German by Ludwig Tieck; and "lady's service" is the highest +occupation of knightly leisure, the subject of the immense bulk of +medięval poetry. "Lady's service" in deeds of arms and song, in constant +praise and defence of the beloved, in heroic enterprise and madcap +mummery, in submission and terror to the wondrous creature whom the +humble servant, the lover, never calls by her sacred name, speaking of +her in words unknown to Antiquity, _dompna, dame, frowe, madonna_--words +of which the original sense has almost been forgotten, although there +cleave to them even now ideas higher than those associated with the +_puella_ of the ancients, the _wib_ of the heroic days--lady, +mistress--the titles of the Mother of God, who is, after all, only the +mystical Soul's Paramour of the medięval world. "Lady's service"--the +almost technical word, expressing the position, half-serf-like, +half-religious, the bonds of complete humility and never-ending +faithfulness, the hopes of reward, the patience under displeasure, the +pride in the livery of servitude, the utter absorption of the life of +one individual in the life of another; which constitute in Provence, in +France, in Germany, in England, in Italy, in the fabulous kingdoms of +Arthur and Charlemagne, the strange new thing which I have named +Medięval Love. + +Has such a thing really existed? Are not these medięval poets leagued +together in a huge conspiracy to deceive us? Is it possible that strong +men have wept and fainted at a mere woman's name, like the Count of +Nevers in "Flamenca," or that their mind has swooned away in months of +reverie like that of Parzifal in Eschenbach's poem; that worldly wise +and witty men have shipped off and died on sea for love of an unseen +woman like Jaufre Rudel; or dressed in wolf's hide and lurked and fled +before the huntsmen-like Peire Vidal; or mangled their face and cut off +their finger, and, clothing themselves in rags more frightful than +Nessus' robe, mixed in the untouchable band of lepers like Ulrich von +Liechtenstein? Is it possible to believe that the insane enterprises of +the Amadises, Lisvarts and Felixmartes of late medięval romance, that +the behaviour of Don Quixote in the Sierra Morena, ever had any serious +models in reality? Nay, more difficult still to believe--because the +whole madness of individuals is more credible than the half-madness of +the whole world--is it possible to believe that, as the poems of +innumerable trouvčres and troubadours, minnesingers and Italian poets, +as the legion of medięval romances of the cycles of Charlemagne, Arthur, +and Amadis would have it, that during so long a period of time society +could have been enthralled by this hysterical, visionary, artificial, +incredible religion of medięval love? It is at once too grotesque and +too beautiful, too high and too low, to be credible; and our first +impulse, on closing the catechisms and breviaries, the legendaries and +hymn-books of this strange new creed, is to protest that the love poems +must be allegories, the love romances solar myths, the Courts of Love +historical bungles; that all this medięval world of love is a figment, a +misinterpretation, a falsehood. + +But if we seek more than a mere casual impression; if, instead of +feeling sceptical over one or two fragments of evidence, we attempt to +collect the largest possible number of facts together; if we read not +one medięval love story, but twenty--not half a dozen medięval love +poems, but several scores; if we really investigate into the origin of +the apparent myth, the case speedily alters. Little by little this which +had been inconceivable becomes not merely intelligible, but inevitable; +the myth becomes an historical phenomenon of the most obvious and +necessary sort. Medięval love, which had seemed to us a poetic fiction, +is turned into a reality; and a reality, alas, which is prosaic. Let us +look at it. + +Medięval love is first revealed in the sudden and almost simultaneous +burst of song which, like the twitter and trill so dear to trouvčres, +troubadours, and minnesingers, fills the woods that yesterday were +silent and dead, and greeted the earliest sunshine, the earliest faint +green after the long winter numbness of the dark ages, after the +boisterous gales of the earliest Crusade. The French and Provenēals +sang first, the Germans later, the Sicilians last; but although we may +say after deliberate analysis, such or such a form, or such or such a +story, was known in this country before it appeared in that one, such +imitation or suggestion was so rapid that with regard to the French, the +Provenēals, and the Germans at least, the impression is simultaneous; +only the Sicilians beginning distinctly later, forerunners of the new +love lyric, wholly different from that of trouvčres, troubadours, and +minnesingers, of the Italians of the latter thirteenth century. And this +simultaneous revelation of medięval love takes place in the last quarter +of the twelfth century, when Northern France had already consolidated +into a powerful monarchy, and Paris, after the teachings of Abélard, was +recognized as the intellectual metropolis of Europe; when south of the +Loire the brilliant Angevine kings held the overlordship of the cultured +Raymonds of Toulouse and of the reviving Latin municipalities of +Provence \ when Germany was welded as a compact feudal mass by the most +powerful of the Stauffens; and the papacy had been built up by Gregory +and Alexander into a political wall against which Frederick and Henry +vainly battered; when the Italian commonwealths grew slowly but surely, +as yet still far from guessing that the day would come when their +democracy should produce a new civilization to supersede this triumphant +medięval civilization of the early Capetiens, the Angevines, and the +Hohenstauffens. Europe was setting forth once more for the East; but no +longer as the ignorant and enthusiastic hordes of Peter the Hermit: Asia +was the great field for adventure, the great teacher of new luxuries, at +once the Eldorado and the grand tour of all the brilliant and +inquisitive and unscrupulous chivalry of the day. And, while into the +West were insidiously entering habits and modes of thought of the East; +throughout Germany and Provence, and throughout the still obscure free +burghs of Italy, was spreading the first indication of that emotional +mysticism which, twenty or thirty years later, was to burst out in the +frenzy of spiritual love of St. Francis and his followers. The moment is +one of the most remarkable in all history: the premature promise in the +twelfth century of that intellectual revival which was delayed +throughout Northern Europe until the sixteenth. It is the moment when +society settled down, after the anarchy of eight hundred years, on its +feudal basis; a basis fallaciously solid, and in whose presence no one +might guess that the true and definitive Renaissance would arise out of +the democratic civilization of Italy. + +Such is the moment when we first hear the almost universal song of +medięval love. This song comes from the triumphantly reorganized portion +of society, not from the part which is slowly working its way to +reorganization; not from the timidly encroaching burghers, but from the +nobles. The reign of town poetry, of fabliaux and meistersang, comes +later; the poets of the early Middle Ages, trouvčres, troubadours, and +minnesingers are, with barely one or two exceptions, all knights. And +their song comes from the castle. Now, in order to understand medięval +love, we must reflect for a moment upon this feudal castle, and upon the +kind of life which the love poets of the late twelfth and early +thirteenth century--whether lords like Bertram de Born, and Guillaume de +Poitiers, among the troubadours; the Vidame de Chartres, Meurisses de +Craon, and the Duke of Brabant among the trouvčres of Northern France; +like Ulrich von Liechtenstein among the minnesingers; or retainers and +hangers-on like Bernard de Ventadour and Armand de Mareulh, like +Chrestiens de Troyes, Gaisses Brulez, or Quienes de Béthune, like +Walther, Wolfram, and Tannhäuser--great or small, good or bad, saw +before them and mixed with in that castle. The castle of a great +feudatory of the early Middle Ages, whether north or south of the Loire, +in Austria or in Franconia, is like a miniature copy of some garrison +town in barbarous countries: there is an enormous numerical +preponderance of men over women; for only the chiefs in command, the +overlord, and perhaps one or two of his principal kinsmen or adjutants, +are permitted the luxury of a wife; the rest of the gentlemen are +subalterns, younger sons without means, youths sent to learn their +military duty and the ways of the world: a whole pack of men without +wives, without homes, and usually without fortune. High above all this +deferential male crowd, moves the lady of the castle: highborn, proud, +having brought her husband a dower of fiefs often equal to his own, and +of vassals devoted to her race. About her she has no equals; her +daughters, scarcely out of the nurse's hands, are given away in +marriage; and her companions, if companions they may be called, are the +waiting ladies, poor gentlewomen situated between the maid of honour and +the ladies' maid, like that Brangwaine whom Yseult sacrifices to her +intrigue with Tristram, or those damsels whom Flamenca gives over to the +squires of her lover Guillems; at best, the wife of one of her husband's +subalterns, or some sister or aunt or widow kept by charity. Round this +lady--the stately, proud lady perpetually described by medięval +poets--flutters the swarm of young men, all day long, in her path: +serving her at meals, guarding her apartments, nay, as pages, admitted +even into her most secret chamber; meeting her for ever in the +narrowness of that castle life, where every unnecessary woman is a +burden usurping the place of a soldier, and, if possible, replaced by a +man. Servants, lacqueys, and enjoying the privileges of ubiquity of +lacqueys, yet, at the same time, men of good birth and high breeding, +good at the sword and at the lute; bound to amuse this highborn woman, +fading away in the monotony of feudal life, with few books to read or +unable to read them, and far above all the household concerns which +devolve on the butler, the cellarer, the steward, the gentleman, +honourably employed as a servant. To them, to these young men, with few +or no young women of their own age to associate, and absolutely no +unmarried girls who could be a desirable match, the lady of the castle +speedily becomes a goddess, the impersonation at once of that feudal +superiority before which they bow, of that social perfection which they +are commanded to seek, and of that womankind of which the castle affords +so few examples. To please her, this lazy, bored, highbred woman, with +all the squeamishness and caprice of high birth and laziness about her, +becomes their ideal; to be favourably noticed, their highest glory; to +be loved, these wretched mortals, by this divinity--that thought must +often pass through their brain and terrify them with its delicious +audacity; oh no, such a thing is not possible. But it is. The lady at +first, perhaps most often, singles out as a pastime some young knight, +some squire, some page; and, in a half-queenly, half-motherly way, +corrects, rebukes his deficiencies, undertakes to teach him his duty as +a servant. The romance of the "Petit Jehan de Saintre," written in the +fifteenth century, but telling, with a delicacy of cynicism worthy of +Balzac, what must have been the old, old story of the whole feudal +Middle Ages, shows the manner in which, while feeling that he is being +trained to knightly courtesy and honour, the young man in the service of +a great feudal lady is gradually taught dissimulation, lying, intrigue; +is initiated by the woman who looms above him like a saint into all the +foulness of adultery. Adultery; a very ugly word, which must strike +almost like a handful of mud in the face whosoever has approached this +subject of medięval love in admiration of its strange delicacy and +enthusiasm. Yet it is a word which must be spoken, for in it is the +explanation of the whole origin and character of this passion which +burst into song in the early Middle Ages. This almost religious love, +this love which conceives no higher honour than the service of the +beloved, no higher virtue than eternal fidelity--this love is the love +for another man's wife. Between unmarried young men and young women, +kept carefully apart by the system which gives away a girl without her +consent and only to a rich suitor, there is no possibility of love in +these early feudal courts; the amours, however licentious, between +kings' daughters and brave knights, of the Carolingian tales, belong to +a different rank of society, to the prose romances made up in the +fourteenth century for the burgesses of cities; the intrigues, ending in +marriage, of the princes and princesses of the cycle of Amadis, belong +to a different period, to the fifteenth century, and to courts where +feudal society scarcely exists; the squires, the young knights who hang +about a great baronial establishment of the twelfth and thirteenth +centuries, have still to make their fortune, and do not dream of +marriage. The husband, on the other hand, the great lord or successful +knightly adventurer, married late in life, and married from the +necessity, for ever pressing upon the feudal proprietor, of adding on +new fiefs and new immunities, of increasing his importance and +independence in proportion to the hourly increasing strength and claims +of the overlord, the king, who casts covetous eyes upon him--the husband +has not married for love; he has had his love affairs with the wives of +other men in his day, or may still have them; this lady is a mere feudal +necessity, she is required to give him a dower and give him an heir, +that is all. If the husband does not love, how much less can the wife; +married, as she is, scarce knowing what marriage is, to a man much older +than herself, whom most probably she has never seen, to whom she is a +mere investment. Nay, there is not even the after-marriage love of the +ancients: this wife is not the housekeeper, the woman who works that the +man's house may be rich and decorous; not even the nurse of his +children, for the children are speedily given over to the squires and +duennas; she is the woman of another family who has come into his, the +stranger who must be respected (as that most typical medięval wife, +Eleanor of Guienne, was respected by her husbands) on account of her +fiefs, her vassals, her kinsfolk; but who cannot be loved. Can there be +love between man and wife? There cannot be love between man and wife. +This is no answer of mine, fantastically deduced from medięval poetry. +It is the answer solemnly made to the solemnly asked question by the +Court of Love held by the Countess of Champagne in 1174, and registered +by Master Andrew the King of France's chaplain: "Dicimus enim et +stabilito tenore firmamus amorem non posse inter duos jugales suas +extendere vires." And the reason alleged for this judgment brings us +back to the whole conception of medięval love as a respectful service +humbly waiting for a reward: "For," pursues the decision published by +André le Chapelain, "whereas lovers grant to each other favours freely +and from no legal necessity, married people have the duty of obeying +each other's wishes and of refusing nothing to one another." "No love is +possible between man and wife," repeat the Courts of Love which, +consisting of all the highborn ladies of the province and presided by +some mighty queen or princess, represent the social opinions of the day. +"But this lady," says a knight (Miles) before the love tribunal of Queen +Eleanor, "promised to me that if ever she should lose the love of her +lover, she would take me in his place. She has wedded the man who was +her lover, and I have come to claim fulfilment of her promise." The +court discusses for awhile. "We cannot," answers Queen Eleanor, "go +against the Countess of Champagne's decision that love cannot exist +between man and wife. We therefore desire this lady to fulfil her +promise and give you her love." Again, there come to the Court of Love +of the Viscountess of Narbonne a knight and a lady, who desire to know +whether, having been once married, but since divorced, a love engagement +between them would be honourable. The viscountess decides that "Love +between those who have been married together, but who have since been +divorced from one another, is not to be deemed reprehensible; nay, that +it is to be considered as honourable." And these Courts of Love, be it +remarked, were frequently held on occasion of the marriage of great +personages; as, for instance, of that between Louis VII. and Eleanor of +Poitiers in 1137. The poetry of the early Middle Ages follows implicitly +the decisions of these tribunals, which reveal a state of society to +which the nearest modern approach is that of Italy in the eighteenth +century, when, as Goldoni and Parini show us, as Stendhal (whose "De +l'Amour" may be taken as the modern "Breviari d'Amor") expounds, there +was no impropriety possible as long as a lady was beloved by any one +except her own husband. No love, therefore, between unmarried people +(the cyclical romances, as before stated, and the Amadises, belong to +another time of social condition, and the only real exception to my rule +of which I can think is the lovely French tale of "Aucassin et +Nicolette"); and no love between man and wife. But love there must be; +and love there consequently is; love for the married woman from the man +who is not her husband. The feudal lady, married without being consulted +and without having had a chance of knowing what love is, yet lives to +know love; lives to be taught it by one of these many bachelors bound to +flutter about her in military service or social duty; lives to teach it +herself. And she is too powerful in her fiefs and kinsmen, too powerful +in the public opinion which approves and supports her, to be hampered by +her husband. The husband, indeed, has grown up in the same habits, has +known, before marrying, the customs sanctioned by the Courts of Love; he +has been the knight of some other man's wife in his day, what right has +he to object? As in the days of Italian _cecisbei_, the early medięval +lover might say with Goldoni's Don Alfonso or Don Roberto, "I _serve_ +your wife--such or such another serves mine, what harm can there be in +it?" ("Io servo vostra moglie, Don Eugenio favorisce la mia; che male c' +e?" I am quoting from memory.) And as a fact, we hear little of +jealousy; the amusement of En Barral when Peire Vidal came in and kissed +his sleeping wife; and the indignation of all Provence for the murder of +Guillems de Cabestanh (buried in the same tomb with the lady who had +been made to eat of his heart)--showing from opposite sides how the +society accustomed to Courts of Love looked upon the duties of husbands. + +Such was the social life in those feudal courts whence first arises the +song of medięval love, and that this is the case is proved by the whole +huge body of early medięval poetry. We must not judge, as I have said, +either by poems of much earlier date, like the Nibelungen and the +Carolingian _chansons de geste_, which merely received a new form in the +early Middle Ages; still less from the prose romances of Mélusine, +Milles et Amys, Palemon and Arcite, and a host of others which were +elaborated only later and under the influence of the quite unfeudal +habits of the great cities; and least of all from that strange late +southern cycle of the Amadises, from which, odd as it seems, many of our +notions of chivalric love have, through our ancestors, through the +satirists or burlesque poets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, +been inherited. We must look at the tales which, as we are constantly +being told by trouvčres, troubadours, and minnesingers, were the +fashionable reading of the feudal classes of the twelfth and thirteenth +centuries: the tales best known to us in the colourless respectability +of the collection made in the reign of Edward IV. by Sir Thomas Malory, +and called by him the "Morte d'Arthur"--of the ladies and knights of +Arthur's court; of the quest of the Grail by spotless knights who were +bastards and fathers of bastards; of the intrigues of Tristram of +Lyoness and Queen Yseult; of Launcelot and Guenevere; the tales which +Francesca and Paolo read together. We must look, above all, at the lyric +poetry of France, Provence, Germany, and Sicily in the early Middle +Ages. + + + Vos qui trčs bien ameis i petit mentendeis + Por l'amor de Ihesu les pucelles ameis. + Nos trouvons en escris de sainte auctoriteis + Ke pucelle est la fleur de loyaulment ameir. + + +This strange entreaty to love the maidens for the sake of Christ's love, +this protest of a nameless northern French poet (Wackernagel, +Altfranzösische Lieder and Leiche IX.) against the adulterous passion of +his contemporaries, comes to us, pathetically enough, solitary, faint, +unnoticed in the vast chorus, boundless like the spring song of birds or +the sound of the waves, of poets singing the love of other men's wives. +But, it may be objected--how can we tell that these love songs, so +carefully avoiding all mention of names, are not addressed to the +desired bride, to the legitimate wife of the poet? For several reasons; +and mainly, for the crushing evidence of an undefinable something which +tells us that they are not. The other reasons are easily stated. We know +that feudal habits would never have allowed to unmarried women (and +women were married when scarcely out of their childhood) the +opportunities for the relations which obviously exist between the poet +and his lady; and that, if by some accident a young knight might fall in +love with a girl, he would address not her but her parents, since the +Middle Ages, who were indifferent to adultery, were, like the southern +nations among whom the married woman is not expected to be virtuous, +extreme sticklers for the purity of their unmarried womankind. Further, +we have no instance of an unmarried woman being ever addressed during +the early Middle Ages, in those terms of social respect--_madame, +domna, frowe, madonna_--which essentially belong to the mistress of a +household; nor do these stately names fit in with any theory which would +make us believe that the lady addressed by the poet is the jealously +guarded daughter of the house with whom he is plotting a secret +marriage, or an elopement to end off in marriage. This is not the way +that Romeo speaks to Juliet, nor even that the princesses in the +cyclical romances and in the Amadises are wooed by their bridegrooms. +This is not the language of a lover who is broaching his love, and who +hopes, however timidly, to consummate it before all the world by +marriage. It is obviously the language of a man either towards a woman +who is taking a pleasure in keeping him dangling without favours which +she has implicitly or explicitly promised; or towards a woman who is +momentarily withholding favours which her lover has habitually enjoyed. +And in a large proportion of cases the poems of trouvčres, troubadours, +and minnesingers are the expression of fortunate love, the fond +recollection or eager expectation of meetings with the beloved. All this +can evidently not be connected with the wooing, however stealthy, +however Romeo-and-Juliet-like of a bride; still less can it be explained +in reference to love within wedlock. A man does not, however loving, +worship his wife as his social superior; he does not address her in +titles of stiff respect; he does not sigh and weep and supplicate for +love which is his due, and remind his wife that she owes it him in +return for loyal, humble, discreet service. Above all, a man (except in +some absurd comedy perhaps, where the husband, in an age of _cicisbeos_, +is in love with his own wife and dares not admit it before the society +which holds "that there can be no love between married folk ")--a +husband, I repeat, does not beg for, arrange, look forward to, and +recall with triumph or sadness, secret meetings with his own wife. Now +the secret meeting is, in nearly every aristocratic poet of the early +poetry, the inevitable result of the humble praises and humble requests +for kindness; it is, most obviously, _the_ reward for which the poet is +always importuning. Medięval love poetry, compared with the love poetry +of Antiquity and the love poetry of the revival of letters, is, in its +lyric form, decidedly chaste; but it is perfectly explicit; and, for all +its metaphysical tendencies and its absence of clearly painted pictures, +the furthest possible removed from being Platonic. One of the most +important, characteristic, and artistically charming categories of +medięval love lyrics is that comprising the Provenēal _serena_ and +_alba,_ with their counterparts in the _langue d'oil_, and the so-called +_Wachtlieder_ of the minnesingers; and this category of love poetry may +be defined as the drama, in four acts, of illicit love. The faithful +lover has received from his lady an answer to his love, the place and +hour are appointed; all the day of which the evening is to bring him +this honour, he goes heavy hearted and sighing: "Day, much do you grow +for my grief, and the evening, the evening and the long hope kills me." +Thus far the _serena_, the evening song, of Guiraut Riquier. A lovely +anonymous _alba,_ whose refrain, "Oi deus, oi deus; de l' alba, tan tost +ve!" is familiar to every smatterer of Provenēal, shows us the lady and +her knight in an orchard beneath the hawthorn, giving and taking the +last kisses while the birds sing and the sky whitens with dawn. "The +lady is gracious and pleasant, and many look upon her for her beauty, +and her heart Is all in loving loyally; alas, alas, the dawn! how soon +it: comes!--" "Oi deus, oi deus; de l'alba, tan tost ve!" The real _alba_ +is the same as the German _Wachtlieder,_ the song of the squire or +friend posted at the garden gate or outside the castle wall, warning the +lovers to separate. "Fair comrade (Bel Companho), I call to you singing. +'Sleep no more, for I hear the birds announcing the day in the trees, +and I fear that the jealous one may find you;' and in a moment it will +be day, 'Bel Companho, come to the window and look at the signs in the +sky! you will know me a faithful messenger; if you do it not, it will be +to your harm" and in a moment it will be dawn (et ades sera l' alba)... +Bel Companho, since I left you I have not slept nor raised myself from +my knees; for I have prayed to God the Son of Saint Mary, that he should +send me: back my faithful comrade, and in a moment it will be dawn In +this _alba_ of Guiraut de Borneulh, the lover comes at last to the +window, and cries to his watching comrade that he is too happy to care +either for the dawn or for the jealous one. The German _Wachtlieder_ are +even more explicit. "He must away at once and without delay," sings the +watchman in a poem of Wolfram, the austere singer of Parzifal and the +Grail Quest; "let him go, sweet lady; let him away from thy love so that +he keep his honour and life. He trusted himself to me that I should +bring him safely hence; it is day ..." "Sing what thou wilt, watchman," +answers the lady, "but leave him here." In a far superior, but also far +less chaste poem of Heinrich von Morungen, the lady, alone and +melancholy, wakes up remembering the sad white light of morning, the sad +cry of the watchman, which separated her from her knight. Still more +frankly, and in a poem which is one of the few real masterpieces of +Minnesang, the lady in Walther von der Vogelweide's "Under der linden an +der Heide" narrates a meeting in the wood. "What passed between us shall +never be known by any! never by any, save him and me--yes, and by the +little nightingale that sang _Tandaradei_! The little bird will surely +be discreet." + +The songs of light love for another's wife of troubadour, trouvčre, and +minnesinger, seem to have been squeezed together, so that all their +sweet and acrid perfume is, so to speak, sublimated, in the recently +discovered early Provenēal narrative poem called "Flamenca." Like the +"Tristram" of Gottfried von Strassburg, like all these light medięval +love _lyrics,_ of which I have been speaking, the rhymed story of +"Flamenca," a pale and simple, but perfect petalled daisy, has come up +in a sort of moral and intellectual dell in the winter of the Middle +Ages--a dell such as you meet in hollows of even the most wind-swept +southern hills, where, while all round the earth is frozen and the short +grass nibbled away by the frost, may be found even at Christmas a bright +sheen of budding wheat beneath the olives on the slope, a yellow haze of +sun upon the grass in which the little aromatic shoots of fennel and +mint and marigold pattern with greenness the sere brown, the +frost-burnt; where the very leafless fruit trees have a spring-like rosy +tinge against the blue sky, and the tufted little osiers flame a joyous +orange against the greenness of the hill. + +Such spots there are--and many--in the winter of the Middle Ages; though +it is not in them, but where the rain beats, and the snow and the wind +tugs, that grow, struggling with bitterness, the great things of the +day: the philosophy of Abélard, the love of man of St. Francis, the +patriotism of the Lombard communes; nor that lie dormant, fertilized in +the cold earth, the great things of art and thought, the great things to +come. But in them arise the delicate winter flowers which we prize: +tender, pale things, without much life, things either come too soon or +stayed too late, among which is "Flamenca;" one of those roses, nipped +and wrinkled, but stained a brighter red by the frost, which we pluck in +December or in March; beautiful, bright, scentless roses, which, scarce +in bud, already fall to pieces in our hand. "Flamenca" is simply the +narrative of the loves of the beautiful wife of the bearish and jealous +Count Archambautz, and of Guillems de Nevers, a brilliant young knight +who hears of the lady's sore captivity, is enamoured before he sees her, +dresses up as the priest's clerk, and speaks one word with her while +presenting the mass book to be kissed, every holiday; and finally +deceives the vigilance of the husband by means of a subterranean +corridor, which he gets built between his inn and the bath-room of the +lady at the famous waters of Bourbon-les-Bains. In this world of +"Flamenca," which is in truth the same world as that of the "Romaunt of +the Rose," the "Morte d'Arthur," and of the love poets of early France +and Germany, conjugal morality and responsibility simply do not exist. +It seems an unreal pleasure-garden, with a shadowy guardian--impalpable +to us gross moderns--called Honour, but where, as it seems, Love only +reigns. Love, not the mystic and melancholy god of the "Vita Nuova," but +a foppish young deity, sentimental at once and sensual, of fashionable +feudal life: the god of people with no apparent duties towards others, +unconscious of any restraints save those of this vague thing called +honour; whose highest mission for the knight, as put in our English +"Romaunt of the Rose" is to-- + + Set thy might and alle thy witte + Wymmen and ladies for to plese, + And to do thyng that may hem ese; + +while, for the lady, it is expressed with perfect simplicity of +shamelessness by Flamenca herself to her damsels, teaching them that the +woman must yield to the pleasure of her lover. Now love, when young, +when, so to speak, but just born and able to feed (as a newborn child on +milk, without hungering for more solid food) on looks and words and +sighs; love thus young, is a fair-seeming godhead, and the devotion to +him a pretty and delicate piece of ęstheticism. And such it is here in +"Flamenca," where there certainly exists neither God nor Christ, both +complete absentees, whose priest becomes a courteous lover's valet, +whose church the place for amorous rendezvous, whose sacrifice of mass +and prayer becomes a means of amorous correspondence: Cupid, in the +shape of his slave Guillems de Nevers--become _patarin_(zealot) for +love--peeping with shaven golden head from behind the missal, touching +the lady's hand and whispering with the words of spiritual peace the +declaration of love, the appointment for meeting. God and Christ, I +repeat, are absentees. Where they are I know not; perhaps over the Rhine +with the Lollards in their weavers' dens, or over the Alps in the cell +of St. Francis; not here, certainly, or if here, themselves become the +mere slaves of love. But this King Love, as long as a mere infant, is a +sweet and gracious divinity, surrounded by somewhat of the freshness and +hawthorn sweetness of spring which seem to accompany his favourite +Guillems. Guillems de Nevers, "who could still grow," this brilliant +knight and troubadour, in his white silken and crimson and purple +garments and soundless shoes embroidered with flowers, this prince of +tournaments and _tensos_, who hearing the sorrows of the beautiful +Flamenca, loves her unseen, sits sighing in sight of her prison bower, +and faints like a hero of the Arabian Nights at her name, and has +visions of her as St. Francis has of Christ; this younger and brighter +Sir Launcelot, is an ideal little figure, whom you might mistake for +Love himself as described in the "Romaunt of the Rose;" Love's avatar or +incarnation, on whose appearance the year blooms into spring, the fruit +trees blossom, the birds sing, the girls dance at eve round the +maypoles; behind whom, while reading this poem, we seem to see the corn +shine green beneath the olives, the white-blossomed branches slant +across the blue sky. For is he not the very incarnation of chivalry, of +beauty, and of love? So much for this King Love while but quite young. +Unfortunately he is speedily weaned of his baby food of mere blushing +glances and sighed-out names; and then his aspect, his kingdom's aspect, +the aspect of his votaries, undergoes a change. The profane but charming +game of the loving clerk and the missal is exchanged for the more +coarse hide-and-seek of hidden causeways and tightened bolts, with +jealous husbands guarding the useless door; Guillems becomes but an +ordinary Don Juan or Lovelace, Flamenca but a sorry, sneaking +adulteress, and the gracious damsels mere common sluts, curtseying at +the loan (during the interview of nobler folk) of the gallant's squires. +For the scent of May, of fresh leaves and fallen blossoms, we get the +nauseous vapours of the bath-room; and, alas, King Love has lost his +aureole and his wings and turned keeper of the hot springs, sought out +by the gouty and lepers, of Bourbon-les-Bains; and in closing this book, +so delightfully begun, we sicken at the whiff of hot and fetid moral air +as we should sicken in passing over the outlet of the polluted hot +water. + +"But where is the use of telling us all this?" the reader will ask; +"every one knows that illicit passion existed and exists, and has its +chroniclers, its singers in prose and in verse. But what has all this +poetry of common adultery to do with a book like the 'Vita Nuova,' with +that strange new thing, that lifelong worship of a woman, which you call +medięval love?" This much: that out of this illicit love, and out of it, +gross as it looks, alone arises the possibility of the "Vita Nuova;" +arises the possibility of the romantic and semi-religious love of the +Middle Ages. Or, rather, let us say that this mere loose love of the +_albas_ and _Wachtlieder_ and "Flamenca," is the substratum, nay, is the +very flesh and blood, of the spiritual passion to which, in later days, +we owe the book of Beatrice. + +It is a harsh thing to say, but one which all sociology teaches us, that +as there exists no sensual relation which cannot produce for its +ennoblement a certain amount of passion, so also does there exist no +passion (and Phędrus is there to prove it) so vile and loathsome as to +be unable to weave about itself a glamour of ideal sentiment. The poets +of the Middle Ages strove after the criminal possession of another man's +wife. This, however veiled with fine and delicate poetic expressions, is +the thing for which they wait and sigh and implore; this is the reward, +the supremely honouring and almost sanctifying reward which the lady +cannot refuse to the knight who has faithfully and humbly served her. +The whole bulk of the love lyrics of the early Middle Ages are there to +prove it; and if the allusions in them are not sufficiently clear, those +who would be enlightened may study the discussions of the allegorical +persons even in the English (and later) version of Guillaume de Lorris' +"Roman de la Rose;" and turn to what, were it in _langue d'oc_, we +should call a _tenso_ of Guillaume li Viniers among Mätzner's +"Altfranzösische Lieder-dichter." The catastrophe of Ulrich von +Liechtenstein's "Frowendienst," where the lady, the "virtuous," the +"pure," as he is pleased to call her, after making him cut off his +finger, dress in leper's clothes, chop off part of his upper lip, and go +through the most marvellous Quixotic antics dressed in satin and pearls +and false hair as Queen Venus, and jousting in this costume with every +knight between Venice and Styria, all for her honour and glory; pulls +the gallant in a basket up to her window, and then lets him drop down +into the moat which is no better than a sewer; this grotesque and +tragically resented end of Ulrich's first _love service_ speaks volumes +on the point. The stones in Nostradamus' "Lives of the Troubadours," the +incidents in Gottfried's "Tristan und Isolde," nay, the adventures even +in our expunged English "Morte d'Arthur," relating to the birth of Sir +Galahad, are as explicit as anything in Brantōme or the Queen of +Navarre; the most delicate love songs of Provence and Germany are +cobwebs spun round Decameronian situations. And all this is permitted, +admitted, sanctioned by feudal society even as the _cecisbeos_ of the +noble Italian ladies were sanctioned by the society of the seventeenth +and eighteenth centuries. In the medięval castle, where, as we have +seen, the lady, separated from her own sex, is surrounded by a swarm of +young men without a chance of marriage, and bound to make themselves +agreeable to the wife of a military superior; the woman soon ceases to +be the exclusive property of her husband, and the husband speedily +discovers that the majority, hence public ridicule, are against any +attempt at monopolizing her. Thus adultery becomes, as we have seen, +accepted as an institution under the name of _service_; and, like all +other social institutions, developes a morality of its own--a morality +within immorality, of faithfulness within infidelity. The lady must be +true to her knight, and the knight must be true to his lady: the Courts +of Love solemnly banish from society any woman who is known to have more +than one lover. Faithfulness is the first and most essential virtue of +medięval love; a virtue unknown to the erotic poets of Antiquity, and +which modern times have inherited from the Middle Ages as a requisite, +even (as the reproaches of poets of the Alfred de Musset school teach +us) in the most completely illicit love. Tristram and Launcelot, the two +paragons of knighthood, are inviolably constant to their mistress: the +husband may and must be deceived, but not the wife who helps to deceive +him. Yseult of Brittany and Elaine, the mother of Galahad, do not +succeed in breaking the vows made to Yseult the Fair and to Queen +Guenevere. The beautiful lady in the hawthorn _alba_ "a son cor en amar +lejalmens." But this loyal loving is for the knight who is warned to +depart, certainly not for the husband, the _gilos_, in whose despite +("Bels dous amios, baizem nos eu e vos--Aval els pratzon chantols +auzellos--_Tot O fassam en despeit del gilos_") they are meeting. The +ladies of the minnesingers are "pure," "good," "faithful" (and each and +all are pure, good, and faithful, as long as they do not resist) from +the point of view of the lover, not of the husband, if indeed a husband +be permitted to have any point of view at all. And as fidelity is the +essential virtue in these adulterous connections, so infidelity is the +greatest crime that a woman (and even a man) can commit, the greatest +misfortune which fate can send to an unhappy knight. That he leaves a +faithful mistress behind him is the one hope of the knight who, taking +the cross, departs to meet the scimitars of Saladin's followers, the +fevers, the plagues, the many miserable deaths of the unknown East. "If +any lady be unfaithful," says Quienes de Béthune, "she will have to be +unfaithful with some base wretch." + + + Et les dames ki castement vivront + Se loiauté font a ceus qui iront; + Et seles font par mal conseil folaje, + A lasques gens et mauvais le feront, + Car tout li bon iront en cest voiage. + + +"I have taken the cross on account of my sins," sings Albrecht von +Johansdorf, one of the most earnest of the minnesingers; "now let God +help, till my return, the woman who has great sorrow on my account, in +order that I may find her possessed of her honour; let Him grant me this +prayer. But if she change her life (_i.e_., take to bad courses), then +may God forbid my ever returning." The lady is bound (the Courts of Love +decide this point of honour) to reward her faithful lover. "A knight," +says a lady, in an anonymous German song published by Bartsch, "has +served me according to my will. Before too much time elapse, I must +reward him; nay, if all the world were to object, he must have his way +with me" ("und waerez al der Werlte leit, so muoz sīn wille an mir +ergän"). But, on the other hand, the favoured knight is bound to protect +his lady's good fame. + + + Se jai mamie en tel point mis, + Que tout motroit (m'octroit) sans esformer, + Tant doi je miex sonnor gaiter-- + + +thus one of the interlocutors in a French _jeu-parti_, published by +Mätzner; a rule which, if we may judge from the behaviour of Tristram +and Launcelot, and from the last remnants of medięval love lore in +modern French novels, means simply that the more completely a man has +induced a woman to deceive her husband, the more stoutly is he bound to +deny, with lies, rows, and blows, that she has ever done anything of the +sort. Here, then, we find established, as a very fundamental necessity +of this socially recognized adultery, a reciprocity of fidelity between +lover and mistress which Antiquity never dreamed of even between husband +and wife (Agamemnon has a perfect right to Briseis or Chryseis, but +Clytęmnestra has no right to Aegisthus); and which indeed could scarcely +arise as a moral obligation except where the woman was not bound to love +the man (which the wife is) and where her behaviour towards him depended +wholly upon her pleasure, that is to say, upon her satisfaction with his +behaviour towards her. This, which seems to us so obvious, and of which +every day furnishes us an example in the relations of the modern suitor +and his hoped-for wife, could not, at a time when women were married by +family arrangement, arise except as a result of illegitimate love. +Horrible as it seems, the more we examine into this subject of medięval +love, the more shall we see that our whole code of Grandisonian chivalry +between lovers who intend marriage is derived from the practice of the +Launcelots and Gueneveres, not from that of the married people (we may +remember the manner in which Gunther woos his wife Brunhilt in the +Nibelungenlied) of former ages; nay, the more we shall have to recognize +that the very feeling which constitutes the virtuous love of modern +poets is derived from the illegitimate loves of the Middle Ages. + +Let us examine what are the habits of feeling and thinking which grow +out of this reciprocal fidelity due to the absence of all one-sided +legal pressure in this illegitimate, but socially legitimated, love of +the early Middle Ages; which are added on to it by the very necessities +of illicit connection. The lover, having no right to the favours of his +mistress, is obliged, in order to win and to keep them, to please her by +humility, fidelity, and such knightly qualities as are the ideal plumage +of a man: he must bring home to her, by showing the world her colours +victorious in serious warfare, in the scarcely less dangerous play of +tournaments, and by making her beauty and virtues more illustrious in +his song than are those of other women in the songs of their lovers--he +must bring home to her that she has a more worthy servant than her +rivals; he must determine her to select him and to adhere to her +selection. Now medięval husbands select their wives, instead of being +selected; and once the woman and the dowry are in their hands, trouble +themselves but little whether they are approved of or not. On the other +hand, the mistress appears to her lover invested with imaginative, ideal +advantages such as cannot surround her in the eyes of her husband: she +is, in nearly every case, his superior in station and the desired of +many beholders; she is bound to him by no tie which may grow prosaic and +wearisome; she appears to him in no domestic capacity, can never descend +to be the female drudge; her possession is prevented from growing stale, +her personality from becoming commonplace, by the difficulty, rareness, +mystery, adventure, danger, which even in the days of Courts of Love +attach to illicit amours; above all, being for this man neither the +housewife nor the mother, she remains essentially and continually the +mistress, the beloved. Similarly the relations between the knight and +the lady, untroubled by domestic worries, pecuniary difficulties, and +squabbles about children, remain, exist merely as love relations, +relations of people whose highest and sole desire is to please one +another. Moreover, and this is an important consideration, the lady, who +is a mere inexperienced, immature girl when she first meets her husband, +is a mature woman, with character and passions developed by the +independence of conjugal and social life. When she meets her lover, +whatever power or dignity of character she may possess is ripe; whatever +intensity of aspiration and passion may be latent is ready to come +forth; for the first time there is equality in love. Equality? Ah, no. +This woman who is the wife of his feudal superior, this woman surrounded +by all the state of feudal sovereignty, this woman who, however young, +has already known so much of life, this woman whose love is a free, gift +of grace to the obscure, trembling vassal who has a right not even to be +noticed; this lady of medięval love must always remain immeasurably +above her lover. And, in the long day-dreams while watching her, as he +thinks unseen, while singing of her, as he thinks unheard, there cluster +round her figure, mistily seen in his fancy, those vague and-mystic +splendours which surround the new sovereign of the Middle Ages, the +Queen of Heaven; there mingles in the half-terrified raptures of the +first kind glance, the first encouraging word, the ineffable passion +stored up in the Christian's heart for the immortal beings who, in the +days of Bernard and Francis, descend cloud-like on earth and fill the +cells of the saints with unendurable glory. + +And thus, out of the baseness of habitual adultery, arises incense-like, +in the early medięval poetry, a new kind of love--subtler, more +imaginative, more passionate, a love of the fancy and the heart, a love +stimulating to the perfection of the individual as is any religion; +nay, a religion, and one appealing more completely to the complete man, +flesh and soul, than even the mystical beliefs of the Middle Ages. And +as, in the fantastic song of Ritter Tannhäuser, whose liege lady, so +legend tells, was Dame Venus herself, the lady bids the knight go forth +and fetch her green water which has washed the setting sun, salamanders +snatched from the flame, the stars out of heaven; so would it seem as if +this new power in the world, this poetically worshipped woman, had sent +forth mankind to seek wonderful new virtues, never before seen on earth. +Nay, rather, as the snowflakes became green leaves, the frost blossoms +red and blue flowers, the winter wind a spring-scented breeze, when +Bernard de Ventadorn was greeted by his mistress; so also does it seem +as if, at the first greeting of the world by this new love, the medięval +winter had turned to summer, and there had budded forth and flowered a +new ideal of manly virtue, a new ideal of womanly grace. + +But evil is evil, and evil is its fruit. Out of circumstances hitherto +unknown, circumstances come about for the first time owing to the +necessities of illegitimate passion, have arisen certain new and nobler +characters of sexual love, certain new and beautiful conceptions of +manly and womanly nature. The circumstances to which these are owed are +pure in themselves, they are circumstances which in more modern times +have characterized the perfectly legitimate passion of lovers held +asunder by no social law, but by mere accidental barriers--from Romeo +and Juliet to the Master of Ravenswood and Lucy Ashton; and pure so far +have been the spiritual results. But these circumstances were due, in +the early Middle Ages, to the fact of adultery; and to the new ideal of +love has clung, even in its purity, in its superior nobility, an element +of corruption as unknown to gross and corrupt Antiquity as was the +delicacy and nobility of medięval love. The most poetical and pathetic +of all medięval love stories, the very incarnation of all that is most +lyric at once and most tragic in the new kind of passion, is the story, +told and retold by a score of poets and prose writers, of the loves of +Yseult of Ireland and of Sir Tristram who, as the knight was bringing +the princess to his uncle and her affianced, King Mark of Cornwall drank +together by a fatal mistake a philter which made all such as partook of +it in common inseparable lovers even unto death. Every one knows the +result r: how Yseult came to her husband already the paramour of +Tristram; how Brangwaine, her damsel, feeling that this unhallowed +passion was due to her having left-within reach the potion intended for +the King and Queen of Cornwall, devoted herself, at the price of her +maidenhood, to connive in the amours of the lovers whom she had made; +how King Mark was deceived, and doubted, and was deceived again; how +Tristram fled to Brittany, but how, despite his seeming marriage with +another and equally lovely Yseult, he remained faithful to the Queen of +Cornwall. One version tells that Mark slew his nephew while he sat +harping to Queen Yseult; another that Tristram died of grief because his +scorned though wedded wife told him that the white-sailed ship, bearing +his mistress to meet him, bore the black sail which meant that she was +not on board; but all versions, I think, agree in ending with the fact, +that the briar-rose growing on the tomb of the one, slowly trailed its +flowers and thorns along till it had reached also the grave of the +other, and knit together, as love had knit together with its sweet +blossoms and sharp spines, the two fated lovers. The Middle Ages were +enthralled by this tale; but they were also, occasionally, a little +shocked by it. Poets and prose writers tampered every now and then with +incidents and characters, seeking to make it appear that, owing to the +substitution of the waiting-maid, and the neglect of the wedded princess +of Brittany, Yseult had never belonged to any man save Tristram, nor +Tristram to any woman save Yseult; or that King Mark had sent his nephew +to woo the Irish queen's daughter merely in hopes of his perishing in +the attempt, and that his whole subsequent conduct was due to a mere +unnatural hatred of a better knight than himself; touching up here and +there with a view to justifying and excusing to some degree the long +series of deceits which constituted the whole story. Thus the more timid +and less gifted. But when, in the very first years (1210) of the +thirteenth century, the greatest medięval poet that preceded Dante, the +greatest German poet that preceded Goethe, Meister Gottfried von +Strassburg, took in hand the old threadbare story of "Tristan und +Isolde," he despised all alterations of this sort, and accepted the +original tale in its complete crudeness. + +For, consciously or unconsciously, Gottfried had conceived this story as +a thing wholly unknown in his time, and no longer subject to any of +those necessities of constant rearrangement which tormented medięval +poets: he had conceived it not as a tale, but as a novel. Gottfried +himself was probably but little aware of what he was doing; the poem +that he was writing probably fell for him into the very same category as +the poems of other men; but to us, with our experience of so many +different forms of narrative, it must be evident that "Tristan und +Isolde" is a new departure, inasmuch as it is not the story of deeds and +the people who did them, like the true epic from Homer to the +Nibelungen; nor the story of people and the adventures which happened to +them, like all romance poetry from "Palemon and Arcite," to the "Orlando +Furioso;" but, on the contrary, the story of the psychological +relations, the gradual metamorphosis of soul by soul, between two +persons. The long introductory story of Tristram's youth must not +mislead us, nor all the minute narrations of the killing of dragons and +the drinking of love philters: Gottfried, we must remember, was +certainly no deliberate innovator, and these thing's are the mere +inevitable externalities of medięval poetry, preserved with dull slavish +care by the re-writer of a well-known tale, but enclosing in reality +something essentially and startlingly modern: the history of a passion +and of the spiritual changes which it brings about in those who are its +victims. + +To meet again this purely psychological interest we must skip the whole +rest of the Middle Ages, nay, skip even the great period of dramatic +literature, not stopping till we come to the end of the seventeenth and +beginning of the eighteenth century, to the "Princesse de Clčves," to +"Clarissa Harlowe," nay, really, to "The Nouvelle Heloise." For even in +Shakespeare there is always interest and importance in the action and +reaction of subsidiary characters, in the event, in the accidental; +there is intrigue, chance, misunderstanding, fate--active agencies of +which Othello and Hamlet, King Lear and Romeo, are helpless victims; +there is, even in this psychological English drama of the Elizabethans, +fate in the shape of Iago, in the shape of the Ghost, in the shape of +the brothers of Webster's duchess; fate in the shape of a ring, a +letter, a drug, but fate always. And in this "Tristan und Isolde" of +Gottfried von Strassburg is there not fate also in the love potion +intended for King Mark, and given by the mistake of Brangwaine to Mark's +bride and his nephew? To this objection, which will naturally occur to +any reader who is not acquainted with the poem of Gottfried, I simply +answer, there is not. The love potion there is, but it does not play the +same part as do, for instance, the drugs of Friar Laurence and his +intercepted letter. Suppose the friar's narcotic to have been less +enduring in its action, or his message to have reached in safety, why +then Juliet would have been awake instead of asleep, or Romeo would not +have supposed her to be dead, and instead of the suicide of the two +lovers, we should have had the successful carying off of Juliet by +Romeo. Not so with Gottfried. The philter is there, and a great deal is +talked about it; but it is merely one of the old, threadbare trappings +of the original story, which he has been too lazy to suppress; it is +merely, for the reader, the allegorical signal for an outburst of +passion which all our subsequent knowledge of Tristram and Yseult shows +us to be absolutely inevitable. In Gottfried's poem, the drinking of the +potion signifies merely that all the rambling, medięval prelude, not to +be distinguished from the stories of "Morte d'Arthur," and of half the +romances of the Middle Ages, has come to a close and may be forgotten; +and that the real work of the great poet, the real, matchless tragedy of +the four actors--Tristram, Yseult, Mark, and Brangwaine--has begun. + +Yet if we seek again to account to ourselves for this astonishing +impression of modernness which we receive from Gottfried's poem, we +recognize that it is due to something far more important than the mere +precocious psychological interest; nay, rather, that this psychological +interest is itself dependent upon the fact which makes "Tristan und +Isolde," so modern to our feelings. This fact is simply that the poem of +Gottfried is the earliest, and yet perhaps almost the completest, +example of a literary anomaly which Antiquity, for all its abominations, +did not know: the glorification of fidelity in adultery, the +glorification of excellence within the compass of guilt. Older times +--more distant from our own in spirit, though not necessarily in +years--have presented us with many themes of guilt: the guilt which +exists according to our own moral standard, but not according to that of +the narrator, as the magnificently tragic Icelandic incest story of +Sigmund and Signy; the guilt which has come about no one well knows how, +an unfortunate circumstance leaving the sinner virtually stainless, in +his or her own eyes and the eyes of others, like the Homeric Helen; the +heroic guilt, where the very heroism seems due to the self-sacrifice of +the sinner's innocence, of Judith; the struggling, remorseful guilt, +hopelessly overcome by fate and nature, of Phędra; the dull and dogged +guilt, making the sinner scarce more than a mere physical +stumbling-block for others, of the murderer Hagen in the Nibelungenlied; +and, finally, the perverse guilt, delighting in the consciousness of +itself, of demons like Richard and Iago, of libidinous furies like the +heroines of Tourneur and Marston. The guilt theme of "Tristan und +Isolde" falls into none of these special categories. This theme, +unguessed even by Shakespeare, is that of the virtuous behaviour towards +one another of two individuals united in sinning against every one else. +Gottfried von Strassburg narrates with the greatest detail how Tristram +leads to the unsuspecting king the unblushing, unremorseful woman +polluted by his own embraces; how Yseult substitutes on the wedding +night her spotless damsel Brangwaine for her own sullied self; then, +terrified lest the poor victim of her dishonour should ever reveal it, +attempts to have her barbarously murdered, and, finally, seeing that +nothing can shake the heroic creature's faith, admits her once more to +be the remorseful go-between in her amours. He narrates how Tristram +dresses as a pilgrim and carries the queen from a ship to the shore, in +order that Yseult may call on Christ to bear witness by a miracle that +she is innocent of adultery, never having been touched save by that +pilgrim and her own husband; and how, when the followers of King Mark +have surrounded the grotto in the wood, Tristram places the drawn sword +between himself and the sleeping queen, as a symbol of their chastity +which the king is too honest to suspect. He draws, with a psychological +power truly extraordinary in the beginning of the thirteenth century, +the two other figures in this love drama: King Mark, cheated, +dishonoured, oscillating between horrible doubt, ignominious suspicion +and more ignominious credulity, his love for his wife, his trust in his +nephew, his incapacity for conceiving ill-faith and fraud, the very +gentleness and generosity of his nature, made the pander of guilt in +which he cannot believe; and, on the other side, Brangwaine, the +melancholy, mute victim of her fidelity to Yseult, the weak, heroic +soul, rewarded only with cruel ingratitude, and condemned to screen and +help the sin which she loathes and for which she assumes the awful +responsibility. All this does Gottfried do, yet without ever seeming to +perceive the baseness and wickedness of this tissue of lies, +equivocations, and perjuries in which his lovers hide their passion; +without ever seeming to guess at the pathos and nobility of the man and +the woman who are the mere trumpery obstacles or trumpery aids to their +amours. He heaps upon Tristram and Yseult the most extravagant praises: +he is the flower of all knighthood, and she, the kindest, gentlest, +purest, and noblest of women; he insists upon the wickedness of the +world which is for ever waging war upon their passion, and holds up to +execration all those who seek to spy out their secret. Gottfried is most +genuinely overcome by the ideal beauty of this inextinguishable +devotion, by the sublimity of this love which holds the whole world as +dross; the crimes of the lovers are for him the mere culminating point +of their moral grandeur, which has ceased to know any guilt save +absence of love, any virtue save loving. And so serene is the old +minnesinger's persuasion, that it obscures the judgment and troubles the +heart even of his reader; and we are tempted to ask ourselves, on laying +down the book, whether indeed this could have been sinful, this love of +Tristram and Yseult which triumphed over everything in the world, and +could be quenched only by death. That circle of hell where all those who +had sinfully loved were whirled incessantly in the perse, dark, stormy +air, appeared in the eyes even of Dante as a place less of punishment +than of glory; and, especially since the Middle Ages, all mankind looks +upon that particular hell-pit with admiration rather than with loathing. +And herein consists, more even than in any deceptions practised upon +King Mark or any ingratitude manifested towards Brangwaine, the +sinfulness of Tristram and Yseult: sinfulness which is not finite like +the individual lives which it offends, but infinite and immortal as the +heart and the judgment which it perverts. For such a tale, and so told, +as the tale of Gottfried von Strassburg, makes us sympathize with this +fidelity and devotion of a man and woman who care for nothing in the +world save for each other, who are dragged and glued together by the +desire and habit of mutual pleasure; it makes us admire their readiness +to die rather than be parted, when their whole life is concentrated in +their reciprocal sin, when their miserable natures enjoy, care for, +know, only this miserable love. It makes us wink with leniency at the +dishonour, the baseness, the cruelty, to which all this easy virtue is +due. And such sympathy, such admiration, such leniency, for howsoever +short a time they may remain in our soul, leave it, if they ever leave +it completely and utterly less strong, less clean than it was before. We +have all of us a lazy tendency to approve of the virtue which costs no +trouble; to contemplate in ourselves or others, with a spurious moral +satisfaction, the development of this or that virtuous quality in souls +which are deteriorating in undoubted criminal self-indulgence. We have +all of us, at the bottom of our hearts, a fellow feeling for all human +affection; and the sinfulness of sinners like Tristram and Yseult lies +largely in the fact that they pervert this legitimate and holy sympathy +into a dangerous leniency for any strong and consistent love, into a +morbid admiration for any irresistible mutual passion, making us forget +that love has in itself no moral value, and that while self-indulgence +may often be innocent, only self-abnegation can ever be holy. + +The great medięval German poem of Tristram and Yseult remained for +centuries a unique phenomenon; only John Ford perhaps, that grander and +darker twin spirit of Gottfried von Strassburg, reviving, even among the +morbidly psychological and crime-fascinated followers of Shakespeare, +that new theme of evil--the heroism of unlawful love. But Gottfried had +merely manipulated with precocious analytical power a mode of feeling +and thinking which was universal in the feudal Middle Ages; the great +epic of adultery was forgotten, but the sympathetic and admiring +interest in illegitimate passion remained; and was transmitted, wherever +the Renaissance or the Reformation did not break through such +transmission of medięval habits, as an almost inborn instinct from +father to son, from mother to daughter. And we may doubt whether the +important class of men and women who write and read the novels of +illicit love, could ever have existed, had not the psychological artists +of modern times, from Rousseau to George Sand, and from Stendhal to +Octave Feuillet, found ready prepared for them in the countries not +re-tempered by Protestantism, an assoiation of romance, heroism, and +ideality with mere adulterous passion, which was unknown to the +corruption of Antiquity and to the lawlessness of the Dark Ages, and +which remained as a fatal alloy to that legacy of mere spiritual love +which was left to the world by the love poets of early feudalism. + + +II. + +The love of the troubadours and minnesingers, of the Arthurian tales, +which show that love in narrative form, was, as we have seen, polluted +by the selfishness, the deceitfulness, the many unclean necessities of +adulterous passion. Elevated and exquisite though it was, it could not +really purify the relations of man and woman, since it was impure. Nay, +we see that through its influence the grave and simple married love of +the earlier tales of chivalry, the love of Siegfried for Chriemhilt, of +Roland for his bride Belle Aude, of Renaud for his wife Clarisse, is +gradually replaced in later fiction by the irregular love-makings of +Huon of Bordeaux, Ogier the Dane, and Artus of Brittany; until we come +at last to the extraordinary series of the Amadis romances, where every +hero without exception is the bastard of virtuous parents, who +subsequently marry and discover their foundling: a state of things +which, even in the corrupt Renaissance, Boiardo and Ariosto found it +necessary to reform in their romantic poems. With idealizing refinement, +the chivalric love of the French, Provenēal, and German poets brings +also a kind of demoralization which, from one point of view, makes the +spotless songs of Bernard de Ventadour and Armaud de Mareulh, of Ulrich +von Liechtenstein and Frauenlob, less pure than the licentious poems +addressed by the Greeks and Romans to women who, at least, were not the +wives of other men. + +Shall all this idealizing refinement, this almost religious fervour, +this new poetic element of chivalric love remain useless; or serve only +to subtly pollute while pretending to purify the great singing passion? +Not so. But to prevent such waste of what in itself is pure and +precious, is the mission of another country, of another civilization; of +a wholly different cycle of poets who, receiving the new element of +medięval love after it has passed through and been sifted by a number +of hands, shall cleanse and recreate it in the fire of intellectual and +almost abstract passion, producing that wonderful essence of love which, +as the juices squeezed by alchemists out of jewels purified the body +from all its ills, shall purify away all the diseases of the human soul. + +While the troubadours and minnesingers had been singing at the courts of +Angevine kings and Hohenstauffen emperors, of counts of Toulouse and +dukes of Austria; a new civilization, a new political and social system, +had gradually been developing in the free burghs of Italy; a new life +entirely the reverse of the life of feudal countries. The Italian cities +were communities of manufacturers and merchants, into which only +gradually, and at the sacrifice of every aristocratic privilege and +habit, a certain number of originally foreign feudatories were gradually +absorbed. Each community consisted of a number of mercantile families, +equal before the law, and illustrious or obscure according to their +talents or riches, whose members, instead of being scattered over a wide +area like the members of the feudal nobility, were most often gathered +together under one roof--sons, brothers, nephews, daughters, sisters and +daughters-in-law, forming a hierarchy attending to the business of +factory or counting-house under the orders of the father of the family, +and to the economy of the house-under the superintendence of the mother; +a manner of living at once business-like and patriarchal, expounded +pounded by the interlocutors in Alberti's "Governo della Famiglia," and +which lasted until the dissolution of the commonwealths and almost to +our own times. Such habits imply a social organization, an intercourse +between men and women, and a code of domestic morality the exact +opposite to those of feudal countries. Here, in the Italian cities, +there are no young men bound to loiter, far from their homes, round the +wife of a military superior, to whom her rank and her isolation from all +neighbours give idleness and solitude. The young men are all of them in +business, usually with their own kinsfolk; not in their employer's +house, but in his office; they have no opportunity of seeing a woman +from dawn till sunset. The women, on their side, are mainly employed at +home: the whole domestic arrangement depends upon them, and keeps their +hands constantly full; working, and working in the company of their +female relatives and friends. Men and women are free comparatively +little, and then they are free all together in the same places; hence no +opportunities for _tźte-ą-tźte_. Early Italian poetry is fond of showing +us the young poet reading his verses or explaining his passion to those +gentle, compassionate women learned in love, of whom we meet a troop, +beautiful, vague, half-arch, half-melancholy faces, consoling Dante in +the "Vita Nuova," and reminding Guido Cavalcanti of his lady far off at +Toulouse. But such women almost invariably form a group; they cannot be +approached singly. Such a state of society inevitably produces a high +and strict morality. In these early Italian cities a case of in' +fidelity is punished ruthlessly; the lover banished or killed; the wife +for ever lost to the world, perhaps condemned to solitude and a +lingering death in the fever tracts, like Pia dei Tolomei. A complacent +deceived husband is even more ridiculous (the deceived husband is +notoriously the chief laughing stock of all medięval free towns) than is +a jealous husband among the authorized and recognized _cicisbeos_ of a +feudal court. Indeed the respect for marriage vows inevitable in this +busy democratic medięval life is so strong, that long after the +commonwealths have turned into despotisms, and every social tie has been +dissolved in the Renaissance, the wives and daughters of men stained +with every libidinous vice, nay, of the very despots themselves +--Tiberiuses and Neros on a smaller scale--remain spotless in the midst +of evil; and authorized adultery begins in Italy only under the Spanish +rule in the late sixteenth century. + +Such were the manners and morals of the Italian commonwealths when, +about the middle of the thirteenth century, the men of Tuscany, now free +and prosperous, suddenly awoke to the consciousness that they had a soul +which desired song, and a language which was spontaneously singing. It +was the moment when painting was beginning to claim for the figures of +real men and women the walls and vaulted spaces whence had hitherto +glowered, with vacant faces and huge ghostlike eyes, mosaic figures, +from their shimmering golden ground; the moment when the Pisan artists +had sculptured solemnly draped madonnas and kings not quite unworthy of +the carved sarcophagi which stood around them; the moment when, merging +together old Byzantine traditions and Northern examples, the architects +of Florence, Siena, and Orvieto conceived a style which made cathedrals +into marvellous and huge reliquaries of marble, jasper, alabaster, and +mosaics. The medięval flowering time had come late, very late, in Italy; +but the atmosphere was only the warmer, the soil the richer, and Italy +put forth a succession of exquisite and superb immortal flowers of art +when the artistic sap of other countries had begun to be exhausted. But +the Italians, the Tuscans, audacious in the other arts, were diffident +of themselves with regard to poetry. Architecture, painting, sculpture, +had been the undisputed field for plebeian craftsmen, belonging +exclusively to the free burghs and disdained by the feudal castles; but +poetry was essentially the aristocratic, the feudal art, cultivated by +knights and cultivated for kings and barons. It was probably an unspoken +sense of this fact which caused the early Tuscan poets to misgive their +own powers and to turn wistfully and shyly towards the poets of Provence +and of Sicily. There, beyond the seas, under the last lords of Toulouse +and the brilliant mongrel Hohenstauffen princes, were courts, knights, +and ladies; there was the tradition of this courtly art of poetry; and +there only could the sons of Florentine or Sienese merchants, +clodhoppers in gallantry and song, hope to learn the correct style of +thing. Hence the history of the Italian lyric before Dante is the +history of a series of transformations which connect a style of poetry +absolutely feudal and feudally immoral, with the hitherto unheard-of +platonic love subtleties of the "Vita Nuova." And it is curious, in +looking over the collections of early Italian lyrists, to note the +alteration in tone as Sicily and the feudal courts are left further and +further behind. Ciullo d' Alcamo, flourishing about 1190, is the only +Italian-writing poet absolutely contemporaneous with the earlier and +better trouvčres, troubadours, and minnesingers; and he is also the only +one who resembles them very closely. His famous _tenso_, beginning "Rosa +fresca aulentissima" (a tolerably faithful translation heads the +beautiful collection of the late Mr. D.G. Rossetti), is indeed more +explicitly gross and immoral than the majority of Provenēal and German +love-songs: loose as are many of the _albas, serenas, wachtlieder_, and +even many of the less special forms of German and Provenēal poetry, I am +acquainted with none of them which comes up to this singular dialogue, +in which a man, refusing to marry a woman, little by little wins her +over to his wishes and makes her brazenly invite him to her dishonour. +Between Ciullo d' Alcamo and his successors there is some gap of time, +and a corresponding want of gradation. Yet the Sicilian poets of the +courts of Hohenstauffen and Anjou, recognizable by their name or the +name of their town, Inghilfredi, Manfredi, Ranieri and Ruggierone da +Palermo, Tommaso and Matteo da Messina, Guglielmotto d' Otranto, Rinaldo +d'Aquino, Peir delle Vigne, either maintain altogether unchanged the +tone of the troubadours, or only gradually, as in the remarkable case of +the Notary of Lentino, approximate to the platonic poets of Tuscany. The +songs of the archetype of Sicilian singers, the Emperor Frederick II., +are completely Provenēal in feeling as in form, though infinitely +inferior in execution. With him it is always the pleasure which he hopes +from his lady, or the pleasure which he has had--"Quando ambidue stavamo +in allegranza alla dolce fera;" "Pregovi donna mia--Per vostra +cortesia--E pregovi che sia--Quello che lo core disia." Again: "Sospiro +e sto in rancura--Ch' io son si disioso--E pauroso--Mi fate penare--Ma +tanto m' assicura--Lo suo viso amoroso--E lo gioioso--Riso e lo +sguardare--E lo parlare--Di questa criatura--Che per paura--Mi fate +penare--E di morare--Tant' č fina e pura--Tanto č saggia e cortese--Non +credo che pensasse--Nč distornasse--Di ciņ he m' impromise." It is, this +earliest Italian poetry, like the more refined poetry of troubadours and +minnesingers, eminently an importuning of highborn but loosely living +women. From Sicily and Apulia poetry goes first, as might be expected +(and as probably sculpture went) to the seaport Pisa, thence to the +neighbouring Lucca, considerably before reaching Florence. And as it +becomes more Italian and urban, it becomes also, under the strict +vigilance of burgher husbands, considerably more platonic. In Bologna, +the city of jurists, it acquires (the remark is not mine merely, but +belongs also to Carducci) the very strong flavour of legal quibbling +which distinguishes the otherwise charming Guido Guinicelli; and once in +Florence, among the most subtle of all subtle Tuscans, it becomes at +once what it remained even for Dante, saturated with metaphysics: the +woman is no longer paramount, she is subordinated to Love himself; to +that personified abstraction Amor, the serious and melancholy son of +pagan philosophy and Christian mysticism. The Tuscans had imported from +Provence and Sicily the new element of medięval love, of life devotion, +soul absorption in loving; if they would sing, they must sing of this; +any other kind of love, at a time when Italy still read and relished her +would-be Provenēals, Lanfranc Cicala and Sordel of Mantua, would have +been unfashionable and unendurable. But in these Italian commonwealths, +as we have seen, poets are forced, nilly-willy, to be platonic; an +importuning poem found in her work-basket may send a Tuscan lady into a +convent, or, like Pia, into the Maremma; an _alba_ or a _serena_ +interrupted by a wool-weaver of Calimara or a silk spinner of Lucca, may +mean that the imprudent poet be found weltering in blood under some +archway the next morning. The chivalric sentimentality of feudalism must +be restrained; and little by little, under the pressure of such very +different social habits, it grows into a veritable platonic passion. +Poets must sing, and in order that they sing, they must adore; so men +actually begin to seek out, and adore and make themselves happy and +wretched about women from whom they can hope only social distinctions; +and this purely ęsthetic passion goes on by the side nay, rather on the +top, of their humdrum, conjugal life or loosest libertinage. Petrarch's +bastards were born during the reign of Madonna Laura; and that they +should have been, was no more a slight or infidelity to her than to the +other Madonna, the one in heaven. Laura had a right to only ideal +sentiments ideal relations; the poet was at liberty to carry more +material preferences elsewhere. + +But could such love as this exist, could it be genuine? To my mind, +indubitably. For there is, in all our perceptions and desires of +physical and moral beauty, an element of passion which is akin to love; +and there is, in all love that is not mere lust, a perception of, a +craving for, beauty, real or imaginary which is identical with our +merely ęsthetic perceptions and cravings; hence the possibility, once +the wish for such a passion present, of a kind of love which is mainly +ęsthetic, which views the beloved as gratifying merely to the wish for +physical or spiritual loveliness, and concentrates upon one exquisite +reality all dreams of ideal perfection. Moreover there comes, to all +nobler natures, a love dawning: a brightening and delicate flushing of +the soul before the actual appearance of the beloved one above the +horizon, which is as beautiful and fascinating in its very clearness, +pallor, and coldness, as the unearthly purity of the pale amber and +green and ashy rose which streaks the heavens before sunrise. The love +of the early Tuscan poets (for we must count Guinicelli, in virtue of +his language, as a Tuscan) had been restrained, by social necessities +first, then by habit and deliberate ęsthetic choice, within the limits +of this dawning state; and in this state, it had fed itself off mere +spiritual food, and acquired the strange intensity of mere intellectual +passions. We give excessive weight, in our days, to spontaneity in all +things, apt to think that only the accidental, the unsought, can be +vital; but it is true in many things, and truest in all matters of the +imagination and the heart, that the desire to experience any sentiment +will powerfully conduce to its production, and even give it a strength +due to the long incubation of the wish. Thus the ideal love of the +Tuscan poets was probably none the weaker, but rather the stronger, for +the desire which they felt to sing such passion; nay, rather to hear it +singing in themselves. The love of man and wife, of bride and +bridegroom, was still of the domain of prose; adulterous love forbidden; +and the tradition of, the fervent wish for, the romantic passion of the +troubadours consumed them as a strong artistic craving. Platonic love +was possible, doubly possible in souls tense with poetic wants; it +became a reality through the strength of the wish for it. + +Nor was this all. In all imaginative passions, intellectual motives are +so much fuel; and in this case the necessity of logically explaining the +bodiless passion for a platonic lady, of understanding why they felt in +a manner so hitherto unknown to gross mankind, tended greatly to +increase the love of these Tuscans, and to bring it in its chastity to +the pitch of fervour of more fleshly passions, by mingling with the +ęsthetic emotions already in their souls the mystical theorizings of +transcendental metaphysics, and the half-human, half-supernatural +ecstasy of medięval religion. For we must remember that Italy was a +country not merely of manufacturers and bankers, but of philosophers +also and of saints. + +Among the Italians of the thirteenth century the revival of antique +literature was already in full swing; while in France, Germany, and +Provence there had been, in lyric poetry at least, no trace of classic +lore. Whereas the trouvčres and troubadours had possessed but the light +intellectual luggage of a military aristocracy; and the minnesingers +had, for the most part, been absolutely ignorant of reading and writing +(Wolfram says so of himself, and Ulrich von Liechtenstein relates how he +carried about his lady's letter for days unread until the return of his +secretary); the poets of Italy, from Brunetto Latini to Petrarch, were +eminently scholars; men to whom, however much they might be politicians +and ringleaders, like Cavalcanti, Donati, and Dante, whatever existed of +antique learning was thoroughly well known. Such men were familiar with +whatever yet survived of the transcendental theories of Plato and +Plotinus; and they seized at once upon the mythic metaphysics of an +antenatal condition, of typical ideas, of the divine essence of beauty, +on all the mystic discussions on love and on the soul, as a +philosophical explanation of their seemingly inexplicable passion for an +unapproachable woman. The lady upon whom the poetic fervour, the +medięval love, inherited from Provence and France, was now expended, and +whom social reasons placed quite beyond the reach of anything save the +poet's soul and words, was evidently beloved for the sake of that much +of the divine essence contained in her nature; she was loved for purely +spiritual reasons, loved as a visible and living embodiment of virtue +and beauty, as a human piece of the godhead. So far, therefore, from +such an attachment being absurd, as absurd it would have seemed to +troubadours and minnesingers, who never served a lady save for what they +called a reward; it became, in the eyes of these platonizing Italians, +the triumph of the well-bred soul; and as such, soon after, a necessary +complement to dignities, talents, and wealth, the very highest +occupation of a liberal mind. Thus did their smattering of platonic and +neo-platonic philosophy supply the Tuscan poets with a logical reality +for this otherwise unreal passion. + +But there was something more. In this democratic and philosophizing +Italy, there was not the gulf which separated the chivalric poets, men +of the sword and not of books, from the great world of religious +mysticism; for, though the minnesingers especially were extremely devout +and sang many a strange love-song to the Virgin; they knew, they could +know, nothing of the contemplative religion of Eckhardt and his +disciples--humble and transcendental spirits, whose words were treasured +by the sedentary, dreamy townsfolk of the Rhine, but would have conveyed +no meaning even to the poet of the Grail epic, with its battles and +feasts, its booted and spurred slapdash morality, Wolfram von +Eschenbach. In the great manufacturing cities of Italy, such religious +mysticism spread as it could never spread in feudal courts; it became +familiar, both in the mere passionate sermons and songs of the wandering +friars, and in the subtle dialectics of the divines; above all, it +became familiar to the poets. Now the essence of this contemplative +theology of the Middle Ages, which triumphantly held its own against the +cut-and-dry argumentation of scholastic rationalism, was love. Love +which assuredly meant different things to different minds; a passionate +benevolence towards man and beast to godlike simpletons like Francis of +Assisi; a mere creative and impassive activity of the divinity to +deep-seeing (so deep as to see only their own strange passionate eyes +and lips reflected in the dark well of knowledge) and almost pantheistic +thinkers like Master Eckhardt; but love nevertheless, love. "Amor, +amore, ardo d' amore," St. Francis had sung in a wild rhapsody, a sort +of mystic dance, a kind of furious _malagueńa_ of divine love; and that +he who would wish to know God, let him love--"Qui vult habere notitiam +Dei, amet," had been written by Hugo of St. Victor, one of the subtlest +of all the mystics. "Amor oculus est," said Master Eckhardt; love, +love--was not love then the highest of all human faculties, and must not +the act of loving, of perceiving God's essence in some creature which +had virtue, the soul's beauty, and beauty, the body's virtue, be the +noblest business of a noble life? Thus argued the poets; and their +argument, half-passionate, half-scholastic, mixing Phędrus and +Bonaventura, the Schools of Alexandria and the Courts of Love of +Provence, resulted in adding all the fervid reality of philosophical and +religious aspiration to their clear and cold phantom of disembodied love +of woman. + +Little by little therefore, together with the carnal desires of +Provenēals and Sicilians, the Tuscan poets put behind them those little +coquetries of style and manner, complications of metre and rhythm +learned and fantastic as a woman's plaited and braided hair; those +metaphors and similes, like bright flowers or shining golden ribbons +dropped from the lady's bosom and head and eagerly snatched by the +lover, which we still find, curiously transformed and scented with the +rosemary and thyme of country lanes, in the peasant poetry of modern +Tuscany. Little by little does the love poetry of the Italians reject +such ornaments; and cloth itself in that pale garment, pale and stately +in heavy folds like a nun's or friar's weeds, but pure and radiant and +solemn as the garment of some painted angel, which we have all learned +to know from the "Vita Nuova." + +To describe this poetry of the immediate precursors and contemporaries +of Dante is to the last degree difficult: it can be described only by +symbols, and symbols can but mislead us. Dante Rossetti himself, after +translating with exquisite beauty the finest poems of this school, +showed how he had read into them his own spirit, when he drew the +beautiful design for the frontispiece of his collection. These two +lovers--the youth kneeling in his cloth of silver robe, lifting his long +throbbing neck towards the beloved; the lady stooping down towards him, +raising him up and kissing him; the mingled cloud of waving hair, the +four tight-clasped hands, the four tightly glued lips, the profile +hidden by the profile, the passion and the pathos, the eager, wistful +faces, nay, the very splendour of brocade robes and jewels, the very +sweetness of blooming rose spaliers; all this is suitable to illustrate +this group of sonnets or that of the "House of Life;" but it is false, +false in efflorescence and luxuriance of passion, splendour and colour +of accessory, to the poetry of these early Tuscans. Imaginative their +poetry certainly is, and passionate; indeed the very concentration of +imaginative passion; but imagination and passion unlike those of all +other poets; perhaps because more rigorously reduced to their elements: +imagination purely of the heart, passion purely of the intellect, +neither of the senses: love in its most essential condition, but, just +because an essence, purged of earthly alloys, rarefied, sublimated into +a cultus or a philosophy. + +These poems might nearly all have been written by one man, were it +possible for one man to vary from absolute platitude to something like +genius, so homogeneous is their tone: everywhere do we meet the same +simplicity of diction struggling with the same complication and subtlety +of thought, the same abstract speculation strangely mingled with most +individual and personal pathos. The mode of thinking and feeling, the +conception of all the large characteristics of love, and of all its +small incidents are, in this _cycle_ of poets, constantly the same; and +they are the same in the "Vita Nuova;" Dante having, it would seem, +invented and felt nothing unknown to his immediate predecessors and +contemporaries, but merely concentrated their thoughts and feelings by +the greater intenseness of his genius. This platonic love of Dante's +days is, as I have said, a passion sublimated into a philosophy and a +cultus. The philosophy of love engages much of these poets' attention; +all have treated of it, but Guido Cavalcanti, Dante's elder brother in +poetry, is love's chief theologian. He explains, as Eckhardt or +Bonaventura might explain the mysteries of God's being and will, the +nature and operation of love. "Love, which enamours us of excellence, +arises out of pure virtue of the soul, and equals us to God," he tells +us; and subtly developes his theme. This being the case, nothing can be +more mistaken than to suppose, as do those of little sense, that Love is +blind, and goes blindly about ("Da sentir poco, e da credenza vana--Si +move il dir di cotal grossa gente--Ch' amor fa cieco andar per lo suo +regno"). Love is omniscient, since love is born of the knowledge and +recognition of excellence. Such love as this is the only true source of +happiness, since it alone raises man to the level of the divinity. +Cavalcanti has in him not merely the subtlety but the scornfulness of a +great divine. His wrath against all those who worship or defend a +different god of Love knows no bounds. "I know not what to say of him +who adores the goddess born of Saturn and sea-foam. His love is fire: it +seems sweet, but its result is bitter and evil. He may indeed call +himself happy; but in such delights he mingles himself with much +baseness." Such is this god of Love, who, when he descended into Dante's +heart, caused the spirit of life to tremble terribly in his secret +chamber, and trembling to cry, "Lo, here is a god stronger than myself, +who coming will rule over me. Ecce Deus fortior me, qui veniens +dominabitur mihi!" + +The god, this chaste and formidable archangel Amor, is the true subject +of these poets' adoration; the woman into whom he descends by a mystic +miracle of beauty and of virtue becomes henceforward invested with +somewhat of his awful radiance. She is a gentle, gracious lady; a +lovable and loving woman, in describing whose grey-green eyes and colour +as of snow tinted with pomegranate, the older Tuscans would fain linger, +comparing her to the new-budded rose, to the morning star, to the golden +summer air, to the purity of snowflakes falling silently in a serene +sky; but the sense of the divinity residing within her becomes too +strong. From her eyes dart spirits who strike awe into the heart; from +her lips come words which make men sigh; on her passage the poet casts +down his eyes; notions, all these, with which we are familiar from the +"Vita Nuova;" but which belong to Cavalcanti, Lapo Gianni, nay, even to +Guinicelli, quite as much as to Dante. The poet bids his verse go forth +to her, but softly; and stand before her with bended head, as before the +Mother of God. She is a miracle herself, a thing sent from heaven, a +spirit, as Dante says in that most beautiful of all his sonnets, the +summing up of all that the poets of his circle had said of their +lady--"Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare." + +"She passes along the street so beautiful and gracious," says +Guinicelli, "that she humbles pride in all whom she greets, and makes +him of our faith if he does not yet believe. And no base man can come +into her presence. And I will tell you another virtue of her: no man can +think ought of evil as long as he looks upon her." "The noble mind which +I feel, on account of this youthful lady who has appeared, makes me +despise baseness and vileness," says Lapo Gianni. The women who surround +her are glorified in her glory, glorified in their womanhood and +companionship with her. "The ladies around you," says Cavalcanti, "are +dear to me for the sake of your love; and I pray them as they are +courteous, that they should do you all honour." She is, indeed, scarcely +a woman, and something more than a saint: an avatar, an incarnation of +that Amor who is born of virtue and beauty, and raises men's minds to +heaven; and when Cavalcanti speaks of his lady's portrait behind the +blazing tapers of Orsanmichele, it seems but natural that she should be +on an altar, in the Madonna's place. The idea of a mysterious +incarnation of love in the lady, or of a mystic relationship between her +and love, returns to these poets. Lapo Gianni tells us first that she is +Amor's sister, then speaks of her as Amor's bride; nay, in this love +theology of the thirteenth century, arises the same kind of confusion as +in the mystic disputes of the nature of the Godhead. A Sienese poet, Ugo +da Massa, goes so far as to say, "Amor and I are all one thing; and we +have one will and one heart; and if I were not, Amor were not; mind you, +do not think I am saying these things from subtlety ('e non pensate ch' +io 'l dica per arte'); for certainly it is true that I am love, and he +who should slay me would slay love." + +Together with the knowledge of public life and of scholastic theories, +together with the love of occult and cabalistic science, and the craft +of Provenēal poetry, Dante received from his Florence of the thirteenth +century the knowledge of this new, this exotic and esoteric intellectual +love. And, as it is the mission of genius to gather into an undying +whole, to model into a perfect form, the thoughts and feelings and +perceptions of the less highly endowed men who surround it, so Dante +moulded out of the love passion and love philosophy of his day the "Vita +Nuova." Whether the story narrated in this book is fact; whether a real +woman whom he called Beatrice ever existed; some of those praiseworthy +persons, who prowl in the charnel-house of the past, and put its poor +fleshless bones into the acids and sublimates of their laboratory, have +gravely doubted. But such doubts cannot affect us. For if the story of +the "Vita Nuova" be a romance, and if Beatrice be a mere romance +heroine, the real meaning and value of the book does not change in our +eyes; since, to concoct such a tale, Dante must have had a number of +real experiences which are fully the tale's equivalent; and to conceive +and create such a figure as Beatrice, and such a passion as she inspires +her poet, he must have felt as a poignant reality the desire for such a +lady, the capacity for such a love. A tale merely of the soul, and of +the soul's movements and actions, this "Vita Nuova;" so why should it +matter if that which could never exist save in the spirit, should have +been but the spirit's creation? It is, in its very intensity, a vision +of love; what if it be a vision merely conceived and never realized? +Hence the futility of all those who wish to destroy our faith and +pleasure by saying "all this never took place." Fools, can you tell what +did or did not take place in a poet's mind? Be this as it may, the "Vita +Nuova," thank heaven, exists; and, thank heaven, exists as a reality to +our feelings. The longed-for ideal, the perfection whose love, said +Cavalcanti, raises us up to God, has seemed to gather itself into a +human shape; and a real being has been surrounded by the halo of +perfection emanated from the poet's own soul. The vague visions of glory +have suddenly taken body in this woman, seen rarely, at a distance; the +woman whom, as a child, the poet, himself a child, had already looked at +with the strange, ideal fascination which we sometimes experience in our +childhood. People are apt to smile at this opening of the "Vita Nuova;" +to put aside this narrative of childish love together with the pathetic +little pedantries of learned poetry and Kabbala, of the long gloses to +each poem, and the elaborate calculations of the recurrence and +combination of the number nine (and that curious little bit of +encyclopędic display about the Syrian month _Tismin_) as so much pretty +local colouring or obsolete silliness. But there is nothing at which to +laugh in such childish fascinations; the wonderful, the perfect, is more +open to us as children than it is afterwards: a word, a picture, a +snatch of music will have for us an ineffable, mysterious meaning; and +how much more so some human being, often some other, more brilliant +child from whose immediate contact we are severed by some circumstance, +perhaps by our own consciousness of inferiority, which makes that other +appear strangely distant, above us, moving in a world of glory which we +scarcely hope to approach; a child sometimes, or sometimes some grown +person, beautiful, brilliant, who sings or talks or looks at us, the +child, with ways which we do not understand, like some fairy or goddess. +No indeed, there is nothing to laugh at in this, in this first +blossoming of that love for higher and more beautiful things, which in +most of us is trodden down, left to wither, by our maturer selves; +nothing to make us laugh; nay, rather to make us sigh that later on we +see too well, see others too much on their real level, scrutinize too +much; too much, alas, for what at best is but an imperfect creature. And +in this state of fascination does the child Dante see the child +Beatrice, as a strange, glorious little vision from a childish sphere +quite above him; treasuring up that vision, till with his growth it +expands and grows more beautiful and noble, but none the less +fascinating and full of awfulness. When, therefore, the grave young +poet, full of the yearning for Paradise (but Paradise vaguer, sweeter, +less metaphysic and theological than the Paradise of his manhood); as +yet but a gracious, learned youth, his terrible moral muscle still +undeveloped by struggle, the noble and delicate dreamer of Giotto's +fresco, with the long, thin, almost womanish face, marked only by dreamy +eyes and lips, wandering through this young Florence of the Middle +Ages--when, I say, he meets after long years, the noble and gentle +woman, serious and cheerful and candid; and is told that she is that +same child who was the queen and goddess of his childish fancies; then +the vague glory with which his soul is filled expands and enwraps the +beloved figure, so familiar and yet so new. And the blood retreats from +his veins, and he trembles; and a vague god within him, half allegory, +half reality, cries out to him that a new life for him has begun. +Beatrice has become the ideal; Beatrice, the real woman, has ceased to +exist; the Beatrice of his imagination only remains, a piece of his own +soul embodied in a gracious and beautiful reality, which he follows, +seeks, but never tries to approach. Of the real woman he asks nothing; +no word throughout the "Vita Nuova" of entreaty or complaint, no shadow +of desire, not a syllable of those reproaches of cruelty which Petrarch +is for ever showering upon Laura. He desires nothing of Beatrice, and +Beatrice cannot act wrongly; she is perfection, and perfection makes him +who contemplates humble at once and proud, glorifying his spirit. Once, +indeed, he would wish that she might listen to him; he has reason to +think that he has fallen in her esteem, has seemed base and uncourteous +in her eyes, and he would explain. But he does not wish to address her; +it never occurs to him that she can ever feel in any way towards him; it +is enough that he feels towards her. Let her go by and smile and +graciously salute her friends: the sight of her grave and pure +regalness, nay, rather divinity, of womanhood, suffices for his joy; +nay, later the consciousness comes upon him that it is sufficient to +know of her existence and of his love even without seeing her. And, as +must be the case in such ideal passion, where the action is wholly in +the mind of the lover, he is at first ashamed, afraid; he feels a terror +lest his love, if known to her, should excite her scorn; a horror lest +it be misunderstood and befouled by the jests of those around him, even +of those same gentle women to whom he afterwards addresses his praise of +Beatrice. He is afraid of exposing to the air of reality this ideal +flower of passion. But the moment comes when he can hide it no longer; +and, behold, the passion flower of his soul opens out more gloriously in +the sunlight of the world. He is proud of his passion, of his worship; +he feels the dignity and glory of being the priest of such a love. The +women all round, the beautiful, courteous women, of whom, only just +now, he was so dreadfully afraid, become his friends and confidants; +they are quite astonished (half in love, perhaps, with the young poet) +at this strange way of loving; they sympathize, admire, are in love with +his love for Beatrice. And to them he speaks of her rather than to men, +for the womanhood which they share with his lady consecrates them in his +eyes; and they, without jealousy towards this ideal woman, though +perhaps not without longing for this ideal love, listen as they might +listen to some new and unaccountably sweet music, touched and honoured, +and feeling towards Dante as towards some beautiful, half-mad thing. He +talks of her, sings of her, and is happy; the strangest thing in this +intensely real narrative of real love is this complete satisfaction of +the passion in its own existence, this complete absence of all desire or +hope. But this happiness is interrupted by the sudden, terrible thought +that one day all this must cease; the horrible, logical necessity coming +straight home to him, that one day she must die--"Di necessitą conviene +che la gentilissima Beatrice alcuna volta si muoia." There is nothing +truer, more intensely pathetic, in all literature, than this frightful +pang of evil, not real, but first imagined; this frightful nightmare +vision of the end coming when reality is still happy. Have we not all of +us at one time felt the horrible shudder of that sudden perception that +happiness must end; that the beloved, the living, must die; that this +thing the present, which we clasp tight with our arms, which throbs +against our breast, will in but few moments be gone, vanished, leaving +us to grasp mere phantom recollections? Compared with this the blow of +the actual death of Beatrice is gentle. And then, the truthfulness of +his narration how, with yearning, empty heart, hungering after those +poor lost realities of happiness, after that occasional glimpse of his +lady, that rare catching of her voice, that blessed consciousness of her +existence, he little by little lets himself be consoled, cradled to +sleep like a child which has sobbed itself out, in the sympathy, the +vague love, of another--the Donna della Finestra--with whom he speaks of +Beatrice; and the sudden, terrified, starting up and shaking off of any +such base consolation, the wrath at any such mental infidelity to the +dead one, the indignant impatience with his own weakness, with his +baseness in not understanding that it is enough that Beatrice has lived +and that he has loved her, in not feeling that the glory and joy of the +ineffaceable past is sufficient for all present and future. A revolution +in himself which gradually merges in that grave final resolve, that +sudden seeing how Beatrice can be glorified by him, that solemn, quiet, +brief determination not to say any more of her as yet; not till he can +show her transfigured in Paradise. "After this sonnet there appeared +unto me a marvellous vision, in which I beheld things that made me +propose unto myself to speak no more of this blessed one, until the +time when I might more worthily treat of her. And that this may come to +pass, I strive with all my endeavour, even as she truly knows it. Thus, +if it should please Him, through whom all things do live, that my life +continue for several more years, I hope to say of her such things as +have never been said of any lady. And then may it please Him, who is the +lord of all courtesy, that my soul shall go forth to see the glory of +its lady, that is to say, of that blessed Beatrice, who gloriously looks +up into the face of Him, _qui est per omnia sęcula benedictus_" + +Thus ends the "Vita Nuova;" a book, to find any equivalent for whose +reality and completeness of passion, though it is passion for a woman +whom the poet scarcely knows and of whom he desires nothing, we must go +back to the merest fleshly love of Antiquity, of Sappho or Catullus; for +modern times are too hesitating and weak. So at least it seems; but in +fact, if we only think over the matter, we shall find that in no earthly +love can we find this reality and completeness: it is possible only in +love like Dante's. For there can be no unreality in it: it is a reality +of the imagination, and leaves, with all its mysticism and idealism, no +room for falsehood. Any other kind of love may be set aside, silenced, +by the activity of the mind; this love of Dante's constitutes that very +activity. And, after reading that last page which I have above +transcribed, as those closing Latin words echo through our mind like the +benediction from an altar, we feel as if we were rising from our knees +in some secret chapel, bright with tapers and dim with incense; among a +crowd kneeling like ourselves; yet solitary, conscious of only the glory +we have seen and tasted, of that love _qui est per omnia scecula +benedictus._ + + +III. + +But is it right that we should feel thus? Is it right that love, +containing within itself the potentialities of so many things so sadly +needed in this cold real world, as patience, tenderness, devotion, and +loving-kindness--is it right that love should thus be carried away out +of ordinary life and enclosed, a sacred thing for contemplation, in the +shrine or chapel of an imaginary Beatrice? And, on the other hand, is it +right that into the holy places of our soul, the places where we should +come face to face with the unattainable ideal of our own conduct that we +may strive after something nobler than mere present pleasure and +profit--is it right that into such holy places, destined but for an +abstract perfection, there should be placed a mere half-unknown, vaguely +seen woman? In short, is not this "Vita Nuova" a mere false ideal, one +of those works of art which, because they are beautiful, get worshipped +as holy? + +This question is a grave one, and worthy to make us pause. The world is +full of instances of the fatal waste of feelings misapplied: of human +affections, human sympathy and compassion, so terribly necessary to +man, wasted in various religious systems, upon Christ and God: of +religious aspirations, contemplation, worship, and absorption, necessary +to the improvement of the soul, wasted in various artistic or poetic +crazes upon mere pleasant works, or pleasant fancies, of man; +wastefulness of emotions, wastefulness of time, which constitute +two-thirds of mankind's history and explain the vast amount of evil in +past and present. The present question therefore becomes, is not this +"Vita Nuova" merely another instance of this lamentable carrying off of +precious feelings in channels where they result no longer in +fertilization, but in corruption? The Middle Ages, especially, in its +religion, its philosophy, nay, in that very love of which I am writing, +are one succession of such acts of wastefulness. This question has come +to me many a time, and has left me in much doubt and trouble. But on +reflection I am prepared to answer that such doubts as these may safely +be cast behind us, and that we may trust that instinct which, whenever +we lay down the "Vita Nuova," tells us that to have felt and loved this +book is one of those spiritual gains in our life which, come what may, +can never be lost entirely. + +The "Vita Nuova" represents the most exceptional of exceptional moral +and intellectual conditions. Dante's love for Beatrice is, in great +measure, to be regarded as an extraordinary and exquisite work of art, +produced not by the volition of man, but by the accidental combination +of circumstances. It is no more suited to ordinary life than would a +golden and ivory goddess of Phidias be suited to be the wife of a mortal +man. But it may not therefore be useless; nay, it may be of the highest +utility. It may serve that high utilitarian mission of all art, to +correct the real by the ideal, to mould the thing as it is in the +semblance of the thing as it should be. Herein, let it be remembered, +consists the value, the necessity of the abstract and the ideal. In the +long history of evolution we have now reached the stage where selection +is no longer in the mere hands of unconscious nature, but of conscious +or half-conscious man; who makes himself, or is made by mankind, +according to not merely physical necessities, but to the intellectual +necessity of realizing the ideal, of pursuing the object, of imitating +the model, before him. No man will ever find the living counterpart of +that chryselephantine goddess of the Greeks; ivory and gold, nay, +marble, fashioned by an artist, are one thing; flesh is another, and +flesh fashioned by mere blind accident. But the man who should have +beheld that Phidian goddess, who should have felt her full perfection, +would not have been as easily satisfied as any other with a mere +commonplace living woman; he would have sought--and seeking, would have +had more likelihood of finding--the woman of flesh and blood who nearest +approached to that ivory and gold perfection. The case is similar with +the "Vita Nuova." No earthly affection, no natural love of man for +woman, of an entire human being, body and soul, for another entire human +being, can ever be the counterpart of this passion for Beatrice, the +passion of a mere mind for a mere mental ideal. But if the old +lust-fattened evil of the world is to diminish rather than to increase, +why then every love of man for woman and of woman for man should tend, +to the utmost possibility, to resemble that love of the "Vita Nuova." +For mankind has gradually separated from brute kind merely by the +development of those possibilities of intellectual and moral passion +which the animal has not got; an animal man will never cease to be, but +a man he can daily more and more become, until from the obscene +goat-legged and goat-faced creature which we commonly see, he has turned +into something like certain antique fauns: a beautiful creature, not +noticeably a beast, a beast in only the smallest portion of his nature. +In order that this may come to pass--and its coming to pass means, let +us remember, the enormous increase of happiness and diminution of misery +upon earth--it is necessary that day by day and year by year there +should enter into man's feelings, emotions, and habits, into his whole +life, a greater proportion of that which is his own, and is not shared +by the animal; that his actions, preferences, the great bulk of his +conscious existence, should be busied with things of the soul, truth, +good, and beauty, and not with things of the body. Hence the love of +such a gradually improving and humanizing man for a gradually improving +and humanizing woman, should become, as much as is possible, a +connection of the higher and more human, rather than of the lower and +more bestial, portions of their nature; it should tend, in its +reciprocal stimulation, to make the man more a man, the woman more a +woman, to make both less of the mere male and female animals that they +were. In brief, love should increase, instead, like that which oftenest +profanes love's name, of diminishing, the power of aspiration, of +self-direction, of self-restraint, which may exist within us. Now to +tend to this is to tend towards the love of the "Vita Nuova;" to tend +towards the love of the "Vita Nuova" is to tend towards this. Say what +you will of the irresistible force of original constitution, it remains +certain, and all history is there as witness, that mankind--that is to +say, the only mankind in whom lies the initiative of good, mankind which +can judge and select--possesses the faculty of feeling and acting in +accordance with its standard of feeling and action; the faculty in great +measure of becoming that which it thinks desirable to become. Now to +have perceived the even imaginary existence of such a passion as that of +Dante for Beatrice, must be, for all who can perceive it, the first step +towards attempting to bring into reality a something of that passion: +the real passion conceived while the remembrance of that ideal passion +be still in the mind will bear to it a certain resemblance, even as, +according to the ancients, the children born of mothers whose rooms +contained some image of Apollo or Adonis would have in them a reflex, +however faint, of that beauty in whose presence they came into +existence. In short, it seems to me, that as the "Vita Nuova" embodies +the utmost ideal of absolutely spiritual love, and as to spiritualize +love must long remain one of the chief moral necessities of the world, +there exists in this book a moral force, a moral value, a power in its +unearthly passion and purity, which, as much as anything more +deliberately unselfish, more self-consciously ethical, we must +acknowledge and honour as holy. + +As the love of him who has read and felt the "Vita Nuova" cannot but +strive towards a purer nature, so also the love of which poets sang +became also nobler as the influence of the strange Tuscan school of +platonic lyrists spread throughout literature, bringing to men the +knowledge of a kind of love born of that idealizing and worshipping +passion of the Middle Ages; but of medięval love chastened by the +manners of stern democracy and passed through the sieve of Christian +mysticism and pagan philosophy. Of this influence of the "Vita +Nuova"--for the "Vita Nuova" had concentrated in itself all the +intensest characteristics of Dante's immediate predecessors and +contemporaries, causing them to become useless and forgotten--of this +influence of the "Vita Nuova," there is perhaps no more striking example +than that of the poet who, constituted by nature to be the mere +continuator of the romantically gallant tradition of the troubadours, +became, and hence his importance and glory, the mediator between Dante +and the centuries which followed him; the man who gave to mankind, +incapable as yet of appreciating or enduring the spiritual essence of +the "Vita Nuova," that self-same essence of intellectual love in an +immortal dilution. I speak, of course, of Petrarch. His passion is +neither ideal nor strong. The man is in love, or has been in love, +existing on a borderland of loving and not loving, with the beautiful +woman. His elegant, refined, half-knightly, half-scholarly, and +altogether courtly mind is delighted with her; with her curly yellow +hair, her good red and white beauty (we are never even told that Dante's +Beatrice is beautiful, yet how much lovelier is she not than this Laura, +descended from all the golden-haired bright-eyed ladies of the +troubadours!), with her manner, her amiability, her purity and dignity +in this ecclesiastical Babylon called Avignon. He maintains a +semi-artificial love; frequenting her house, writing sonnet after +sonnet, rhetorical exercises, studies from the antique and the +Provenēal, for the most part; he, who was born to be a mere troubadour +like Ventadour or Folquet, becomes, through the influence of Dante, the +type of the poet Abate, of the poetic _cavaliere servente_; a good, weak +man with aspirations, who, failing to get the better of Laura's virtue, +doubtless consoles himself elsewhere, but returns to an habitual +contemplation of it. He is, being constitutionally a troubadour, an +Italian priest turned partly Provenēal, vexed at her not becoming his +mistress; then (having made up his mind, which was but little set upon +her), quite pleased at her refusal: it turns her into a kind of +Beatrice, and him, poor man, heaven help him! into a kind of Dante--a +Dante for the use of the world at large. He goes on visiting Laura, and +writing to her a sonnet regularly so many times a week, and the best, +carefully selected, we feel distinctly persuaded, at regular intervals. +It is a determined cultus, a sort of half-real affectation, something +equivalent to lighting a lamp before a very well-painted and very +conspicuous shrine. All his humanities, all his Provenēal lore go into +these poems--written for whom? For her? Decidedly; for she has no reason +not to read the effusions of this amiable, weak priestlet; she feels +nothing for him. For her; but doubtless also to be handed round in +society; a new sonnet or canzone by that charming and learned man, the +Abate Petrarch. There is considerable emptiness in all this: he praises +Laura's chastity, then grows impatient, then praises her again; adores +her, calls her cruel, his goddess, his joy, his torment; he does not +really want her, but in the vacuity of his feeling, thinks he does; +calls her alternately the flat, abusive, and eulogistic names which mean +nothing. He plays loud and soft with this absence of desire; he fiddle +faddles in descriptions of her, not passionate or burning, but +delicately undressed: he sees her (but with chaste eyes) in her bath; +he envies her veil, &c.; he neither violently intellectually embraces, +nor humbly bows down in imagination before her; he trifles gracefully, +modestly, half-familiarly, with her finger tips, with the locks of her +hair, and so forth. Fancy Dante abusing Beatrice; fancy Dante talking of +Beatrice in her bath; the mere idea of his indignation and shame makes +one shameful and indignant at the thought. But this perfect Laura is no +Beatrice, or only a half-and-half sham one. She is no ideal figure, +merely a figure idealized; this is no imaginative passion, merely an +unreal one. Compare, for instance, the suggestion of Laura's possible +death with the suggestion of the possible death of Beatrice. Petrarch +does not love sufficiently to guess what such a loss would be. Then +Laura does die. Here Petrarch rises. The severing of the dear old +habits, the absence of the sweet reality, the terrible sense that all is +over, Death, the great poetizer and giver of love philters, all this +makes him love Laura as he never loved her before. The poor weak +creature, who cannot, like a troubadour, go seek a new mistress when the +old one fails him, feels dreadfully alone, the world dreadfully dreary +around him; he sits down and cries, and his crying is genuine, making +the tears come also into our eyes. And Laura, as she becomes a more +distant ideal, becomes nobler, though noble with only a faint earthly +graciousness not comparable to the glory of the living Beatrice. And, +as he goes on, growing older and weaker and more desolate, the thought +of a glorified Laura (as all are glorified, even in the eyes of the +weakest, by death) begins to haunt him as Dante was haunted by the +thought of Beatrice alive. Yet, even at this very time, come doubts of +the lawfulness of having thus adored (or thought he had adored) a mortal +woman; he does not know whether all this may not have been vanity and +folly; he tries to turn his thoughts away from Laura and up to God. +Perhaps he may be called on to account for having given too much of his +life to a mere earthly love. Then, again, Laura reappears beautified in +his memory, and is again tremblingly half-conjured away. He is weak, and +sad, and helpless, and alone; and his heart is empty; he knows not what +to think nor how to feel; he sobs, and we cry with him. Nowhere could +there be found a stranger contrast than this nostalgic craving after the +dead Laura, vacillating and troubled by fear of sin and doubt of +unworthiness of object, with that solemn ending of the "Vita Nuova," +where the name of Beatrice is pronounced for the last time before it be +glorified in Paradise, where Dante devotes his life to becoming worthy +of saying "such words as have never been said of any lady." The ideal +woman is one and unchangeable in glory, and unchangeable is the passion +of her lover; but of this sweet dead Laura, whose purity and beauty and +cruelty he had sung, without a tremor of self-unworthiness all her +life, of her the poor weak Petrarch begins to doubt, of her and her +worthiness of all this love; and when? when she is dead and himself is +dying. + +Such a man is Petrarch; and yet, by the irresistible purifying and +elevating power of the "Vita Nuova,'" this man came to write not other +_albas_ and _serenas,_ not other love-songs to be added to the +love-songs of Provence, but those sonnets and canzoni which for four +centuries taught the world, too coarse as yet to receive Dante's passion +at first hand, a nobler and more spiritual love. After Petrarch a +gradual change takes place in the poetic conception of love: except in +learned revivalisms or in loose buffooneries, the mere fleshly love of +Antiquity disappears out of literature; and equally so, though by a +slower process of gradual transformation, vanishes also the adoring, but +undisguisedly adulterous love of the troubadours and minnesingers. Into +the love Instincts of mankind have been mingled, however much diluted, +some drops of the more spiritual passion of Dante. The _puella_ of +Antiquity, the noble dame of feudal days, is succeeded in Latin +countries, in Italy, and France, and Spain, and Portugal, by the +_gloriosa donna_ imitated from. Petrarch, and imitated by Petrarch from +Dante; a long-line of shadowy figures, veiled in the veil of Madonna +Laura, ladies beloved of Lorenzo and Michael Angelo, of Ariosto, and +Tasso, and Camoens, and Cervantes, passes through the world; nay, even +the sprightly-mistress of Ronsard, half-bred pagan and troubadour has +airs of dignity and mystery which make us almost think that in this +dainty coquettish French body, of Marie or Helene or Cassandrette, there +really may be an immortal soul. But with the Renaissance--that movement +half of medięval democratic progress, and half of antique revivalism, +and to which in reality belongs not merely Petrarch, but Dante, and +every one of the Tuscan poets, Guinicelli, Lapo Gianni, Cavalcanti, who +broke with the feudal poetry of Provence and Sicily--with the +Renaissance, or rather with its long-drawn-out end, comes the close, for +the moment, of the really creative activity of the Latin peoples in the +domain of poetry. All the things for two centuries which Italy and +France and Spain and Portugal (which we must remember for the sake of +Camoens) continue to produce, are but developments of parts left +untouched; or refinements of extreme detail, as in the case, +particularly, of the French poets of the sixteenth century; but poetry +receives from these races nothing new or vital, no fresh ideal or +fruitful marriage of ideals. And here begins, uniting in itself all the +scattered and long-dormant powers of Northern poetry, the great and +unexpected action of England. It had slept through the singing period of +the Middle Ages, and was awakened, not by Germany or Provence, but by +Italy: Boccaccio and Petrarch spoke, and, as through dreams, England in +Chaucer's voice, made answer. Again, when the Renaissance had drawn to a +close, far on in the sixteenth century, English poetry was reawakened; +and again by Italy. This time it was completely wakened, and arose and +slept no more. And one of the great and fruitful things achieved by +English poetry in this its final awakening was to give to the world the +new, the modern, perhaps the definitive, the final ideal of love. +England drank a deep draught--how deep we see from Sidney's and +Spenser's sonnets--of Petrarch; and in this pleasant dilution, tasted +and felt the burning essence of the "Vita Nuova;" for though Dante +remained as the poet, the poet of heaven and hell, this happy +half-and-half Petrarch had for full two centuries completely driven into +oblivion the young Dante who had loved Beatrice. For England, for this +magnificent and marvellous outburst of all the manifold poetic energy +stored up and quintupled during that long period of inertness, there +could however be no foreign imported ideal of love; there was no +possibility of a new series of spectral Lauras, shadows projected by a +shadow. Already, long ago, at the first call of Petrarch, Chaucer, by +the side of the merely medięval love types--of brutish lust and doglike +devotion--of the Wife of Bath and of Griseldis, had rough-sketched a +kind of modern love, the love which is to become that of Romeo and +Hamlet, in his story of Palemon and Arcite. Among the poetic material +which existed in England at the close of the sixteenth century was the +old, long-neglected, domestic love, quiet, undemonstrative, essentially +unsinging, of the early Northern (as indeed also of the Greek and +Hindoo) epics; a domestic love which, in a social condition more closely +resembling our own than any other, even than that of the Italian +democracies, which had preceded it; among a people who permitted a woman +to choose her own husband, and forbade a man wooing another man's wife, +had already, in ballads and folk poetry, begun a faint-twitter of song. +To this love of the man and the woman who hope to marry, strong and +tender, but still (as Coleridge remarked of several of the lesser +Elizabethan playwrights) most outspokenly carnal, was united by the pure +spirit of Spenser, by the unerring genius of Shakespeare, that vivifying +drop of burning, spiritual love taken from out of the "Vita Nuova," +which had floated, like some sovereign essential oil, on the top of +Petrarch's rose-water. Henceforward the world possesses a new kind of +love: the love of Romeo, of Hamlet, of Bassanio, of Viola, and of +Juliet; the love of the love poems of Shelley, of Tennyson, of Browning +and Browning's wife. A love whose blindness, exaggeration of passion, +all that might have made it foolish and impracticable, leads no longer +to folly and sin, but to an intenser activity of mankind's imagination +of the good and beautiful, to a momentary realization in our fancy of +all our vague dreams of perfection; a love which, though it may cool +down imperceptibly and pale in its intenseness, like the sunrise fires +into a serene sky, has left some glory round the head of the wife, some +glory in the heart of the husband, has been, however fleeting, a vision +of beauty which has made beauty more real. And all this owing to the +creation, the storing up, the purification by the Platonic poets of +Tuscany, of that strange and seemingly so artificial and unreal thing, +medięval love; the very forms and themes of whose poetry, the _serena_ +and the _alba_, which had been indignantly put aside by the early +Italian lyrists, being unconsciously revived, and purified and +consecrated in the two loveliest love poems of Elizabethan poetry: the +_serena_, the evening song of impatient expectation in Spenser's +Epithalamium; the _alba_, the dawn song of hurried parting, in the +balcony scene of "Romeo and Juliet." + +Let us recapitulate. The feudal Middle Ages gave to mankind a more +refined and spiritual love, a love all chivalry, fidelity, and +adoration, but a love steeped in the poison of adultery; and to save the +pure and noble portions of this medięval love became the mission of the +Tuscan poets of that strange school of Platonic love which in its very +loveliness may sometimes seem so unnatural and sterile. For, by reducing +this medięval love to a mere intellectual passion, seeking in woman +merely a self-made embodiment of cravings after perfection, they +cleansed away that deep stain of adultery; they quadrupled the intensity +of the ideal element; they distilled the very essential spirit of poetic +passion, of which but a few drops, even as diluted by Petrarch, +precipitated, when mingled with the earthly passion of future poets, to +the bottom, no longer to be seen or tasted, all baser ingredients. + +And, while the poems of minnesingers and troubadours have ceased to +appeal to us, and remain merely for their charm of verse and of graceful +conceit; the poetry written by the Italians of the thirteenth century +for women, whose love was but an imaginative fervour, remains +concentrated in the "Vita Nuova;" and will remain for all time the +sovereign purifier to which the world must have recourse whenever that +precipitate of baser instincts, which thickened like slime the love +poetry of Antiquity, shall rise again and sully the purity of the love +poetry of to-day. + + + + + +EPILOGUE. + +More than a year has elapsed since the moment when, fancying that this +series of studies must be well-nigh complete, I attempted to explain in +an introductory chapter what the nature of this book of mine is, or +would fain be. I had hoped that each of these studies would complete its +companions; and that, without need for explicit explanation, my whole +idea would have become more plain to others than it was at that time +even to myself. But instead, it has become obvious that the more +carefully I had sought to reduce each question to unity, the more that +question-subdivided and connected itself with other questions; and that, +with the solution of each separate problem, had arisen a new set of +problems which infinitely complicated the main lessons to be deduced +from a study of that many-sided civilization to which, remembering the +brilliant and mysterious offspring of Faustus and Helena, I have given +the name of Euphorion. Hence, as it seems, the necessity for a few +further words of explanation. + +In those introductory pages written some fifteen months ago, I tried to +bring home to the reader a sense which has haunted me throughout the +writing of this volume; namely, that instead of having deliberately made +up my mind to study the Renaissance, as one makes up one's mind to visit +Greece or Egypt or the Holy Land; I have, on the contrary, quite +accidentally and unconsciously, found myself wandering about in spirit +among the monuments of this particular historic region, even as I might +wander about in the streets of Siena where I wrote last year, of +Florence whence I write at present; wandering about among these things, +and little by little feeling a particular interest in one, then in +another, according as each happened to catch my fancy or to recall some +already known thing. Now these, which for want of a better word I have +just called monuments, and just now, less clearly, but also less +foolishly, merely _things_--these things were in reality not merely +individual and really existing buildings, books, pictures, or statues, +individual and really registered men, women, and events; they were the +mental conceptions which I had extracted out of these realities; the +intellectual types made up (as the medięval symbols of justice are made +up of the visible paraphernalia, robe, scales and sword, for judging and +weighing and punishing) of the impressions left on the mind by all +those buildings, or books, or pictures, or statues, or men, women, and +events. They were not the iniquities of this particular despot nor the +scandalous sayings of that particular humanist, but the general moral +chaos of the Italian fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; not the poem of +Pulci, of Boiardo, of Ariosto in especial, but a vast imaginary poem +made up of them all; not the medięval saints of Angelico and the pagan +demi-gods of Michael Angelo, but the two tremendous abstractions: the +spirit of Medięvalism in art, and the spirit of Antiquity; the interest +in the distressed soul, and the interest in the flourishing body. And, +as my thoughts have gone back to Antiquity and onwards to our own times, +their starting-point has nevertheless been the Tuscan art of the +fifteenth century, their nucleus some notes on busts by Benedetto da +Maiano and portraits by Raphael. + +My _dramatis persona_ have been modes of feeling and forms of art. I +have tried to explain the life and character, not of any man or woman, +but of the moral scepticism of Italy, of the tragic spirit of our +Elizabethan dramatists; I have tried to write the biography of the +romance poetry of the Middle Ages, of the realism of the great portrait +painters and sculptors of the Renaissance. But these, my _dramatis +persona,_ are, let me repeat it, abstractions: they exist only in my +mind and in the minds of those who think like myself. Hence, like all +abstractions, they represent the essence of a question, but not its +completeness, its many-sidedness as we may see it in reality. Hence it +is that I have frequently passed over exceptions to the rule which I was +stating, because the explanation of these exceptions would have involved +the formulating of a number of apparently irrelevant propositions; so +that any one who please may accuse me of inexactness; and, to give an +instance, cover the margins of my essay on Medięval Love with a whole +list of virtuous love stories of the Middle Ages; or else ferret out of +Raynouard and Von der Hagen a dozen pages of medięval poems in praise of +rustic life. These objections will be perfectly correct, and (so far as +my knowledge permitted me) I might have puzzled the reader with them +myself; but it remains none the less certain that, in the main, medięval +love was not virtuous, and medięval peasantry not admired by poets; and +none the less certain, I think, also, that in describing the +characteristics and origin of an abstract thing, such as medięval love, +or medięval feeling towards the country and country folk, it was my +business to state the rule and let alone the exceptions. + +There is another matter which gives me far greater concern. In creating +and dealing with an abstraction, one is frequently forced, if I may use +the expression, to cut a subject in two, to bring one of its sides into +full light and leave the other in darkness; nay, to speak harshly of one +side of an art or of a man without being able to speak admiringly of +another side. + +This one-sidedness, this apparent injustice of judgment, has in some +cases been remedied by the fact that I have treated in one study those +things which I was forced to omit in another study; as, in two separate +essays, I have pointed out first the extreme inferiority of Renaissance +sculpture to the sculpture of Antiquity with regard to absolute beauty +of form; and then the immeasurable superiority of Renaissance over +antique sculpture in the matter of that beauty and interest dependent +upon mere arrangement and handling, wherein lies the beauty-creating +power of realistic schools. But most often I have shown one side, not +merely of an artist or an art, but of my own feeling, without showing +the other; and in one case this inevitable one-sidedness has weighed +upon me almost like personal guilt, and has almost made me postpone the +publication of this book to the Greek Kalends, in hopes of being able to +explain and to atone. I am alluding to Fra Angelico. I spoke of him in a +study of the progress of mere beautiful form, the naked human form +moreover, in the art of the Renaissance; I looked at his work with my +mind full of the unapproachable superiority of antique form; I judged +and condemned the artist with reference to that superb movement towards +nature and form and bodily beauty which was the universal movement of +the fifteenth century; I lost patience with this saint because he would +not turn pagan; I pushed aside, because he did not seek for a classic +Olympus, his exquisite dreams of a medięval Paradise. I had taken part, +as its chronicler, with the art which seeks mere plastic perfection, the +art to which Angelico said, "Retro me Sathana." It was my intention to +close even this volume with a study of the poetical conception of early +Renaissance painting, of that strange kind of painting in which a thing +but imperfect in itself, a mere symbol of lovely ideas, brings home to +our mind, with a rush of associations, a sense of beauty and wonder +greater perhaps than any which we receive from the sober reality of +perfect form. Again, there are the German masters--the great engravers, +Kranach, Altdorfer, Aldegrever, especially; of whom, for their absolute +pleasure in ugly women, for their filthy delight in horrors, I have said +an immense amount of ill; and of whom, for their wonderful intuition of +dramatic situation, their instinct of the poetry of common things, and +their magnificently imaginative rendering of landscape, I hope some day +to say an equal amount of good. + +I have spoken of the lesson which may be derived from studies even as +humble as these studies of mine; since, in my opinion, we cannot treat +history as a mere art--though history alone can gives us now-a-days +tragedy which has ceased to exist on our stage, and wonder which has +ceased to exist in our poetry--we cannot seek in it mere selfish +enjoyment of imagination and emotion, without doing our soul the great +injury of cheating it of some of those great indignations, some of +those great lessons which make it stronger and more supple in the +practical affairs of life. Each of these studies of mine brings its own +lesson, artistic or ethical, important or unimportant; its lesson of +seeking certainty in our moral opinions, beauty in all and whatever our +forms of art, spirituality in our love. But besides these I seem to +perceive another deduction, an historical fact with a practical +application; to see it as the result not merely perhaps of the studies +of which this book is the fruit, but of those further studies, of the +subtler sides of Medięval and Renaissance life and art which at present +occupy my mind and may some day add another series of essays to this: a +lesson still vague to myself, but which, satisfactorily or +unsatisfactorily, I shall nevertheless attempt to explain; if indeed it +requires to be brought home to the reader. + +Of the few forms of feeling and imagination which I have treated--things +so different from one another as the feeling for nature and the +chivalric poem, as modern art, with its idealism and realism, and modern +love--of these forms, emotional and artistic, which Antiquity did not +know, or knew but little, the reader may have observed that I have +almost invariably traced the origin deep into that fruitful cosmopolitan +chaos, due to the mingling of all that was still unused of the remains +of Antiquity with all that was untouched of the intellectual and moral +riches of the barbarous nations, to which we give the name of Middle +Ages; and that I have, as invariably, followed the development of these +precious forms, and their definitive efflorescence and fruit-bearing, +into that particular country where certain medięval conditions had +ceased to exist, namely Italy. In other words, it has seemed to me that +the things which I have studied were originally produced during the +Middle Ages, and consequently in the medięval countries, France, +Germany, Provence; but did not attain maturity except in that portion of +the Middle Ages which is medięval no longer, but already more than half +modern, the Renaissance, which began in Italy not with the establishment +of despotisms and the coming of Greek humanists, but with the +independence of the free towns and with the revival of Roman tradition. + +Why so? Because, it appears to me, after watching the lines of my +thought converging to this point, because, with a few exceptions, the +Middle Ages were rich in great beginnings (indeed a good half of all +that makes up our present civilization seems to issue from them): but +they were poor in complete achievements; full of the seeds of modern +institutions, arts, thoughts, and feelings, they yet show us but rarely +the complete growth of any one of them: a fruitful Nile flood, but which +must cease to drown and to wash away, which must subside before the +germs that it has brought can shoot forth and mature. The sense of this +comes home to me most powerfully whenever I think of medięval poetry and +medięval painting. + +The songs of the troubadours and minnesingers, what are they to our +feelings? They are pleasant, even occasionally beautiful, but they are +empty, lamentably empty, charming arrangements of words; poetry which +fills our mind or touches our heart comes only with the Tuscan lyrists +of the thirteenth century. The same applies to medięval narrative-verse: +it is, with one or two exceptions or half exceptions, such as "The +Chanson de Roland" and Gottfried's "Tristan und Isolde," decidedly +wearisome; a thing to study, but scarcely a thing to delight in. I do +not mean to say that the old legends of Wales and Scandinavia, +subsequently embodied by the French and German poets of the Middle Ages, +are without imaginative or emotional interest; nothing can be further +from my thoughts. The Nibelung story possesses, both in the Norse and in +the Middle High German version, a tragic fascination; and a quaint +fairy-tale interest, every now and then rising to the charm of a +Decameronian _novella_, is possessed by many of the Keltic tales, +whether briefly told in the Mabinogion or lengthily detailed by +Chrestien de Troyes and Wolfram von Eschenbach. But all this is the +interest of the mere story, and you would enjoy it almost as much if +that story were related not by a poet but by a peasant; it is the +fascination of the mere theme, with the added fascination of our own +unconscious filling up and colouring of details. And the poem itself, +whence we extract this theme, remains, for the most part, uninteresting. +The figures are vague, almost shapeless and colourless; they have no +well-understood mental and moral anatomy, so that when they speak and +act the writer seems to have no clear conception of the motives or +tempers which make them do so; even as in a child's pictures, the horses +gallop, the men run, the houses stand, but without any indication of the +muscles which move the horse, of the muscles which hold up the man, of +the solid ground upon which is built, nay rather, into which is planted, +the house. Hatred of Hagen, devotion of Rüdger, passionate piety of +Parzival--all these are things of which we do not particularly see the +how or why; we do not follow the reasons, in event or character, which +make these men sacrifice themselves or others, weep, storm, and so +forth; nay, even when these reasons are clear from the circumstances, we +are not shown the action of the mechanism, we do not see how Brunhilt is +wroth, how Chriemhilt is revengeful, how Herzeloid is devoted to +Parzival. There is, in the vast majority of this medięval poetry, no +clear conception of the construction and functions of people's +character, and hence no conception either of those actions and reactions +of various moral organs which, after all, are at the bottom of the +events related. Herein lies the difference between the forms of the +Middle Ages and those of Antiquity; for how perfectly felt, understood, +is not every feeling and every action of the Homeric heroes, how +perfectly indicated! We can see the manner and reason of the conflict of +Achilles and Agamemnon, of the behaviour of the returned Odysseus, as +clearly as we see the manner and reason of the movements of the fighting +Centaurs and Lapithę, or the Amazons; nay, even the minute mood of +comparatively unimportant figures, as Helen, Brisei's, and Nausicaa, is +indicated in its moral anatomy and attitude as distinctly as is the +manner in which the maidens of the Parthenon frieze slowly restrain +their steps, the boys curb their steeds, or the old men balance their +oil jars. Nothing of this in medięval literature, except perhaps in +"Flamenca" and "Tristan," where the motive of action, mere imaginative +desire, is all-permeating and explains everything. These people clearly +had no interest, no perception, connected with character: a valorous +woman, a chivalrous knight, an insolent steward, a jealous husband, a +faithful retainer; things recognized only in outline, made to speak and +act only according to a fixed tradition, without knowledge of the +internal mechanism of motive; these sufficed. Hence it is that medięval +poetry is always like medięval painting (for painting continued to be +medięval with Giotto's pupils long after poetry had ceased to be +medięval with Dante and his school), where the Virgin sits and holds the +child without body wherewith to sit or arms wherewith to hold; where +angels flutter forward and kneel in conventional greeting, with +obviously no bended knees beneath their robes, nay, with knees, waist, +armpits, all anywhere; where men ride upon horses without flat to their +back; where processions of the blessed come forth, guided by fiddling +seraphs, vague, faint faces, sweet or grand, heads which might wave like +pieces of cut-out paper upon their necks, arms and legs here and there, +not clearly belonging to any one; creatures marching, soaring, flying, +singing, fiddling, without a bone or a muscle wherewith to do it all. +And meanwhile, in this medięval poetry, as in this medięval painting, +there are yards and yards of elaborate preciousness: all the embossed +velvets, all the white-and-gold-shot brocades, all the silks and satins, +and jewel-embroidered stuffs of the universe cast stiffly about these +phantom men and women, these phantom horses and horsemen. It is not +until we turn to Italy, and to the Northern man, Chaucer, entirely under +Italian influence, that we obtain an approach to the antique clearness +of perception and comprehension; that we obtain not only in Dante +something akin to the muscularities of Signorelli and Michael Angelo; +but in Boccaccio and Chaucer, in Cavalca and Petrarch, the equivalent of +the well-understood movement, the well-indicated situation of the +simple, realistic or poetic, sketches of Filippino and Botticelli. + +This, you will say, is a mere impression; it is no explanation, still +less such an explanation as may afford a lesson. Not so. This strange +inconclusiveness in all medięval things, till the moment comes when they +cease to be medięval; this richness in germs and poverty in mature +fruit, cannot be without its reason. And this reason, to my mind, lies +in one word, the most terrible word of any, since it means suffering and +hopelessness; a word which has haunted my mind ever since I have looked +into medięval things: the word Wastefulness. Wastefulness; the frightful +characteristic of times at once so rich and so poor, the explanation of +the long starvation and sickness that mankind, that all mankind's +concerns--art, poetry, science, life--endured while the very things +which would have fed and revived and nurtured, existed close at hand, +and in profusion. Wastefulness, in this great period of confusion, of +the most precious things that we possess: time, thought, and feeling +refused to the realities of the world, and lavished on the figments of +the imagination. Why this vagueness, this imperfection in all medięval +representations of life? Because even as men's eyes were withdrawn, by +the temporal institutions of those days, from the sight of the fields +and meadows which were left to the blind and dumb thing called serf; so +also the thoughts of mankind, its sympathy and intentions, were +withdrawn from the mere earthly souls, the mere earthly wrongs and woes +of men by the great self-organized institution of medięval religion. +Pity of the body of Christ held in bondage by the Infidel; love of God; +study of the unknowable things of Heaven: such are the noblest +employments of the medięval soul; how much of pity, of love, may remain +for man; how much of study for the knowable? To Wastefulness like +this--to misapplication of mind ending almost in palsy--must we ascribe, +I think, the strange sterility of such medięval art as deals not merely +with pattern, but with the reality of man's body and soul. And we might +be thankful, if, during our wanderings among medięval things, we had +seen the starving of only art and artistic instincts; but the soul of +man has lain starving also; starving for the knowledge which was sought +only of Divine things, starving for the love which was given only to +God. + +The explanation, therefore, and its lesson, may thus be summed up in the +one word Wastefulness. And the fruitfulness of the Renaissance, all that +it has given to us of art, of thought, of feeling (for the "Vita Nuova" +is its fruit), is due, as it seems to me, to the fact that the +Renaissance is simply the condition of civilization when, thanks to the +civil liberty and the spiritual liberty inherited from Rome and +inherited from Greece, man's energies of thought and feeling were +withdrawn from the unknowable to the knowable, from Heaven to Earth; and +were devoted to the developing of those marvellous new things which +Antiquity had not known, and which had lain neglected and wasted during +the Middle Ages. + +FLORENCE, _January_,1884. + + + + + +APPENDIX. + +I have seen the pictures and statues and towns which I have described, +and I have read the books of which I attempt to give an impression; but +here my original research, if such it may be called, comes to an end. I +have trusted only to myself for my impressions; but I have taken from +others everything that may be called historical fact, as distinguished +from the history of this or that form of thought or of art which I have +tried to elaborate. My references are therefore only to standard +historical works, and to such editions of poets and prose writers as +have come into my hands. How much I am endebted to the genius of +Michelet; nay, rather, how much I am, however unimportant, the thing +made by him, every one will see and judge. With regard to positive +information I must express my great obligations to the works of Jacob +Burckhardt, of Prof. Villari, and of Mr. J.A. Symonds in everything that +concerns the political history and social condition of the Renaissance. +Mr. Symonds' name I have placed last, although this is by no means the +order of importance in which the three writers appear in my mind, +because vanity compels me to state that I have deprived myself of the +pleasure and profit of reading his volumes on Italian literature, from a +fear that finding myself doubtless forestalled by him in various +appreciations, I might deprive my essays of what I feel to be their +principal merit, namely, the spontaneity and wholeness of personal +impression. With regard to philological lore, I may refer, among a +number of other works, to M. Gaston Paris' work on the Cycle of +Charlemagne, M. de la Villemarqué's companion volume on Keltic romances, +and Professor Rajna's "Fonti dell' Ariosto." My knowledge of +troubadours, trouvčres, and minnesingers is obtained mainly from the +great collections of Raynouard, Wackernagel, Mätzner, Bartsch, and Von +der Hagen, and from Bartsch's and Simrock's editions and versions of +Gottfried von Strassburg, Hartmann von Aue, and Wolfram von Eschenbach. +"Flamenca" I have read in Professor Paul Meyer's beautiful edition, text +and translation; "Aucassin et Nicolette," in an edition published, if I +remember rightly, by Janet; and also in a very happy translation +contained in Delvau's huge collection of "Romans de Chevalerie," which +contains, unfortunately sometimes garbled, as many of the prose stories +of the Carolingian and Amadis cycle as I, at all events, could endure to +read. For the early Italian poets, excepting Carducci's "Cino da +Pistoia," my references are the same as those in Rossetti's "Dante and +his Cycle," especially the "Rime Antiche" and the "Poeti del Primo +Secolo." Professor d'Ancona's pleasant volume has greatly helped me in +the history of the transformation of the courtly poetry of the early +Middle Ages into the folk poetry of Tuscany. I owe a good deal also, +with regard to this same essay "The Outdoor Poetry," to Roskoff's famous +"Geschichte des Teufels," and to Signor Novati's recently published +"Carmina Medii _Ęvi_." The Italian _novellieri,_ Bandello, Cinthio, and +their set, I have used in the Florentine editions of 1820 or 1825; +Masuccio edited by De Sanctis. For the essay on the Italian Renaissance +on the Elizabethan Stage, I have had recourse, chiefly, to the fifteenth +century chronicles in the "Archivio Storico Italiano," and to Dyce's +Webster, Hartley Coleridge's Massinger and Ford, Churton Collins' Cyril +Tourneur, and J.O. Halliwell's Marston. + +The essays on art have naturally profited by the now inevitable Crowe +and Cavalcaselle; but in this part of my work, while I have relied very +little on books, I have received more than the equivalent of the +information to be obtained from any writers in the suggestions and +explanations of my friend Mr. T. Nelson MacLean, who has made it +possible for a mere creature of pens and ink to follow the differences +of _technique_ of the sculptors and medallists of the fifteenth century; +a word of thanks also, for various such suggestions as can come only +from a painter, to my old friend Mr. John S. Sargent, of Paris. + +I must conclude these acknowledgments by thanking the Editors of the +_Contemporary, British Quarterly_, and _National Reviews_, and of the +_Cornhill Magazine_, for permission to republish such of the essays or +fragments of essays as have already appeared in those periodicals. + +THE END. + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Euphorion, by Vernon Lee + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EUPHORION *** + +***** This file should be named 31304-8.txt or 31304-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/3/0/31304/ + +Produced by Marc D'Hooghe + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Euphorion + Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the + Renaissance - Vol. II + +Author: Vernon Lee + +Release Date: February 17, 2010 [EBook #31304] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EUPHORION *** + + + + +Produced by Marc D'Hooghe + + + + + +</pre> + + +<h1>EUPHORION: BEING STUDIES OF THE ANTIQUE AND THE MEDIÆVAL IN THE RENAISSANCE</h1> + +<h3>BY</h3> + +<h2>VERNON LEE</h2> + +<h3><i>Author of "Studies of the 18th Century in Italy," "Belcaro," etc.</i></h3> + +<h3><i>VOL. II.</i></h3> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3>TABLE OF CONTENTS.</h3> + + +<p class="center"><a href="#THE_PORTRAIT_ART">The Portrait Art</a></p> + +<p class="center"><a href="#THE_SCHOOL_OF_BOIARDO">The School Of Boiardo</a></p> + +<p class="center"><a href="#MEDIEVAL_LOVE">Mediaeval Love</a></p> + +<p class="center"><a href="#EPILOGUE">Epilogue</a></p> + +<p class="center"><a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a></p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + + +<h3><a name="THE_PORTRAIT_ART" id="THE_PORTRAIT_ART"></a>THE PORTRAIT ART</h3> + + +<h3>I.</h3> + +<p>Real and Ideal—these are the handy terms, admiring +or disapproving, which criticism claps with random +facility on to every imaginable school. This artist +or group of artists goes in for the real—the upright, +noble, trumpery, filthy real; that other artist or group +of artists seeks after the ideal—the ideal which may +mean sublimity or platitude. We summon every +living artist to state whether he is a realist or an +idealist; we classify all dead artists as realists or +idealists; we treat the matter as if it were one of +almost moral importance. Now the fact of the case +is that the question of realism and idealism, which +we calmly assume as already settled or easy to settle +by our own sense of right and wrong, is one of the +tangled questions of art-philosophy; and one, moreover, +which no amount of theory, but only historic +fact, can ever set right. For, to begin with, we find +realism and idealism coming before us in different +ways and with different meaning and importance. +All art which is not addressing (as decrepit art is +forced to do) faculties to which it does not spontaneously +and properly appeal—all art is decorative, ornamental, +idealistic therefore, since it consciously or +unconsciously aims, not merely at reproducing the +already existing, but at producing something which +shall repay the looking at it, something which shall ornament, +if not a place, at least our lives; and such making +of the ornamental, of the worth looking at, necessarily +implies selection and arrangement—that is to say +idealism. At the same time, while art aims definitely +at being in this sense decorative, art may very possibly +aim more immediately at merely reproducing, without, +selection or arrangement, the actually existing things +of the world; and this in order to obtain the mere +power of representation. In short, art which is idealistic +as a master will yet be realistic as a scholar: it +decorates when it achieves, it copies when it studies. +But this is only half the question. Certain whole +schools may be described as idealistic, others as +realistic, in tendency; and this, not in their study, but +in their achievement. One school will obviously be +contented with forms the most unselected and vulgar; +others will go but little out of their way in search of +form-superiority; while yet others, and these we must +emphatically call idealistic, are squeamish to the last +degree in the choice and adaptation of form, anxious, +to get the very best, and make the very best of it. +Yet, on thinking over it, we shall find that realistic. +and idealistic schools are all, in their achievements, +equally striving after something which is not the mere +reproduction of the already existing as such—striving, +in short, after decoration. The pupil of Perugino +will, indeed, wait patiently to begin his work until he +can find a model fit for a god or goddess; while the +fellow-craftsman of Rembrandt will be satisfied with +the first dirty old Jew or besotten barmaid that comes +to hand. But the realistic Dutchman is not, therefore, +any the less smitten with beauty, any the less eager +to be ornamental, than the idealistic Italian: his man +and woman he takes indeed with off-hand indifference, +but he places them in that of which the Italian shall +perhaps never have dreamed, in that on which he has +expended all his science, his skill, his fancy, in that +which he gives as his addition to the beautiful things +of art—in atmosphere, in light, which are to the everyday +atmosphere and light what the patiently sought +for, carefully perfected god or goddess model of +Raphael is to the everyday Jew, to the everyday +barmaid, of Rembrandt.</p> + +<p>The ideal, for the man who is quite coarsely realistic +in his figures, exists in the air, light, colour; and in +saying this I have, so to speak, turned over the page +too quickly, forestalled the expression of what I can +prove only later: the disconnection of such comparative +realism and idealism as this (the only kind of realism, +let us remember, which can exist in great art) with +any personal bias of the artist, its intimate dependence +upon the constitution and tendency of art, upon its +preoccupations about form, or colour, or light, in a +given country and at a given moment. And now I +should wish to resume the more orderly treatment +of the subject, which will lead us in time to the second +half of the question respecting realism and idealism. +These considerations have come to me in connection +with the portrait art of the Renaissance; and this +very simply. For portrait is a curious bastard of art, +sprung on the one side from a desire which is not +artistic, nay, if anything, opposed to the whole nature +and function of art: the desire for the mere likeness of +an individual. The union with this interloping tendency, +so foreign to the whole aristocratic temper of art, has +produced portrait; and by the position of this hybrid, +or at least far from regularly bred creature; by the +amount of the real artistic quality of beauty which it +is permitted to retain by the various schools of art, +we can, even as by the treatment of similar social +interlopers we can estimate the necessities and tendencies +of various states of society, judge what are +the conditions in which the various schools of art +struggle for the object of their lives, which is the +beautiful.</p> + +<p>I have said that art is realistic in its periods or +moments of study; and this is essentially the case +even with the school which in many respects was the +most unmistakably decorative and idealistic in intention: +the school of Giotto. The Giottesques are +more than decorative artists, they are decorators in +the most literal sense. Painting with them is merely +one of the several arts and crafts enslaved by mediaeval +architecture and subservient to architectural effects. +Their art is the only one which is really and successfully +architecturally decorative; and to appreciate this +we must contrast their fresco-work with that of the +fifteenth century and all subsequent times. Masaccio, +Ghirlandajo, Signorelli, turn the wall into a mere badly +made frame; a gigantic piece of cardboard would do +as well, and better; the colours melt into one another, +the figures detach themselves at various degrees of +relief; those upon the ceiling and pendentives are +frequently upside down; yet these figures, which are +so difficult to see, are worth seeing only in themselves, +and not in relation to their position. The masonry +is no longer covered, but carved, rendered uneven with +the cavities and protrusions of perspective. In Mantegna's +frescoes the wall becomes a slanting theatre +scene, cunningly perspectived like Palladio's Teatro +Olimpico; with Correggio, wall, masonry, everything, +is dissolved, the side or cupola of a church becomes a +rent in the clouds, streaming with light.</p> + +<p>Not so with the Giottesque frescoes: the wall, the +vault, the triumphant masonry is always present and +felt, beneath the straight, flat bands of uniform colour; +the symmetrical compartments, the pentacles,triangles, +and segments, and borders of histories, whose figures +never project, whose colours are separate as those in +a mosaic. The Giottesque frescoes, with their tiers +and compartments of dark blue, their vague figures +dressed in simple ultramarines, greens, dull reds, and +purples; their geometrical borders and pearlings and +dog-tooths; cover the walls, the ribbed and arched +ceilings, the pointed raftering almost like some +beautiful brown, blue, and tarnished gold leather-hangings; +the figures, outlined in dark paint, have +almost the appearance of being stencilled, or even +stamped on the wall. Such is Giottesque painting: +an art which is not merely essentially decorative, +but which is, moreover, what painting and sculpture +remained throughout the Gothic period, subservient +to the decorative effect of another art; an art in which +all is subordinated to architectural effect, in which +form, colour, figures, houses, the most dramatic scenes +of the most awful of all dramas, everything is turned +into a kind of colossal and sublime wall-paper; and +such an art as this would lead us to expect but little +realism, little deliberate and slavish imitation of the +existing. Yet wherever there is life in this Gothic +art (which has a horrible tendency, piously unobserved +by critics, to stagnate into blundering repetition of +the same thing), wherever there is progress, there is, +in the details of that grandiose, idealistic decoration, +realism of the crudest kind. Those Giottesque +workers, who were not content with a kind of Gothic +Byzantinism; those who really handed over something +vital to their successors of the fifteenth century, while +repeating the old idealistical decorations; were studying +with extraordinary crudeness of realism. Everything +that was not conventional ornament or type +was portrait; and portrait in which the scanty technical +means of the artist, every meagre line and thin dab +of colour, every timid stroke of brush or of pencil, went +towards the merciless delineation not merely of a body +but of a soul. And the greater the artist, the more +cruel the portrait: cruellest in representation of utter +spiritual baseness in the two greatest of these idealistic +decorators; Giotto, and his latest disciple, Fra +Angelico. Of this I should like to give a couple of +examples.</p> + +<p>In Giotto's frescoes at Santa Croce—one of the +most lovely pieces of mere architectural decoration +conceivable—there are around the dying and the dead +St. Francis two groups of monks, which are astoundingly +realistic. The solemn ending of the ideally +beautiful life of sanctity which was so fresh in the +memory of Giotto's contemporaries, is nothing beyond +a set of portraits of the most absolutely mediocre +creatures, moral and intellectual, of creatures the most +utterly incapable of religious enthusiasm that ever +made religion a livelihood. They gather round the +dying and the dead St. Francis, a noble figure, not at +all ecstatic or seraphic, but pure, strong, worn out +with wise and righteous labour, a man of thought and +action, upon whose hands and feet the stigmata of +supernatural rapture are a mere absurdity. The +monks are presumably his immediate disciples, those +fervent and delicate poetic natures of whom we read +in the "Fioretti di San Francesco." To represent them +Giotto has painted the likeness of the first half-dozen +friars he may have met in the streets near Santa +Croce: not caricatures, nor ideals, but portraits +Giotto has attempted neither to exalt nor to degrade +them into any sort of bodily or spiritual interestingness. +They are not low nor bestial nor extremely +stupid. They are in various degrees dull, sly, routinist, +prosaic, pedantic; their most noteworthy characteristic +is that they are certainly the men who are not called +by God. They are no scandal to the Church, but +no honour; they are sloth, stupidity, sensualism, and +cunning not yet risen to the dignity of a vice. They +look upon the dying and the dead saint with indifference, +want of understanding, at most a gape or a +bright look of stupid miscomprehension at the stigmata: +they do not even perceive that a saint is a +different being from themselves. With these frescoes +of Giotto I should wish to compare Fra Angelico's +great ceremonial crucifixion in the cloister chapel of +San Marco of Florence; for it displays to an extraordinary +degree that juxtaposition of the most conventionally +idealistic, pious decorativeness with the +realism straightforward, unreflecting, and heartless to +the point of becoming perfectly grotesque. The fresco +is divided into two scenes: on the one side the crucifixion, +the mystic actors of the drama, on the other +the holy men admitted to its contemplation. A sense +that holy things ought to be old-fashioned, a respect +for Byzantine inanity which invariable haunted the +Giottesques in their capacity of idealistic decorators, +of men who replaced with frescoes the solemn lifeless +splendours of mosaic; this kind of artistico-religious +prudery has made Angelico, who was able to foreshorten +powerfully the brawny crucified thieves, represent +the Saviour dangling from the cross bleached,boneless, +and shapeless, a thing that is not dead because it +has never been alive. The holy persons around stand +rigid, vacant, against their blue nowhere of background, +with vague expanses of pink face looking neither one way +nor the other; mere modernized copies of the strange, +goggle-eyed, vapid beings on the old Italian mosaics. +This is not a representation of the actual reality of the +crucifixion, like Tintoret's superb picture at S. Rocco, +or Dürer's print, or so many others, which show the +hill, the people, the hangman, the ladders and ropes +and hammers and tweezers: it is a sort of mystic +repetition of it; subjective, if I may say so; existing +only in the contemplation of the saints on the opposite +side, who are spectators only in the sense that a contemplative +Christian may be said to be the mystic +spectator of the Passion. The thing for the painter +to represent is fervent contemplation, ecstatic realization +of the past by the force of ardent love and belief; +the condition of mind of St. Francis, St. Catherine of +Siena, Madame Guyon: it is the revelation of the great +tragedy of heaven to the soul of the mystic. Now, +how does Fra Angelico represent this? A row of +saints, founders of orders, kneel one behind the other, +and by their side stand apostles and doctors of the +Church; admitting them to the sight of the super-human, +with the gesture, the bland, indifferent vacuity +of the Cameriere Segreto or Monsignore who introduces +a troop of pilgrims to the Pope; they are privileged +persons, they respect, they keep up decorum, +they raise their eyes and compress their lips with ceremonious +reverence; but, Lord! they have gone through +it all so often, they are so familiar with it, they don't +look at it any longer; they gaze about listlessly, they +would yawn if they were not too well bred for that. +The others, meanwhile, the sainted pilgrims, the men +whose journey over the sharp stones and among the +pricking brambles of life's wilderness finds its final +reward in this admission into the presence of the +Holiest, kneel one by one, with various expressions: +one with the stupid delight of a religious sightseer; +his vanity is satisfied, he will next draw a rosary from +his pocket and get it blessed by Christ Himself; he +will recount it all to his friends at home. Another is +dull and gaping, a clown who has walked barefoot +from Valencia to Rome, and got imbecile by the way; +yet another, prim and dapper; the rest indifferent +looking restlessly about them, at each other, at their +feet and hands, perhaps exchanging mute remarks +about the length of time they are kept waiting; those +at the end of the kneeling procession, St. Peter Martyr +and St. Giovanni Gualberto especially, have the bored, +listless, devout look of the priestlets in the train of a +bishop. All these figures, the standing ones who +introduce and the kneeling ones who are being introduced, +are the most perfect types of various states of +dull, commonplace, mediocre routinist superstition; +so many Camerlenghi on the one hand, so many +Passionist or Propagandists on the other: the first +aristocratic, bland and bored; the second, dull, listless, +mumbling, chewing Latin Prayers which never +meant much to their minds, and now mean nothing; +both perfectly reverential and proper in behaviour, +with no more possibility of individual fervour of belief +than of individual levity of disbelief: the Church, as +it exists in well-regulated decrepitude. And thus +does the last of the Giottesques, the painter of glorified +Madonnas and dancing angels, the saint, represent +the saints admitted to behold the supreme tragedy of +the Redemption.</p> + +<p>Thus much for the Giottesques. The Tuscans of +the early Renaissance developed up to the utmost, +assisted by the goldsmiths and sculptors, who taught +them modelling and anatomy, that realistic element +of Giottesque painting. Its ideal decorative part had +become impossible. Painting could no longer be a +decoration of architecture, and it had not yet the means +of being ornamental in itself; it was an art which did +not achieve, but merely studied. Among its exercises +in anatomy, modelling, perspective, and so forth, always +laborious and frequently abortive, its only spontaneous, +satisfactory, mature production was its portrait work, +Portraits of burghers in black robes and hoods; of +square-jawed youths with red caps stuck on to their +fuzzy heads, of bald and wrinkled scholars and magnificoes; +of thinly bearded artizans; people who stand +round the preaching Baptist or crucified Saviour, look +on at miracle or martyrdom, stolid, self-complacent, +heedless, against their background of towered, walled, +and cypressed city—of buttressed square and street; +ugly but real, interesting, powerful among the grotesque +agglomerations of bag-of-bones nudities, bunched and +taped-up draperies and out-of-joint architecture of the +early Renaissance frescoes; at best among its picture-book +and Noah's-ark prettinesses of toy-box cypresses, +vine trellises, inlaid house fronts, rabbits in the grass, +and peacocks on the roofs; for the early Renaissance, +with the one exception of Masaccio, is in reality a +childish time of art, giving us the horrors of school-hour +blunders and abortions varied with the delights of +nursery wonderland: maturity, the power of achieving, +the perception of something worthy of perception, +comes only with the later generation, the one immediately +preceding the age of Raphael and Michael +Angelo; with Ghirlandajo, Signorelli, Filippino, Botticelli, +Perugino, and their contemporaries.</p> + +<p>But this period is not childish, is not immature in +everything. Or, rather, the various arts which exist +together at this period are not all in the same stage +of development. While painting is in this immature +ugliness, and ideal sculpture, in works like Verrocchio's +and Donatello's David, only a cleverer, more experienced, +but less legitimate kind of painting, painting +more successful in the present, but with no possible +future; the almost separate art of portrait-sculpture +arises again where it was left by Graeco-Roman +masters, and, developing to yet greater perfection, +gives in marble the equivalent of what painting will +be able to produce only much later: realistic art +which is decorative; beautiful works made out of ugly +materials.</p> + +<p>The vicissitudes of Renaissance sculpture are +strange: its life, its power, depend upon death; it is an +art developed in the burying vault and cloister cemetery. +During the Middle Ages sculpture had had its +reason, its vital possibility, its something to influence, +nay, to keep it alive, in architecture; but with the disappearance +of Gothic building disappears also the +possibility of the sculpture which covers the portals of +Chartres and the belfry of Florence. The pseudo-classic +colonnades, entablatures, all the thin bastard +Ionic and Corinthian of Aberti and Bramante, did not +require sculpture, or had their own little supply of unfleshed +ox-skulls, greengrocer's garlands, scallopings +and wave-linings, which, with a stray siren and one +or two bloated emperors' heads, amply sufficed. On +the other hand, mediaeval civilization and Christian +dogma did not encourage the production of naked of +draped ideal statues like those which Antiquity stuck +on countless temple fronts, and erected at every +corner of square, street, or garden. The people of the +Middle Ages were too grievously ill grown, distorted, +hideous, to be otherwise than indecent in nudity; they +may have had an instinct of the kind, and, ugly as +they knew themselves to be, they must yet have found +in forms like those of Verrocchio's David insufficient +beauty to give much pleasure. Besides, if the Middle +Ages had left no moral room for ideal sculpture once +freed from the service of architecture; they had still +less provided it with a physical place. Such things +could not be set up in churches, and only a very +moderate number of statues could be wanted as open-air +monuments in the narrow space of a still Gothic +city; and, in fact, ideal heroic statues of the early +Renaissance are fortunately not only ugly, but comparatively +few in number. There remained, therefore, +for sculpture, unless contented to dwindle down into +brass and gold miniature work, no regular employment +save that connected with sepulchral monuments. +During the real Middle Ages, and in the still Gothic +north, the ornamentation of a tomb belonged to architecture: +from the superb miniature minsters, pillared +and pinnacled and sculptured, cathedrals within the +cathedral, to the humbler foliated arched canopy, protecting +a simple sarcophagus at the corner of many a +street in Lombardy. The sculptor's work was but the low +relief on the church flags, the timidly carved, outlined, +cross-legged knight or praying priest, flattened down +on his pillow as if ashamed even of that amount of +prominence, and in a hurry to be trodden down and +obliterated into a few ghostly outlines. But to this +humiliated prostrate image, to this flat thing doomed +to obliteration, came the sculptor of the Renaissance, +and bade the wafer-like simulacrum fill up, expand, +raise itself, lift itself on its elbow, arise and take +possession of the bed of state, the catafalque raised +high above the crowd, draped with brocade, carved +with rich devices of leaves and beasts of heraldry, +roofed over with a daïs, which is almost a triumphal +arch, garlanded with fruits and flowers, upon which +the illustrious dead were shown to the people; but +made eternal, and of eternal magnificence, by the +stone-cutter, and guarded, not for an hour by the +liveried pages or chaunting monks, but by winged +genii for all eternity. Some people, I know, call this +a degradation, and say that it was the result of corrupt +pride, this refusal to have the dear or illustrious dead +scraped out any longer by the shoe-nails of every +ruffian, rubbed out by the knees of every kitchen +wench; but to me it seems that it was due merely to +the fact that sculpture had lost its former employment, +and that a great art cannot (thank Heaven!) be +pietistically self-humiliating. Be this as it may, the +sculpture of the Renaissance had found a new and +singularly noble line of work, the one in which it was +great, unique, unsurpassed, because untutored. It +worked here without models, to suit modern requirements, +with modern spirit; it was emphatically-modern +sculpture; the only modern sculpture which +can be talked of as something original, genuine, valuable, +by the side of antique sculpture. Greek Antiquity +had evaded death, and neglected the dead; a garland +of maenads and fauns among ivy leaves, a battle of +amazons or centaurs; in the late semi-Christian, +platonic days, some Orphic emblem, or genius; at +most, as in the exquisite tombs of the Keramikos of +Athens, a figure, a youth on a prancing steed, like the +Phidian monument of Dexileus; a maiden, draped +and bearing an urn; but neither the youth nor the +maiden is the inmate of the tomb: they are types, +living types, no portraits. Nay, even where Antiquity +shows us Death or Hermes, gently leading away the +beloved; the spirit, the ghost, the dead one, is unindividual. +"Sarkophagen und Urnen bekränzte der +Heide mit Leben," said Goethe; but it was the life +which was everlasting because it was typical: the life +not which had been relinquished by the one buried +there, but the life which the world danced on, forgetful, +round his ashes. The Romans, on the contrary, +graver and more retentive folk than the Greeks, as +well as more domestic, less coffee-house <i>living</i>, appear +to have inherited from the Etruscans a desire to preserve +the effigy of the dead, a desire unknown to the +Greeks. But the Etrusco-Roman monuments, where +husband and wife stare forth togaed and stolaed, half +reduced to a conventional crop-headedness, grim and +stiff as if sitting unwillingly for their portrait; or +reclining on the sarcophagus-lid, neither dead, nor +asleep, nor yet alive and awake, but with a hieratic +mummy stare, have little of aesthetic or sympathetic +value. The early Renaissance, then, first bethought +it of representing the real individual in the real death +slumber. And I question whether anything more +fitting could be placed on a tomb than the effigy of the +dead as we saw them just before the coffin-lid closed +down; as we would give our all to see them but one +little moment longer; as they continue to exist for our +fancy within the grave; for to any but morbid feelings +the beloved can never suffer decay. Whereas a portrait +of the man in life, as the throning popes in St. +Peter's, seems heartless and derisive; such monuments +striking us as conceived and ordered by their inmates +while alive, like Michael Angelo's Pope Julius, and +Browning's Bishop, who was so preoccupied about his +tomb in St. Praxed's Church. The Renaissance, the +late Middle Ages, felt better than this: on the +extreme pinnacle, high on the roof, they might indeed +place against the russet brick or the blue sky, amid +the hum of life and the movement of the air, the +living man, like the Scaligers, the mailed knight on +his charger, lance in rest: but in the church below, +under the funereal pall, they could place only the body +such as it may have lain on the bier.</p> + +<p>And that figure on the bier was the great work of +Renaissance sculpture. Inanimate and vulgar when +in heroic figures they tried to emulate the ancients, +the sculptors of the fifteenth century have found their +own line. The modesty, the simplicity, the awful and +beautiful repose of the dead; the individual character +cleared of all its conflicting meannesses by death, +simplified, idealized as it is in the memory of the +survivors—all these are things which belong to the +Renaissance. As the Greeks gave the strong, smooth +life-current circulating through their heroes; so did +these men of the fifteenth century give the gentle and +harmonious ebbing after-life of death in their sepulchral +monuments. Things difficult to describe, and which +must be seen and remembered. There is the monument, +now in the museum at Ravenna, by a sculptor +whose name, were it known, would surely be among +the greatest, of the condottiere, Braccioforte: the body +prone in its heavy case of armour, not yet laid out in +state, but such as he may have been found in the +evening, when the battle was over, under a tree where +they had carried him to die while they themselves +went back to fight; the head has fallen back, side-ways, +weighed down by the helmet, which has not +even been unbuckled, only the face, the clear-cut, +austere features, visible beneath the withdrawn vizor; +the eyes have not been closed; and there are few +things more exquisite and solemn at once in all +sculpture, than the indication of those no longer seeing +eyes, of that broken glance, beneath the half-closed +lids. There is Rossellino's Cardinal of Portugal at +S. Miniato a Monte: the slight body, draped in episcopal +robes, lying with delicate folded hands, in +gracious decorum of youthful sanctity; the strong +delicate head, of clear feature and gentle furrow of +suffering and thought, a face of infinite purity of +strength, strength still ungnarled by action: a young +priest, who in his virginal dignity is almost a noble +woman. And there is the Ilaria Guinigi of Jacopo +della Quercia (the man who had most natural affinity +with the antique of all these sculptors, as one may see +from the shattered remains of the Fonte Gaia of +Siena), the lady stretched out on the rose-garlanded +bed of state in a corner of Lucca Cathedral, her feet +upon her sleeping dog, her sweet, girlish head, with +wavy plaits of hair encircled by a rose-wreathed, +turban-like diadem, lying low on round cushions; the +bed gently giving way beneath the beautiful, ample-bosomed +body, round which the soft robe is chastely +gathered, and across which the long-sleeved arms +are demurely folded; the most beautiful lady (whose +majestic tread through the palace rooms we can well +imagine) that the art of the fifteenth century has recorded. +There is, above all, the Carlo Marsuppini of +Desiderio da Settignano, the humanist Secretary of +the Commonwealth, lying on the sarcophagus, superb +with shell fretwork and curling acanthus, in Santa +Croce of Florence. For the youthful beauty of the +Cardinal of Portugal and of the Lady Ilaria are +commonplace compared with the refinement of this +worn old face, with scant wavy hair and thin, gently +furrowed, but by no means ploughed-up features. +The slight figure looks as if in life it must have +seemed almost transparent; and the hands are very +pathetic: noble, firm hands, subtle of vein and wrist, +crossed simply, neither in prayer nor in agony, but in +gentle weariness, over the book on his breast. That +book is certainly no prayer-book; rather a volume of +Plato or Cicero: in his last moments the noble old +man has longed for a glance over the familiar pages; +they have placed the book on his breast, but it has +been too late; the drowsiness of death has overtaken +him, and with his last sigh he has gently folded his +hands over the volume, with the faint, last clinging to +the things beloved in this world.</p> + +<p>Such is that portrait sculpture of the early Renaissance, +its only sculpture, if we except the exquisite work +in babies and angels just out of the nursery of the Robbias, +which is a real achievement. But how achieved? +This art is great just by the things which Antiquity +did not. And what are those things? Shall we say +that it is sentiment? But all fine art has tact, antique +art most certainly; and as to pathos, why, any quiet +figure of a dead man or woman, however rudely carved, +has pathos; nay, there is pathos in the poor puling^ +hysterical art which makes angels draw the curtains +of fine ladies' bedchambers, and fine ladies, in hoop or +limp Grecian dress, faint (the smelling bottle, Betty!) +over their lord's coffin; there is pathos, to a decently +constituted human being, wherever (despite all absurdities) +we can imagine that there lies some one +whom it was bitter to see departing, to whom it was +bitter to depart. Pathos, therefore, is not the question; +and, if you choose to call it sentiment, it is in reality +a sentiment for line and curve, for stone and light. +The great question is, How did these men of the +Renaissance make their dead people look beautiful? +For they were not all beautiful in life, and ugly folk +do not grow beautiful merely because they are dead. +The Cardinal of Portugal, the beautiful Ilaria herself, +were you to sketch their profile and place it by the +side of no matter what ordinary antique, would greatly +fall short of what we call sculpturesque beauty; and +many of the others, old humanists and priests and +lawyers, are emphatically ugly: snub or absurdly +hooked noses, retreating or deformedly overhanging +foreheads, fleshy noses, and flabby cheeks, blear eyes +and sunk-in mouths; and a perfect network of wrinkles +and creases, which, hard as it is to say, have been +scooped out not merely by age, but by low mind, +fretting and triumphant animalism. Now, by what +means did the sculptor—the sculptor, too unacquainted +with sculptural beauty (witness his ugly +ideal statues), to be able, like the man who turned the +successors of Alexander into a race of leonine though +crazy demi-gods—to insidiously idealize these ugly and +insignificant features; by what means did he turn +these dead men into things beautiful to see? I have +said that he took up art where Graeco-Roman Antiquity +had left it. Remark that I say Graeco-Roman, and I +ought to add much more Roman than Greek. For +Greek sculpture, nurtured in the habit of perfect form, +art to whom beauty was a cheap necessity, invariably +idealized portrait, idealized it into beauty or inanity. +But when Greek art had run its course; when beauty +of form had well-nigh been exhausted or begun to +pall; certain artists, presumably Greeks, but working +for Romans, began to produce portrait work of quite +a new and wonderful sort: the beautiful portraits of +ugly old men, of snub little boys, work which was +clearly before its right time, and was swamped by +idealized portraits, insipid, nay, inane, from the elegant +revivalist busts of Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius down +to the bonnet blocks of the lower empire. Of this +Roman portrait art, of certain heads of half-idiotic +little Caesar brats, of sly and wrinkled old men, things +which ought to be so ugly and yet are so beautiful, +we say, at least, perhaps unformulated, we think, +"How Renaissance!" And the secret of the beauty +of these few Graeco-Roman busts, which is also that +of Renaissance portrait sculpture, is that the beauty is +quite different in kind from the beauty of Greek ideal +sculpture, and obtained by quite different means.</p> + +<p>It is, essentially, that kind of beauty which I began +by saying belonged to realistic art, to the art which is +not squeamish about the object which it represents, +but is squeamish about the manner and medium in +which that indifferent object is represented; it is a kind +of beauty, therefore, more akin to that of Rembrandt +and Velasquez than to that of Michael Angelo or +Raphael. It is the beauty, not of large lines and +harmonies, beauty residing in the real model's forms, +beauty real, wholesale, which would be the same if +the man were not marble but flesh, not in a given +position but moving; but it is a beauty of combinations +of light and surface, a beauty of texture opposed +to texture, which would probably be unperceived in +the presence of the more regal beauty of line and +colour harmonies, and which those who could obtain +this latter would employ only as much as they were +conducive to such larger beauties. And this beauty +of texture opposed to texture and light combined with +surface is a very real thing; it is the great reality of +Renaissance sculpture: this beauty, resulting from +the combination, for instance, in a commonplace face, +of the roughness and coarser pore of the close shaven +lips and chin with the smoothness of the waxy +hanging cheeks; the one catching the light, the other +breaking it into a ribbed and forked penumbra. The +very perfection of this kind of work is Benedetto da +Maiano's bust of Pietro Mellini in the Bargello at +Florence. The elderly head is of strongly marked +osseous structure, yet fleshed with abundant and flaccid +flesh, hanging in folds or creases round the mouth and +chin, yet not flobbery and floppy, but solid, though +yielding, creased, wrinkled, crevassed rather as a sandy +hillside is crevassed by the trickling waters; semi-solid, +promising slight resistance, waxy, yielding +to the touch. But all the flesh has, as it were, gravitated +to the lower part of the face, conglomerated, +or rather draped itself, about the mouth, firmer for +sunken teeth and shaving; and the skin has remained +alone across the head, wrinkled, yet drawn in tight +folds across the dome-shaped skull, as if, while the +flesh disappeared, the bone also had enlarged. And +on the temples the flesh has once been thick, the bone +(seemingly) slight; and now the skin is being drawn, +recently, and we feel more and more every day, into a +radiation of minute creases, as if the bone and flesh +were having a last struggle. Now in this head there +is little beauty of line (the man has never been good-looking), +and there is not much character in the sense +of strongly marked mental or moral personality. I +do not know, nor care, what manner of man this may +have been. The individuality is one, not of the mind^ +but of the flesh. What interests, attaches, is not the +character or temperament, but the bone and skin, the +creases and folds of flesh. And herein also lies the +beauty of the work. I do not mean its interest or +mere technical skill, I mean distinctly visible and +artistic beauty.</p> + +<p>Thus does the sculptor of the Renaissance get +beauty, visible beauty, not psychologic interest, out of +a plain human being; but the beauty (and this is the +distinguishing point of what I must call realistic +decorative art) does not exist necessarily in the plain +human being: he merely affords the beginning of a +pattern which the artist may be able to carry out. A +person may have in him the making of a really beautiful +bust and yet be ugly; just as the same person may +afford a subject for a splendid painting and for an +execrable piece of sculpture. The wrinkles and creases +in a face like that of Benedetto da Maiano's Mellini +would probably be ugly and perhaps disgusting in the +real reddish, flaccid, discoloured flesh; while they are +admirable in the solid and supple-looking marble, in +its warm and delicate bistre and yellow. Material has +an extraordinary effect upon form; colour, though +not a positive element in sculpture, has immense +negative power in accentuating or obliterating the +mere line. All form becomes vague and soft in the +dairy flaccidness of modern ivory; and clear and +powerful in the dark terra cotta, which can ennoble +even the fattest and flattest faces with its wonderful +faculty for making mere surface markings, mere +crowsfeet, interesting. Thus also with bronze: the +polished, worked bronze, of fine chocolate burnish +and reddish reflections, mars all beauty of line; how +different the unchased, merely rough cast, greenish, +with infinite delicate greys and browns, making, for +instance, the head of an old woman like an exquisite +withered, shrivelled, veined autumnal leaf. It is +moreover, as I have said, a question of combination of +surface and light, this art which makes beautiful busts +of ugly men. The ideal statue of the Greeks intended +for the open air; fit to be looked at under any light, +high or low, brilliant or veiled, had indeed to be prepared +to look well under any light; but to look well +under any light means not to use any one particular +relation of light as an ally; the surface was kept +modestly subordinated to the features, the features +which must needs look well at all moments and from +all points of view. But the Renaissance sculptor +knew where his work would be placed; he could calculate +the effect of the light falling invariably through +this or that window; he could make a fellow-workman +of that light, present for it to draw or to obliterate +what features he liked, bid it sweep away such or such +surfaces with a broad stream, cut them with a deep +shadow, caress their smooth chiselling or their rough +grainings, mark as with a nail the few large strokes of +the point which gave the firmness to the strained +muscle or stretched skin. Out of this model of his, +this plain old burgess, he and his docile friend the light, +could make quite a new thing; a new pattern of bosses +and cavities, of smooth sweeps and tracked lines, of +creases and folds of flesh, of pliable linen and rough +brocade of dress: something new, something which, +without a single feature being straightened or shortened, +yet changed completely the value of the whole +assemblage of features; something undreamed of by +nature in moulding that ugly old merchant or humanist. +With this art which produced works like Desiderio +da Settignano's Carlo Marsuppini and Benedetto da +Maiano's Pietro Mellini, is intimately connected the +art of the great medallists of the Renaissance—Pasti, +Guacialotti, Niccolò Fiorentino, and, greatest of all, +Pisanello. Its excellence depends precisely upon its +independence of the ideal work of Antiquity; nay, +even upon the fact that, while the ancients, striking +their coins in chased metal dies, obtained an astonishing +minuteness and clearness of every separate little +stroke and dint, and were therefore forced into an +almost more than sculptural perfection of mere line, +of mere profile and throat and elaborately composed +hair, a sort of sublime abstraction of the possible +beauty of a human face, as in the coins of Syracuse +and also of Alexander; the men of the fifteenth +century employed the process of casting the bronze +in a concave mould obtained by the melting away of +a medallion in wax; in wax, which taking the living +impress of the artist's finger, and recalling in its firm +and yet soft texture the real substance of the human +face, insensibly led the medallist to seek, not sharp +and abstract lines, but simple, strongly moulded +bosses; not ideal beauty, but the real appearance of +life. It is, moreover, a significant fact that while the +men who, half a century or so later, made fine, characterless +die-stamped medals in imitation of the antique, +Caradossi and Benvenuto for instance, were gold-smiths +and sculptors, workers with the chisel, artists +seeking essentially for abstract elegance of line; the +two greatest medallists of the early Renaissance, +Vittore Pisano and Matteo di Pasti, were both of them +painters; and painters of the Northern Italian school, +to whom colour and texture were all important, and +linear form a matter of indifference. And indeed, if +we look at the best work of what I may call the wax +mould medallists of the fifteenth century, even at the +magnificent marble medallions of the laurel-wreathed +head of Sigismund Malatesta on the pillars of his +church at Rimini, modelled by Pasti, we shall see +that these men were preoccupied almost exclusively +with the almost pictorial effect of the flesh in its +various degrees of boss and of reaction of the light; +and that the character, the beauty even, which they +attained, is essentially due to a skilful manipulation +of texture, and surface, and light—one might almost +say of colour. We all know Pisanello's famous heads +of the Malatesti of Rimini: the saturnine Sigismund, +the delicate dapper Novello, the powerful yet beautiful +Isotta; but there are other Renaissance medals +which illustrate my meaning even better, and connect +my feelings on the subject of this branch of art more +clearly with my feelings towards such work as Benedetto's +Pietro Mellini. Foremost among these is +the perhaps somewhat imperfect and decidedly grotesque, +but astonishingly powerful, naïf and characteristic +Lorenzo dei Medici by Niccolò +real grandeur of whose conception of this coarse yet +imaginative head may be profitably contrasted with +the classicizing efforts after the demi-god or successor +of Alexander in Pollaiolo's famous medal of the Pazzi +conspiracy. Next to this I would place a medal by +Guacialotti of Bishop Niccolò Palmieri, with the +motto, "Nudus egressus sic redibo"—singularly appropriate +to the shameless fleshliness of the personage, +with his naked fat chest and shoulders, his fat, pig-like +cheeks and greasy-looking bald head; a hideous +beast, yet magnificent in his bestiality like some huge +fattened porker. These medals give us, as does the +bust of Pietro Mellini, beauty of the portrait despite +ugliness of the original. But there are two other +medals, this time by Pisanello, and, as it seems to +me, perhaps his masterpieces, which show the quite +peculiar way in which this homely charm of portraiture +amalgamates, so as to form a homogeneous and +most seemingly simple whole, with the homely charm +of certain kinds of pure and simple youthful types. +One of these (the reverse of which fantastically represents +the four elements, the wooded earth, the starry +sky, the rippled sea, the sun, all in one sphere) is the +portrait of Don Inigo d'Avalos; the other that of +Cecilia Gonzaga. This slender beardless boy in the +Spanish shovel hat and wisp of scarf twisted round +the throat; and this tall, long-necked girl, with sloping +shoulders and still half-developed bosom; are, so to +speak, brother and sister in art, in Pisanello's wonderful +genius. The relief of the two medals is extremely +low, so that in certain lights the effigies vanish almost +completely, sink into the pale green surface of the +bronze; the portraits are a mere film, a sort of haze +which has arisen on the bronze and gathered into +human likeness; but in this film, this scarce perceptible +relief, we are made to perceive the slender osseous +structure, the smooth, sleek, childish blond flesh and +hair, the delicate, undecided pallor of extreme youth +and purity, even as we might in some elaborate portrait +by Velasquez, but with a springlike healthiness +which Velasquez, painting his lymphatic Hapsburgs, +rarely has.</p> + +<p>Such is this Renaissance art of medals, this side +branch of the great realistic portraiture in stone of +the Benedettos, Desiderios, and Rossellinos; a perfect +thing in itself; and one which, if we muse over it in +connection with the more important works of fifteenth +century sculpture, will perhaps lead us to think that, +as the sculpture of Antiquity, in its superb idealism, +its devotion to the perfect line and curve of beauty, +achieved the highest that mere colourless art can +achieve—thanks to the very purity, sternness, and narrowness +of its sculpturesque feeling—so also, perhaps, +modern sculpture, should it ever re-arise, must be +a continuation of the tendencies of the Renaissance, +must be the humbler sister of painting, must seek for +the realistic portrait and begin, perhaps, with the +realistic medal.</p> + +<h3>II.</h3> + +<p>This kind of realism, where only the model is ugly, +while the portrait is beautiful; which seeks decorative +value by other means than the intrinsic excellence of +form in the object represented, this kind of realism is +quite different in sort from the realisms of immature +art, which, aiming at nothing beyond a faithful copy, +is content with producing an ugly picture of an ugly +thing. Now this latter kind of realism endured in +painting some time after decorative realism such as I +have described had reached perfection in sculpture. +Nor was it till later, and when the crude scholastic +realism had completely come to an end, that there +became even partially possible in painting decorative +realism analogous to what we have noticed in sculpture; +while it was not till after the close of the Italian +Renaissance period that the painters arose in Spain +and the Netherlands who were able to treat their +subjects with the uncompromising decorative realism +of Desiderio or Rosellino or Benedetto da Maiano. +For the purely imitative realism of the painters of +the early Renaissance was succeeded in Italy by idealism, +which matured in the great art of intrinsically +beautiful linear form of Michael Angelo and Raphael, +and the great art of intrinsically beautiful colour +form of Giorgione and Titian. These two schools +were bound to be, each in its degree, idealistic. +Complete power of mere representation in tint and +colour having been obtained through the realistic +drudgery of the early Renaissance, selection in the +objects thus to be represented had naturally arisen; +and the study of the antique had further hastened +and directed this movement of art no longer to study +but to achieve, to be decorative once more, decorative +no longer in subservience to architecture, but as the +separate and self-sufficing art of painting. Selection, +therefore, which is the only practical kind of +idealism, had begun as soon as painting was possessed +of the power of representing objects in their relations +of line and colour, with that amount of light and +shadow requisite to the just appreciation of the relations +of form and the just relations of colour. Now art +which stops short at this point of representation must +inevitably be, if decorative at all, idealistically decorative; +it must be squeamish respecting the objects +represented, respecting their real structure, colour, +position, and grouping. For, of the visible impressions +received from an object, some are far more +intrinsic than others. Suppose we see a woman, +beautiful in the structure of her body, and beautiful +in the colour of her person and her draperies, standing +under a light which is such as we should call beautiful +and interesting: of these three qualities one will be +intrinsic in the woman, the second very considerably +so, the third not at all. For, let us call that woman +away and replace her immediately by another woman +chosen at random. We shall immediately perceive +that we have lost one pleasurable impression, that of +beautiful bodily structure: the woman has taken away +her well-shapen body. Next we shall perceive a +notable diminution in the second pleasurable impression: +the woman has taken with her, not indeed her +well-tinted garments, which we may have bestowed +on her successor, but her beautifully coloured skin +and hair, so that of the pleasing colour-impression +will remain only as much as was due to, and may +have been retained with, the original woman's clothes. +But if we look for our third pleasurable impression, +our beautiful light, we shall find that unchanged, +whether it fall upon a magnificently arrayed goddess +or upon a sordid slut And, conversely, the beautiful +woman, when withdrawn from that light and placed +in any other, will be equally lovely in form, even if +we cast her in plaster, and lose the colour of her skin +and hair; or if we leave her not only the beautiful +tints of her flesh and hair, but her own splendidly +coloured garments, we shall still have, in whatsoever +light, a magnificent piece of colour. But if we recall +the poor ugly creature who has succeeded her from +out of that fine effect of light, we shall have nothing +but a hideous form invested in hideous colour.</p> + +<p>This rough diagram will be sufficient to explain +my thought respecting the relative degree to which +the art dealing with linear form, that dealing with +colour and that dealing with light, with the medium +in which form and colour are perceived; is each +respectively bound to be idealistically or realistically +decorative. Now painting was aesthetically mature, +possessed the means to achieve great beauty, at a time +when of the three modes of representation there had +as yet developed only those of linear form and colour; +and the very possibility and necessity of immediately +achieving all that could be achieved by these means +delayed for a long time the development of the third +mode of representation: the representation of objects +as they appear with reference to the light through +which they are seen. A beginning had indeed been +made. Certain of Correggio's effects of light, even +more an occasional manner of treating the flesh and +hair, reducing both form and colour to a kind of vague +boss and vague sheen, such as they really present in +given effects of light, a something which we define +roughly as eminently modern in the painting of his +clustered cherubs; all this is certainly a beginning of +the school of Velasquez. Still more so is it the case +with Andrea del Sarto, the man of genius whom critics +love to despatch as a mediocrity, because his art, +which is art altogether for the eyes, and in which he +innovated more than any of his contemporaries, does +not afford any excuse for the irrelevancies of ornamental +criticism; with him the appearance of form +and colour, acted upon by light, the relative values of +which flesh and draperies consist with reference to +the surrounding medium, all this becomes so evident +a preoccupation and a basis for decorative effects, as +to give certain of his works an almost startling air of +being modern. But this tendency comes to nothing: +the men of the sixteenth century appear scarcely to +have perceived wherein lay the true excellence of this +"Andrea senza errori," deeming him essentially the +artist of linear perfection; while the innovations of +Correggio in the way of showing the relations of flesh +tones and light ended in the mere coarse gala +illuminations in which his successors made their +seraphs plunge and sprawl. There was too much to +be done, good and bad, in the way of mere linear form +and mere colour; and as art of mere linear form and +colour, indifferent of all else, did the art of the Italian +Renaissance run to seed.</p> + +<p>I said at the beginning of this paper that the degree +to which any art is strictly idealistic, can be measured +by the terms which it will make with portrait. For as +portrait is due to the desire to represent a person quite +apart from that person affording material for decoration, +it is evident that only the art which can call +in the assistance of decorative materials, independent +of the represented individual, can possibly make a +beautiful picture out of an ugly man; while the art +which deals only with such visible peculiarities as are +inherent in the individual, has no kind of outlet, is +cornered, and can make of a repulsive original only +a repulsive picture. The analogy to this we have +already noticed in sculpture: antique sculpture, considering +only the linear bosses which existed equally +in the living man and in the statue, could not afford +to represent plain people; while Renaissance sculpture, +extracting a large amount of beauty out of combinations +of surface and light, was able, as long as it +could arrange such an artificial combination, to dispense +with great perfection in the model. Nay, if we +except Renaissance statuary as a kind of separate +art, we may say that this independence of the object +portrayed is a kind of analytic test, enabling us to +judge at a glance, and by the degree of independence +from the model, the degree to which any art is removed +from the mere line and boss of antique sculpture. +In the statue standing free in any light that +may chance to come, every form must be beautiful +from every point; but in proportion as the new elements +of painting enter, in proportion as the actual +linear form and boss is marked and helped out by +grouping, colour, and light and shade, does the actual +perfection of the model become less important; until, +under the reign of light as the chief factor, it becomes +altogether indifferent. In this fact lies the only +rational foundation for the notion, made popular by +Hegel, that painting is an art in which beauty is of +much less account than in sculpture; failing to understand +that the sum total of beauty remained the same, +whether dependent upon the concentration of a single +element or obtained by the co-operation of several +consequently less singly important elements.</p> + +<p>But to return to the question of portrait art. From +what we have seen, it is clear that art which requires +perfection of form will be reduced to ugliness if +cramped in the obtaining of such perfection, whereas +art which can obtain beauty by other means will still +have a chance when reduced to imitate ugly object? +Hence it is that while the realistically decorative art +of the seventeenth century can make actually beautiful +things of the portraits of ugly people, the idealistically +decorative art of the Renaissance produces +portraits which are cruelly ugly in proportion as the +art is purely idealistic. Yet even in idealism there +are degrees: the more the art is confined to mere +linear form, to the exclusion of colour, the uglier will be +the portraits. With Michael Angelo the difficulty was +simplified to impossibility: he could not paint portrait +at all; and in his sculptured portraits of the two +Medicean dukes at S. Lorenzo he evaded all attempt +at likeness, making those two men into scarcely more +than two architectural monsters, half-human cousins +of the fantastic creatures who keep watch on the +belfries and gurgoyles of a Gothic cathedral. It is +almost impossible to think of Michael Angelo attempting +portrait: the man's genius cannot be constrained +to it, and what ought to be mere ugliness would come +out idealized into grandiose monstrosity. Men like +Titian and Tintoret are at the other end of the scale +of ideal decoration: they are bordering upon the +domain of realism. Hence they can raise into interest, +by the mere power of colour, many an insignificant +type; yet even they are incapable of dealing with +absolute ugliness, with absence of fine colour, or, if +they do deal with it, there is an immediate improvement +upon the model, and the appearance of truthfulness +goes. Between the absolute incapacity for dealing +with ugliness of Michael Angelo, and the power of +compromising with it of Titian and Tintoret, Raphael +stands half-way: he can call in the assistance of colour +just sufficiently to create a setting of carefully harmonized +draperies and accessories, beautiful enough +to allow of his filling it up with the most cruelly ugly +likeness which any painter ever painted. Far too +much has been written about Raphael in general, but +not half enough about Raphael as a portrait-painter; +for by the side of the eclectic idealist, who combined +and balanced beauty almost into insipidity, is the most +terribly, inflexibly veracious portrait-painter that ever +was. Compared with those sternly straightforward +portraits of his Florentine and Roman time, where +ugliness and baseness are never attenuated by one +tittle, and alloyed nobility or amiability, as with his +finer models, like the two Donis, husband and wife, +and Bibbiena, is never purified of its troubling element; +compared with them the Venetian portraits +are mere insincere, enormously idealized pieces of +colour-harmony; nay, the portraits of Velasquez are +mere hints—given rapidly by a sickened painter striving +to make those scrofulous Hapsburgs no longer +mere men, but keynotes of harmonies of light—of +what the people really are. For Velasquez seems to +show us the temperament, the potentiality of his +people, and to leave us, with a kind of dignified and +melancholy silence as to all further, to find out what +life, what feelings and actions, such a temperament +implies. But Raphael shows us all: the temperament +and the character, the real active creature, with all the +marks of his present temper and habits, with all the +indications of his immediate actions upon him: completely +without humour or bitterness, without the +smallest tendency to twist the reality into caricature +or monstrosity, nay, perhaps without much psychologic +analysis to tell him the exact meaning of what he is +painting, going straight to the point, and utterly ruthless +from sheer absence of all alternative of doing +otherwise than he does. There is nothing more +cruelly realistic in the world, cruel not only to the +base originals but to the feelings of the spectator, +than the harmony of villainies, of various combinations +of black and hog-like bestiality, and fox and +wolf-like cunning and ferocity with wicked human +thought and self-command, which Raphael has enshrined +in that splendid harmony of scarlet silk and +crimson satin, and purple velvet and dull white +brocade, as the portraits of Leo X. and his cardinals +Rossi and Dei Medici.</p> + +<p>The idealistic painter, accustomed to rely upon the +intrinsic beauty which he has hitherto been able to +select or create; accustomed also to think of form as +something quite independent of the medium through +which it is seen, scarcely conscious of the existence +of light and air in his habit of concentrating all attention +upon a figure placed, as it were, in a sort of +vacuum of indifference;—this idealistic artist is left +without any resources when bid to paint an ugly +man or woman. With the realistic artist, to whom +the man or woman is utterly indifferent, to whom the +medium in which they are seen is everything, the case +Is just reversed: let him arrange his light, his atmospheric +effect, and he will work into their pattern no +matter what plain or repulsive wretch. To Velasquez +the flaccid yellowish fair flesh, with its grey downy +shadows, the limp pale drab hair, which is grey in the +light and scarcely perceptibly blond in the shade, all +this unhealthy, bloodless, feebly living, effete mass of +humanity called Philip IV. of Spain, shivering in +moral anaemia like some dog thorough bred into +nothingness, becomes merely the foundation for a +splendid harmony of pale tints. Again, the poor +little baby princess, with scarce visible features, seemingly +kneaded (but not sufficiently pinched and +modelled) out of the wet ashes of an <i>auto da fè</i>, in +her black-and-white frock (how different from the +dresses painted by Raphael and Titian!), dingy and +gloomy enough for an abbess or a cameriera major, +this childish personification of courtly dreariness, +certainly born on an Ash Wednesday, becomes the +principal strands for a marvellous tissue of silvery and +ashy light, tinged yellowish in the hair, bluish in the +eyes and downy cheeks, pale red in the lips and the +rose in the hair; something to match which in beauty +you must think of some rarely seen veined and +jaspered rainy twilight, or opal-tinted hazy winter +morning. Ugliness, nay, repulsiveness, vanish, subdued +into beauty, even as noxious gases may be subdued +into health-giving substances by some cunning +chemist. The difference between such portraits as +these and the portraits by Raphael does not however +consist merely in the beauty: there is also the fact +that if you take one of Velasquez's portraits out of +their frame, reconstitute the living individual, and bid +him walk forth in whatsoever light may fall upon him, +you will have something infinitely different from the +portrait, and of which your only distinct feeling will +be that a fine portrait might be made of the creature; +whereas it is a matter of complete indifference whether +you see Raphael's Leo X. in the flesh or in his gilded +frame.</p> + +<p>Whatever may fairly be said respecting the relative +value of idealistic and realistic decorative art is really +also connected with this latter point. Considering +that realistic art is merely obtaining beauty by attention +to other factors than those which preoccupy +idealistic art, that the one fulfils what the other neglects—taking +the matter from this point of view, it +would seem as if the two kinds of arts were, so to +speak, morally equal; and that any vague sense of +mysterious superior dignity clinging to idealistic art +was a mere shred of long discarded pedantry. But +it is not so. For realistic art does more than merely +bring into play powers unknown to idealistic art: it +becomes, by the possession of these powers, utterly +indifferent to the intrinsic value of the forms represented: +it is so certain of making everything lovely by +its harmonies of light and atmosphere that it almost +prefers to choose inferior things for this purpose. +I am thinking at present of a picture by I forget what +Dutchman in our National Gallery, representing in +separate compartments five besotten-looking creatures, +symbolical of the five senses: they are ugly, brutish, +with I know not what suggestion of detestable temperament +in their bloodshot flesh and vermilion lips, +as if the whole man were saturated^with his appetite. +Yet the Dutchman has found the means of making +these degraded types into something which we care +to look at, and to look at on account of its beauty; +even as, in lesser degree, Rubens has always managed +to make us feel towards his flaccid, veal-complexioned, +fish-eyed women, something of what we feel towards +the goddesses of the Parthenon; towards the white-robed, +long-gloved ladies, with meditative face beneath +their crimped auburn hair, of Titian.</p> + +<p>Viewed in one way, there is a kind of nobility in +the very fact that such realistic art can make us +pardon, can redeem, nay almost sanctify, so much. +But is it right thus to pardon, redeem, and sanctify; +thus to bring the inferior on to the level of the superior? +Nay, is it not rather wrong to teach us to +endure so much meanness and ugliness in creatures, +on account of the nobility with which they are represented? +Is this not vitiating our feelings, blunting +our desire for the better, our repugnance for the +worse?</p> + +<p>A great and charitable art, this realistic art of the +seventeenth century, and to be respected for its very +tenderness towards the scorned and castaway things +of reality; but accustoming us, perhaps too much, like +all charitable and reclaiming impulses, to certain unworthy +contacts: in strange contrast herein with that +narrow but ascetic and aristocratic art of idealism, +which, isolated and impoverished though it may be, +has always the dignity of its immaculate purity, of its +unswerving judgment, of its obstinate determination +to deal only with the best. A hard task to judge +between them. But be this as it may, it is one of the +singular richnesses of the Italian Renaissance that +it knew of both tendencies; that while in painting +it gave the equivalent of that rigid idealism of the +Greeks which can make no compromise with ugliness; +in sculpture it possessed the equivalent of the +realism of Velasquez, which can make beauty out of +ugly things, even as the chemist can make sugar out +of vitriol.</p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3><a name="THE_SCHOOL_OF_BOIARDO" id="THE_SCHOOL_OF_BOIARDO"></a>THE SCHOOL OF BOIARDO.</h3> + +<p class="center">"Le donne, i cavalieri, 1' armi, gli amori."</p> + + +<h3>I.</h3> + +<p>Throughout the tales of Charlemagne and his +warriors, overtopping by far the crowd of paladins +and knights, move two colossal mailed and vizored +figures—Roland, whom the Italians call Orlando and +the Spaniards Roldan, the son of Milon d'Angers and +of Charlemagne's sister; and Renaud or Rinaldo, the +lord of Montauban, and eldest of the famous four sons +of Aymon. These are the two representative heroes, +equal but opposed, the Achilles and Odysseus, the +Siegfried and Dietrich, of the Carolingian epic; and +in each is personified, by the unconscious genius of +the early Middle Ages, one of the great political +movements, of the heroic struggles, of feudalism. +For there existed in feudalism two forces, a centripetal +and a centrifugal—a force which made for the +supremacy of the kingly overlordship, and a force +which made for the independence of the great vassals. +Hence, in the poetry which is the poetry of feudalism, +two distinct currents of feeling, two distinct epics—-the +epic of the devoted loyalty of all the heroes of France +to their wise and mighty emperor Charlemagne, +triumphant even in misfortune; and the epic of the +hopeless resistance against a craven and capricious +despot Charles of the most righteous and whole-hearted +among his feudatories: the epic of Roland, +and the epic of Renaud. Of the first there remains +to us, in its inflexible and iron solemnity, an original +rhymed narrative, "The Chanson de Roland," which +we may read perhaps almost in the selfsame words in +which it was sung by the Normans of William in their +night watch before the great battle. The centripetal +force of feudalism gained the upper hand, and the +song of the great empire, of the great deeds of +loyal prowess, was consecrated in the feudal monarchy. +The case was different with the tale of resistance and +rebellion. The story of Renaud soon became a dangerous +lesson for the great barons; it fell from the +hands of the nobles to those of humbler folk; and it is +preserved to us no longer in mediaeval verse, but in a +prose version, doubtless of the fifteenth century, under +the name, familiar on the stalls of village fairs, of "The +Quatre Fils Aymon." But, as Renaud is the equal of +Roland, so is this humble prose tale nevertheless the +equal of the great song of Roncevaux; and even now, +it would be a difficult task to decide which were the +grander, the tale of loyalty or the tale of resistance.</p> + +<p>In each of these tales,"The Chanson de Roland" and +"The Quatre Fils Aymon," there is contained a picture +of its respective hero, which sums up, as it were, the +whole noble character of the book; and which, the +picture of the dying Roland and the picture of the +dying Renaud, I would fain bring before you before +speaking of the other Roland and the other Renaud, +the Orlando of Ariosto and the Rinaldo of Boiardo. +The traitor Ganelon has enabled King Marsile to +overtake with all his heathenness the rear-guard of +Charlemagne between the granite walls of Roncevaux; +the Franks have been massacred, but the Saracens +have been routed; Roland has at last ceded to the +prayers of Oliver and of Archbishop Turpin; three +times has he put to his mouth his oliphant and blown +a blast to call back Charlemagne to vengeance, till +the blood has foamed round his lips and his temple +has burst. Oliver is dead, the archbishop is dying, +Roland himself is slowly bleeding to death. He goes +down into the defile, heaped with corpses, and seeks +for the bodies of the principal paladins, Ivon and +Ivaire, the Gascon Engelier, Gérier and Gérin, Bérenger +and Otho, Anseis and Salamon, and the old Gerard of +Rousillon; and one by one drags them to where the +archbishop lies dying. And then, when to these +knights Roland has at last added his own beloved +comrade Oliver, he bids the archbishop bless all the +dead, before he die himself. Then, when he has reverently +crossed Turpin's beautiful priestly hands over +his breast, he goes forth to shatter his sword Durendal +against the rocks; but the good sword has cut the rock +without shivering; and the coldness of death steals, +over Roland. He stretches himself upon a hillock +looking towards Spain, and prays for the forgiveness +of his sins; then, with Durendal and his ivory horn +by his side, he stretches out the glove of his right +hand to God. "He has stretched forth to God the glove +of his right hand; St. Gabriel has received it... +Then his head has sunk on his arm; he has gone, with +clasped hands, to his end. God sends him one of his +cherubim and St. Michael of Peril. St. Gabriel has +come with them. They carry the soul of the Count: +up to paradise."</p> + +<p>More solitary, and solemn and sad even, is the end +of the other hero, of the great rebel Renaud of Montauban. +At length, after a lifetime wasted in fruitless, +attempts to resist the iniquity of the emperor, to +baffle his power, to shame him by magnanimity into, +justice, the four sons of Aymon, who have given up +their youth, their manhood, the dearest things to their heart, +respect to their father and loyalty to their +sovereign, rather than countenance the injustice of +Charlemagne to their kinsman, have at last obtained +to be pardoned; to be pardoned, they, heroes, by this, +dastardly tyrant, and to quietly sink, broken-hearted +into nothingness. The eldest, Renaud, returning from +his exile and the Holy Land, finds that his wife +Clarisse has pined for him and died; and then, putting +away his armour from him, and dressing in a pilgrim's +frock made of the purple serge of the dead lady's robe, +he goes forth to wander through the world; not very +old in years, but broken-spirited; at peace, but in +solitude of heart. And one evening he arrives at +Cologne. We can imagine the old knight, only half +aware of the sunshine of the evening, the noise of the +streets, the looks of the crowd, the great minster +rising half-finished in the midst of the town by the +Rhine, the cries and noise and chipping of the masons; +unconscious of all this, half away: with his brothers +hiding in the Ardennes, living on roots and berries, at +bay before Charlemagne; or wandering ragged and +famishing through France; with King Yon brilliant +at Toulouse, seeing perhaps for the first time his bride +Clarisse, or the towers of Montauban rising under the +workmen's hands; thinking perhaps of the frightful +siege, when all, all had been eaten in the fortress, and +his children Aymonnet and Yonnet, all thin and +white, knelt down and begged him to slaughter his +horse Bayard that they might eat; perhaps of that +journey, when he and his brothers, all in red-furred +robes with roses in their hands, rode prisoners of +King Charles across the plain of Vaucouleurs; perhaps +of when he galloped up to the gallows at Montfaucon, +and cut loose his brother Richard; or of that daring +ride to Paris, where he and his horse won the race, +snatched the prize from before Charlemagne and +sped off crying out that the winner was Renaud of +Montauban; or, perhaps, seeing once more the sad, +sweet face of the Lady Clarisse, when she had burned +all her precious stuffs and tires in the castle-yard, and +lay dead without him to kiss her cold mouth; of +seeing once more his good horse Bayard, when he +kissed him in his stall before giving him to be killed +by Charlemagne. Thinking of all that past, seeing +it all within his mind, and seeing but little of the +present; as, in the low yellow light, he helped, for his +bread, the workmen to heave the great beams, to +carry the great stones of the cathedral, to split the +huge marble masses while they stared in astonished +envy; as he sat, unconscious of their mutterings, +eating his dry bread and porridge in the building +docks by the river. And then, when wearied, he had +sunk to sleep in the hay-loft, dreaming perchance that +all this evil life was but a dream and the awakening +therefrom to happiness and strength; the jealous workmen +came and killed him with their base tools, and +cast him into the Rhine. They say that the huge +body floated on the water, surrounded by a great +halo; and that when the men of the banks, seeing this, +reverently fished it out, they found that the noble +corpse was untouched by decay, and still surrounded +by a light of glory. And thus, it seems to me, this +Renaud, this rebel baron of whose reality we know +nothing, has floated surrounded by a halo of poetry +down the black flood of the Middle Ages (in which +so much has sunk); and when we look upon his face, +and see its beauty and strength and solemness, we +feel, like the people of the Rhine bank, inclined to +weep, and to say of this mysterious corpse, "Surely +this is some great saint."</p> + +<p>Of each of these heroes thus shown us by the +Middle Ages, the Italian Renaissance also, by the +hand of two of her greatest poets, has given us a +picture. And first, of Roland. Of him, of Count +Orlando, we are told by Messer Lodovico Ariosto, that +in consequence of his having discovered, in a certain +pleasant grotto among the ferns and maidenhair, +words graven on the rock (interrupted, doubtless, by +the lover's kisses) which revealed that the Princess +Angelica of Cathay had disdained him for Medoro, +the fair-haired page of the King of the Moors; Count +Orlando went straightway out of his mind, and hanging +up his armour and stripping off his clothes, galloped +about on his bare-backed horse, slaughtering cows and +sheep instead of Saracens; until it pleased God, moved +by the danger of Christendom and the prayers of +Charlemagne, to permit Astolfo to ride on the hippogriffs +back up to the moon, and bring back thence +the wits of the great paladin contained in a small phial. +We all know that merry tale. What the Renaissance +has to say of Renaud of Montauban is even stranger +and more fantastic. One day, says Matteo Boiardo, +in the fifteenth canto of the second part of his "Orlando +Innamorato," as Rinaldo of Montalbano, the contemner +of love, was riding in the Ardennes, he came to a +clearing in the forest, where, close to the fountain of +Merlin, a wonderful sight met his eyes. On a flowery +meadow were dancing three naked damsels, and singing +with them danced also a naked youth, dark of +eyes and fair of hair, the first down on his lips, so +that some might have said it was and others that it +was not there. On Rinaldo's approach they broke +through their singing and dancing, and rushed upon him, +pelting him with roses and hyacinths and violets from +their baskets, and beating him with great sheaves of +lilies, which burnt like flames through the plates of his +armour to the very marrow of his bones. Then when +they had dragged him, tied with garlands, by the feet +round and round the meadow; wings, eyed not with +the eyes of a peacock but with the eyes of lovely +damsels, suddenly sprouted out of their shoulders, and +they flew off, leaving the poor baron, bruised on the +grass, to meditate upon the vanity of all future resistance +to love.</p> + +<p>Such are the things which the Middle Ages and +the Renaissance found to tell us of the two great +heroes of Carolingian poetry. And the explanation +of how it came to pass, that for the Roland of the +song of Roncevaux was substituted the Orlando of +Ariosto, and for the Renaud of "The Quatre Fils +Aymon" the Rinaldo of Matteo Boiardo—means +simply that which I desire here to study: the metamorphoses +of mediaeval romance stuffs, and, more +especially, the vicissitudes of the cycle of Charlemagne.</p> + +<h2>II.</h2> + +<p>We are apt to think of the Middle Ages as if they +were the companion-piece to Antiquity; but no such +ideal correspondence exists between the two periods. +Antiquity is all of a piece, and the Middle Ages, on +the contrary, are heterogeneous and chaotic. For +Antiquity is the steady and uniform development of +civilization in one direction and with one meaning; +there are great differences between its various epochs, +but they are as the differences between the budding, +the blossoming, and the fading stages of one plant: +life varies, but is one. The Middle Ages, on the +other hand, are a series of false starts, of interruptions +and of new departures; a perpetual confusion. For, +if we think over them, we shall see that these centuries +called mediaeval are occupied by the effort of one +people, or one generation, to put to rights and settle +down among as much as it can save of the civilization +of Antiquity. And the sudden overwhelming of this +people or this generation by another, which puts all +the elaborate arrangements into disarray, adds to the +ruins of Antiquity the ruins of more recent times; and +then this destroying generation tries to put things +straight, to settle down, and is in its turn interrupted +by the advent of some new comer who begins the +game afresh.</p> + +<p>As it is with peoples, so also is it with ideas; +scarcely has a scheme of life or of philosophy or of art +taken shape and consistence before, from out of the +inexhaustible chaos of mediaeval thought and feeling, +there issue new necessities, new aspirations, which put +into confusion all previous ones. The Middle Ages +were like some financial crisis: a little time, a little +credit, money will fructify, wealth will reappear, the +difficult moment will be tided over; and so with +civilization. But unfortunately the wealth of ideas +began to accumulate in the storehouse only just long +enough to bring down a rout of creditors, people who +rifled the bank, and went home to consume or invest +their money in order to be succeeded by others. +Hence, in the matter of civilization, the Middle Ages +ended in an extraordinary slow ruin, a bankruptcy +like that which overtook France before '89, and from +which, as France was restored by the bold seizure and +breaking up of property of the revolution, the world +was restored by the bold breaking of feudal and +spiritual mortmain, the restoring of wasted energies +to utility, of that great double revolution, the Renaissance +and the Reformation. Be this as it may, +mankind throughout the Middle Ages appears to +have been in a chronic condition of packing up and +unpacking, and packing up again; one after another +a nation, a race, a philosophy, a political system came +to the front and was pushed back again into limbo: +Germans and Kelts and Latins, French civilization +of the day of Abélard, Provençal civilization of the +days of the Raymonds, brilliant and evanescent +Hohenstauffen supremacy, papacy at Canossa and at +Avignon, Templars triumphant and Templars persecuted; +scholasticism, mysticism, feudalism, democracy, +communism: influences all these perpetually +rising up and being trodden down, till they all rotted +away in the great stagnation of the fifteenth century; +and only in one part of the world, where the conflict was +more speedily ended, where one set of tendencies early +triumphed, where stability was temporarily obtained, +in Italy alone did civilization continue to be nurtured +and developed for the benefit of all mankind. In +such a state of affairs only such things could flourish +and mature as were safe from what I have called, for +want of a better expression, the perpetual unpacking +and repacking, the perpetual being on the move, of the +Middle Ages; and among such things foremost was +art, the essential art of the times, architecture, which, +belonging to the small towns, to the infinite minority +of the democracy, who worked and made money and +let the great changes pass over their heads, thrived +almost as something too insignificant for notice. +But it was different with literature. Cathedrals once +built cannot so easily be changed; new peoples, new +ideas, must accept them. But poetry—the thing which +every nation insists upon having to suit its own taste, +the thing which every nation and every generation +carries about with it hither and thither, the thing +which can be altered to suit every passing whim—poetry +was, of all the fluctuating things of the Middle +<i>Ages</i>, perhaps the most fluctuating. And fluctuating +also because, as none of these various nations, tendencies, +aspirations, dominated sufficiently long to +produce any highly organized art, there remained +no standard works, nothing recognizedly perfect, +which would be kept for its perfection and gather +round it imitations, so as to form the nucleus of any +homogeneous tradition. The Middle Ages, so full of +fashions in literary matters, possessed no classics; the +minnesingers knew nothing of the stern old Teutonic +war songs; the meistersängers had forgotten the +minnesingers; the trouvères and troubadours knew +nothing of "The Chanson de Roland," and Villon knew +nothing of them; only in Italy, where the Middle +Ages came to an end and the Renaissance began with +the Lombard league, was there established a tradition +of excellence, with men like Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, +handed down from generation to generation; +even as, while in the north there came about the +strange modification which substituted the French of +Rabelais for the French of Chrestien de Troyes, the +German of Luther for the German of Wolfram von +Eschenbach, the Italian language, from Ciullo d'Alcamo +almost to Boiardo and Lorenzo dei Medici, remained +virtually identical. The result of this, which I +may call the heterogeneousness and instability of the +Middle Ages was that not merely literary forms were +for ever arising and being superseded, but literary +subject matter was continually undergoing a process +of transformation. While in Antiquity the great epic +and tragic stuffs remained well-nigh unaltered, and +the stories of Valerius Flaccus and Apollonius Rhodius +were merely the stories which had been current since +the days of Homer, during the course of the Middle +Ages every epic cycle, and every tale belonging +thereunto, was gradually adulterated, mingled with, +swamped by, some other cycle or tale; nay, rather, +every other, cycle and every other tale, the older ones +trying to save their popularity by admixture with +the more recent, till at last all mythical significance, +all historical meaning, all national character, all +psychological reality, were lost in the chaotic result. +And meanwhile, in the absence of any stable language, +of any durable literary fashion, the Middle +Ages were unable to give to these epic stuffs, at any +one period of their life of metamorphose, a form +sufficiently artistically valuable to secure anything +beyond momentary vogue, to secure for them the +immortality of the great Greek tales of adventure and +warfare and love. Thus it came about that the epic +cycle of Charlemagne, after supplanting in men's +minds the grand sagas of the pagan North, was itself +supplanted by the Arthurian cycle; that the Frankish +stories absorbed the wholly discrepant elements of +their more fortunate Keltic rivals; that both cycles, +having lost all character through fusion and through +obliteration by time, became more meaningless generation +by generation and year by year, until when the +Middle Ages had come to an end, and the great poets +of the Renaissance were ready to give this old +mediaeval epic stuff a definitive and durable artistic +shape, there came to the hands of Boiardo and +Ariosto, of Tasso and Spenser, only a strange, trumpery +material, muddled by jongleurs and romance +writers, and reduced to mere fairy stuff, taken seriously +only by Don Quixote, and by the authors of the volumes +of insane twaddle called after Amadis of Gaul and +all his kinsmen.</p> + +<p>Such a condition of perpetual change as explains, +in my belief, why the mediaeval epic subjects were +wanted, can be made clear only by examples. I shall +therefore try to show the transformations which were +undergone by one or two principal mediaeval epic +subjects as a result of a mixture with other epic cycles; +of a gradual adaptation to a new state of civilization; +and finally of their gradual separation from all kind +of reality and real interests.</p> + +<p>First of all, let us look at the epic cycle, which, +although known to us only in poems no older than +those of the trouvères and minnesingers who sang of +Charlemagne and Arthur, is in reality far more +ancient, and on account of its antiquity and its consequent +disconnection with mediaeval religious and +political interests, was thrown aside even by the +nations to which it belonged, by the Scandinavians +who took to writing sagas about the wars of Charlemagne +against Saracens, and by the Germans who +preferred to hear the adventures of Welsh and Briton, +Launcelots and Tristrams. I am alluding to the +stories connected with the family and life of the hero +called Sigurd by the Scandinavians, and Siegfried by +the Germans. Of these we possess a Norse version +called the Volsunga Saga, magnificently done into +English by Mr. William Morris; which, although +written down at the end of the twelfth century, in the +very time therefore of Chrestien de Troyes, Wolfram +von Eschenbach, and Gottfried von Strassburg, and +subsequently to the presumed writing of "The Chanson +de Roland" and the Nibelungenlied, shows us in reality +the product of a people, the distant Scandinavians of +Iceland, who were five or six hundred years behind +the French, Germans, and English of the twelfth century. +In the Volsunga Saga, neither Christianity nor +feudalism is yet dreamed of; and it is for this reason +that I wish to compare it with the Nibelungenlied, in +order to show how enormously the old epic stuff was +altered by the new civilization. The whole social and +moral condition of the two versions is different. In +the old Scandinavian civilization, where the Viking is +surrounded and served by clansmen, the feeling of +blood relationship is the strongest in people's hearts; +strangely and fearfully shown in the introductory tale +of Signy, who, in order to avenge her father Volsung, +killed by her husband, murders her children by the +latter, and then, altered in face by magic arts, goes +forth to the woods to her brother Sigmund, that, un-wittingly, +he may beget with her the only man fit to +avenge the Volsungs. And then she sends the boy +Sinfjotli to the man he has hitherto considered merely +as his uncle, bidding the latter kill him if he prove +unworthy of his incestuous birth, or train him to vengeance. +The three together murder the husband +and legitimate children of Signy, and set the palace +on fire; which, being done, the queen, having accomplished +her duty to her kin, accomplishes that towards +her husband, and calmly returns to die in the burning +hall. Here (and apparently again in the case of the +children of Sigurd and Brynhilt) incest becomes a +family virtue. This being the frightful preponderance +of the feeling of blood relationship, it is quite natural +that the Scandinavian Chriemhilt (called in the Volsunga +Saga, Gudrun) should not resent the murder +of her husband Siegfried or Sigurd by her brothers at +the instigation of the jealous Brynhilt (who has in a +manner been Sigurd's wife before he made her over to +Chriemhilt's eldest brother); and that, so far from +seeking any revenge against them,she should, when her +second husband Atli sends for her brothers in order to +rob and murder them, first vainly warn them of the +plot, and then, when they have been massacred, kill +Atli and her children by him in order to avenge her +brothers. The slackening of the tribal feeling, the idea +of fidelity in love and sanctity of marriage belonging +to Christianity and feudalism, rendered such a story +unintelligible to the Germans of the Othos and +Henrys. In the Nibelungenlied, the whole story of +the massacre of the brothers is changed. Chriemhilt +never forgives the murder of Siegfried, and it is not +Etzel—Atli for the sake of plunder, but she herself +for the sake of revenge, who decoys her brothers and +murders them; it is she who with her own hand cuts +off the head of Gunther to expiate his murder of Siegfried. +To our feelings, more akin to those of the feudal +Christians of Franconia than to those of the tribal +Scandinavians of the Edda, the second version is far +more intelligible and interesting—the story of this +once gentle and loving Chriemhilt, turned by the +murder of her beloved into a fury, and plotting to +avenge his death by the death of all his kinsfolk, +must be much grander and more pathetic than the +story of this strange Gudrun, who sits down patiently +beneath the injury done to her by her brothers, but +savagely avenges them on her new husband, and her +own and his innocent children; to us this persistence +of tribal feeling, destroying all indignation and love, is +merely unnatural, confusing, and repulsive. But this +alteration for the better in one of the incidents of +the tale is a mere fluke; and the whole main plot of +the originally central figures are completely obliterated +by the new state of civilization, and rendered merely +trivial and grotesque. In the Volsunga Saga Sigurd, +overcome by enchantments, has forgotten his wife (or +mistress, a vague mythical relationship); and, with all +sense of the past obliterated, has made her over to the +brother of his new wife Gudrun; and Brynhilt kills +her faithless love to dissolve the second marriage and +be reunited with him in death. In the Nibelungenlied +Siegfried, although the flower of knighthood, conquers +by foul play the Amazon Brunhilt to reward +Gunther for the hand of his sister; nay, in a comic +and loathsome scene he forces her into the embraces +of the craven Gunther; and then he gets killed by +Brunhilt's machinations; when, after most unqueenly +bickerings, the proud Amazon is brutally told by +Siegfried's wife of the dirty trick which has given +her to Gunther. After this, it is impossible to realize, +when Siegfried is murdered and all our sympathies +called on to his side, the utterly out-of-character, +blackguardly behaviour which has brought the hero +to his death. Similarly the conception of the character +and position of Brynhilt is entirely disfigured and +rendered inane in the Nibelungenlied: of that superb +demi-goddess of the Scandinavians, burnt on the pyre +with her falcons and dogs and horses and slaves, by +the side of the demi-god Sigurd, whom she has loved +and killed, lest the door of Valhalla, swinging after +him, should shut her out from his presence; of her +there remains in the German mediaeval poem only +a virago (more like the giantesses of the Amadis +romances) enraged at having been defeated and grotesquely +and grossly pummelled into wedlock by a +man not her husband, and then slanged like a fishwife +by her envious sister-in-law.</p> + +<p>The old, consistent, grandly tragic tale of the mysterious +incests and revenges of a race of demi-gods has +lost its sense, its point in the attempt to arrange it to +suit Christian and feudal ideas. The really fine portions +of the Nibelungenlied are exactly those which +have no real connection with the original story, +gratuitous additions by mediaeval poets. The delicately +indicated falling in love of Siegfried and +Chriemhilt, the struggles of Markgraf Rüdger between +obedience to his feudal superior and fidelity +towards his friends and guests; and, above all, the +canto of the death of Siegfried. This last is different, +intensely different, from the rugged and dreary +monotony of the rest; this most poetical, almost +Spenserian or Ariostesque realization of the scene; +this beautiful picture (though worked with the needle +of the arras-worker rather than with pencil or brush) +of the wood, the hunt", the solitary fountain in the +Odenwald, where, with his spear leaned against the +lime-tree, Siegfried was struck down into the clover +and flowers, and writhed with Hagen's steel through +his back. This canto is certainly interpolated by +some first-rate poet, at least a Gottfried or a Walther, +to whom that passage of the savage old droning song of +death had suggested a piece of new art; it is like the +fragments of exquisitely chiselled leafage and figures +which you sometimes find encrusted—by whom? +wherefore?—quite isolated in the midst of the rough +and lichen-stained stones of some rude Lombard +church. All the rest of the Nibelungenlied gives an +impression of effeteness; there is no definiteness of +idea such as that of the Volsunga Saga; the battles +are mere vague slaughter, no action, no realized movement, +or (excepting Rudger) no realized motive of +conduct. Shape and colour would seem to have +been obliterated by repetition and alteration. Yet +even these alterations could not make the tale of Siegfried +survive among the Germans of the Middle Ages; +nay, the more the alterations the less the interest; +the want of consistency and colour due to rearrangement +merely accelerated the throwing aside of a subject +which, dating from pagan and tribal times, had +become repugnant to the new generations. All the +mutilations in the world could not make the old +Scandinavian tales of betrayed trust, of revenge and +triumphant bloodshed, at all sympathetic to men +whose religious and social ideals were those of forgiveness +and fidelity; even stripped of its incestuous +mysteries and of its fearful tribal love, the tale of +Sigurd and Brynhilt, reduced to the tale of Chriemhilt's +revenge, was unpalatable: no more attempts were +made at re-writing it, and the poems of Walther, of +Gottfried, of Wolfram, of Ulrich, and of Tannhäuser, +full as they are of references to stories of the Carolingian +and Arthurian cycles, nay, to Antique and +Oriental tales, contain no allusion to the personages of +the Nibelungenlied. The old epic of the Gothic races +had been pushed aside by the triumphant epic of the +obscure and conquered Kelts.</p> + +<p>There are few phenomena in the history of ideas +and forms more singular than that of the sudden +conquest of the poetry of dominant or distant nations +by the poetic subjects of a comparatively small race, +sheared of all political importance, restricted to a +trifling territory, and well-nigh deprived of their +language; and of this there can be found no more +striking example than the sudden ousting of the +Carolingian epic by the cycle of Arthur.</p> + +<p>The Kelts of Britain and Ireland possessed an epic +cycle of their own, which came to notice only when +they were dispossessed of their last strongholds by +Saxons and Normans, and which immediately spread +with astounding rapidity all over Europe. The vanquished +race became fashionable; themselves, their +art and their poetry, began to be sought for as a +precious and war-enhanced loot. The heroic tales of +the Kelts were transcribed in Welsh, and translated +into Latin, by order of the Norman and Angevine +kings, glad, it would seem, to oppose the Old Briton +to the Saxon element. The Keltic songs were carried +all over France by Breton bards, to whose music and +rhymes, with only a general idea of the subjects, the +neo-Latin-speaking Franks listened with the sort of +stolid satisfaction with which English or Germans of +a hundred years ago listened to Italians singing +Metastasio's verses. But soon the songs and tales +were translated; and French poets imitated in their +language, northern and southern, the graceful metres +of the Keltic lays, and altered and arranged their +subjects. So that, in a very short time, France, and +through it Germany, was inundated with Keltic stories. +This triumph of the vanquished race was not without +reason. The Kelts, early civilized by Rome and +Christianity, had a set of stories and a set of heroes +extremely in accordance with mediaeval ideas, and +requiring but very little alteration. The considerable +age of their civilization had long obliterated all traces +of pagan and tribal feeling in their tales. Their +heroes, originally, like those of all other people, +divinities intimately connected with natural phenomena, +had long lost all cosmic characteristics, long +ceased to be gods, and, manipulated by the fancy of a +race whose greatness was quite a thing of the past, +had become a sort of golden age ideals—the men of a +distant period of glory, which was adorned with every +kind of perfection, till it became as unreal as fairyland. +Fairyland, in good sooth, was this country of +the Keltic tales; and there is a sort of symbolical +significance in the fact of its lawgiver Merlin, and its +emperor Arthur, being both of them not dead, like +Sigurd, like Dietrich, like Charlemagne and Roland, +but lying in enchanted sleep. Long inaction and the +day-dreaming of idleness had refined and idealized the +heroes of this Keltic race—a race of brilliant fancy and +almost southern mobility, and softened for a long time +by contact with Roman colonists and Christian priests. +They were not the brutal combatants of an active +fighting age, like the heroes of the Edda and of the +Carolingian cycles; nor had they any particular military +work to do, belonging as they did to a people +huddled away into inactivity. Their sole occupation +was to extend abroad that ideal happiness which +reigned in the ideal court of Arthur; to go forth on the +loose and see what ill-conditioned folk there might +yet be who required being subdued or taught manners +in the happy kingdom, which the poor insignificant +Kelts connected with some princelet of theirs who +centuries before may have momentarily repelled the +pagan Saxons. Hence in the Keltic stories, such as +they exist in the versions previous to the conquest by +the Norman kings, and previous also to any communications +with other peoples, the distinct beginning +of what was later to be called knight-errantry; of +heroes, creations of an inactive nation, having no +special military duties, going forth to do what good +they may at random, unforced by any necessity, and +following a mere aesthetico-romantic plan of perfecting +themselves by deeds of valour to become more worthy +of their God, their King, and their Lady: religion, +loyalty, and love, all three of them mere aesthetic +abstractions, becoming the goal of an essentially +aesthetic, unpractical system of self-improvement, such +as was utterly incompatible with any real and serious +business in life. Idle poetic fancies of an inert people, +the Knights of the Round Table have no mission save +that of being poetically perfect. Such was the spirit +of Keltic poetry; and, as it happened, this spirit +satisfied the imaginative wants of mediaeval society +just at the moment when political events diffused +in other countries the knowledge of the Arthurian +legends. The old Teutonic tales of Sigurd, Gudrun, +and Dietrich, had long ceased to appeal, in their +mutilated and obliterated condition, to a society to +whom tribal feeling and pagan heroism were odious, +and whose religion distinctly reproved revenge. These +semi-mythological tales had been replaced by another +cycle: the purely realistic epic, which had arisen +during the struggles between the Christian west +against the pagan north-east and the Mohammedan +south, and which, originating in the short battle-songs +narrating the exploits of the predecessors and help-mates +of Charlemagne, had constituted itself into large +narratives of which the "Song of Roland" represents +artistic culmination. These narratives of mere military +exploits, of the battles of a strong feudal aristocracy +animated by feudal loyalty and half-religious, half-patriotic +fury against invading heathenness, had perfectly +satisfied the men of the earliest Middle Ages, +of the times when feudalism was being established and +the church being reformed; when the strong military +princelets of the North were embarking with their +barons to conquer new kingdoms in England and in +Italy and Greece; when the whole of feudal Europe +hurled itself against Asia in the first Crusades. But +the condition of things soon altered: the feudal +hierarchy was broken up into a number of semi-independent +little kingdoms or principalities, struggling, +with the assistance of industrial and mercantile classes, +to become absolute monarchies; princes who had been +mere generals became stay-at-home diplomatists, +studious of taxation and intrigue, surrounded no +longer by armed vassals, but by an essentially urban +court, in constant communication with the money-making +burghers. Religion, also, instead of being a +matter of fighting with infidel invaders, turned to fantastic +sectarianism and emotional mysticism. With +the sense of futility, of disappointment, attendant on +the later Crusades, came also a habit of roaming in +strange countries, of isolated adventure in search of +wealth or information, a love of the distant, the half-understood, +the equivocal; perhaps even a hankering +after a mysterious compromise between the religion of +Europe and the religions of the East, such as appears +to have existed among the Templars and other Franks +settled in Asia.</p> + +<p>There was, throughout feudal society, a sort of enervated +languor, a morbid longing for something new, +now that the old had ceased to be possible or had +proved futile; after the great excitement of the Crusades +it was impossible to be either sedately idle or +quietly active, even as it is with all of us during the +days of weariness and restlessness after some long +journey. To such a society the strongly realistic +Carolingian epic had ceased to appeal: the tales of +the Welsh and Breton bards, repeated by trouvère +and jongleur, troubadour and minnesinger, came as a +revelation. The fatigued, disappointed, morbid, imaginative +society of the later Crusades recognized in +this fairyland epic of a long refined, long idle, nay, +effete race, the realization of their own ideal: of +activity unhampered by aim or organization, of sentiment +and emotion and action quite useless and unnecessary, +purely subservient to imaginative gratification. +These Arthurs, Launcelots, Tristrams, Kays, +and Gawains, fantastic phantoms, were also far more +artistically malleable than the iron Rolands, Olivers, +and Renauds of earlier days; that unknown kingdom +of Britain could much more easily be made the impossible +ideal, in longing for which squeamish and +lazy minds might refuse all coarser reality. Moreover, +those who listened to the tales of chivalry were +different from those who had listened to the Carolingian +stories; and, therefore, required something +different. They were courtiers, and one half of them +were women. Now the Carolingian tales, originally +battle-songs, sung in camps and castles to mere +soldiers, had at first possessed no female characters +at all; and when gradually they were introduced, it +was in the coarsest barrack or tap-room style. The +Keltic tales, on the contrary, whether from national +tradition, or rather from longer familiarity with Christian +culture and greater idleness of life, naturally +made women and women's love the goal of a great +many adventures which an effete nation could no +longer ascribe to patriotic movements. But this was +not all. The religious feeling of the day was extremely +inclined to mysticism, in which aesthetic, +erotic, and all kinds of morbid and ill-defined tendencies +were united, which was more than anything else +tinged with a semi-Asiatic quietism, a longing for the +passive ecstasy of Nirvāna. This religious side of +mediaeval life was also gratified by the Arthurian +romances. Oddly enough, there existed an old Welsh +or Breton tale about the boy Peredur, who from a +complete simpleton became the prince of chivalry, +and his many adventures connected with a certain +mysterious blood-dripping lance, and a still more +mysterious basin or <i>grail</i> (an allusion to which is said +by M. de la Villemarqué to be contained in the originally +Keltic name of Percival), which possessed magic +properties akin to those of the purse of Fortunatus, +or the pipkin in the story of "Little pot, boil!" The +story, whose original mythical meaning had been lost +in the several centuries of Christianity, was very +decayed and obscure; and the fact of the blood on +the lance being that of a murdered kinsman of Peredur, +and of the basin containing the head of the same +person cut off by Gloucester witches, was evidently +insufficient to account for all the mystery with which +these objects were surrounded. The French poets of +the Middle Ages, strongly imbued with Oriental legends +brought back by the Crusaders, saw at a glance the +meaning of the whole story: the lance was the lance +with which Longinus had pierced the Saviour's side; +the Grail was the cup which had received His blood, +nay, it was the cup of the Last Supper. A tale about +the preservation of these precious relics by Joseph of +Arimathaea, was immediately connected therewith; a +theory was set up (doubtless with the aid of quite unchristian, +Oriental legends) of a kind of kingdom of +the keepers of the Grail, of a vague half-material, half-spiritual +state of bliss connected with the service of +the Grail, which fed its knights (and here the Templars +and their semi-oriental mysteries, for which they were +later so frightfully misused, certainly come into play) +with food which is at once of the body and of the soul. +Thus the Keltic Peredur, bent upon massacring the +Gloucester witches to avenge his uncle, was turned +into a saintly knight, seeking throughout a more and +more perfect life for the kingdom of the Grail: the +Perceval of Chrestien de Troyes, the Parzifal of +Wolfram von Eschenbach, whom later romance +writers (wishing to connect everything more closely +with Arthur's court) replaced by the Sir Galahad of +the "Morte d'Arthur," while the guest of the Grail +became a sort of general mission of several knights, +a sort of spiritual crusade to whose successful champions +Percival, Bors, and Galahad, the Middle Ages +did not hesitate to add the arch-adulterer Launcelot.</p> + +<p>Thus did the Arthurian tales answer the requirements +of the languid, dreamy, courtly, lady-serving +and religiously mystic sons and grandsons of those +earlier Crusaders whose aspirations had been expressed +by the rough and solemn heroes of Carolingian tales. +The Carolingian tales were thrown aside, or were kept +by the noble mediaeval poets only on condition of +their original meaning being completely defaced by +wholesale admixture of the manners and adventures +belonging to the Arthurian cycles. The paladins +were forced to disport themselves in the same fairyland +as the Knights of the Round Table; and many +mediaeval poems the heroes of which, like Ogier of +Denmark and Huon of Bordeaux, already existed in +the Carolingian tales, are in reality, with their romantic +loves, their useless adventures, their Morgana's castles +and Oberon's horns, offshoots of the Keltic stories, +which were as rich in every kind of supernatural +(being, in fact, pagan myths turned into fairy tales) +as the genuine Carolingian subjects, whose origin was +entirely historical, were completely devoid of such +things. Arthur and his ladies and knights: Guenevere, +Elaine, Enid, Yseult, Launcelot, Geraint, Kay, Gawain, +Tristram, and Percival-Galahad, were the real heroes +and heroines of the courtly nobles and the courtly +poets of this second phase of mediaeval life. The +Teuton Charlemagne, Roland and Oliver were as +completely forgotten of the poets who met in that +memorable combat of the Wartburg, as were the +Teuton Sigurd and Dietrich. And if the Carolingian +cycle survived, however much altered, I think it must +have been thanks to the burghers and artizans of the +Netherlands and of Provence, to whom the bluff, +matter-of-fact heroism, the simple, gross, but not illegitimate +amours of Carolingian heroes, were more +satisfactory than any mystic quest of the Grail, any +refined adultery of Guenevere or Yseult.</p> + +<p>But the inevitable fate of all mediaeval epics awaited +this triumphant Arthurian cycle: the fate of being obliterated +by passing from one nation and civilization +to another, long before the existence of any poetic art +adequate to its treatment. Of this I will take as an +example one of the mediaeval poems which has the +greatest reputation the masterpiece (according to most +critics, with whom I find it difficult, in the presence +of a poet like Gottfried von Strassburg, to agree) of +probably the most really poetical and earnest school of +poetry which the pre-Dantesque Middle Ages possessed—the +"Parzifal" of Wolfram von Eschenbach.</p> + +<p>The paramount impression (I cannot say the +strongest, for strong impressions are incompatible +with such work as this) left by the masterpiece of +Wolfram von Eschenbach, is that of the most astonishing +vagueness, fluidity, haziness, vaporousness. In +reading it one looks back to that rudely hewn and +extremely obliterated Nibelungenlied, as to something +?quite astonishingly clear, detailed and strongly marked +as to something distinctly artistic. Indeed by the +side of "Parzifal" everything seems artistic; Hartmann +von Aue reads like Chaucer, "Aucassin et +Nicolette" is as living as "Cymbeline," "Chevy Chase" +seems as good as the battles of Homer. It is not a +narrative, but a vague mooning; a knight illiterate, +not merely like his fellow minnesingers, in the way +of reading and writing, but in the sense of complete +absence of all habit of literary form; extremely noble +and pure of mind, chaste, gentle, with a funny, puzzled +sense of humour, reminding one distantly of Jean +Paul in his drowsy moments; a hanger-on of courts, +but perfectly simple-hearted and childlike; very poor +and easily pleased: such is, for good and for bad, +Herr Wolfram von Eschenbach, the only real personality +in his poem. And he narrates, in a mooning, +digressive, good-natured, drowsy tone, with only a rare +awaking of interest, a story which he has heard from +some one else, and that some one else from a series +of other some one elses (Chrestien de Troyes, a +legendary Provençal Chiot or Guyot, perhaps even +the original Welsh bard); all muddled, monotonous, +and droning; events and persons ill-defined, without +any sense of the relative importance of anything, +without clear perception of what it is all about, or at +least without the power of keeping the matter straight +before the reader. A story, in point of fact, which is +no story at all, but a mere series of rambling adventures +(adventures which are scarcely adventures, having +no point or plot) of various people with not much +connection and no individuality—Gachmuret, Parzifal, +Gawain, Loherangrein,Anfortas, Feirefis—pale ghosts +of beings, moving in a country of Kennaqwhere, +Aquitaine, Anjou, Brittany, Wales, Spain, and heaven +knows what wondrous Oriental places; a misty country +with woods and towns and castles which are infinitely +far apart and yet quite near each other; which +seem to sail about like cloud castles round the only solid +place in the book, Plimizöl, where Arthur's court, +with round table constantly spread, Is for ever established. +A no place, nowhere; yet full of details; +minute inventories of the splendid furniture of castles +(castles where? how reached?); infinitely inferior in +this matter even to the Nibelungenlied, where you are +made to feel so vividly (one of the few modern and +therefore clear things therein) the long, dreary road +from Worms to Bechlarn, and thence to Etzelburg, +though of none of them is there anything beyond a +name. For the Nibelungen story had been localized +in what to narrator and audience was a reality, the +country in which themselves lived, where themselves +might seek out the abbey in which Siegfried was +buried, the well in the Odenwald near which he was +stabbed; where they knew from merchant and pilgrim +the road taken by the Nibelungs from Santen to +Worms, by the Burgundians from Worms to Hungary. +But here in "Parzifal" we are in a mere vague world +of anywhere, the world of Keltic and Oriental romance +become mere cloudland to the Thuringian knight. +And similarly have the heroes of other nations, the +Arthurs, Gawains, Gachmurets, of Wales and Anjou, +become mere vague names; they have become liquified, +lost all shape and local habitation. They are +mere names, these ladies and knights of Herr Wolfram, +names with fair pink and white faces, names magnificently +draped in bejewelled Oriental stuffs and embossed +armour; they have no home, no work, nothing +to do. This is the most remarkable characteristic of +"Parzifal," and what makes it so typical of the process +of growing inane through overmuch alteration, which +prevented the mediaeval epics ever turning into an +Iliad or an Odyssey; this that it is essentially idle +and all about nothing. The feudal relations strongly +marked in the German Nibelungenlied have melted +away like the distinctions of race: every knight is +independent, not a vassal nor a captain, a Volker or +Hagen, or Roland or Renaud followed by his men; +but an isolated individual, without even a squire, +wandering about alone through this hazy land of +nowhere. Knight-errantry, in the time of the great +Guelph and Ghibelline struggles, every bit as ideal as +that of Spenser or Cervantes; and with the difference +that Sir Calidore and Sir Artegal have an appointed +task, some Blatant Beast or other nuisance to overcome; +and that Don Quixote has the general rescuing +of all the oppressed Princesse Micomiconas, and the +destruction of all windmills, and the capturing of all +helmets of Mambrino, and the establishing all over +the world of the worship of Dulcinea. But these +knights of Wolfram von Eschenbach have no more +this mission than they have the politico-military +missions, missions of a Rüdger or a Roland. They +are all riding about at random, without any particular +pagans, necromancers, or dragons to pursue. The very +service of the Holy Grail, which is the main interest +of the poem, consists in nothing apparently except +living virtuously at the Castle of Montselväsche, and +virtuously eating and drinking the victuals provided +miraculously. To be admitted to this service, no +initiation, no mission, nothing preliminary seems +required. Parzifal himself merely wanders about +vaguely, without doing any specified thing. The fact +is that in this poem all has become purely ideal; ideal +to the point of utter vacuity: there is no connection +with any human business. Of all the heroes and +heroines we hear that they are perfectly chaste, truthful, +upright; and they are never put into any situation +to test these qualities: they are never placed in the +way of temptation, never made to fight with evil, or +to decide between it and good. The very religion of +the Holy Grail consists in doing nothing: not a word +about relieving the poor or oppressed, of tending the +sick, of delivering the Holy Sepulchre, of defending +that great injured One, Christ. To be Grail Knight +or even Grail King means to be exactly the same as +before. Where in this vague dreamland of passive +purity and heroism, of untempted chastity and untried +honour, where are the earthly trials of Tristram, of +Guenevere, of Rüdger, of Renaud? Where the moral +struggles of the Middle Ages? Where is Godfrey, or +Francis, or Dominick? Nowhere. All has disappeared, +melted away; Christianity and Paganism themselves +have melted away or into each other, as in the easy +meeting of the Pagan Feirefis and the Christian +Parzifal, and in the double marriage of Gachmuret with +the Indian Belakane and the Welsh Herzeloid; there +remains only a kind of Buddhistic Nirvāna of vague +passive perfection, but without any renunciation; and +in a world devoid of evil and full of excellent brocade +and armour and eatables, and lovely maidens who +dress and undress you, and chastely kiss you on the +mouth; a world without desire, aspiration, or combat, +vacantly happy and virtuous. A world purely ideal, +divorced from all reality, unsubstantial like the kingdom +of Gloriana, but, unlike Spenser's, quite unshadowed +by any puritan sadness, by any sense of evil, untroubled +by allegorical vices; cheerful, serene, filled with flowers +and song of birds, but as unreal as the illuminated +arabesques of a missal. In truth, perhaps more to be +compared with an eighteenth century pastoral, an ideal +created almost in opposition to reality; a dream of +passiveness and liberty (as of light leaves blown about) +as the ideal of the fiercely troubled, struggling, tightly +fettered feudal world. The ideal, perhaps, of only one +moment, scarcely of a whole civilization; or rather +(how express my feeling?) an accidental combination +of an instant, as of spectre vapour arisen from the mixture +of Kelt and Teuton, of Frank and Moslem. Is it +Christian, Pagan, Mohammedan? None of all these.... +A simple-looking vaporous chaos of incongruous, +but not conflicting, elements: a poem of virtue without +object, of knighthood without work, of religion without +belief; in this like its central interest, the Grail: a mystery, +a cup, a stone; a thing which heals, feeds, speaks; +animate or inanimate? Stone of the Caaba or chalice of +the Sacrament? Merely a mysterious holy of holies +and good of goods, which does everything and nothings +means nothing and requires nothing—is nothing.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3>III.</h3> + +<p>Thus was obliterated, in all its national and traditional +meaning, the heroic cycle of Arthur; and by the +same process of slow adaptation to new intellectual +requirements which had completely wiped out of +men's memory the heroic tales of Siegfried, which had +entirely altered the originally realistic character of +the epic of Charlemagne. But unreal and ideal as +had become the tales of the Round Table, and disconnected +with any national tradition, the time came +when even these were not sufficiently independent of +reality to satisfy the capricious imagination of the later +Middle Ages. At the end of the fourteenth century +was written, most probably in Portuguese by Vasco +de Lobeira, the tale of "Amadis de Gaula," which was +followed by some forty or fifty similar books telling the +adventures of all the brothers, nephews, sons, grandsons +sons, and great-grandsons, an infinite succession, of +the original Amadis; which, translated into all languages +and presently multiplied by the press, seem to +have usurped the place of the Arthurian stories in +feudal countries until well-nigh the middle of the +sixteenth century; and which were succeeded by no +more stories of heroes, but by the realistic comic +novels of the type of "Lazarillo de Tormes," and the +buffoon philosophic extravaganzas of "Gargantua." +Further indeed it was impossible to go than did mediaeval +idealism in the Amadises. Compared with them +the most fairy-tale-like Arthurian stories are perfect +historical documents. There remains no longer any +?connection whatsoever with reality, historical or +geographical: the whole world seems to have been +expeditiously emptied of all its contents, to make room +for kingdoms of Gaul, of Rome, of the Firm Island, of +Sobradisa, etc., which are less like the Land West of the +Moon and East of the Sun than they are like Sancho +Panza's island. All real mankind, past, present, and +future, has similarly been swept away and replaced +by a miraculous race of Amadises, Lisvarts, Galaors, +Gradasilias, Orianas, Pintiquinestras, Fradalons, and +so forth, who flit across our vision, in company with +the indispensable necromancers, fairies, dwarfs, giants, +and duennas, like some huge ballet: things without +character, passions, pathos; knights who are never +wounded or killed, princesses who always end with +marrying the right man, enchanters whose heads +are always chopped off, foundlings who are always +reinstated in their kingdom, inane paper puppets +bespangled with impossible sentiment, tinsel and rags +which are driven about like chaff by the wind-puffs of +romance. The advent of the Amadises is the coming +of the Kingdom of Nonsense, the sign that the last +days of chivalric romance have come; a little more, +and the Licentiate Alonzo Perez will take his seat in +Don Quixote's library, and Nicholas the Barber light +his faggots in the yard.</p> + +<p>But, as if in compensation of the usurpation of +which they had been the victims, the Carolingian tales, +pushed out of the way by the Arthurian cycle, were +not destined to perish. Thrown aside with contempt +by the upper classes, engrossed with the Round Table +and the Holy Grail, the tales of Charlemagne and his +paladins, largely adulterated with Arthurian elements, +were apparently cherished by a lower class of society: +burgesses, artizans, and such-like, for whom that +Arthurian world was far too etherial and too delicately +immoral; and to this circumstance is due +the fact that the humiliated Carolingian tales eventually +received an artistic embodiment which was not +given to the Arthurian stories. While troubadours and +minnesingers were busy with the court of Arthur, +and grave Latinists like Rusticiano of Pisa wrote +of Launcelot and Guenevere; the Carolingian epics +seem to have been mainly sung about by illiterate +jongleurs, and to have busied the pens of prose hackwriters +for the benefit of townsfolk. The free towns +of the Netherlands and of Germany appear to have +been full of this unfashionable literature: the Carolingian +cycle had become democratic. And, inasmuch +as it was literature no longer for knights and +courtiers, but for artizans and shopkeepers, it went, of +course, to the pre-eminently democratic country of +the Middle Ages—Italy. This was at a time when +Italian was not yet a recognized language, and when +the men and women who talked in Tuscan, Lombard, +or Venetian dialects, wrote in Latin and in French; +and while Francesca and Paolo read the story of +Launcelot most probably in good mediaeval <i>langue +d'oil</i>, as befitted people of high birth; the jongleurs, +who collected crowds so large as to bar the streets +and require the interference of the Bolognese magistrates, +sang of Roland and Oliver in a sort of <i>lingua +Franca</i> of French Lombard. French jongleurs singing +in impossible French-Italian; Italian jongleurs +singing in impossible French; Paduan penny-a-liners +writing Carolingian cyclical novels in French, not of +Paris, assuredly, but of Padua—a comical and most +hideous jabber of hybrid languages—this was how +the Carolingian stories became popular in Italy. +Meanwhile, the day came when the romantic Arthurian +tales had to dislodge in Italy before the invasion +of the classic epic. Troy, Rome, and Thebes had +replaced Tintagil and Caerleon in the interest of the +cultured classes long before the beginning of the +fifteenth century; when Poggio, in the very midst of +the classic revival, still told of the comically engrossed +audience which surrounded the vagabonds singing of +Orlando and Rinaldo. The effete Arthurian cycle, +superseded in Spain and France by the Amadis +romances, was speedily forgotten in Italy; but the +Carolingian stories remained; and when Italian poetry +arose once more after the long interregnum between +Petrarch and Lorenzo dei Medici, and looked about +for subjects, it laid its hand upon them. But when, +in the second half of the fifteenth century, those old +tales of Charlemagne received, after so many centuries +of alterations and ephemeral embodiments, that artistic +form which the Middle Ages had been unable to +give them, the stories themselves, and the way in +which they were regarded, were totally different from +what they had been in the time of Theroulde, or of +the anonymous author of "The Quatre Fils Aymon;" +the Renaissance, with its keen artistic sense, made out +of the Carolingian tales real works of art, but works +of art which were playthings. To begin with, the +Carolingian stories had been saturated with Arthurian +colour: they had been furnished with all the knight-rrantry, +all the gallantry, all the enchantments, the +fairies, giants, and necromancers of the Keltic legends; +and, moreover, they had lost, by infinite repetition, all +the political realism and meaning so striking in "The +Chanson de Roland" and "The Quatre Fils Aymon;" +a confusion and unreality further increased by the +fact that the Italians had no original connection with +those tales, that to them real men and plans were no +better than imaginary ones, and that the minstrels +who sang in the market-place, and the laborious prose-writers +who compiled such collections as that called +of the "Reali di Francia," were equally free in their +alterations and adaptations, creating unknown relationships, +inventing new adventures, suppressing essential +historical points, with no object save amusing their +audience or readers with new stories about familiar +heroes. Such was the condition of the stories themselves. +The attitude of the public towards them was, +by the middle of the fifteenth century, one of complete +incredulity and frivolous amusement; the paladins +were as unreal as the heroes of any granny's +fairy tale. The people wanted to hear of wonderful +battles and adventures, of enchantments and love-makings; +but they wanted also to laugh; and, sceptical, +practical, democratic, the artizans and shopkeepers +of Florence—to whom, paying, as they did, expensive +mercenaries who stole poultry and never got wounded +on any account, all chivalry or real military honour +was the veriest nursery rubbish—such people as +crowded round the <i>cantastoria</i> of <i>mercato vecchio</i>, must +indeed have found much to amuse them in these tales +of so different an age.</p> + +<p>And into such crowds there penetrated to listen and +watch (even as the Magnificent Lorenzo had elbowed +among the carnival ragamuffins of Florence, and had +slid in among the holiday-making peasants of Poggio +a Caiano) a learned man, a poet, an intimate of the +Medicis, of Politian, Ficino, and Pico della Mirandola, +Messer Luigi Pulci, the same who had written the semi-allegorical, +semi-realistic poem about Lorenzo dei +Medici's gala tournament. There was a taste in the +house of the Medici, together with those for platonic +philosophy, classical erudition, religious hymns, and +Hebrew kabbala, for a certain kind of realism, for the +language and mode of thinking of the lower classes, as +a reaction from Petrarchesque conventionality. As +the Magnificent Lorenzo had had the fancy to string +together in more artistic shape the quaint and graceful +love poems, hyperbolical, realistic, tender, and abusive, +of the Tuscan peasantry; so also Messer Luigi Pulci +appears to have been smitten with the notion of trying +his hand at a chivalric poem like those to which he +and his friends had listened among the butchers and +pork-shops, the fishmongers and frying booths of the +market, and giving an impression, in its ideas and +language, of the people to whom such strains were +sung. But Luigi Pulci was vastly less gifted as a +poet than Lorenzo dei Medici; Florentine prentices +are less aesthetically pleasing than Tuscan peasants, +and the "Morgante Maggiore" is a piece of work of +a sort utterly inferior to the "Nencia da Barberino." +Still the "Morgante Maggiore" remains, and will +remain, as a very remarkable production of grotesque +art. Just as Lorenzo dei Medici was certainly not +without a deliberate purpose of selecting the quaintness +and gracefulness of peasant life; even so, and +perhaps more, Luigi Pulci must have had a deliberate +intention of producing a ludicrous effect; in both cases +the deliberate attempt is very little perceptible, in the +"Nencia da Barberino" from the genius of Lorenzo, +in the "Morgante Maggiore" from the stolidity of +Pulci. The "Morgante," of which parts were probably +written as a mere sample to amuse a supper party, +became interesting to Pulci, in the mere matter of +inventing and stringing together new incidents; and +despite its ludicrous passages, it must have been more +seriously written by him, and more seriously listened +to by his friends, than would a similar production +now-a-days. For the men of the Renaissance, no +matter how philosophized and cultured, retained the +pleasure in mere incident, which we moderns seem to +have given over to children and savages; and Lorenzo, +Ficino, and Politian probably listened to the adventures +of Luigi Pulci's paladins and giants with much +the same interest, and only a little more conscious +sense of grotesqueness, with which the crowd in the +market listened to Cristofano dell' Altissimo and +similar story-tellers. The "Morgante Maggiore," +therefore, is neither really comic nor really serious. +It is not a piece of realistic grotesqueness like "Gargantua" +or "Pantagruel," any more than it is a serious +ideal work like "Amadis de Gaula:" the proportion +of deliberately sought effects is small; the great bulk, +serious or comic, seems to have come quite at random. +It is not a caricatured reproduction of the poems of +chivalry sung in the market, for they were probably +serious, stately, and bald, with at most an occasional +joke; it is the reproduction of the joint impression +received from the absurd, harum-scarum, unpractical +world of chivalry of the poet, and the real world of +prose, of good-humoured buffoonish coarseness with +which the itinerant poet was surrounded. The paladins +are no Don Quixotes, the princesses no Dulcineas, +the battles are real battles; but the language is that +of Florentine wool-workers, housewives, cheese-sellers, +and ragamuffins, crammed with the slang of the +market-place,its heavy jokes and perpetual sententious +aphorism. Moreover the prominence given to food +and eating is unrivalled except by Rabelais: the +poet must have lounged with delight through the +narrow mediaeval lanes, crowded with booths and +barrows, sniffing with rapture the mingled scents of +cheese, pork, fish, spices, and a hundred strange concomitant +market smells. And the market, that +classic <i>mercato vecchio</i> (alas, finally condemned and +destroyed by modern sanitary prudishness, and which +only those who have seen can conceive in its full +barbarous, nay, barbaric Pantagruelian splendour of +food, blood, and stenches) of Florence, is what we +think of throughout the poem. And, when Messer +Luigi comes to narrate, with real gravity and after the +due invocation of the Virgin, the Trinity, and the saints, +the tremendous disaster of Roncevaux, he uses such +words and such similes, that above the neighing of +horses and the clash of hurtling armour and the yells +of the combatants we suddenly hear the nasal sing-song +of Florentine tripe-vendors and pumpkin-pod-sellers, +the chaffer and oaths and laughter of the gluttonous +crowd pouring through the lanes of Calimala +and Pellicceria; nay (horrible and grotesque miracle), +there seems to rise out of the confused darkness of +the battle-filled valley, there seems to disengage itself +(as out of a mist) from the chaos of heaped bodies, +and the flash of steel among the whirlwinds of dust, a +vision, more and more distinct and familiar, of the +crowded square with its black rough-hewn, smoke-stained +houses, ornamented with Robbia-ware angels +and lilies or painted madonnas; of its black butchers +dens, outside which hang the ghastly disembowelled +sheep with blood-stained fleeces, the huge red-veined +hearts and livers; of the piles of cabbage and cauliflowers, +the rows of tin ware and copper saucepans, +the heaps of maccaroni and pastes, of spices and +drugs; the garlands of onions and red peppers and +piles of apples; the fetid sliminess of the fish tressels; +the rough pavement oozy and black, slippery with +cabbage-stalks, puddled with bullock's blood, strewn +with plucked feathers—all under the bright blue sky, +with Giotto's dove-coloured belfry soaring high above; +a vision, finally, of one of those deep dens, with walls, +all covered with majolica plates and dishes and +flashing brass-embossed trenchers, in the dark depths +of which crackles perennially a ruddy fire, while a +huge spit revolves, offering to the flames now one +now the other side of scores of legs of mutton, rounds +of beef, and larded chickens, trickling with the butter +unceasingly ladled by the white-dressed cooks. +Roncisvalle, Charlemagne, the paladins, paganism, +Christendom—what of them? "I believe in capon, +roast or boiled, and sometimes done in butter; in +mead and in must; and I believe in the pasty and +the pastykins, mother and children; but above all +things I believe in good wine "—as Margutte snuffles +out in his catechism; and as to Saracens and paladins, +past, present, and future, a fig for them!</p> + +<p>But meanwhile, for all that Florentine burgesses, +artizans, and humorists may think, there is in this +Italy of the Renaissance something besides Florence; +there is a school of poetry, disconnected with the +realisms of Lorenzo and Pulci, with the Ovidian +Petrarchisms of Politian. There is Ferrara. Lying, +as they do, between the Northern Apennine slopes of +Modena and the Euganean hills, the dominions of the +House of Este appear at first sight merely as part and +parcel of Lombardy, and we should expect from them +nothing very different from that which we expect from +Milan or Bologna or Padua. But the truth is different; +all round Ferrara, indeed, stretches the fertile flatness +of Lombard cornfields, and they produce, as infallibly +as they produce their sacks of grain and tuns of wine +and heaps of silk cocoon, the intellectual and social +equivalents of such things in Renaissance Italy: industry, +wealth, comfort, scepticism, art. But on either +side, into the defiles of the Euganean hills to the +north, into the widening torrent valleys of the Modenese +Apennines to the south, the Marquisate of Este +stretches up into feudalism, into chivalry, into the +imaginative kingdom of the Middle Ages. Mediaevalism, +feudalism, chivalry, indeed, of a very modified +sort; and as different from that of France and +Germany as differ from the poverty-stricken plains +and forests and and moors of the north these Italian +mountain slopes, along which the vines crawl in long +trellises, and the chestnuts rise in endlessly superposed +tiers of terraces, cultivated by a peasant who is not the +serf, but the equal sharer in profits with the master of +the soil. And on one of those fertile hill-sides, looking +down upon a narrow valley all a green-blue shimmer +with corn and vine-bearing elms, was born, in the +year 1434, Matteo Maria Boiardo, in the village which +gave him the title, one of the highest in the Estensian +dominions, of Count of Scandiano. Here, in the +Apennines, Scandiano is a fortified village, also a +castle, doubtless half turned into a Renaissance villa, +but mediaeval and feudal nevertheless; but the name +of Scandiano belongs also, I know not for what reason, +to a certain little red-brick palace on the outskirts of +Ferrara, beautifully painted with half-allegorical, half-realistic +pageant frescoes by Cosimo Tura, and enclosing +a sweet tangled orchard-garden; to all of +which, being the place to which Duke Borso and Duke +Ercole were wont to retire for amusement, the Ferrarese +have given the further name of Schifanoia, which +means, "fly from cares." This little coincidence of +Scandiano the feudal castle in the Apennines, and +Scandiano the little pleasure palace at Ferrara, seems to +give, by accidental allegory, a fair idea of the +double nature of Matteo Boiardo, of the Ferrarese +court to which he belonged, and of the school of poetry +(including the more notable but less original work of +Ariosto) which the genius of the man and the character +of the court succeeded together in producing.</p> + +<p>To understand Boiardo we must compare him with +Ariosto; and to understand Ariosto we must compare +him with Boiardo; both belong to the same school, +and are men of very similar genius, and where the one +leaves off the other begins. But first, in order to +understand the character of this poetry which, in the +main, is identical in Boiardo and in his more successful +but less fascinating pupil Ariosto, let us understand +Ferrara. It was, in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth +centuries, a chivalric town of Ariostesque +chivalry: feudalism turned courtly and elegant, and +moreover, very liberal and comfortable by preponderance +of democratic and industrial habits; a military +court, of brave mercenary captains full of dash +and adventure, not mere brigands and marauders +having studied strategy, like the little Umbrian chieftains; +a court orderly, elegant, and brilliant: a prince +not risen from behind a counter like Medicis and Petruccis, +nor out of blood like Baglionis and Sforzas, but +of a noble old house whose beginnings are lost in the +mist of real chivalry and real paladinism; a duke with +a pretence of feudal honour and decorum, at whose +court men were all brave and ladies all chaste—with +the little licenses of baseness and gallantry admitted +by Renaissance chivalry. A bright, brilliant court at +the close of the fifteenth century; and more stable +than the only one which might have rivalled it, the +Feltrian court of Urbino, too small and lost among +the Umbrian bandits. A bright, brilliant town, also, +this Ferrara: not mercantile like Florence, not mere +barracks like Perugia; a capital, essentially, in its rich +green plain by the widened Po, with its broad handsome +streets (so different from the mediaeval exchanges of +Bologna, and the feudal alleys of Perugia), its well-built +houses, so safe and modern, needing neither +<i>bravi</i> nor iron window bars, protected (except against +some stray murder by one of the Estensi themselves), +by the duke's well-organized police; houses with well-trimmed +gardens, like so many Paris hôtels; and with +the grand russet brick castle, military with its moat +and towers, urban with its belvederes and balconies, in +the middle, well placed to sweep away with its guns +(the wonderful guns of the duke's own making) any +riot, tidily, cleanly, without a nasty heap of bodies and +slop of blood as in the narrow streets of other towns +Imagine this bright capital, placed, moreover, in the +richest centre of Lombardy, with glitter of chivalry +from the Euganean hills and Apennines (castellated +with Este, Monselice,Canossa, and Boiardo's own Scandiano); +with gorgeous rarities of commerce from Venice +and Milan—a central, unique spot. It is the natural +home of the chivalrous poets of the Renaissance, +Boiardo, Ariosto, Tasso; as Florence is of the Politians +and Pulcis (Hellenism and back-shopery); and Venice +of the literature of lust, jests, cynicism, and adventure, +Aretine, Beolco, Calmo, and Poliphilo-Colonna. In +that garden, where the white butterflies crowd among +the fruit trees bowed down to the tall grass of the palace +of Schifanoia—a garden neither grand nor classic, but +elegiac and charming—we can imagine Boiardo or +Ariosto reading their poems to just such a goodly +company as Giraldi Cinthio (a Ferrarese, and fond +of romance, too) describes in the prologue of his +"Ecatomiti:" gentle and sprightful ladies, with the +splendid brocaded robes, and the gold-filleted golden +hair of Dosso Dossi's wonderful Alcina Circe; graceful +youths like the princely St. John of Benvenuto +Garofalo; jesters like Dosso's at Modena; brilliant +captains like his St. George and St. Michael; and a +little crowd of pages with doublets and sleeves laced +with gold tags, of sedate magistrates in fur robes +and scarlet caps, of white-dressed maids with instruments +of music and embroidery frames and hand +looms, like those which Cosimo Tura painted for Duke +Borso on the walls of this same Schifanoia palace +Such is the audience; now for the poems.</p> + +<p>The stuff of Boiardo and Ariosto is the same: that +old mediaeval stuff of the Carolingian poems, coloured, +scented with Arthurian chivalry and wonder. The +knight-errantry of the Keltic tales is cleverly blended +with the pseudo-historical military organization of +the Carolingian cycle. Paladins and Saracens are +ingeniously manoeuvred about, now scattered in little +groups of twos and threes, to encounter adventures +in the style of Sir Launcelot or Amadis; now gathered +into a compact army to crash upon each other as at +Roncevaux; or else wildly flung up by the poet to +alight in fairyland, to find themselves in the caverns +of Jamschid, in the isles where Oberon's mother +kept Caesar, and Morgana kept Ogier, in the boats, +entering subterranean channels, of Sindbad and +Huon of Bordeaux; a constant alternation of individual +adventure and wholesale organized campaigns, +conceived and carried out with admirable +ingenuity. So much for the deeds of arms. The +deeds of love are also compounded of Carolingian and +Arthurian, but flavoured with special Renaissance +feeling. There is a great deal of rapid love-making +between too gallant knights and too impressionable +ladies; licentious amours which we moderns lay at the +door of Boiardo and Ariosto, not knowing that the +licentiousness of the Olivers and Ogiers and Guerins +and Huons of mediaeval poetry, of the sentimental +Amadises, Galaors, and Lisvarts of the fourteenth +century, whom the Renaissance has toned down in +Rogers and Rinaldos and Ricciardettos, is by many +degrees worse. A moral improvement also (for all +the immorality of the Renaissance) in the eschewing +of the never-failing adultery of the Arthurian romances, +and the appropriation to legitimately faithful +love of the poetical devotion which Tristram and +Launcelot bear to other men's wives. To this are +added, and more by Ariosto than by Boiardo, two +essentially Italian elements: something of the nobility +of passion of the Platonic sonneteers; and a good dose +of the ironical, scurrilous, moralizing immoral anecdote +gossiping of Boccaccio and Sacchetti. Such is the +stuff. The conception, though rarely comic, and +sometimes <i>bonâ fide</i> serious, is never earnest. All +this is a purely artistic world, a world of decorative +arabesque incident, intended to please, scarcely ever +to move, or to move, at most, like some Decameronian +tale of Isabella and the Basil Plant, or Constance and +Martuccio. On the other hand, there is none of the +grotesque irreverence of Pulci. Boiardo and Ariosto +are not in earnest; they are well aware that their heroes +and heroines are mere modern men and women tricked +out in pretty chivalric trappings, driven wildly about +from Paris to Cathay, and from Spain to the Orkneys—on +Tony Lumpkin's principle of driving his mother +round and round the garden plot till she thought herself +on a heath six miles off—without ever really changing +place. But they do not, like Pulci, make fun of their +characters. They write chivalry romances not for +Florentine pork-butchers and wool-carders, but for +gallant ladies and gentlemen, to whom, with duels, +tournaments, serenades, and fine speeches, chivalry is +an admired name, though no longer a respected reality.</p> + +<p>The heroes of Boiardo and of Ariosto are always +bold and gallant and glittering, the spirit of romance +is in them; a giant Sancho Panza like Morgante, +redolent of sausage and cheese, would never be admitted +into the society of a Ferrarese Orlando. The +art of Boiardo and of Ariosto is eminently pageant +art, in which sentiment and heroism are but as one +element among many; there is no pretence at reality +(although there is a good deal of incidental realism), +and no thought of the interest in subject and persons +which goes with reality. It is a masquerade, and one +whose men and women must, I think, be imagined +in a kind of artistic fancy costume: a mixture of the +Renaissance dress and of the antique, as we see it in +the prints of contemporary pageants, and in Venetian +and Ferrarese pictures; that Circe of Dosso's, in the +Borghese gallery of Rome, seated in her stately wine-lees +and gold half-heraldically and half-cabalistically +patterned brocade, before the rose-bushes of the little +mysterious wood, is the very ideal of the Falerinas +and Alcinas, of the enchantresses of Boiardo and +Ariosto. Pageant people, these of the Ferrarese +poets; they only play at being in forests and deserts, +as children play at being on volcanoes or in Green-land +by the nursery fire. It is a kind of dressing up, +a masquerading of the fancy; not disguising in order +to deceive, but rather laying hold of any pretty or +brilliant impressive garb that comes to hand, and +putting that on in conjunction with many odds and +ends, as an artist's guests might do with the silks and +velvets and Oriental properties of a studio. These +knights and ladies, for ever tearing about from Scotland +to India, never, in point of fact, get any further +than the Apennine slopes where Boiardo was born, +where Ariosto governed the Garfagnana. They ride +for ever (while supposed to be in the Ardennes or in +Egypt) across the velvet moss turf, all patterned with +minute starry clovers and the fallen white ropy +chestnut blossom, amidst the bracken beneath the +slender chestnut trees, the pale blue sky looking in +between their spreading branches; at most they lose +their way in the intricacies of some seaside pineta, +where the feet slip on the fallen needles, and the sun +slants along the vistas of serried, red, scaly trunks, +among the juniper and gorse and dry grass and +flowers growing in the sea sand. Into the vast mediaeval +forests of Germany and France, Boiardo and +Ariosto's fancy never penetrated.</p> + +<p>Such is the school: a school represented in its +typical character only by Boiardo and Ariosto, but to +which belong, nevertheless, with whatever differences, +Tasso, Spenser, Camoens, all the poets of Renaissance +romance. Now of the two leaders thereof. Here I +feel that I can speak only personally; tell only of +my own personal impressions and preferences. Comparing +together Boiardo and Ariosto, I am, of course, +aware of the infinite advantages of the latter. Ariosto +is a man of far more varied genius; he is an artist, +while Boiardo is an amateur; he is learned in arranging +and ornamenting; he knows how to alternate various +styles, how to begin and how to end. Moreover, he +is a scholarly person of a more scholarly time: he is +familiar with the classics, and, what is more important, +he is familiar with the language in which he is writing. +He writes exquisitely harmonious, supple, and brilliant +Tuscan verse, with an infinite richness of diction; while +poor Boiardo jogs along in a language which is not the +Lombard dialect in which he speaks, and which is very +uncouth and awkward, as is every pure language for +a provincial; indeed, so much so, that the pedantic +Tuscans require Berni to make Tuscan, elegant, to +<i>ingentilire</i>, with infinite loss to quaintness and charm, +the "Orlando Innamorato" of poor Ferrarese Boiardo. +Moreover, Ariosto has many qualities unknown to +Boiardo; wit, malice, stateliness, decided eloquence +and power of simile and apostrophe; he is a symphony +for full orchestra, and Boiardo a mere melody played +on a single fiddle, which good authorities (and no one +dare contest with Italians when they condemn anything +not Tuscan as jargon) pronounce to be no +Cremona. All these advantages Ariosto certainly +has; and I do not quarrel with those who prefer him +for them. But many of them distinctly take away +from my pleasure. I confess that I am bored by the +beautifully written moral and allegorical preludes of +Ariosto's cantos; I would willingly give all his aphorism +and all his mythology to get quickly to the +story. Also, I resent his admirable rhetorical flourishes +about his patrons, his Ercoles, Ippolitos, and Isabellas +they ring false, dreadfully false and studied; and +Boiardo's quickly despatched friendly greeting of his +friends, his courteous knights and gentle ladies, pleases +me much better. Moreover, the all-pervading consciousness +of the existence of Homer, Virgil, nay, +Statius and Lucan, every trumpery antique epic-monger, +annoys me, giving an uncomfortable doubt +as to whether Ariosto did not try to make all this +nonsense serious, and this romance into an epic; all +this occasional Virgilian stateliness, alternated with +a kind of polished Decameronian gossipy cynicism, +diverts my attention, turns paladins and princesses +too much into tutor-educated gentlemen, into Bandello +and Cinthio-reading ladies of the sixteenth century. +The picture painted by Ariosto is finer, but you see +too much of the painter; he and his patrons take up +nearly the whole foreground, and they have affected, +idealized faces and would-be dignified and senatorial +poses. For these and many other reasons, I personally +prefer Boiardo; and perhaps the best reason for my preference +is the irrational one that he gives me more +pleasure. My preferences, my impressions, I have +said, are in this matter, much less critical than personal. +Hence I can speak of Boiardo only as he +affects me.</p> + +<p>When first I read Boiardo, I was conscious of a +curious phenomenon in myself. I must confess to +reading books usually in a very ardent or rather weary +manner, either way in a hurry to finish them. As it +happened, when I borrowed Boiardo, I had a great +many other things on hand which required my time +and attention; yet I could not make up my mind to +return the book until I had finished it, though my +intention had been merely to satisfy my curiosity by +a dip into it. I went on, without that eager desire to +know what follows which one has in a novel; drowsily +with absolute reluctance to leave off, like the reluctance +to rise from the grass beneath the trees with only +butterflies and shadows to watch, or the reluctance to +put aside some fairy book of Walter Crane's. It was +like strolling in some quaint, ill-trimmed, old garden, +finding fresh flowers, fresh bits of lichened walls, fresh +fragments of broken earthenware ornaments; or, rather, +more like a morning in the Cathedral Library at +Siena, the place where the gorgeous choir books are +kept, itself illuminated like missal pages by Pinturicchio: +amused, delighted, not moved nor fascinated; +finding every moment something new, some charming +piece of gilding, some sweet plumed head, some quaint +little tree or town; making a journey of lazy discovery +in a sort of world of Prince Charmings, the real realm +of the "Faëry Queen," quite different in enchantment +from the country of Spenser's Gloriana, with its pale +allegoric ladies and knights, half-human, half-metaphysical, +and its make-believe allegorical ogres and +giants. This is the real Fairyland, this of Boiardo: +no mere outskirts of Ferrara, with real, playfully +cynical Ferrarese men and women tricked out as +paladins and Amazons, and making fun of their +disguise, as in Ariosto; no wonderland of Tasso, with +enchanted gardens copied out of Bolognese pictures +and miraculous forests learned from theatre mechanicians, +wonders imitated by a great poet from the cardboard +and firework wonders of Bianca Cappello's +wedding feasts. This is the real fairyland, the wonderland +of mediaeval romance and of Persian and Arabian +tales, no longer solemn or awful, but brilliant, sunny, +only half believed in; the fairyland of the Renaissance, +superficially artistic, with its lightest, brightest fancies, +and its charming realities; its cloistered and painted +courts with plashing fountains, its tapestried and inlaid +rooms, its towered and belvedered villas, its quaint +clipped gardens full of strange Oriental plants and +beasts; and all this transported into a country of +wonders, where are the gardens of the Hesperides, the +fountain of Merlin, the tomb of Narcissus, the castle +of Morgan-le-Fay; every quaint and beautiful fancy, +antique and mediaeval, mixed up together, as in some +Renaissance picture of Botticelli or Rosselli or Filippino, +where knights in armour descend from Pegasus +before Roman temples, where swarthy white-turbaned +Turks, with oddly bunched-up trousers and jewelled +caftans, and half-naked, oak-crowned youths, like genii +descended, pensive and wondering, from some antique +sarcophagus, and dapper princelets and stalwart knights, +and citizens and monks, all crowd round the altar of +some wonder-working Macone or Apolline or Trevigante; +some comic, dreadful, apish figure, mummed +up in half-antique, half-oriental garb. Or else we are +led into some dainty, pale-tinted panel of Botticelli, +where the maidens dance in white clinging clothes, +strewing flowers on to the flower-freaked turf; or into +some of Poliphilo's vignettes, where the gentle ladies, +seated with lute and viol under vine-trellises, welcome +the young gallant, or poet, or knight.</p> + +<p>Such is the world of Boiardo. Spenser has once +or twice peeped in, painted it, and given us exquisite +little pictures, as that of Malecasta's castle, all hung +with mythological tapestries, that of the enchanted +chamber of Britomart, and those of Sir Calidore meeting +the Graces and of Hellenore dancing with the +Satyrs; but Spenser has done it rarely, trembling to +return to his dreary allegories. Equal to these single +pictures by Spenser, Boiardo has only one or two, but +he keeps us permanently in the world where such +pictures are painted. Boiardo is not a great artist +like Spenser: but he is a wizard, which is better. He +leads us, unceasingly, through the little dreamy laurelwoods, +where we meet crisp-haired damsels tied to +pine-trees, or terrible dragons, or enchanted wells, +through whose translucent green waters we see +brocaded rooms full of fair ladies; he ferries us ever +and anon across shallow streams, to the castles where +<i>gentil donzelle</i> wave their kerchiefs from the pillared +belvedere; he slips us unseen into the camps and +council-rooms of the splendidly trapped Saracens, +like so many figures out of Filippino's frescoes; he +conducts us across the bridges where giants stand +warders, to the mysterious carved tombs whence issue +green and crested snakes, who, kissed by a paladin, +turn into lovely enchantresses; he takes us beneath +the beds of rivers and through the bowels of the earth +where kings and knights turned into statues of gold, +sit round tables covered with jewels, illumined by +carbuncles more wonderful than that of Jamschid; or +through the mazes of fairy gardens, where every ear +of corn, cut off, turns into a wild beast, and every +fallen leaf into a bird, where hydras watch in the waters +and lamias rear themselves in the grass, where Orlando +must fill his helmet with roses lest he hear the voice +of the sirens; where all the wonders of Antiquity—the +snake-women, the Circes, the sirens, the hydras and +fauns live, strangely changed into something infinitely +quaint and graceful, still half-antique, yet already half-Arabian +or Keltic, in the midst of the fairyland of +Merlin and of Oberon—live, move, transform themselves +afresh; where the golden-haired damsels and +the stripling knights, delicate like Pinturicchio's Prince +Charmings, gallop for ever on their enchanted coursers, +within enchanted armour, invincible, invulnerable, +under a sky always blue, and through an unceasing +spring, ever onwards to new adventures. Adventures +which the noble, gentle Castellan of Scandiano, poet +and knight and humorist, philanthropical philosopher +almost from sheer goodness of heart, yet a little crazy, +and capable of setting all the church bells ringing in +honour of the invention of the name of Rodomonte +relates not to some dully ungrateful Alfonso or +Ippolito, but to his own guests, his own brilliant +knights and ladies, with ever and anon an effort to +make them feel, through his verse, some of those +joyous spring-tide feelings which bubble up in himself; +as when he remembers how, "Once did I wander on +a May morning in a fair flower-adorned field on a +hillside overlooking the sea, which was all tremulous +with light; and there, among the roses of a green +thorn-brake, a damsel was singing of love; singing +so sweetly that the sweetness still touches my heart; +touches my heart, and makes me think of the greatdelight +it was to listen;" and how he would fain repeat that +song, and indeed an echo of its sweetness runs through +his verse. Meanwhile, stanza pours out after stanza, +adventure grows out of adventure, each more wonderful, +more gorgeous than its predecessor. To which +listen the ladies, with their white, girdled dresses and +crimped golden locks; the youths, with their soft +beardless faces framed in combed-out hair, with their +daggers on their hips and their plumed hats between +their fingers; and the serious bearded men, in silken +robes; drawing nearer the poet, letting go lute or +violin or music-book as they listen on the villa terrace +or in some darkened room, where the sunset sky turns +green-blue behind the pillared window, and the roses +hang over the trellise of the cloister. And as they +did four hundred years ago, so do we now, rejoice. +The great stalwart naked forms of Greece no longer +leap and wrestle or carry their well-poised baskets of +washed linen before us; the mailed and vizored knights +of the Nibelungen no longer clash their armour to the +sound of Volker's red fiddle-bow; the glorified souls +of Dante no longer move in mystic mazes of light +before the eyes of our fancy. All that is gone. But +here is the fairyland of the Renaissance. And thus +Matteo Boiardo, Count of Scandiano, goes on, adding +adventure to adventure, stanza to stanza, in his castle +villa, or his palace at Ferrara. But suddenly he stops +and his bright fiddle and lute music jars and ends: +"While I am singing, O Redeeming God, I see all Italy +set on fire by these Gauls, coming to ravage I know +not what fresh place."</p> + +<p>And thus, with the earlier and more hopeful Renaissance +of the fifteenth century, Matteo Boiardo +broke off with his "Orlando Innamorato." The perfect +light-heartedness, the delight in play of a gentle, +serious, eminently kindly nature, which gives half the +charm to Boiardo's work, seems to have become impossible +after the ruin of Italian liberty and prosperity +the frightful showing up of Italy's moral and social +and political insignificance at the beginning of the +sixteenth century. Lombardy especially became a +permanent battle-field, and its towns mere garrison +places of French, German, Spanish, and Swiss barbarians, +whose presence meant slaughter and pillage +and every foulest outrage; and then, between the +horrors of the unresisted invasions and the unresisted +exactions, came plague and famine, and industry and +commerce gradually died out. A few princes, subsidised +and guarded by French or Imperialists, kept +up an appearance of cheerfulness, but the courts even +grew more gloomy as the people grew more miserable. +There is more joking, more resonant laughter in +Ariosto than in Boiardo, but there is very much less +serenity and cheerfulness; ever and anon a sort of +bitterness, a dreary moralizing tendency, a still more +dreary fit of prophesying future good in which he has +no belief, comes over Ariosto. Berni, who rewrote the +"Orlando Innamorato" in choice Tuscan, and who +underlined every faintly marked jest of Boiardo's, with +evident preoccupation of the ludicrous effects of the +"Morgante Maggiore"—Berni even could not keep up +his spirits; into the middle of Boiardo's serene fairyland +adventures he inserted a description of the sack +of Rome which is simply harrowing. All real cheerfulness +departed from the people, to be replaced only +by pleasure in the debaucheries of the buffoonish +obscenity of Aretino, Bandello, and so forth, to which +the men of the dying Italy of the Renaissance listened +as the roysterers of the plague of Florence, with the +mortal sickness almost upon them, may have listened +to the filthy songs which they trolled out in their +drunkenness. Or at best, the poor starved, bruised, +battered, humiliated nation may have tried to be +cheerful on the principle of its harlequin playwright +Beolco, who, more honest than the Ariostos and +Bibbienas, and Aretines, came forward on his stage of +planks at Padua, and after describing the ruin and +wretchedness of the country, the sense of dreariness +and desolation, which made young folk careless of +marriage, and the very nightingales (he thought) +careless of song, recommended his audience, since +they could not even cry thoroughly and to feel any +the better for it, to laugh, if they still were able. +Boiardo was forgotten; his spirit was unsuited to the +depression, gloomy brutality, gloomy sentimentality, +which grew every day as Italy settled down after its +Renaissance-Shrovetide in the cinders and fasting of +the long Lent of Spanish and Jesuit rule.</p> + +<p>Still the style of Boiardo was not yet exhausted; the +peculiar kind of fairy epic, the peculiar combination of +chivalric and classic elements of which the "Orlando +Innamorato" and the "Orlando Furioso," had been +the great examples, still fascinated poets and public. +The Renaissance, or what remained of it, was now no +longer confined to Italy; it had spread, paler, more +diluted, shallower, over the rest of Europe. To follow +the filiation of schools, to understand the intellectual +relationships of individuals, of the latter half of the +sixteenth century, it becomes necessary to move from +one country to another. And thus the two brother +poets of the family of Boiardo, its two last and much +saddened representatives, came to write in very +different languages and under very different circumstances. +These two are Tasso and our own Spenser. +They are both poets of the school of the "Orlando +Innamorato," both poets of a reaction, of a kind of +purified Renaissance: the one of the late Italian +Renaissance emasculated by the Council of Trent and +by Spain; the other of the English Renaissance, in +its youth truly, but, in the individual case of Spenser, +timidly drawn aside from the excesses of buoyant life +around. In the days of the semi-atheist dramatists, +all flesh and blood and democracy, Spenser steeps +himself in Christianity and chivalry, even as Tasso +does, following on the fleshly levity and scepticism of +Boiardo, Berni, and Ariosto. There is in both poets +a paleness, a certain diaphanous weakness, an absence +of strong tint or fibre or perfume; in Tasso the pallor +of autumn, in Spenser the paleness of spring: autumn +left sad and leafless by the too voluptuous heat and +fruitfulness of summer; spring still pale and pinched +by winter, with timid nipped grass and unripe stiff +buds and catkins, which never suggest the tangle of +bush, grasses, and magnificent flowers and fruits, sweet, +splendid, or poisonous, which the sun will make out +of them. The Renaissance, in the past for Tasso, in +the proximate and very visible future for Spenser, has +frightened both; the cynicism and bestiality of men +like Machiavelli and Aretino; the godless, muscular +lustiness of Marlowe, Greene, and Peele, seen in a +glimpse by Tasso and Spenser, have given a shock to +their sensitive nature, have made them turn away and +hide themselves from a second sight of it. They both +take refuge in a land of fiction, of romance, from the +realities into which they dread to splash; a world unsubstantial, +diaphanous, faint-hued, almost passionless, +which they make out of beauty and heroism and +purity, which they alembicize and refine, but into +which there never enters any vital element, anything +to give it flesh and bone and pulsing life: it is a mere +soap bubble. And beautiful as is this world of their +own making, it is too negative even for them; they +move in it only in imagination, calm, serene, vacant, +almost sad. There is in it, and in themselves, a something +wanting; and the remembrance of that unholy life +of reality which jostled and splashed their delicate +souls, comes back and haunts them with its evil +thought. There is no laugh—what is worse, no smile +—in these men. Incipient puritanism, not yet the +terrible brawny reality of Bunyan, but a vague, grey +spectre, haunts Spenser; and the puritanism of Don +Quixote, the vague, melancholy, fantastic reverting +from the evil world of to-day to an impossible world +of chivalry, is troubling the sight of Tasso. He +cannot go crazy like Don Quixote, and instead he +grows melancholy; he cannot believe in his own +ideals; he cannot give them life, any more than can +Spenser give life to his allegoric knights and ladies, +because the life would have to be fetched by Tasso +out of the flesh of Ariosto, and by Spenser out of the +blood of Marlowe; and both Tasso and Spenser +shrink at the thought of what might with it be inoculated +or transfused; and they rest satisfied with +phantoms. The phantoms of Spenser are more +shadowy much more utterly devoid of human character; +they are almost metaphysical abstractions, +and they do not therefore sadden us: they are too +unlike living things to seem very lifeless. But the +phantoms of Tasso, he would fain make realities; he +works at every detail of character, history, or geography, +which may make his people real; they are +not, as with Spenser, elves and wizards flitting about +in a nameless fairyland, characterless and passionless; +they are historical creatures, captains and soldiers in +a country mapped out by the geographer; but they +are phantoms all the more melancholy, these beautiful +and heroic Clorindas and Erminias and Tancreds +and Godfreys—why? because the real world around +Tasso is peopled with Brachianos and Corombonas, +and Annabellas and Giovannis, creatures for Webster +and Ford; and because this world of chivalry is, in +his Italy, as false as the world of Amadis and +Esplandian in Toboso and Barcelona for poor Don +Quixote. Melancholy therefore, and dreamy, both +Tasso and Spenser, with nothing they can fully love +in reality, because they see it tainted with reality and +evil; without the cheerful falling back upon everyday +life of Ariosto and Shakespeare, and with a strange +fancy for fairyland, for the distant, for the Happy +Islands, the St. Brandan's Isles, the country of the +fountain of youth, the country of which vague reports +have come back with the ships of Raleigh and Ponce +de Leon. Tasso and Spenser are happiest, in their +calm, melancholy way, when they can let themselves +go in day-dreams, and talk of things in which they do not +believe, of diamond shields which stun monsters, +of ointments which cure all ills of body and of soul +of enchanted groves whose trees sound with voices, +and lutes, of boats in which, steered by fairies, we can +glide across the scarcely rippled summer sea, and +watching the ruins of the past, time and reality left +behind, set sail for some strange land of bliss. And +there is in the very sensuousness and love of beauty-of +these men a vagueness and melancholy, a constant: +sense of the fleeting and of the eternal, as in that +passage, translated from the languidly sweet Italian +perfection of Tasso into the timid, almost scentless, +English of Spenser—"Cosi trapassa al trapassar d'un +giorno."</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">So passeth, in the passing of a day,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Of mortall life the leafe, the bud, the flowre</span></p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">No more doth florish after first decay,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">That earst was sought to deck both bed and bowre</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Of many a lady, and many a Paramowre.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Gather therefore the Rose whilest yet is prime,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">For soone comes age that will her pride deflowre;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Gather the Rose of love whitest yet is time,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Whitest loving thou mayest loved be withe equall crime.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>A sense of evanescence, of dreamlikeness, quite different +from the thoughtless enjoyment of Boiardo, +from the bold and manly facing of the future, the +solemn, strong sense of life and death as of waking +realities, of the Elizabethan dramatists, even of weaklings +like Massinger and Beaumont. In Tasso and in +Spenser there is no such joyousness, no such solemnity; +only a dreamy watching, a regret which is scarcely a +regret, at the evanescence of pale beauty and pale life, +of joys feebly felt and evils meekly borne.</p> + +<p>With Tasso and Spenser comes to a close the school +of Boiardo, the small number of real artists who finally +gave an enduring and beautiful shape to that strangely +mixed and altered material of romantic epic left behind +by the Middle Ages; comes to an end at least till +our own day of appreciative and deliberate imitation +and selection and rearrangement of the artistic forms +of the past. Until the revival (after much study and +criticism) by our own poets of Arthur and Gudrun and +the Fortunate Isles, the world had had enough of +mediaeval romance. Chivalry had avowedly ended in +chamberlainry; the devotion to women in the official +routine of the <i>cicisbeo</i>; the last romance to which the +late Renaissance had clung, which made it sympathize +with Huon, Ogier, Orlando, and Rinaldo, which had +made it take delight still in the fairyland of Oberon, +of Fallerina, of Alcina, of Armida, of Acrasia, the +romance of the new world, had also turned into prose, +prose of blood-stained filth. The humanistic and +rationalistic men of the Renaissance had doubtless early +begun to turn up their noses in dainty dilettantism +or scientific contempt, at what were later to be called +by Montaigne, "Ces Lancelots du Lac, ces Amadis, +ces Huons et tels fatras di livres à quoy l'enfance +s'amuse;" and by Ben Jonson:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 16.5em;">Public nothings,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Abortives of the fabulous dark cloister,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Sent out to poison courts, and infect manners—</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>the public at large was more constant, and still retained +a love for mediaeval romance. But more than humanities, +more than scientific scepticism and religious +puritanism, did the slow dispelling of the illusion of +Eldorado and the Fortunate Isles. Mankind set sail +for America in brilliant and knightly gear, believing +in fountains of youth and St. Brandan's Isles, with +Ariosto, Tasso, and Spenser still in its pockets. It +returns from America either as the tattered fever-stricken +ruffian, or as the vulgar, fat upstart of Spanish +comedy, returns without honour or shame, holding +money (and next to money, negroes) of greater account +than any insignia of paladinship or the Round Table; +it is brutal, vulgar, cynical; at best very sad, and it +gets written for its delectation the comic-tragic novels +of rapscallions, panders, prostitutes, and card-sharpers, +which from "Lazarillo de Tormes" to "Gil Blas," +and from "Gil Blas" to "Tom Jones," finall replace +the romances of the Launcelots, Galahads, Rinaldos, +and Orlandos.</p> + + +<p>Thus did the mediaeval romantic-epic stuffs suffer +alteration, adulteration, and loss of character, throughout +the long period of the Middle Ages, without ever +receiving an artistic shape, such as should make all +men preserve and cherish them for the only thing +which makes men preserve and cherish such things—that +never to be wasted quality, beauty. The Middle +Ages were powerless to endow therewith their own +subjects; so the subjects had to wait, altering more +and more with every passing day, till the coming of +the Renaissance. And by that time these subjects +had ceased to have any serious meaning whatever; +the Roland of the song of Roncevaux had become +the crazy Orlando of Ariosto; the Renaud of "The +Quatre Fils Aymon," had become the Rinaldo, thrashed +with sheaves of lilies by Cupid, of Matteo Boiardo. +The Renaissance took up the old epic-romantic +materials and made out of them works of art; but +works of art which, as I said before, were playthings +gets written for its delectation the comic-tragic novels +of rapscallions, panders, prostitutes, and card-sharpers, +which, from "Lazarillo de Tormes" to "Gil Bias," +and from "Gil Bias" to "Tom Jones," finally replace +the romances of the Launcelots, Galahads, Rinaldos, +and Orlandos.</p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + + +<h3><a name="MEDIEVAL_LOVE" id="MEDIEVAL_LOVE"></a>MEDIEVAL LOVE.</h3> + + +<p>On laying down the "Vita Nuova" our soul is at first +filled and resounding with the love of Beatrice. +Whatever habits or capacities of noble loving may +lurk within ourselves, have been awakened by the +solemn music of this book, and have sung in unison +with Dante's love till we have ceased to hear the voice +of his passion and have heard only the voice of our +own. When the excitement has diminished, when +we have grown able to separate from our own feelings +the feelings of the man dead these five centuries and +a half, and to realize the strangeness, the obsoleteness +of this love which for a moment had seemed our love; +then a new phase of impressions has set in, and the +"Vita Nuova" inspires us with mere passionate awe: +awe before this passion which we feel to be no longer +our own, but far above and distant from us, as in some +rarer stratum of atmosphere; awe before this woman +who creates it, or rather who is its creation. Even as +Dante fancied that the people of Florence did when +the bodily presence of this lady came across their +path, so do we cast down our glance as the image of +Beatrice passes across our mind. Nay, the glory of +her, felt so really while reading the few, meagre words +in the book, is stored away in our heart, and clothes +with a faint aureole the lady—if ever in our life we +chance to meet her—in whom, though Dante tells us +nothing of stature, features, eyes or hair, we seem to +recognize a likeness to her on whose passage "ogni +lingua divien tremando muta, e gli occhi non ardiscon +di guardare." Passion like this, to paraphrase a line +of Rossetti's, is genius; and it arouses in such as look +upon it the peculiar sense of wonder and love, of awe-stricken +raising up of him who contemplates, which +accompanies the contemplation of genius.</p> + +<p>But it may be that one day we feel, instead of this, +wonder indeed, but wonder mingled with doubt. +This ideal love, which craves for no union with its +object; which seeks merely to see, nay, which is satisfied +with mere thinking on the beloved one, will strike +us with the cold and barren glitter of the miraculous. +This Beatrice, as we gaze on her, will prove to be no +reality of flesh and blood like ourselves; she is a form +modelled in the semblance of that real, living woman +who died six centuries ago, but the substance of which +is the white fire of Dante's love. And the thought +will arise that this purely intellectual love of a scarce-noticed +youth for a scarce-known woman is a thing +which does not belong to life, neither sweetening nor +ennobling any of its real relations; that it is, in its +dazzling purity and whiteness, in fact a mere strange +and sterile death light, such as could not and should +not, in this world of ours, exist twice over. And, lest we +should ever be tempted to think of this ideal love for +Beatrice as of a wonderful and beautiful, but scarcely +natural or useful phenomenon, I would wish to study +the story of its origin and its influence. I would wish +to show that had it not burned thus strangely concentrated +and pure, the poets of succeeding ages could +not have taken from that white flame of love which +Dante set alight upon the grave of Beatrice, the spark +of ideal passion which has, in the noblest of our +literature, made the desire of man for woman and of +woman for man burn clear towards heaven, leaving +behind the noisome ashes and soul-enervating vapours +of earthly lust</p> + +<h3>I.</h3> + +<p>The centuries have made us; forcing us into new +practices, teaching us new habits, creating for us new +capacities and wants; adding, ever and anon, to the +soul organism of mankind features which at first were +but accidental peculiarities, which became little by +little qualities deliberately sought for and at lengths +inborn and hereditary characteristics. And thus, in, +what we call the Middle Ages, there was invented by +the stress of circumstances, elaborated by half-consciuos +effort and bequeathed as an unalienable habit, +a new manner of loving.</p> + +<p>The women of classical Antiquity appear to us in +poetry and imaginative literature as one of two things: +the wife or the mistress. The wife, Penelope, Andromache, +Alkestis, nay, even the charming young bride +in Xenophon's "Oeconomics," is, while excluded from +many concerns, distinctly reverenced and loved in her +own household capacity; but the reverence is of the +sort which the man feels for his parents and his household +gods, and the affection is calm and gently +rebuking like that for his children. The mistress, on +the other hand, is the object of passion which is often +very vehement, but which is always either simply +fleshly or merely fancifully aesthetic or both, and which +entirely precludes any save a degrading influence upon +the sensual and suspicious lover. Even Tibullus, in +love matters one of the most modern among the +ancients, and capable of painting many charming and +delicate little domestic idyls even in connection with +a mere bought mistress, is perpetually accusing his +Delia of selling herself to a higher bidder, and sighing +at the high probability of her abandoning him for the +Illyrian praetor or some other rich amateur of pretty +women. The barbarous North—whose songs have +come down to us either, like the Volsunga Saga +translated by Mr. Morris, in an original pagan version, +or else, as the Nibelungenlied, recast during the +early Middle Ages—the North tells us nothing of the +venal paramour, but knows nothing also beyond the +wedded wife; more independent and mighty perhaps +than her counterpart of classical Antiquity, but +although often bought, like Brynhilt or Gudrun, at +the expense of tremendous adventures, cherished +scarcely more passionately than the wives of Odysseus +and Hector. Thus, before the Middle Ages, there +existed as a rule only a holy, but indifferent and +utterly unlyrical, love for the women, the equals of +their husbands, wooed usually of the family and +solemnly given in marriage without much consultation +of their wishes; and a highly passionate and singing, +but completely profligate and debasing, desire for +mercenary though cultivated creatures like the Delias +and Cynthlas of Tibullus and Propertius, or highborn +women, descended, like Catullus' Lesbia, in brazen dishonour +to their level, women towards whom there could +not possibly exist on the part of their lovers any sense +of equality, much less of inferiority. To these two +kinds of love, chaste but cold, and passionate but +unchaste, the Middle Ages added, or rather opposed, +a new manner of loving, which, although a mere +passing phenomenon, has left the clearest traces +throughout our whole mode of feeling and writing.</p> + +<p>To describe mediaeval love is a difficult matter, and +to describe it except in negations is next to impossibility. +I conceive it to consist in a certain sentimental, +romantic, idealistic attitude towards women, not by +any means incompatible however with the grossest +animalism; an attitude presupposing a complete +moral, aesthetical, and social superiority on the part of +the whole sex, inspiring the very highest respect and +admiration independently of the individual's qualities; +and reaching the point of actual worship, varying +from the adoration of a queen by a courtier to the +adoration of a shrine by a pilgrim, in the case of the +one particular lady who happens to be the beloved; +an attitude in the relations of the sexes which results +in love becoming an indispensable part of a noble life, +and the devoted attachment to one individual woman, +a necessary requisite of a gentlemanly training.</p> + +<p>Mediaeval love is not merely a passion, a desire, an +affection, a habit; it is a perfect occupation. It +absorbs, or is supposed to absorb, the Individual; it +permeates his life like a religion. It is not one of the +interests of life, or, rather, one of life's phases; it is +the whole of life, all other interests and actions either +sinking into an unsingable region below it, or merely +embroidering a variegated pattern upon its golden +background. Mediaeval love, therefore, never obtains +its object, however much it may obtain the woman; +for the object of mediaeval love, as of mediaeval religious +mysticism, is not one particular act or series of +acts, but is its own exercise, of which the various incidents +of the drama between man and woman are +merely so many results. It has not its definite stages, +like the love of the men of classical Antiquity or the +heroic time of the North: its stages of seeking, obtaining, +cherishing, guarding; it is always at the same +point, always in the same condition of half-religious, +half-courtier-like adoration, whether it be triumphantly +successful or sighingly despairing. The man and +the woman—or rather, I should say, the knight and +the lady, for mediaeval love is an aristocratic privilege, +and the love of lower folk is not a theme for +song—the knight and the lady, therefore, seem +always, however knit together by habit, nay, by inextricable +meshes of guilt, somehow at the same distance +from one another. Once they have seen and loved +each other, their passion burns on always evenly, +burns on (at least theoretically) to all eternity. It +seems almost as if the woman were a mere shrine, a +mysterious receptacle of the ineffable, a grail cup, a +consecrated wafer, but not the ineffable itself. For +there is always in mediaeval love, however fleshly +the incidents which it produces, a certain Platonic +element; that is to say, a craving for, a pursuit of, +something which is an abstraction; an abstraction +impossible to define in its constant shifting and shimmering, +and which seems at one moment a social +standard, a religious ideal, or both, and which merges +for ever in the dazzling, vague sheen of the Eternal +Feminine. Hence, one of the most distinctive features +of mediaeval love, an extraordinary sameness of intonation, +making it difficult to distinguish between the +<i>bonâ fide</i> passion for which a man risks life and honour, +and the mere conventional gallantry of the knight +who sticks a lady's glove on his helmet as a compliment +to her rank; nay, between the impure adoration +of an adulterous lamia like Yseult, and the mystical +adoration of a glorified Mother of God; for both are +women, both are ladies, and therefore the greatest +poet of the early Middle Ages, Gottfried von Strassburg, +sings them both with the same religious respect, +and the same hysterical rapture. This mediaeval love +is furthermore a deliberately expected, sought-for, and +received necessity in a man's life; it is not an accident, +much less an incidental occurrence to be lightly +taken or possibly avoided: it is absolutely indispensable +to man's social training, to his moral and +aesthetical self-improvement; it is part and parcel of +manhood and knighthood. Hence, where it does not +arise of itself (and where a man is full of the notion of +such love, it is rare that it does not come) but too +soon it has to be sought for. Ulrich von Liechtenstein, +in his curious autobiography written late in the +twelfth century, relates how ever since his childhood +he had been aware of the necessity of the loyal love +service of a lady for the accomplishment of knightly +duties; and how, as soon as he was old enough to love, +he looked around him for a lady whom he might +serve; a proceeding renewed in more prosaic days +and with a curious pedantic smack, by Lorenzo dei +Medici; and then again, perhaps for the last time, by +the Knight of La Mancha, in that memorable discussion +which ended in the enthronement as his heart's +queen of the unrivalled Dulcinea of Toboso. <i>Frowendienst,</i> +"lady's service," is the name given by Ulrich +von Liechtenstein, a mediaeval Quixote, outshining by +far the mad Provençals Rudel and Vidal, to the memoirs +very delightfully done into modern German by Ludwig +Tieck; and "lady's service" is the highest occupation +of knightly leisure, the subject of the immense +bulk of mediaeval poetry. "Lady's service" in deeds of +arms and song, in constant praise and defence of the +beloved, in heroic enterprise and madcap mummery, +in submission and terror to the wondrous creature +whom the humble servant, the lover, never calls by +her sacred name, speaking of her in words unknown +to Antiquity, <i>dompna, dame, frowe, madonna</i>—words +of which the original sense has almost been forgotten, +although there cleave to them even now ideas higher +than those associated with the <i>puella</i> of the ancients, +the <i>wib</i> of the heroic days—lady, mistress—the titles +of the Mother of God, who is, after all, only the mystical +Soul's Paramour of the mediaeval world. "Lady's +service"—the almost technical word, expressing the +position, half-serf-like, half-religious, the bonds of +complete humility and never-ending faithfulness, the +hopes of reward, the patience under displeasure, the +pride in the livery of servitude, the utter absorption of +the life of one individual in the life of another; which +constitute in Provence, in France, in Germany, in +England, in Italy, in the fabulous kingdoms of +Arthur and Charlemagne, the strange new thing +which I have named Mediaeval Love.</p> + +<p>Has such a thing really existed? Are not these +mediaeval poets leagued together in a huge conspiracy +to deceive us? Is it possible that strong men have +wept and fainted at a mere woman's name, like the +Count of Nevers in "Flamenca," or that their mind +has swooned away in months of reverie like that of +Parzifal in Eschenbach's poem; that worldly wise and +witty men have shipped off and died on sea for love +of an unseen woman like Jaufre Rudel; or dressed in +wolf's hide and lurked and fled before the huntsmen +like Peire Vidal; or mangled their face and cut off +their finger, and, clothing themselves in rags more +frightful than Nessus' robe, mixed in the untouchable +band of lepers like Ulrich von Liechtenstein? Is it +possible to believe that the insane enterprises of the +Amadises, Lisvarts and Felixmartes of late mediaeval +romance, that the behaviour of Don Quixote in the +Sierra Morena, ever had any serious models in reality? +Nay, more difficult still to believe—because the whole +madness of individuals is more credible than the half-madness +of the whole world—is it possible to believe +that, as the poems of innumerable trouvères and +troubadours, minnesingers and Italian poets, as the +legion of mediaeval romances of the cycles of Charlemagne, +Arthur, and Amadis would have it, that during +so long a period of time society could have been +enthralled by this hysterical, visionary, artificial, incredible +religion of mediaeval love? It is at once too +grotesque and too beautiful, too high and too low, to +be credible; and our first impulse, on closing the +catechisms and breviaries, the legendaries and hymn-books +of this strange new creed, is to protest that the +love poems must be allegories, the love romances +solar myths, the Courts of Love historical bungles; +that all this mediaeval world of love is a figment, a +misinterpretation, a falsehood.</p> + +<p>But if we seek more than a mere casual impression; +if, instead of feeling sceptical over one or two fragments +of evidence, we attempt to collect the largest +possible number of facts together; if we read not one +mediaeval love story, but twenty—not half a dozen +mediaeval love poems, but several scores; if we +really investigate into the origin of the apparent myth, +the case speedily alters. Little by little this which had +been inconceivable becomes not merely intelligible, +but inevitable; the myth becomes an historical phenomenon +of the most obvious and necessary sort. +Mediaeval love, which had seemed to us a poetic fiction, +is turned into a reality; and a reality, alas, which is +prosaic. Let us look at it.</p> + +<p>Mediaeval love is first revealed in the sudden and +almost simultaneous burst of song which, like the +twitter and trill so dear to trouvères, troubadours, and +minnesingers, fills the woods that yesterday were +silent and dead, and greeted the earliest sunshine, +the earliest faint green after the long winter numbness +of the dark ages, after the boisterous gales of the +earliest Crusade. The French and Provençals sang +first, the Germans later, the Sicilians last; but although +we may say after deliberate analysis, such +or such a form, or such or such a story, was known +in this country before it appeared in that one, such +imitation or suggestion was so rapid that with regard +to the French, the Provençals, and the Germans at +least, the impression is simultaneous; only the Sicilians +beginning distinctly later, forerunners of the new love +lyric, wholly different from that of trouvères, troubadours, +and minnesingers, of the Italians of the latter +thirteenth century. And this simultaneous revelation +of mediaeval love takes place in the last quarter +of the twelfth century, when Northern France had +already consolidated into a powerful monarchy, and +Paris, after the teachings of Abélard, was recognized +as the intellectual metropolis of Europe; when south +of the Loire the brilliant Angevine kings held the +overlordship of the cultured Raymonds of Toulouse +and of the reviving Latin municipalities of Provence \ +when Germany was welded as a compact feudal mass +by the most powerful of the Stauffens; and the papacy +had been built up by Gregory and Alexander into +a political wall against which Frederick and Henry +vainly battered; when the Italian commonwealths +grew slowly but surely, as yet still far from guessing +that the day would come when their democracy should +produce a new civilization to supersede this triumphant +mediaeval civilization of the early Capetiens, the +Angevines, and the Hohenstauffens. Europe was +setting forth once more for the East; but no longer +as the ignorant and enthusiastic hordes of Peter the +Hermit: Asia was the great field for adventure, the +great teacher of new luxuries, at once the Eldorado +and the grand tour of all the brilliant and inquisitive +and unscrupulous chivalry of the day. And, while +into the West were insidiously entering habits and +modes of thought of the East; throughout Germany +and Provence, and throughout the still obscure free +burghs of Italy, was spreading the first indication of +that emotional mysticism which, twenty or thirty +years later, was to burst out in the frenzy of spiritual +love of St. Francis and his followers. The moment +is one of the most remarkable in all history: the +premature promise in the twelfth century of that +intellectual revival which was delayed throughout +Northern Europe until the sixteenth. It is the moment +when society settled down, after the anarchy +of eight hundred years, on its feudal basis; a basis +fallaciously solid, and in whose presence no one might +guess that the true and definitive Renaissance would +arise out of the democratic civilization of Italy.</p> + +<p>Such is the moment when we first hear the almost +universal song of mediaeval love. This song comes +from the triumphantly reorganized portion of society, +not from the part which is slowly working its way to +reorganization; not from the timidly encroaching +burghers, but from the nobles. The reign of town +poetry, of fabliaux and meistersang, comes later; the +poets of the early Middle Ages, trouvères, troubadours, +and minnesingers are, with barely one or two exceptions, +all knights. And their song comes from the +castle. Now, in order to understand mediaeval love, +we must reflect for a moment upon this feudal castle, +and upon the kind of life which the love poets of the +late twelfth and early thirteenth century—whether +lords like Bertram de Born, and Guillaume de Poitiers, +among the troubadours; the Vidame de Chartres, Meurisses +de Craon, and the Duke of Brabant among the +trouvères of Northern France; like Ulrich von Liechtenstein +among the minnesingers; or retainers and +hangers-on like Bernard de Ventadour and Armand +de Mareulh, like Chrestiens de Troyes, Gaisses Brulez, +or Quienes de Béthune, like Walther, Wolfram, and +Tannhäuser—great or small, good or bad, saw before +them and mixed with in that castle. The castle of a +great feudatory of the early Middle Ages, whether +north or south of the Loire, in Austria or in Franconia, +is like a miniature copy of some garrison town +in barbarous countries: there is an enormous numerical +preponderance of men over women; for only the +chiefs in command, the overlord, and perhaps one or +two of his principal kinsmen or adjutants, are permitted +the luxury of a wife; the rest of the gentlemen +are subalterns, younger sons without means, youths +sent to learn their military duty and the ways +of the world: a whole pack of men without wives, +without homes, and usually without fortune. High +above all this deferential male crowd, moves the lady +of the castle: highborn, proud, having brought her +husband a dower of fiefs often equal to his own, and +of vassals devoted to her race. About her she has +no equals; her daughters, scarcely out of the nurse's +hands, are given away in marriage; and her companions, +if companions they may be called, are the +waiting ladies, poor gentlewomen situated between +the maid of honour and the ladies' maid, like that +Brangwaine whom Yseult sacrifices to her intrigue with +Tristram, or those damsels whom Flamenca gives +over to the squires of her lover Guillems; at best, +the wife of one of her husband's subalterns, or some +sister or aunt or widow kept by charity. Round this +lady—the stately, proud lady perpetually described +by mediaeval poets—flutters the swarm of young men, +all day long, in her path: serving her at meals, +guarding her apartments, nay, as pages, admitted +even into her most secret chamber; meeting her for +ever in the narrowness of that castle life, where every +unnecessary woman is a burden usurping the place +of a soldier, and, if possible, replaced by a man. +Servants, lacqueys, and enjoying the privileges of +ubiquity of lacqueys, yet, at the same time, men of +good birth and high breeding, good at the sword and +at the lute; bound to amuse this highborn woman, +fading away in the monotony of feudal life, with +few books to read or unable to read them, and far +above all the household concerns which devolve on +the butler, the cellarer, the steward, the gentleman, +honourably employed as a servant. To them, to these +young men, with few or no young women of their own +age to associate, and absolutely no unmarried girls +who could be a desirable match, the lady of the castle +speedily becomes a goddess, the impersonation at +once of that feudal superiority before which they bow, +of that social perfection which they are commanded +to seek, and of that womankind of which the castle +affords so few examples. To please her, this lazy, +bored, highbred woman, with all the squeamishness +and caprice of high birth and laziness about her, +becomes their ideal; to be favourably noticed, their +highest glory; to be loved, these wretched mortals, +by this divinity—that thought must often pass +through their brain and terrify them with its delicious +audacity; oh no, such a thing is not possible. But it +is. The lady at first, perhaps most often, singles out +as a pastime some young knight, some squire, some +page; and, in a half-queenly, half-motherly way, +corrects, rebukes his deficiencies, undertakes to teach +him his duty as a servant. The romance of the +"Petit Jehan de Saintré," written in the fifteenth +century, but telling, with a delicacy of cynicism worthy +of Balzac, what must have been the old, old story of +the whole feudal Middle Ages, shows the manner in +which, while feeling that he is being trained to knightly +courtesy and honour, the young man in the service of +a great feudal lady is gradually taught dissimulation, +lying, intrigue; is initiated by the woman who looms +above him like a saint into all the foulness of adultery. +Adultery; a very ugly word, which must strike +almost like a handful of mud in the face whosoever +has approached this subject of mediaeval love in +admiration of its strange delicacy and enthusiasm. +Yet it is a word which must be spoken, for in it is +the explanation of the whole origin and character of +this passion which burst into song in the early Middle +Ages. This almost religious love, this love which +conceives no higher honour than the service of the +beloved, no higher virtue than eternal fidelity—this +love is the love for another man's wife. Between unmarried +young men and young women, kept carefully +apart by the system which gives away a girl without +her consent and only to a rich suitor, there is no +possibility of love in these early feudal courts; the +amours, however licentious, between kings' daughters +and brave knights, of the Carolingian tales, belong to +a different rank of society, to the prose romances made +up in the fourteenth century for the burgesses of +cities; the intrigues, ending in marriage, of the princes +and princesses of the cycle of Amadis, belong to a +different period, to the fifteenth century, and to courts +where feudal society scarcely exists; the squires, the +young knights who hang about a great baronial establishment +of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, have +still to make their fortune, and do not dream of marriage. +The husband, on the other hand, the great lord +or successful knightly adventurer, married late in life, +and married from the necessity, for ever pressing upon +the feudal proprietor, of adding on new fiefs and new +immunities, of increasing his importance and independence +in proportion to the hourly increasing +strength and claims of the overlord, the king, who +casts covetous eyes upon him—the husband has not +married for love; he has had his love affairs with the +wives of other men in his day, or may still have +them; this lady is a mere feudal necessity, she is +required to give him a dower and give him an heir, +that is all. If the husband does not love, how much +less can the wife; married, as she is, scarce knowing +what marriage is, to a man much older than herself, +whom most probably she has never seen, to whom +she is a mere investment. Nay, there is not even the +after-marriage love of the ancients: this wife is not +the housekeeper, the woman who works that the man's +house may be rich and decorous; not even the nurse +of his children, for the children are speedily given over +to the squires and duennas; she is the woman of +another family who has come into his, the stranger +who must be respected (as that most typical mediaeval +wife, Eleanor of Guienne, was respected by her +husbands) on account of her fiefs, her vassals, her +kinsfolk; but who cannot be loved. Can there be +love between man and wife? There cannot be love +between man and wife. This is no answer of mine, +fantastically deduced from mediaeval poetry. It is the +answer solemnly made to the solemnly asked question +by the Court of Love held by the Countess of Champagne +in 1174, and registered by Master Andrew the +King of France's chaplain: "Dicimus enim et stabilito +tenore firmamus amorem non posse inter duos jugales +suas extendere vires." And the reason alleged for this +judgment brings us back to the whole conception of +mediaeval love as a respectful service humbly waiting +for a reward: "For," pursues the decision published +by André le Chapelain, "whereas lovers grant to each +other favours freely and from no legal necessity, +married people have the duty of obeying each other's +wishes and of refusing nothing to one another." "No +love is possible between man and wife," repeat the +Courts of Love which, consisting of all the highborn +ladies of the province and presided by some mighty +queen or princess, represent the social opinions of the +day. "But this lady," says a knight (Miles) before +the love tribunal of Queen Eleanor, "promised to me +that if ever she should lose the love of her lover, she +would take me in his place. She has wedded the man +who was her lover, and I have come to claim fulfilment +of her promise." The court discusses for awhile. +"We cannot," answers Queen Eleanor, "go against the +Countess of Champagne's decision that love cannot +exist between man and wife. We therefore desire this +lady to fulfil her promise and give you her love." Again, +there come to the Court of Love of the Viscountess +of Narbonne a knight and a lady, who desire to know +whether, having been once married, but since divorced, +a love engagement between them would be honourable. +The viscountess decides that "Love between those +who have been married together, but who have since +been divorced from one another, is not to be deemed +reprehensible; nay, that it is to be considered as +honourable." And these Courts of Love, be it remarked, +were frequently held on occasion of the marriage of +great personages; as, for instance, of that between +Louis VII. and Eleanor of Poitiers in 1137. The +poetry of the early Middle Ages follows implicitly +the decisions of these tribunals, which reveal a state +of society to which the nearest modern approach is +that of Italy in the eighteenth century, when, as +Goldoni and Parini show us, as Stendhal (whose "De +l'Amour" may be taken as the modern "Breviari +d'Amor") expounds, there was no impropriety possible +as long as a lady was beloved by any one except her +own husband. No love, therefore, between unmarried +people (the cyclical romances, as before stated, and +the Amadises, belong to another time of social condition, +and the only real exception to my rule of which +I can think is the lovely French tale of "Aucassin et +Nicolette"); and no love between man and wife. But +love there must be; and love there consequently is; +love for the married woman from the man who is not +her husband. The feudal lady, married without being +consulted and without having had a chance of knowing +what love is, yet lives to know love; lives to be +taught it by one of these many bachelors bound to +flutter about her in military service or social duty; +lives to teach it herself. And she is too powerful in +her fiefs and kinsmen, too powerful in the public +opinion which approves and supports her, to be +hampered by her husband. The husband, indeed, +has grown up in the same habits, has known, before +marrying, the customs sanctioned by the Courts of +Love; he has been the knight of some other man's +wife in his day, what right has he to object? As in +the days of Italian <i>cecisbei</i>, the early mediaeval lover +might say with Goldoni's Don Alfonso or Don +Roberto, "I <i>serve</i> your wife—such or such another +serves mine, what harm can there be in it?" ("Io +servo vostra moglie, Don Eugenio favorisce la mia; che +male c' è?" I am quoting from memory.) And as a +fact, we hear little of jealousy; the amusement of En +Barral when Peire Vidal came in and kissed his sleeping +wife; and the indignation of all Provence for the +murder of Guillems de Cabestanh (buried in the same +tomb with the lady who had been made to eat of his +heart)—showing from opposite sides how the society +accustomed to Courts of Love looked upon the duties +of husbands.</p> + +<p>Such was the social life in those feudal courts +whence first arises the song of mediaeval love, and +that this is the case is proved by the whole huge +body of early mediaeval poetry. We must not judge, +as I have said, either by poems of much earlier date, +like the Nibelungen and the Carolingian <i>chansons de +geste</i>, which merely received a new form in the early +Middle Ages; still less from the prose romances of +Mélusine, Milles et Amys, Palemon and Arcite, and a +host of others which were elaborated only later and +under the influence of the quite unfeudal habits of the +great cities; and least of all from that strange late +southern cycle of the Amadises, from which, odd as it +seems, many of our notions of chivalric love have, +through our ancestors, through the satirists or burlesque +poets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, been +inherited. We must look at the tales which, as we +are constantly being told by trouvères, troubadours, +and minnesingers, were the fashionable reading of the +feudal classes of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: +the tales best known to us in the colourless respectability +of the collection made in the reign of Edward +IV. by Sir Thomas Malory, and called by him the +"Morte d'Arthur"—of the ladies and knights of +Arthur's court; of the quest of the Grail by spotless +knights who were bastards and fathers of bastards; +of the intrigues of Tristram of Lyoness and Queen +Yseult; of Launcelot and Guenevere; the tales which +Francesca and Paolo read together. We must look, +above all, at the lyric poetry of France, Provence, +Germany, and Sicily in the early Middle Ages.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Vos qui très bien ameis i petit mentendeis</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Por l'amor de Ihesu les pucelles ameis.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Nos trouvons en escris de sainte auctoriteis</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Ke pucelle est la fleur de loyaulment ameir.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>This strange entreaty to love the maidens for the +sake of Christ's love, this protest of a nameless +northern French poet (Wackernagel, Altfranzösische +Lieder and Leiche IX.) against the adulterous passion +of his contemporaries, comes to us, pathetically +enough, solitary, faint, unnoticed in the vast chorus, +boundless like the spring song of birds or the sound +of the waves, of poets singing the love of other men's +wives. But, it may be objected—how can we tell that +these love songs, so carefully avoiding all mention of +names, are not addressed to the desired bride, to the +legitimate wife of the poet? For several reasons; +and mainly, for the crushing evidence of an undefinable +something which tells us that they are not. The +other reasons are easily stated. We know that feudal +habits would never have allowed to unmarried women +(and women were married when scarcely out of their +childhood) the opportunities for the relations which +obviously exist between the poet and his lady; and +that, if by some accident a young knight might fall +in love with a girl, he would address not her but her +parents, since the Middle Ages, who were indifferent +to adultery, were, like the southern nations among +whom the married woman is not expected to be +virtuous, extreme sticklers for the purity of their +unmarried womankind. Further, we have no instance +of an unmarried woman being ever addressed during +the early Middle Ages, in those terms of social respect—<i>madame, +domna, frowe, madonna</i>—which essentially +belong to the mistress of a household; nor do +these stately names fit in with any theory which would +make us believe that the lady addressed by the poet +is the jealously guarded daughter of the house with +whom he is plotting a secret marriage, or an elopement +to end off in marriage. This is not the way +that Romeo speaks to Juliet, nor even that the +princesses in the cyclical romances and in the Amadises +are wooed by their bridegrooms. This is not +the language of a lover who is broaching his love, and +who hopes, however timidly, to consummate it before +all the world by marriage. It is obviously the language +of a man either towards a woman who is taking +a pleasure in keeping him dangling without favours +which she has implicitly or explicitly promised; or +towards a woman who is momentarily withholding +favours which her lover has habitually enjoyed. And +in a large proportion of cases the poems of trouvères, +troubadours, and minnesingers are the expression of +fortunate love, the fond recollection or eager expectation +of meetings with the beloved. All this can +evidently not be connected with the wooing, however +stealthy, however Romeo-and-Juliet-like of a bride; +still less can it be explained in reference to love +within wedlock. A man does not, however loving, +worship his wife as his social superior; he does not +address her in titles of stiff respect; he does not sigh +and weep and supplicate for love which is his due, +and remind his wife that she owes it him in return +for loyal, humble, discreet service. Above all, a man +(except in some absurd comedy perhaps, where the +husband, in an age of <i>cicisbeos</i>, is in love with his own +wife and dares not admit it before the society which +holds "that there can be no love between married +folk ")—a husband, I repeat, does not beg for, arrange, +look forward to, and recall with triumph or sadness, +secret meetings with his own wife. Now the secret +meeting is, in nearly every aristocratic poet of the +early poetry, the inevitable result of the humble praises +and humble requests for kindness; it is, most obviously, +<i>the</i> reward for which the poet is always importuning. +Mediaeval love poetry, compared with the love +poetry of Antiquity and the love poetry of the revival +of letters, is, in its lyric form, decidedly chaste; but +it is perfectly explicit; and, for all its metaphysical +tendencies and its absence of clearly painted pictures, +the furthest possible removed from being Platonic. +One of the most important, characteristic, and artistically +charming categories of mediaeval love lyrics +is that comprising the Provençal <i>serena</i> and <i>alba,</i> +with their counterparts in the <i>langue d'oil</i>, and the +so-called <i>Wachtlieder</i> of the minnesingers; and +this category of love poetry may be defined as the +drama, in four acts, of illicit love. The faithful lover +has received from his lady an answer to his love, the +place and hour are appointed; all the day of which +the evening is to bring him this honour, he goes heavy +hearted and sighing: "Day, much do you grow for my +grief, and the evening, the evening and the long hope +kills me." Thus far the <i>serena</i>, the evening song, +of Guiraut Riquier. A lovely anonymous <i>alba,</i> +whose refrain, "Oi deus, oi deus; de l' alba, tan tost +ve!" is familiar to every smatterer of Provençal, +shows us the lady and her knight in an orchard +beneath the hawthorn, giving and taking the last +kisses while the birds sing and the sky whitens with +dawn. "The lady is gracious and pleasant, and many +look upon her for her beauty, and her heart Is all in +loving loyally; alas, alas, the dawn! how soon it: +comes!—" "Oi deus, oi deus; de l'alba, tan tost ve!" +The real <i>alba</i> is the same as the German <i>Wachtlieder,</i> +the song of the squire or friend posted at the +garden gate or outside the castle wall, warning the +lovers to separate. "Fair comrade (Bel Companho), +I call to you singing. 'Sleep no more, for I hear the +birds announcing the day in the trees, and I fear that +the jealous one may find you;' and in a moment it will, +be day, 'Bel Companho, come to the window and look +at the signs in the sky! you will know me a faithful +messenger; if you do it not, it will be to your harm" +and in a moment it will be dawn (et ades sera 1' alba)... +Bel Companho, since I left you I have not slept nor +raised myself from my knees; for I have prayed to God +the Son of Saint Mary, that he should send me: +back my faithful comrade, and in a moment it will be +dawn In this <i>alba</i> of Guiraut de Borneulh, the +lover comes at last to the window, and cries to his. +watching comrade that he is too happy to care either +for the dawn or for the jealous one. The German +<i>Wachtlieder</i> are even more explicit. "He must away +at once and without delay," sings the watchman in +a poem of Wolfram, the austere singer of Parzifal +and the Grail Quest; "let him go, sweet lady; let +him away from thy love so that he keep his honour +and life. He trusted himself to me that I should +bring him safely hence; it is day ..." "Sing what +thou wilt, watchman," answers the lady, "but leave +him here." In a far superior, but also far less chaste +poem of Heinrich von Morungen, the lady, alone and +melancholy, wakes up remembering the sad white +light of morning, the sad cry of the watchman, which +separated her from her knight. Still more frankly, +and in a poem which is one of the few real masterpieces +of Minnesang, the lady in Walther von der +Vogelweide's "Under der linden an der Heide" +narrates a meeting in the wood. "What passed +between us shall never be known by any! never by +any, save him and me—yes, and by the little nightingale +that sang <i>Tandaradei</i>! The little bird will surely +be discreet."</p> + +<p>The songs of light love for another's wife of troubadour, +trouvère, and minnesinger, seem to have been +squeezed together, so that all their sweet and acrid +perfume is, so to speak, sublimated, in the recently +discovered early Provençal narrative poem called +"Flamenca." Like the "Tristram" of Gottfried von +Strassburg, like all these light mediaeval love <i>lyrics,</i> +of which I have been speaking, the rhymed story of +"Flamenca," a pale and simple, but perfect petalled +daisy, has come up in a sort of moral and intellectual +dell in the winter of the Middle Ages—a dell such as +you meet in hollows of even the most wind-swept +southern hills, where, while all round the earth is +frozen and the short grass nibbled away by the frost, +may be found even at Christmas a bright sheen of +budding wheat beneath the olives on the slope, a +yellow haze of sun upon the grass in which the little +aromatic shoots of fennel and mint and marigold +pattern with greenness the sere brown, the frost-burnt; +where the very leafless fruit trees have a spring-like rosy +tinge against the blue sky, and the tufted little osiers +flame a joyous orange against the greenness of the hill.</p> + +<p>Such spots there are—and many—in the winter of +the Middle Ages; though it is not in them, but where +the rain beats, and the snow and the wind tugs, that +grow, struggling with bitterness, the great things of +the day: the philosophy of Abélard, the love of man +of St. Francis, the patriotism of the Lombard communes; +nor that lie dormant, fertilized in the cold +earth, the great things of art and thought, the great +things to come. But in them arise the delicate winter +flowers which we prize: tender, pale things, without +much life, things either come too soon or stayed too +late, among which is "Flamenca;" one of those roses, +nipped and wrinkled, but stained a brighter red by +the frost, which we pluck in December or in March; +beautiful, bright, scentless roses, which, scarce in bud, +already fall to pieces in our hand. "Flamenca" is +simply the narrative of the loves of the beautiful wife +of the bearish and jealous Count Archambautz, and +of Guillems de Nevers, a brilliant young knight who +hears of the lady's sore captivity, is enamoured before +he sees her, dresses up as the priest's clerk, and +speaks one word with her while presenting the mass +book to be kissed, every holiday; and finally deceives +the vigilance of the husband by means of a subterranean +corridor, which he gets built between his +inn and the bath-room of the lady at the famous +waters of Bourbon—les—Bains. In this world of +"Flamenca," which is in truth the same world as +that of the "Romaunt of the Rose," the "Morte +d'Arthur," and of the love poets of early France +and Germany, conjugal morality and responsibility +simply do not exist. It seems an unreal pleasure-garden, +with a shadowy guardian—impalpable to +us gross moderns—called Honour, but where, as it +seems, Love only reigns. Love, not the mystic and +melancholy god of the "Vita Nuova," but a foppish +young deity, sentimental at once and sensual, of +fashionable feudal life: the god of people with no +apparent duties towards others, unconscious of any +restraints save those of this vague thing called +honour; whose highest mission for the knight, as put +in our English "Romaunt of the Rose" is to—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Set thy might and alle thy witte</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Wymmen and ladies for to plese,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And to do thyng that may hem ese;</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>while, for the lady, it is expressed with perfect simplicity +of shamelessness by Flamenca herself to her +damsels, teaching them that the woman must yield +to the pleasure of her lover. Now love, when young, +when, so to speak, but just born and able to feed (as +a newborn child on milk, without hungering for more +solid food) on looks and words and sighs; love thus +young, is a fair-seeming godhead, and the devotion to +him a pretty and delicate piece of aestheticism. And +such it is here in "Flamenca," where there certainly +exists neither God nor Christ, both complete absentees, +whose priest becomes a courteous lover's valet, whose +church the place for amorous rendezvous, whose +sacrifice of mass and prayer becomes a means of +amorous correspondence: Cupid, in the shape of his +slave Guillems de Nevers—become <i>patarin</i>(zealot) for +love—peeping with shaven golden head from behind +the missal, touching the lady's hand and whispering +with the words of spiritual peace the declaration of +love, the appointment for meeting. God and Christ, +I repeat, are absentees. Where they are I know not; +perhaps over the Rhine with the Lollards in their +weavers' dens, or over the Alps in the cell of St. +Francis; not here, certainly, or if here, themselves +become the mere slaves of love. But this King Love, +as long as a mere infant, is a sweet and gracious +divinity, surrounded by somewhat of the freshness +and hawthorn sweetness of spring which seem to accompany +his favourite Guillems. Guillems de Nevers, +"who could still grow," this brilliant knight and troubadour, +in his white silken and crimson and purple +garments and soundless shoes embroidered with +flowers, this prince of tournaments and <i>tensos</i>, who +hearing the sorrows of the beautiful Flamenca, loves +her unseen, sits sighing in sight of her prison bower, +and faints like a hero of the Arabian Nights at her +name, and has visions of her as St. Francis has of +Christ; this younger and brighter Sir Launcelot, is +an ideal little figure, whom you might mistake for +Love himself as described in the "Romaunt of the +Rose;" Love's avatar or incarnation, on whose appearance +the year blooms into spring, the fruit trees +blossom, the birds sing, the girls dance at eve round +the maypoles; behind whom, while reading this poem, +we seem to see the corn shine green beneath the +olives, the white-blossomed branches slant across the +blue sky. For is he not the very incarnation of +chivalry, of beauty, and of love? So much for this +King Love while but quite young. Unfortunately he +is speedily weaned of his baby food of mere blushing +glances and sighed-out names; and then his aspect, +his kingdom's aspect, the aspect of his votaries, undergoes +a change. The profane but charming game of +the loving clerk and the missal is exchanged for the +more coarse hide-and-seek of hidden causeways and +tightened bolts, with jealous husbands guarding the +useless door; Guillems becomes but an ordinary Don +Juan or Lovelace, Flamenca but a sorry, sneaking +adulteress, and the gracious damsels mere common +sluts, curtseying at the loan (during the interview of +nobler folk) of the gallant's squires. For the scent of +May, of fresh leaves and fallen blossoms, we get the +nauseous vapours of the bath-room; and, alas, King +Love has lost his aureole and his wings and turned +keeper of the hot springs, sought out by the gouty +and lepers, of Bourbon-les-Bains; and in closing +this book, so delightfully begun, we sicken at the +whiff of hot and fetid moral air as we should sicken +in passing over the outlet of the polluted hot water.</p> + +<p>"But where is the use of telling us all this?" the +reader will ask; "every one knows that illicit passion +existed and exists, and has its chroniclers, its singers +in prose and in verse. But what has all this poetry +of common adultery to do with a book like the 'Vita +Nuova,' with that strange new thing, that lifelong +worship of a woman, which you call mediaeval love?" +This much: that out of this illicit love, and out of it, +gross as it looks, alone arises the possibility of the +"Vita Nuova;" arises the possibility of the romantic +and semi-religious love of the Middle Ages. Or, +rather, let us say that this mere loose love of the <i>albas</i> +and <i>Wachtlieder</i> and "Flamenca," is the substratum, +nay, is the very flesh and blood, of the spiritual passion +to which, in later days, we owe the book of Beatrice.</p> + +<p>It is a harsh thing to say, but one which all sociology +teaches us, that as there exists no sensual relation +which cannot produce for its ennoblement a certain +amount of passion, so also does there exist no passion +(and Phaedrus is there to prove it) so vile and loathsome +as to be unable to weave about itself a glamour +of ideal sentiment. The poets of the Middle Ages +strove after the criminal possession of another man's +wife. This, however veiled with fine and delicate +poetic expressions, is the thing for which they wait +and sigh and implore; this is the reward, the +supremely honouring and almost sanctifying reward +which the lady cannot refuse to the knight who has +faithfully and humbly served her. The whole bulk of +the love lyrics of the early Middle Ages are there to +prove it; and if the allusions in them are not sufficiently +clear, those who would be enlightened may +study the discussions of the allegorical persons even +in the English (and later) version of Guillaume de +Lorris' "Roman de la Rose;" and turn to what, were +it in <i>langue d'oc</i>, we should call a <i>tenso</i> of Guillaume +li Viniers among Mätzner's "Altfranzösische Lieder-dichter." +The catastrophe of Ulrich von Liechtenstein's +"Frowendienst," where the lady, the "virtuous," +the "pure," as he is pleased to call her, after making +him cut off his finger, dress in leper's clothes, chop +off part of his upper lip, and go through the most +marvellous Quixotic antics dressed in satin and pearls +and false hair as Queen Venus, and jousting in this +costume with every knight between Venice and +Styria, all for her honour and glory; pulls the gallant +in a basket up to her window, and then lets him drop +down into the moat which is no better than a sewer; +this grotesque and tragically resented end of Ulrich's +first <i>love service</i> speaks volumes on the point. The +stones in Nostradamus' "Lives of the Troubadours," +the incidents in Gottfried's "Tristan und Isolde," nay, +the adventures even in our expunged English "Morte +d'Arthur," relating to the birth of Sir Galahad, are +as explicit as anything in Brantôme or the Queen +of Navarre; the most delicate love songs of Provence +and Germany are cobwebs spun round Decameronian +situations. And all this is permitted, admitted, +sanctioned by feudal society even as the <i>cecisbeos</i> of +the noble Italian ladies were sanctioned by the society +of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the +mediaeval castle, where, as we have seen, the lady, +separated from her own sex, is surrounded by a swarm +of young men without a chance of marriage, and +bound to make themselves agreeable to the wife of a +military superior; the woman soon ceases to be the +exclusive property of her husband, and the husband +speedily discovers that the majority, hence public +ridicule, are against any attempt at monopolizing her. +Thus adultery becomes, as we have seen, accepted as +an institution under the name of <i>service</i>; and, like all +other social institutions, developes a morality of its +own—a morality within immorality, of faithfulness +within infidelity. The lady must be true to her +knight, and the knight must be true to his lady: the +Courts of Love solemnly banish from society any +woman who is known to have more than one lover. +Faithfulness is the first and most essential virtue of +mediaeval love; a virtue unknown to the erotic poets +of Antiquity, and which modern times have inherited +from the Middle Ages as a requisite, even (as the +reproaches of poets of the Alfred de Musset school +teach us) in the most completely illicit love. Tristram +and Launcelot, the two paragons of knighthood, are +inviolably constant to their mistress: the husband +may and must be deceived, but not the wife who +helps to deceive him. Yseult of Brittany and Elaine, +the mother of Galahad, do not succeed in breaking +the vows made to Yseult the Fair and to Queen +Guenevere. The beautiful lady in the hawthorn +<i>alba</i> "a son cor en amar lejalmens." But this +loyal loving is for the knight who is warned to depart, +certainly not for the husband, the <i>gilos</i>, in whose +despite ("Bels dous amios, baizem nos eu e vos—Aval +els pratzon chantols auzellos—<i>Tot O fassam en despeit +del gilos</i>") they are meeting. The ladies of the minnesingers +are "pure," "good," "faithful" (and each +and all are pure, good, and faithful, as long as they do +not resist) from the point of view of the lover, not of +the husband, if indeed a husband be permitted to have +any point of view at all. And as fidelity is the +essential virtue in these adulterous connections, so +infidelity is the greatest crime that a woman (and even +a man) can commit, the greatest misfortune which fate +can send to an unhappy knight. That he leaves a +faithful mistress behind him is the one hope of the +knight who, taking the cross, departs to meet the +scimitars of Saladin's followers, the fevers, the plagues, +the many miserable deaths of the unknown East. +"If any lady be unfaithful," says Quienes de Béthune, +"she will have to be unfaithful with some base +wretch."</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Et les dames ki castement vivront</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Se loiauté font a ceus qui iront;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Et seles font par mal conseil folaje,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">A lasques gens et mauvais le feront,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Car tout li bon iront en cest voiage.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>"I have taken the cross on account of my sins," sings +Albrecht von Johansdorf, one of the most earnest of +the minnesingers; "now let God help, till my return, +the woman who has great sorrow on my account, in +order that I may find her possessed of her honour; +let Him grant me this prayer. But if she change her +life (<i>i.e</i>., take to bad courses), then may God forbid +my ever returning." The lady is bound (the Courts +of Love decide this point of honour) to reward her +faithful lover. "A knight," says a lady, in an anonymous +German song published by Bartsch, "has served +me according to my will. Before too much time +elapse, I must reward him; nay, if all the world were +to object, he must have his way with me" ("und +waerez al der Werlte leit, so muoz sîn wille an mir +ergän"). But, on the other hand, the favoured knight +is bound to protect his lady's good fame.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Se jai mamie en tel point mis,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Que tout motroit (m'octroit) sans esformer,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Tant doi je miex sonnor gaiter—</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>thus one of the interlocutors in a French <i>jeu-parti</i>, +published by Mätzner; a rule which, if we may judge +from the behaviour of Tristram and Launcelot, and +from the last remnants of mediaeval love lore in +modern French novels, means simply that the more +completely a man has induced a woman to deceive +her husband, the more stoutly is he bound to deny, +with lies, rows, and blows, that she has ever done anything +of the sort. Here, then, we find established, as +a very fundamental necessity of this socially recognized +adultery, a reciprocity of fidelity between lover +and mistress which Antiquity never dreamed of even +between husband and wife (Agamemnon has a perfect +right to Briseis or Chryseis, but Clytaemnestra has no +right to Aegisthus); and which indeed could scarcely +arise as a moral obligation except where the woman +was not bound to love the man (which the wife is) +and where her behaviour towards him depended +wholly upon her pleasure, that is to say, upon her +satisfaction with his behaviour towards her. This, +which seems to us so obvious, and of which every +day furnishes us an example in the relations of +the modern suitor and his hoped-for wife, could not, +at a time when women were married by family +arrangement, arise except as a result of illegitimate +love. Horrible as it seems, the more we examine +into this subject of mediaeval love, the more shall we +see that our whole code of Grandisonian chivalry +between lovers who intend marriage is derived from +the practice of the Launcelots and Gueneveres, not +from that of the married people (we may remember +the manner in which Gunther woos his wife Brunhilt +in the Nibelungenlied) of former ages; nay, the more +we shall have to recognize that the very feeling which +constitutes the virtuous love of modern poets is derived +from the illegitimate loves of the Middle Ages.</p> + +<p>Let us examine what are the habits of feeling and +thinking which grow out of this reciprocal fidelity +due to the absence of all one-sided legal pressure in +this illegitimate, but socially legitimated, love of the +early Middle Ages; which are added on to it by the +very necessities of illicit connection. The lover, having +no right to the favours of his mistress, is obliged, +in order to win and to keep them, to please her by +humility, fidelity, and such knightly qualities as are +the ideal plumage of a man: he must bring home to +her, by showing the world her colours victorious in +serious warfare, in the scarcely less dangerous play of +tournaments, and by making her beauty and virtues +more illustrious in his song than are those of other +women in the songs of their lovers—he must bring +home to her that she has a more worthy servant than +her rivals; he must determine her to select him and +to adhere to her selection. Now mediaeval husbands +select their wives, instead of being selected; and once +the woman and the dowry are in their hands, trouble +themselves but little whether they are approved of or +not. On the other hand, the mistress appears to her +lover invested with imaginative, ideal advantages +such as cannot surround her in the eyes of her +husband: she is, in nearly every case, his superior in +station and the desired of many beholders; she is +bound to him by no tie which may grow prosaic and +wearisome; she appears to him in no domestic +capacity, can never descend to be the female drudge; +her possession is prevented from growing stale, her +personality from becoming commonplace, by the +difficulty, rareness, mystery, adventure, danger, which +even in the days of Courts of Love attach to illicit +amours; above all, being for this man neither the +housewife nor the mother, she remains essentially and +continually the mistress, the beloved. Similarly the +relations between the knight and the lady, untroubled +by domestic worries, pecuniary difficulties, and +squabbles about children, remain, exist merely as +love relations, relations of people whose highest and +sole desire is to please one another. Moreover, and +this is an important consideration, the lady, who is +a mere inexperienced, immature girl when she first +meets her husband, is a mature woman, with character +and passions developed by the independence of +conjugal and social life. When she meets her lover, +whatever power or dignity of character she may +possess is ripe; whatever intensity of aspiration and +passion may be latent is ready to come forth; for the +first time there is equality in love. Equality? Ah, +no. This woman who is the wife of his feudal superior, +this woman surrounded by all the state of feudal +sovereignty, this woman who, however young, has +already known so much of life, this woman whose +love is a free, gift of grace to the obscure, trembling +vassal who has a right not even to be noticed; this +lady of mediaeval love must always remain immeasurably +above her lover. And, in the long day-dreams +while watching her, as he thinks unseen, while singing +of her, as he thinks unheard, there cluster round her +figure, mistily seen in his fancy, those vague and-mystic +splendours which surround the new sovereign +of the Middle Ages, the Queen of Heaven; there +mingles in the half-terrified raptures of the first kind +glance, the first encouraging word, the ineffable +passion stored up in the Christian's heart for the +immortal beings who, in the days of Bernard and +Francis, descend cloud-like on earth and fill the cells +of the saints with unendurable glory.</p> + +<p>And thus, out of the baseness of habitual adultery, +arises incense-like, in the early mediaeval poetry, a new +kind of love—subtler, more imaginative, more passionate, +a love of the fancy and the heart, a love +stimulating to the perfection of the individual as is +any religion; nay, a religion, and one appealing more +completely to the complete man, flesh and soul, than +even the mystical beliefs of the Middle Ages. And +as, in the fantastic song of Ritter Tannhäuser, whose +liege lady, so legend tells, was Dame Venus herself, +the lady bids the knight go forth and fetch her green +water which has washed the setting sun, salamanders +snatched from the flame, the stars out of heaven; so +would it seem as if this new power in the world, this +poetically worshipped woman, had sent forth mankind +to seek wonderful new virtues, never before seen on +earth. Nay, rather, as the snowflakes became green +leaves, the frost blossoms red and blue flowers, the +winter wind a spring-scented breeze, when Bernard +de Ventadorn was greeted by his mistress; so also +does it seem as if, at the first greeting of the world by +this new love, the mediaeval winter had turned to +summer, and there had budded forth and flowered a +new ideal of manly virtue, a new ideal of womanly +grace.</p> + +<p>But evil is evil, and evil is its fruit. Out of circumstances +hitherto unknown, circumstances come about +for the first time owing to the necessities of illegitimate +passion, have arisen certain new and nobler +characters of sexual love, certain new and beautiful +conceptions of manly and womanly nature. The +circumstances to which these are owed are pure in +themselves, they are circumstances which in more +modern times have characterized the perfectly legitimate +passion of lovers held asunder by no social law, +but by mere accidental barriers—from Romeo and +Juliet to the Master of Ravenswood and Lucy Ashton; +and pure so far have been the spiritual results. But +these circumstances were due, In the early Middle +Ages, to the fact of adultery; and to the new ideal +of love has clung, even in its purity, in its superior +nobility, an element of corruption as unknown to gross +and corrupt Antiquity as was the delicacy and +nobility of mediaeval love. The most poetical and +pathetic of all mediaeval love stories, the very incarnation +of all that is most lyric at once and most +tragic in the new kind of passion, is the story, told +and retold by a score of poets and prose writers, of +the loves of Yseult of Ireland and of Sir Tristram +who, as the knight was bringing the princess to his +uncle and her affianced, King Mark of Cornwall +drank together by a fatal mistake a philter which +made all such as partook of it in common inseparable +lovers even unto death. Every one knows the result r: +how Yseult came to her husband already the paramour +of Tristram; how Brangwaine, her damsel, feeling that this +unhallowed passion was due to her having left-within +reach the potion intended for the King and +Queen of Cornwall, devoted herself, at the price of +her maidenhood, to connive in the amours of the lovers +whom she had made; how King Mark was +deceived, and doubted, and was deceived again; how +Tristram fled to Brittany, but how, despite his seeming +marriage with another and equally lovely Yseult, +he remained faithful to the Queen of Cornwall. One +version tells that Mark slew his nephew while he +sat harping to Queen Yseult; another that Tristram +died of grief because his scorned though wedded wife +told him that the white-sailed ship, bearing his mistress +to meet him, bore the black sail which meant that she +was not on board; but all versions, I think, agree in +ending with the fact, that the briar-rose growing on +the tomb of the one, slowly trailed its flowers and +thorns along till it had reached also the grave of the +other, and knit together, as love had knit together with +its sweet blossoms and sharp spines, the two fated +lovers. The Middle Ages were enthralled by this +tale; but they were also, occasionally, a little shocked +by it. Poets and prose writers tampered every now and +then with incidents and characters, seeking to make it +appear that, owing to the substitution of the waiting-maid, +and the neglect of the wedded princess of +Brittany, Yseult had never belonged to any man save +Tristram, nor Tristram to any woman save Yseult; +or that King Mark had sent his nephew to woo the +Irish queen's daughter merely in hopes of his perishing +in the attempt, and that his whole subsequent +conduct was due to a mere unnatural hatred of a +better knight than himself; touching up here and +there with a view to justifying and excusing to some +degree the long series of deceits which constituted the +whole story. Thus the more timid and less gifted. +But when, in the very first years (1210) of the thirteenth +century, the greatest mediaeval poet that preceded +Dante, the greatest German poet that preceded Goethe, +Meister Gottfried von Strassburg, took in hand the +old threadbare story of "Tristan und Isolde," he +despised all alterations of this sort, and accepted the +original tale in its complete crudeness.</p> + +<p>For, consciously or unconsciously, Gottfried had +conceived this story as a thing wholly unknown in +his time, and no longer subject to any of those necessities +of constant re-arrangement which tormented +mediaeval poets: he had conceived it not as a tale, but +as a novel. Gottfried himself was probably but little +aware of what he was doing; the poem that he was +writing probably fell for him into the very same category +as the poems of other men; but to us, with our +experience of so many different forms of narrative, it +must be evident that "Tristan und Isolde" is a new +departure, inasmuch as it is not the story of deeds and +the people who did them, like the true epic from +Homer to the Nibelungen; nor the story of people +and the adventures which happened to them, like all +romance poetry from "Palemon and Arcite," to the +"Orlando Furioso;" but, on the contrary, the story of +the psychological relations, the gradual metamorphosis +of soul by soul, between two persons. The +long introductory story of Tristram's youth must not +mislead us, nor all the minute narrations of the killing +of dragons and the drinking of love philters: Gottfried, +we must remember, was certainly no deliberate +innovator, and these thing's are the mere inevitable +externalities of mediaeval poetry, preserved with dull +slavish care by the re-writer of a well-known tale, but +enclosing in reality something essentially and startlingly +modern: the history of a passion and of the +spiritual changes which it brings about in those who +are its victims.</p> + +<p>To meet again this purely psychological interest +we must skip the whole rest of the Middle Ages, nay, +skip even the great period of dramatic literature, not +stopping till we come to the end of the seventeenth +and beginning of the eighteenth century, to the +"Princesse de Clèves," to "Clarissa Harlowe," nay, +really, to "The Nouvelle Heloise." For even in +Shakespeare there is always interest and importance +in the action and reaction of subsidiary characters, in +the event, in the accidental; there is intrigue, chance, +misunderstanding, fate—active agencies of which +Othello and Hamlet, King Lear and Romeo, are +helpless victims; there is, even in this psychological +English drama of the Elizabethans, fate in the shape +of Iago, in the shape of the Ghost, in the shape of the +brothers of Webster's duchess; fate in the shape of a +ring, a letter, a drug, but fate always. And in this +"Tristan und Isolde" of Gottfried von Strassburg is +there not fate also in the love potion intended for +King Mark, and given by the mistake of Brangwaine +to Mark's bride and his nephew? To this objection, +which will naturally occur to any reader who is not +acquainted with the poem of Gottfried, I simply +answer, there is not. The love potion there is, but +it does not play the same part as do, for instance, the +drugs of Friar Laurence and his intercepted letter. +Suppose the friar's narcotic to have been less enduring +in its action, or his message to have reached in +safety, why then Juliet would have been awake instead +of asleep, or Romeo would not have supposed her +to be dead, and instead of the suicide of the two +lovers, we should have had the successful carying off +of Juliet by Romeo. Not so with Gottfried. The +philter is there, and a great deal is talked about it; +but it is merely one of the old, threadbare trappings +of the original story, which he has been too lazy to +suppress; it is merely, for the reader, the allegorical +signal for an outburst of passion which all our subsequent +knowledge of Tristram and Yseult shows us +to be absolutely inevitable. In Gottfried's poem, the +drinking of the potion signifies merely that all the +rambling, mediaeval prelude, not to be distinguished +from the stories of "Morte d'Arthur," and of half the +romances of the Middle Ages, has come to a close and +may be forgotten; and that the real work of the +great poet, the real, matchless tragedy of the four +actors—Tristram, Yseult, Mark, and Brangwaine—has +begun.</p> + +<p>Yet if we seek again to account to ourselves for this +astonishing impression of modernness which we receive +from Gottfried's poem, we recognize that it is due to +something far more important than the mere precocious +psychological interest; nay, rather, that this +psychological interest is itself dependent upon the +fact which makes "Tristan und Isolde," so modern to +our feelings. This fact is simply that the poem of +Gottfried is the earliest, and yet perhaps almost the +completest, example of a literary anomaly which Antiquity, +for all its abominations, did not know: the +glorification of fidelity in adultery, the glorification of +excellence within the compass of guilt. Older times +—more distant from our own in spirit, though not +necessarily in years—have presented us with many +themes of guilt: the guilt which exists according to +our own moral standard, but not according to that of +the narrator, as the magnificently tragic Icelandic +incest story of Sigmund and Signy; the guilt which +has come about no one well knows how, an unfortunate +circumstance leaving the sinner virtually stainless, +in his or her own eyes and the eyes of others, like the +Homeric Helen; the heroic guilt, where the very +heroism seems due to the self-sacrifice of the sinner's +innocence, of Judith; the struggling, remorseful guilt, +hopelessly overcome by fate and nature, of Phaedra; +the dull and dogged guilt, making the sinner scarce +more than a mere physical stumbling-block for others, +of the murderer Hagen in the Nibelungenlied; and, +finally, the perverse guilt, delighting in the consciousness +of itself, of demons like Richard and Iago, of +libidinous furies like the heroines of Tourneur and +Marston. The guilt theme of "Tristan und Isolde" +falls into none of these special categories. This theme, +unguessed even by Shakespeare, is that of the virtuous +behaviour towards one another of two individuals +united in sinning against every one else. Gottfried +von Strassburg narrates with the greatest detail how +Tristram leads to the unsuspecting king the unblushing, +unremorseful woman polluted by his own +embraces; how Yseult substitutes on the wedding night +her spotless damsel Brangwaine for her own sullied +self; then, terrified lest the poor victim of her dishonour +should ever reveal it, attempts to have her barbarously +murdered, and, finally, seeing that nothing +can shake the heroic creature's faith, admits her once +more to be the remorseful go-between in her amours. +He narrates how Tristram dresses as a pilgrim and +carries the queen from a ship to the shore, in order +that Yseult may call on Christ to bear witness by a +miracle that she is innocent of adultery, never having +been touched save by that pilgrim and her own husband; +and how, when the followers of King Mark +have surrounded the grotto in the wood, Tristram +places the drawn sword between himself and the +sleeping queen, as a symbol of their chastity which +the king is too honest to suspect. He draws, with +a psychological power truly extraordinary in the +beginning of the thirteenth century, the two other +figures in this love drama: King Mark, cheated, dishonoured, +oscillating between horrible doubt, ignominious +suspicion and more ignominious credulity, +his love for his wife, his trust in his nephew, his incapacity +for conceiving ill-faith and fraud, the very +gentleness and generosity of his nature, made the +pander of guilt in which he cannot believe; and, on +the other side, Brangwaine, the melancholy, mute +victim of her fidelity to Yseult, the weak, heroic soul, +rewarded only with cruel ingratitude, and condemned +to screen and help the sin which she loathes and for +which she assumes the awful responsibility. All this +does Gottfried do, yet without ever seeming to perceive +the baseness and wickedness of this tissue of +lies, equivocations, and perjuries in which his lovers hide +their passion; without ever seeming to guess at the +pathos and nobility of the man and the woman who +are the mere trumpery obstacles or trumpery aids to +their amours. He heaps upon Tristram and Yseult +the most extravagant praises: he is the flower of all +knighthood, and she, the kindest, gentlest, purest, and +noblest of women; he insists upon the wickedness of +the world which is for ever waging war upon their +passion, and holds up to execration all those who seek +to spy out their secret. Gottfried is most genuinely +overcome by the ideal beauty of this inextinguishable +devotion, by the sublimity of this love which holds +the whole world as dross; the crimes of the lovers +are for him the mere culminating point of their moral +grandeur, which has ceased to know any guilt save +absence of love, any virtue save loving. And so +serene is the old minnesinger's persuasion, that it +obscures the judgment and troubles the heart even +of his reader; and we are tempted to ask ourselves, +on laying down the book, whether indeed this could +have been sinful, this love of Tristram and Yseult +which triumphed over everything in the world, and +could be quenched only by death. That circle of hell +where all those who had sinfully loved were whirled +incessantly in the perse, dark, stormy air, appeared +in the eyes even of Dante as a place less of punishment +than of glory; and, especially since the Middle +Ages, all mankind looks upon that particular hell-pit +with admiration rather than with loathing. And +herein consists, more even than in any deceptions +practised upon King Mark or any ingratitude manifested +towards Brangwaine, the sinfulness of Tristram +and Yseult: sinfulness which is not finite like the individual +lives which it offends, but infinite and immortal +as the heart and the judgment which it perverts. +For such a tale, and so told, as the tale of Gottfried +von Strassburg, makes us sympathize with this fidelity +and devotion of a man and woman who care for +nothing in the world save for each other, who are +dragged and glued together by the desire and habit +of mutual pleasure; it makes us admire their readiness +to die rather than be parted, when their whole +life is concentrated in their reciprocal sin, when their +miserable natures enjoy, care for, know, only this +miserable love. It makes us wink with leniency at the +dishonour, the baseness, the cruelty, to which all this +easy virtue is due. And such sympathy, such admiration, +such leniency, for howsoever short a time they +may remain in our soul, leave it, if they ever leave it +completely and utterly less strong, less clean than it +was before. We have all of us a lazy tendency to +approve of the virtue which costs no trouble; to +contemplate in ourselves or others, with a spurious +moral satisfaction, the development of this or that +virtuous quality in souls which are deteriorating in +undoubted criminal self-indulgence. We have all of +us, at the bottom of our hearts, a fellow feeling for all +human affection; and the sinfulness of sinners like +Tristram and Yseult lies largely in the fact that they +pervert this legitimate and holy sympathy into a +dangerous leniency for any strong and consistent love, +into a morbid admiration for any irresistible mutual +passion, making us forget that love has in itself no +moral value, and that while self-indulgence may often +be innocent, only self-abnegation can ever be holy.</p> + +<p>The great mediaeval German poem of Tristram and +Yseult remained for centuries a unique phenomenon; +only John Ford perhaps, that grander and darker +twin spirit of Gottfried von Strassburg, reviving, even +among the morbidly psychological and crime-fascinated +followers of Shakespeare, that new theme of evil—the +heroism of unlawful love. But Gottfried had merely +manipulated with precocious analytical power a mode of +feeling and thinking which was universal in the +feudal Middle Ages; the great epic of adultery was +forgotten, but the sympathetic and admiring interest +in illegitimate passion remained; and was transmitted, +wherever the Renaissance or the Reformation did not +break through such transmission of mediaeval habits, +as an almost inborn instinct from father to son, from +mother to daughter. And we may doubt whether the +important class of men and women who write and +read the novels of illicit love, could ever have existed, +had not the psychological artists of modern times, +from Rousseau to George Sand, and from Stendhal to +Octave Feuillet, found ready prepared for them in the +countries not re-tempered by Protestantism, an assoiation +of romance, heroism, and ideality with mere +adulterous passion, which was unknown to the corruption +of Antiquity and to the lawlessness of the Dark +Ages, and which remained as a fatal alloy to that +legacy of mere spiritual love which was left to the +world by the love poets of early feudalism.</p> + +<h3>II.</h3> + +<p>The love of the troubadours and minnesingers, of +the Arthurian tales, which show that love in narrative +form, was, as we have seen, polluted by the selfishness, +the deceitfulness, the many unclean necessities of +adulterous passion. Elevated and exquisite though +it was, it could not really purify the relations of man +and woman, since it was impure. Nay, we see that +through its influence the grave and simple married +love of the earlier tales of chivalry, the love of +Siegfried for Chriemhilt, of Roland for his bride Belle +Aude, of Renaud for his wife Clarisse, is gradually +replaced in later fiction by the irregular love-makings +of Huon of Bordeaux, Ogier the Dane, and Artus of +Brittany; until we come at last to the extraordinary +series of the Amadis romances, where every hero +without exception is the bastard of virtuous parents, +who subsequently marry and discover their foundling: +a state of things which, even in the corrupt Renaissance, +Boiardo and Ariosto found it necessary to +reform in their romantic poems. With idealizing refinement, +the chivalric love of the French, Provençal, +and German poets brings also a kind of demoralization +which, from one point of view, makes the spotless +songs of Bernard de Ventadour and Armaud de +Mareulh, of Ulrich von Liechtenstein and Frauenlob, +less pure than the licentious poems addressed by the +Greeks and Romans to women who, at least, were +not the wives of other men.</p> + +<p>Shall all this idealizing refinement, this almost +religious fervour, this new poetic element of chivalric +love remain useless; or serve only to subtly pollute +while pretending to purify the great singing passion? +Not so. But to prevent such waste of what in itself is +pure and precious, is the mission of another country, +of another civilization; of a wholly different cycle of +poets who, receiving the new element of mediaeval +love after it has passed through and been sifted by a +number of hands, shall cleanse and recreate it in the +fire of intellectual and almost abstract passion, producing +that wonderful essence of love which, as the +juices squeezed by alchemists out of jewels purified +the body from all its ills, shall purify away all the +diseases of the human soul.</p> + +<p>While the troubadours and minnesingers had +been singing at the courts of Angevine kings and +Hohenstauffen emperors, of counts of Toulouse and +dukes of Austria; a new civilization, a new political +and social system, had gradually been developing in +the free burghs of Italy; a new life entirely the +reverse of the life of feudal countries. The Italian +cities were communities of manufacturers and merchants, +into which only gradually, and at the sacrifice +of every aristocratic privilege and habit, a certain +number of originally foreign feudatories were gradually +absorbed. Each community consisted of a number of +mercantile families, equal before the law, and illustrious +or obscure according to their talents or riches, whose +members, instead of being scattered over a wide area +like the members of the feudal nobility, were most +often gathered together under one roof—sons, brothers, +nephews, daughters, sisters and daughters-in-law, +forming a hierarchy attending to the business of +factory or counting-house under the orders of the +father of the family, and to the economy of the house-under +the superintendence of the mother; a manner +of living at once business-like and patriarchal, expounded +pounded by the interlocutors in Alberti's "Governo +della Famiglia," and which lasted until the dissolution +of the commonwealths and almost to our own +times. Such habits imply a social organization, an +intercourse between men and women, and a code +of domestic morality the exact opposite to those of +feudal countries. Here, in the Italian cities, there are +no young men bound to loiter, far from their homes, +round the wife of a military superior, to whom her +rank and her isolation from all neighbours give +idleness and solitude. The young men are all of them +in business, usually with their own kinsfolk; not in +their employer's house, but in his office; they have no +opportunity of seeing a woman from dawn till sunset. +The women, on their side, are mainly employed at +home: the whole domestic arrangement depends upon +them, and keeps their hands constantly full; working, +and working in the company of their female relatives +and friends. Men and women are free comparatively +little, and then they are free all together in the same +places; hence no opportunities for <i>tête-à-tête</i>. Early +Italian poetry is fond of showing us the young poet +reading his verses or explaining his passion to those +gentle, compassionate women learned in love, of whom +we meet a troop, beautiful, vague, half-arch, half-melancholy +faces, consoling Dante in the "Vita +Nuova," and reminding Guido Cavalcanti of his lady +far off at Toulouse. But such women almost invariably +form a group; they cannot be approached singly. Such +a state of society inevitably produces a high and strict +morality. In these early Italian cities a case of in' +fidelity is punished ruthlessly; the lover banished or +killed; the wife for ever lost to the world, perhaps +condemned to solitude and a lingering death in the +fever tracts, like Pia dei Tolomei. A complacent +deceived husband is even more ridiculous (the deceived +husband is notoriously the chief laughing stock of +all mediaeval free towns) than is a jealous husband +among the authorized and recognized <i>cicisbeos</i> of a +feudal court. Indeed the respect for marriage vows +inevitable in this busy democratic mediaeval life is +so strong, that long after the commonwealths have +turned into despotisms, and every social tie has been +dissolved in the Renaissance, the wives and daughters +of men stained with every libidinous vice, nay, of the +very despots themselves—Tiberiuses and Neros on a +smaller scale—remain spotless in the midst of evil; +and authorized adultery begins in Italy only under +the Spanish rule in the late sixteenth century.</p> + +<p>Such were the manners and morals of the Italian +commonwealths when, about the middle of the thirteenth +century, the men of Tuscany, now free and +prosperous, suddenly awoke to the consciousness that +they had a soul which desired song, and a language +which was spontaneously singing. It was the moment +when painting was beginning to claim for the figures +of real men and women the walls and vaulted spaces +whence had hitherto glowered, with vacant faces and +huge ghostlike eyes, mosaic figures, from their shimmering +golden ground; the moment when the Pisan artists +had sculptured solemnly draped madonnas and kings +not quite unworthy of the carved sarcophagi which +stood around them; the moment when, merging +together old Byzantine traditions and Northern examples, +the architects of Florence, Siena, and Orvieto +conceived a style which made cathedrals into marvellous +and huge reliquaries of marble, jasper, alabaster, +and mosaics. The mediaeval flowering time had come +late, very late, in Italy; but the atmosphere was only +the warmer, the soil the richer, and Italy put forth a +succession of exquisite and superb immortal flowers +of art when the artistic sap of other countries had +begun to be exhausted. But the Italians, the Tuscans, +audacious in the other arts, were diffident of themselves +with regard to poetry. Architecture, painting, +sculpture, had been the undisputed field for plebeian +craftsmen, belonging exclusively to the free burghs +and disdained by the feudal castles; but poetry was +essentially the aristocratic, the feudal art, cultivated +by knights and cultivated for kings and barons. It +was probably an unspoken sense of this fact which +caused the early Tuscan poets to misgive their own +powers and to turn wistfully and shyly towards the +poets of Provence and of Sicily. There, beyond the +seas, under the last lords of Toulouse and the brilliant +mongrel Hohenstauffen princes, were courts, knights, +and ladies; there was the tradition of this courtly art +of poetry; and there only could the sons of Florentine +or Sienese merchants, clodhoppers in gallantry and +song, hope to learn the correct style of thing. Hence +the history of the Italian lyric before Dante is the +history of a series of transformations which connect a +style of poetry absolutely feudal and feudally immoral, +with the hitherto unheard-of platonic love subtleties +of the "Vita Nuova." And it is curious, in looking +over the collections of early Italian lyrists, to note the +alteration in tone as Sicily and the feudal courts are +left further and further behind. Ciullo d' Alcamo, +flourishing about 1190, is the only Italian-writing +poet absolutely contemporaneous with the earlier and +better trouvères, troubadours, and minnesingers; and +he is also the only one who resembles them very +closely. His famous <i>tenso</i>, beginning "Rosa fresca +aulentissima" (a tolerably faithful translation heads +the beautiful collection of the late Mr. D.G. Rossetti), +is indeed more explicitly gross and immoral than the +majority of Provençal and German love-songs: loose +as are many of the <i>albas, serenas, wachtlieder</i>, and +even many of the less special forms of German and +Provençal poetry, I am acquainted with none of them +which comes up to this singular dialogue, in which a +man, refusing to marry a woman, little by little wins +her over to his wishes and makes her brazenly invite +him to her dishonour. Between Ciullo d' Alcamo +and his successors there is some gap of time, and a +corresponding want of gradation. Yet the Sicilian +poets of the courts of Hohenstauffen and Anjou, +recognizable by their name or the name of their town, +Inghilfredi, Manfredi, Ranieri and Ruggierone da +Palermo, Tommaso and Matteo da Messina, Guglielmotto +d' Otranto, Rinaldo d'Aquino, Peir delle Vigne, +either maintain altogether unchanged the tone of the +troubadours, or only gradually, as in the remarkable +case of the Notary of Lentino, approximate to the +platonic poets of Tuscany. The songs of the archetype +of Sicilian singers, the Emperor Frederick II., +are completely Provençal in feeling as in form, though +infinitely inferior in execution. With him it is always +the pleasure which he hopes from his lady, or the +pleasure which he has had—"Quando ambidue stavamo +in allegranza alla dolce fera;" "Pregovi donna +mia—Per vostra cortesia—E pregovi che sia—Quello +che lo core disia." Again: "Sospiro e sto in rancura—Ch' io +son si disioso—E pauroso—Mi fate penare—Ma +tanto m' assicura—Lo suo viso amoroso—E lo +gioioso—Riso e lo sguardare—E lo parlare—Di questa +criatura—Che per paura—Mi fate penare—E di morare—Tant' +è fina e pura—Tanto è saggia e +cortese—Non credo che pensasse—Nè distornasse—Di +ciò he m' impromise." It is, this earliest Italian +poetry, like the more refined poetry of troubadours +and minnesingers, eminently an importuning of highborn +but loosely living women. From Sicily and +Apulia poetry goes first, as might be expected (and +as probably sculpture went) to the seaport Pisa, +thence to the neighbouring Lucca, considerably before +reaching Florence. And as it becomes more Italian +and urban, it becomes also, under the strict vigilance +of burgher husbands, considerably more platonic. In +Bologna, the city of jurists, it acquires (the remark is +not mine merely, but belongs also to Carducci) the +very strong flavour of legal quibbling which distinguishes +the otherwise charming Guido Guinicelli; +and once in Florence, among the most subtle of all +subtle Tuscans, it becomes at once what it remained +even for Dante, saturated with metaphysics: the +woman is no longer paramount, she is subordinated +to Love himself; to that personified abstraction Amor, +the serious and melancholy son of pagan philosophy +and Christian mysticism. The Tuscans had imported +from Provence and Sicily the new element of mediaeval +love, of life devotion, soul absorption in loving; +if they would sing, they must sing of this; any other +kind of love, at a time when Italy still read and +relished her would-be Provençals, Lanfranc Cicala and +Sordel of Mantua, would have been unfashionable and +unendurable. But in these Italian commonwealths, +as we have seen, poets are forced, nilly-willy, to be +platonic; an importuning poem found in her work-basket +may send a Tuscan lady into a convent, or, +like Pia, into the Maremma; an <i>alba</i> or a <i>serena</i> +interrupted by a wool-weaver of Calimara or a silk +spinner of Lucca, may mean that the imprudent poet +be found weltering in blood under some archway the +next morning. The chivalric sentimentality of feudalism +must be restrained; and little by little, under +the pressure of such very different social habits, +it grows into a veritable platonic passion. Poets must +sing, and in order that they sing, they must adore; +so men actually begin to seek out, and adore and +make themselves happy and wretched about women +from whom they can hope only social distinctions; +and this purely aesthetic passion goes on by the side +nay, rather on the top, of their humdrum, conjugal +life or loosest libertinage. Petrarch's bastards were +born during the reign of Madonna Laura; and that +they should have been, was no more a slight or +infidelity to her than to the other Madonna, the one +in heaven. Laura had a right to only ideal sentiments +ideal relations; the poet was at liberty to carry more +material preferences elsewhere.</p> + +<p>But could such love as this exist, could it be +genuine? To my mind, indubitably. For there is, +in all our perceptions and desires of physical and +moral beauty, an element of passion which is akin to +love; and there is, in all love that is not mere lust, a +perception of, a craving for, beauty, real or imaginary +which is identical with our merely aesthetic perceptions +and cravings; hence the possibility, once the +wish for such a passion present, of a kind of love +which is mainly aesthetic, which views the beloved +as gratifying merely to the wish for physical or spiritual +loveliness, and concentrates upon one exquisite +reality all dreams of ideal perfection. Moreover there +comes, to all nobler natures, a love dawning: a +brightening and delicate flushing of the soul before +the actual appearance of the beloved one above the +horizon, which is as beautiful and fascinating in its +very clearness, pallor, and coldness, as the unearthly +purity of the pale amber and green and ashy rose +which streaks the heavens before sunrise. The love +of the early Tuscan poets (for we must count Guinicelli, +in virtue of his language, as a Tuscan) had +been restrained, by social necessities first, then by +habit and deliberate aesthetic choice, within the limits +of this dawning state; and in this state, it had fed +itself off mere spiritual food, and acquired the strange +intensity of mere intellectual passions. We give +excessive weight, in our days, to spontaneity in all +things, apt to think that only the accidental, the unsought, +can be vital; but it is true in many things, and +truest in all matters of the imagination and the heart, +that the desire to experience any sentiment will powerfully +conduce to its production, and even give it a +strength due to the long incubation of the wish. Thus +the ideal love of the Tuscan poets was probably none +the weaker, but rather the stronger, for the desire +which they felt to sing such passion; nay, rather to hear +it singing in themselves. The love of man and wife, +of bride and bridegroom, was still of the domain of +prose; adulterous love forbidden; and the tradition +of, the fervent wish for, the romantic passion of the +troubadours consumed them as a strong artistic +craving. Platonic love was possible, doubly possible +in souls tense with poetic wants; it became a reality +through the strength of the wish for it.</p> + +<p>Nor was this all. In all imaginative passions, intellectual +motives are so much fuel; and in this case the +necessity of logically explaining the bodiless passion +for a platonic lady, of understanding why they felt in +a manner so hitherto unknown to gross mankind, +tended greatly to increase the love of these Tuscans, +and to bring it in its chastity to the pitch of fervour of +more fleshly passions, by mingling with the aesthetic +emotions already in their souls the mystical theorizings +of transcendental metaphysics, and the half-human, +half-supernatural ecstasy of mediaeval religion. For +we must remember that Italy was a country not +merely of manufacturers and bankers, but of philosophers +also and of saints.</p> + +<p>Among the Italians of the thirteenth century the +revival of antique literature was already in full swing; +while in France, Germany, and Provence there had +been, in lyric poetry at least, no trace of classic lore. +Whereas the trouvères and troubadours had possessed +but the light intellectual luggage of a military aristocracy; +and the minnesingers had, for the most part, +been absolutely ignorant of reading and writing +(Wolfram says so of himself, and Ulrich von Liechtenstein +relates how he carried about his lady's letter +for days unread until the return of his secretary); +the poets of Italy, from Brunetto Latini to Petrarch, +were eminently scholars; men to whom, however +much they might be politicians and ringleaders, like +Cavalcanti, Donati, and Dante, whatever existed of +antique learning was thoroughly well known. Such +men were familiar with whatever yet survived of the +transcendental theories of Plato and Plotinus; and +they seized at once upon the mythic metaphysics of +an antenatal condition, of typical ideas, of the divine +essence of beauty, on all the mystic discussions on +love and on the soul, as a philosophical explanation of +their seemingly inexplicable passion for an unapproachable +woman. The lady upon whom the poetic fervour, +the mediaeval love, inherited from Provence and France, +was now expended, and whom social reasons placed quite +beyond the reach of anything save the poet's soul and +words, was evidently beloved for the sake of that much +of the divine essence contained in her nature; she was +loved for purely spiritual reasons, loved as a visible +and living embodiment of virtue and beauty, as a +human piece of the godhead. So far, therefore, from +such an attachment being absurd, as absurd it would +have seemed to troubadours and minnesingers, who +never served a lady save for what they called a reward; +it became, in the eyes of these platonizing Italians, +the triumph of the well-bred soul; and as such, soon +after, a necessary complement to dignities, talents, and +wealth, the very highest occupation of a liberal mind. +Thus did their smattering of platonic and neo-platonic +philosophy supply the Tuscan poets with a logical +reality for this otherwise unreal passion.</p> + +<p>But there was something more. In this democratic +and philosophizing Italy, there was not the gulf which +separated the chivalric poets, men of the sword and +not of books, from the great world of religious mysticism; +for, though the minnesingers especially were +extremely devout and sang many a strange love-song +to the Virgin; they knew, they could know, nothing +of the contemplative religion of Eckhardt and his +disciples—humble and transcendental spirits, whose +words were treasured by the sedentary, dreamy townsfolk +of the Rhine, but would have conveyed no +meaning even to the poet of the Grail epic, with its +battles and feasts, its booted and spurred slapdash +morality, Wolfram von Eschenbach. In the great +manufacturing cities of Italy, such religious mysticism +spread as it could never spread in feudal courts; +it became familiar, both in the mere passionate sermons +and songs of the wandering friars, and in the +subtle dialectics of the divines; above all, it became +familiar to the poets. Now the essence of this +contemplative theology of the Middle Ages, which +triumphantly held its own against the cut-and-dry +argumentation of scholastic rationalism, was love. +Love which assuredly meant different things to different +minds; a passionate benevolence towards man and +beast to godlike simpletons like Francis of Assisi; a +mere creative and impassive activity of the divinity to +deep-seeing (so deep as to see only their own strange +passionate eyes and lips reflected in the dark well of +knowledge) and almost pantheistic thinkers like +Master Eckhardt; but love nevertheless, love. "Amor, +amore, ardo d' amore," St. Francis had sung in a wild +rhapsody, a sort of mystic dance, a kind of furious +<i>malagueña</i> of divine love; and that he who would +wish to know God, let him love—"Qui vult habere +notitiam Dei, amet," had been written by Hugo of +St. Victor, one of the subtlest of all the mystics. +"Amor oculus est," said Master Eckhardt; love, love—was +not love then the highest of all human faculties, +and must not the act of loving, of perceiving God's +essence in some creature which had virtue, the soul's +beauty, and beauty, the body's virtue, be the noblest +business of a noble life? Thus argued the poets; and +their argument, half-passionate, half-scholastic, mixing +Phaedrus and Bonaventura, the Schools of Alexandria +and the Courts of Love of Provence, resulted in adding +all the fervid reality of philosophical and religious +aspiration to their clear and cold phantom of disembodied +love of woman.</p> + +<p>Little by little therefore, together with the carnal +desires of Provençals and Sicilians, the Tuscan poets +put behind them those little coquetries of style and +manner, complications of metre and rhythm learned +and fantastic as a woman's plaited and braided hair; +those metaphors and similes, like bright flowers or +shining golden ribbons dropped from the lady's bosom +and head and eagerly snatched by the lover, which we +still find, curiously transformed and scented with the +rosemary and thyme of country lanes, in the peasant +poetry of modern Tuscany. Little by little does the +love poetry of the Italians reject such ornaments; and +cloth itself in that pale garment, pale and stately in +heavy folds like a nun's or friar's weeds, but pure and +radiant and solemn as the garment of some painted +angel, which we have all learned to know from the +"Vita Nuova."</p> + +<p>To describe this poetry of the immediate precursors +and contemporaries of Dante is to the last degree +difficult: it can be described only by symbols, and +symbols can but mislead us. Dante Rossetti himself, +after translating with exquisite beauty the finest poems +of this school, showed how he had read into them his +own spirit, when he drew the beautiful design for the +frontispiece of his collection. These two lovers—the +youth kneeling in his cloth of silver robe, lifting his +long throbbing neck towards the beloved; the lady +stooping down towards him, raising him up and kissing +him; the mingled cloud of waving hair, the four +tight-clasped hands, the four tightly glued lips, the +profile hidden by the profile, the passion and the +pathos, the eager, wistful faces, nay, the very splendour +of brocade robes and jewels, the very sweetness of +blooming rose spaliers; all this is suitable to illustrate +this group of sonnets or that of the "House of Life;" +but it is false, false in efflorescence and luxuriance of +passion, splendour and colour of accessory, to the +poetry of these early Tuscans. Imaginative their +poetry certainly is, and passionate; indeed the very +concentration of imaginative passion; but imagination +and passion unlike those of all other poets; perhaps +because more rigorously reduced to their elements: +imagination purely of the heart, passion purely of the +intellect, neither of the senses: love in its most essential +condition, but, just because an essence, purged of +earthly alloys, rarefied, sublimated into a cultus or a +philosophy.</p> + +<p>These poems might nearly all have been written by +one man, were it possible for one man to vary from +absolute platitude to something like genius, so homogeneous +is their tone: everywhere do we meet the same +simplicity of diction struggling with the same complication +and subtlety of thought, the same abstract speculation +strangely mingled with most individual and +personal pathos. The mode of thinking and feeling, +the conception of all the large characteristics of love, +and of all its small incidents are, in this <i>cycle</i> of poets, +constantly the same; and they are the same in the +"Vita Nuova;" Dante having, it would seem, invented +and felt nothing unknown to his immediate predecessors +and contemporaries, but merely concentrated +their thoughts and feelings by the greater intenseness +of his genius. This platonic love of Dante's days is, +as I have said, a passion sublimated into a philosophy +and a cultus. The philosophy of love engages much +of these poets' attention; all have treated of it, but +Guido Cavalcanti, Dante's elder brother in poetry, is +love's chief theologian. He explains, as Eckhardt or +Bonaventura might explain the mysteries of God's +being and will, the nature and operation of love. +"Love, which enamours us of excellence, arises out +of pure virtue of the soul, and equals us to God," he +tells us; and subtly developes his theme. This being +the case, nothing can be more mistaken than to suppose, +as do those of little sense, that Love is blind, +and goes blindly about ("Da sentir poco, e da credenza +vana—Si move il dir di cotal grossa gente—Ch' amor +fa cieco andar per lo suo regno"). Love is omniscient, +since love is born of the knowledge and recognition +of excellence. Such love as this is the only true +source of happiness, since it alone raises man to the +level of the divinity. Cavalcanti has in him not merely +the subtlety but the scornfulness of a great divine. +His wrath against all those who worship or defend +a different god of Love knows no bounds. "I know +not what to say of him who adores the goddess born +of Saturn and sea-foam. His love is fire: it seems +sweet, but its result is bitter and evil. He may indeed +call himself happy; but in such delights he mingles +himself with much baseness." Such is this god of +Love, who, when he descended into Dante's heart, +caused the spirit of life to tremble terribly in his +secret chamber, and trembling to cry, "Lo, here is a +god stronger than myself, who coming will rule over +me. Ecce Deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur +mihi!"</p> + +<p>The god, this chaste and formidable archangel +Amor, is the true subject of these poets' adoration; +the woman into whom he descends by a mystic +miracle of beauty and of virtue becomes henceforward +invested with somewhat of his awful radiance. +She is a gentle, gracious lady; a lovable and loving +woman, in describing whose grey-green eyes and +colour as of snow tinted with pomegranate, the older +Tuscans would fain linger, comparing her to the new-budded +rose, to the morning star, to the golden summer +air, to the purity of snowflakes falling silently in a +serene sky; but the sense of the divinity residing +within her becomes too strong. From her eyes dart +spirits who strike awe into the heart; from her lips +come words which make men sigh; on her passage +the poet casts down his eyes; notions, all these, with +which we are familiar from the "Vita Nuova;" but +which belong to Cavalcanti, Lapo Gianni, nay, even +to Guinicelli, quite as much as to Dante. The poet +bids his verse go forth to her, but softly; and stand +before her with bended head, as before the Mother of +God. She is a miracle herself, a thing sent from +heaven, a spirit, as Dante says in that most beautiful +of all his sonnets, the summing up of all that the +poets of his circle had said of their lady—"Tanto +gentile e tanto onesta pare."</p> + +<p>"She passes along the street so beautiful and +gracious," says Guinicelli, "that she humbles pride in +all whom she greets, and makes him of our faith if he +does not yet believe. And no base man can come +into her presence. And I will tell you another virtue +of her: no man can think ought of evil as long as he +looks upon her." "The noble mind which I feel, on +account of this youthful lady who has appeared, makes +me despise baseness and vileness," says Lapo Gianni. +The women who surround her are glorified in her +glory, glorified in their womanhood and companionship +with her. "The ladies around you," says Cavalcanti, +"are dear to me for the sake of your love; and I pray +them as they are courteous, that they should do you +all honour." She is, indeed, scarcely a woman, and +something more than a saint: an avatar, an incarnation +of that Amor who is born of virtue and beauty, +and raises men's minds to heaven; and when Cavalcanti +speaks of his lady's portrait behind the blazing +tapers of Orsanmichele, it seems but natural that she +should be on an altar, in the Madonna's place. The +idea of a mysterious incarnation of love in the lady, +or of a mystic relationship between her and love, +returns to these poets. Lapo Gianni tells us first that +she is Amor's sister, then speaks of her as Amor's +bride; nay, in this love theology of the thirteenth +century, arises the same kind of confusion as in the +mystic disputes of the nature of the Godhead. A +Sienese poet, Ugo da Massa, goes so far as to say, +"Amor and I are all one thing; and we have one will +and one heart; and if I were not, Amor were not; +mind you, do not think I am saying these things from +subtlety ('e non pensate ch' io '1 dica per arte'); for +certainly it is true that I am love, and he who should +slay me would slay love."</p> + +<p>Together with the knowledge of public life and of +scholastic theories, together with the love of occult +and cabalistic science, and the craft of Provençal +poetry, Dante received from his Florence of the +thirteenth century the knowledge of this new, this +exotic and esoteric intellectual love. And, as it is +the mission of genius to gather into an undying whole, +to model into a perfect form, the thoughts and feelings +and perceptions of the less highly endowed men +who surround it, so Dante moulded out of the love +passion and love philosophy of his day the "Vita +Nuova." Whether the story narrated in this book is +fact; whether a real woman whom he called Beatrice +ever existed; some of those praiseworthy persons, who +prowl in the charnel-house of the past, and put its +poor fleshless bones into the acids and sublimates of +their laboratory, have gravely doubted. But such +doubts cannot affect us. For if the story of the "Vita +Nuova" be a romance, and if Beatrice be a mere +romance heroine, the real meaning and value of the +book does not change in our eyes; since, to concoct +such a tale, Dante must have had a number of real +experiences which are fully the tale's equivalent; and +to conceive and create such a figure as Beatrice, and +such a passion as she inspires her poet, he must have +felt as a poignant reality the desire for such a lady, +the capacity for such a love. A tale merely of the +soul, and of the soul's movements and actions, this +"Vita Nuova;" so why should it matter if that which +could never exist save in the spirit, should have been +but the spirit's creation? It is, in its very intensity, a +vision of love; what if it be a vision merely conceived +and never realized? Hence the futility of all those +who wish to destroy our faith and pleasure by saying +"all this never took place." Fools, can you tell what +did or did not take place in a poet's mind? Be this +as it may, the "Vita Nuova," thank heaven, exists; +and, thank heaven, exists as a reality to our feelings. +The longed-for ideal, the perfection whose love, said +Cavalcanti, raises us up to God, has seemed to gather +itself into a human shape; and a real being has been +surrounded by the halo of perfection emanated from +the poet's own soul. The vague visions of glory have +suddenly taken body in this woman, seen rarely, at a +distance; the woman whom, as a child, the poet, +himself a child, had already looked at with the strange, +ideal fascination which we sometimes experience in +our childhood. People are apt to smile at this opening +of the "Vita Nuova;" to put aside this narrative of +childish love together with the pathetic little pedantries +of learned poetry and Kabbala, of the long gloses +to each poem, and the elaborate calculations of the +recurrence and combination of the number nine (and +that curious little bit of encyclopaedic display about +the Syrian month <i>Tismin</i>) as so much pretty local +colouring or obsolete silliness. But there is nothing +at which to laugh in such childish fascinations; the +wonderful, the perfect, is more open to us as children +than it is afterwards: a word, a picture, a snatch of +music will have for us an ineffable, mysterious meaning; +and how much more so some human being, often some +other, more brilliant child from whose immediate +contact we are severed by some circumstance, perhaps +by our own consciousness of inferiority, which makes +that other appear strangely distant, above us, moving +in a world of glory which we scarcely hope to approach; +a child sometimes, or sometimes some +grown person, beautiful, brilliant, who sings or talks +or looks at us, the child, with ways which we do not +understand, like some fairy or goddess. No indeed, +there is nothing to laugh at in this, in this first +blossoming of that love for higher and more beautiful +things, which in most of us is trodden down, left to +wither, by our maturer selves; nothing to make us +laugh; nay, rather to make us sigh that later on we +see too well, see others too much on their real level, +scrutinize too much; too much, alas, for what at best +is but an imperfect creature. And in this state of +fascination does the child Dante see the child Beatrice, +as a strange, glorious little vision from a childish +sphere quite above him; treasuring up that vision, till +with his growth it expands and grows more beautiful +and noble, but none the less fascinating and full of +awfulness. When, therefore, the grave young poet, +full of the yearning for Paradise (but Paradise vaguer, +sweeter, less metaphysic and theological than the +Paradise of his manhood); as yet but a gracious, +learned youth, his terrible moral muscle still undeveloped +by struggle, the noble and delicate dreamer +of Giotto's fresco, with the long, thin, almost womanish +face, marked only by dreamy eyes and lips, wandering +through this young Florence of the Middle Ages—when, +I say, he meets after long years, the noble and +gentle woman, serious and cheerful and candid; and +is told that she is that same child who was the queen +and goddess of his childish fancies; then the vague +glory with which his soul is filled expands and enwraps +the beloved figure, so familiar and yet so new. +And the blood retreats from his veins, and he trembles; +and a vague god within him, half allegory, half reality, +cries out to him that a new life for him has begun. +Beatrice has become the ideal; Beatrice, the real +woman, has ceased to exist; the Beatrice of his imagination +only remains, a piece of his own soul embodied +in a gracious and beautiful reality, which he follows, +seeks, but never tries to approach. Of the real woman +he asks nothing; no word throughout the "Vita +Nuova" of entreaty or complaint, no shadow of desire, +not a syllable of those reproaches of cruelty which +Petrarch is for ever showering upon Laura. He +desires nothing of Beatrice, and Beatrice cannot act +wrongly; she is perfection, and perfection makes him +who contemplates humble at once and proud, glorifying +his spirit. Once, indeed, he would wish that she might +listen to him; he has reason to think that he has fallen +in her esteem, has seemed base and uncourteous in +her eyes, and he would explain. But he does not wish +to address her; it never occurs to him that she can +ever feel in any way towards him; it is enough that +he feels towards her. Let her go by and smile and +graciously salute her friends: the sight of her grave +and pure regalness, nay, rather divinity, of womanhood, +suffices for his joy; nay, later the consciousness comes +upon him that it is sufficient to know of her existence +and of his love even without seeing her. And, as +must be the case in such ideal passion, where the +action is wholly in the mind of the lover, he is at first +ashamed, afraid; he feels a terror lest his love, if +known to her, should excite her scorn; a horror lest it +be misunderstood and befouled by the jests of those +around him, even of those same gentle women to +whom he afterwards addresses his praise of Beatrice. +He is afraid of exposing to the air of reality this ideal +flower of passion. But the moment comes when he +can hide it no longer; and, behold, the passion flower +of his soul opens out more gloriously in the sunlight +of the world. He is proud of his passion, of his +worship; he feels the dignity and glory of being the +priest of such a love. The women all round, the +beautiful, courteous women, of whom, only just now, +he was so dreadfully afraid, become his friends and +confidants; they are quite astonished (half in love, +perhaps, with the young poet) at this strange way of +loving; they sympathize, admire, are in love with his +love for Beatrice. And to them he speaks of her +rather than to men, for the womanhood which they +share with his lady consecrates them in his eyes; +and they, without jealousy towards this ideal woman, +though perhaps not without longing for this ideal love, +listen as they might listen to some new and unaccountably +sweet music, touched and honoured, and +feeling towards Dante as towards some beautiful, half-mad +thing. He talks of her, sings of her, and is +happy; the strangest thing in this intensely real +narrative of real love is this complete satisfaction of +the passion in its own existence, this complete absence +of all desire or hope. But this happiness is interrupted +by the sudden, terrible thought that one day all this +must cease; the horrible, logical necessity coming +straight home to him, that one day she must die— +"Di necessità conviene che la gentilissima Beatrice +alcuna volta si muoia." There is nothing truer, more +intensely pathetic, in all literature, than this frightful +pang of evil, not real, but first imagined; this frightful +nightmare vision of the end coming when reality is +still happy. Have we not all of us at one time felt +the horrible shudder of that sudden perception that +happiness must end; that the beloved, the living, must +die; that this thing the present, which we clasp tight +with our arms, which throbs against our breast, will in +but few moments be gone, vanished, leaving us to +grasp mere phantom recollections? Compared with +this the blow of the actual death of Beatrice is gentle. +And then, the truthfulness of his narration how, with +yearning, empty heart, hungering after those poor lost +realities of happiness, after that occasional glimpse of +his lady, that rare catching of her voice, that blessed +consciousness of her existence, he little by little lets +himself be consoled, cradled to sleep like a child which +has sobbed itself out, in the sympathy, the vague love, +of another—the Donna della Finestra—with whom he +speaks of Beatrice; and the sudden, terrified, starting +up and shaking off of any such base consolation, +the wrath at any such mental infidelity to the dead +one, the indignant impatience with his own weakness, +with his baseness in not understanding that +it is enough that Beatrice has lived and that he has +loved her, in not feeling that the glory and joy of the +ineffaceable past is sufficient for all present and future. +A revolution in himself which gradually merges in +that grave final resolve, that sudden seeing how +Beatrice can be glorified by him, that solemn, quiet, +brief determination not to say any more of her as yet; +not till he can show her transfigured in Paradise. +"After this sonnet there appeared unto me a marvellous +vision, in which I beheld things that made me +propose unto myself to speak no more of this blessed +one, until the time when I might more worthily treat +of her. And that this may come to pass, I strive with +all my endeavour, even as she truly knows it. Thus, +if it should please Him, through whom all things do +live, that my life continue for several more years, I +hope to say of her such things as have never been said +of any lady. And then may it please Him, who is the +lord of all courtesy, that my soul shall go forth to see +the glory of its lady, that is to say, of that blessed +Beatrice, who gloriously looks up into the face of Him, +<i>qui est per omnia saecula benedictus</i>"</p> + +<p>Thus ends the "Vita Nuova;" a book, to find any +equivalent for whose reality and completeness of +passion, though it is passion for a woman whom the +poet scarcely knows and of whom he desires nothing, +we must go back to the merest fleshly love of Antiquity, +of Sappho or Catullus; for modern times are too hesitating +and weak. So at least it seems; but in fact, +if we only think over the matter, we shall find that in +no earthly love can we find this reality and completeness: +it is possible only in love like Dante's. For +there can be no unreality in it: it is a reality of the +imagination, and leaves, with all its mysticism and +idealism, no room for falsehood. Any other kind of +love may be set aside, silenced, by the activity of the +mind; this love of Dante's constitutes that very activity. +And, after reading that last page which I have above +transcribed, as those closing Latin words echo through +our mind like the benediction from an altar, we feel +as if we were rising from our knees in some secret +chapel, bright with tapers and dim with incense; among +a crowd kneeling like ourselves; yet solitary, conscious +of only the glory we have seen and tasted, of that love +<i>qui est per omnia scecula benedictus.</i></p> + + +<h3>III.</h3> + +<p>But is it right that we should feel thus? Is it right that +love, containing within itself the potentialities of so +many things so sadly needed in this cold real world, +as patience, tenderness, devotion, and loving-kindness +—is it right that love should thus be carried away out +of ordinary life and enclosed, a sacred thing for contemplation, +in the shrine or chapel of an imaginary +Beatrice? And, on the other hand, is it right that +into the holy places of our soul, the places where we +should come face to face with the unattainable ideal +of our own conduct that we may strive after something +nobler than mere present pleasure and profit—is it +right that into such holy places, destined but for an +abstract perfection, there should be placed a mere +half-unknown, vaguely seen woman? In short, is not +this "Vita Nuova" a mere false ideal, one of those works +of art which, because they are beautiful, get worshipped +as holy?</p> + +<p>This question is a grave one, and worthy to make +us pause. The world is full of instances of the fatal +waste of feelings misapplied: of human affections, +human sympathy and compassion, so terribly necessary +to man, wasted in various religious systems, +upon Christ and God: of religious aspirations, contemplation, +worship, and absorption, necessary to the +improvement of the soul, wasted in various artistic or +poetic crazes upon mere pleasant works, or pleasant +fancies, of man; wastefulness of emotions, wastefulness +of time, which constitute two-thirds of mankind's +history and explain the vast amount of evil in past +and present. The present question therefore becomes, +is not this "Vita Nuova" merely another instance of +this lamentable carrying off of precious feelings in +channels where they result no longer in fertilization, +but in corruption? The Middle Ages, especially, in +its religion, its philosophy, nay, in that very love of +which I am writing, are one succession of such acts +of wastefulness. This question has come to me many +a time, and has left me in much doubt and trouble. +But on reflection I am prepared to answer that such +doubts as these may safely be cast behind us, and that +we may trust that instinct which, whenever we lay +down the "Vita Nuova," tells us that to have felt and +loved this book is one of those spiritual gains in our +life which, come what may, can never be lost entirely.</p> + +<p>The "Vita Nuova" represents the most exceptional +of exceptional moral and intellectual conditions. +Dante's love for Beatrice is, in great measure, to be +regarded as an extraordinary and exquisite work of +art, produced not by the volition of man, but by the +accidental combination of circumstances. It is no +more suited to ordinary life than would a golden and +ivory goddess of Phidias be suited to be the wife of a +mortal man. But it may not therefore be useless; +nay, it may be of the highest utility. It may serve +that high utilitarian mission of all art, to correct +the real by the ideal, to mould the thing as it is in +the semblance of the thing as it should be. Herein, +let it be remembered, consists the value, the necessity +of the abstract and the ideal. In the long history +of evolution we have now reached the stage where +selection is no longer in the mere hands of unconscious +nature, but of conscious or half-conscious +man; who makes himself, or is made by mankind, +according to not merely physical necessities, but to +the intellectual necessity of realizing the ideal, of +pursuing the object, of imitating the model, before +him. No man will ever find the living counterpart of +that chryselephantine goddess of the Greeks; ivory and +gold, nay, marble, fashioned by an artist, are one thing; +flesh is another, and flesh fashioned by mere blind +accident. But the man who should have beheld that +Phidian goddess, who should have felt her full perfection, +would not have been as easily satisfied as any +other with a mere commonplace living woman; he +would have sought—and seeking, would have had more +likelihood of finding—the woman of flesh and blood +who nearest approached to that ivory and gold perfection. +The case is similar with the "Vita Nuova." +No earthly affection, no natural love of man for +woman, of an entire human being, body and soul, for +another entire human being, can ever be the counterpart +of this passion for Beatrice, the passion of a mere +mind for a mere mental ideal. But if the old lust-fattened +evil of the world is to diminish rather than +to increase, why then every love of man for woman +and of woman for man should tend, to the utmost +possibility, to resemble that love of the "Vita Nuova." +For mankind has gradually separated from brute kind +merely by the development of those possibilities of intellectual +and moral passion which the animal has not +got; an animal man will never cease to be, but a man +he can daily more and more become, until from the +obscene goat-legged and goat-faced creature which we +commonly see, he has turned into something like certain +antique fauns: a beautiful creature, not noticeably a +beast, a beast in only the smallest portion of his nature. +In order that this may come to pass—and its coming +to pass means, let us remember, the enormous increase +of happiness and diminution of misery upon earth—it +is necessary that day by day and year by year there +should enter into man's feelings, emotions, and habits, +into his whole life, a greater proportion of that which +is his own, and is not shared by the animal; that his +actions, preferences, the great bulk of his conscious +existence, should be busied with things of the soul, +truth, good, and beauty, and not with things of the +body. Hence the love of such a gradually improving +and humanizing man for a gradually improving +and humanizing woman, should become, as much as +is possible, a connection of the higher and more +human, rather than of the lower and more bestial, +portions of their nature; it should tend, in its reciprocal +stimulation, to make the man more a man, the +woman more a woman, to make both less of the mere +male and female animals that they were. In brief, love +should increase, instead, like that which oftenest profanes +love's name, of diminishing, the power of aspiration, +of self-direction, of self-restraint, which may +exist within us. Now to tend to this is to tend towards +the love of the "Vita Nuova;" to tend towards the +love of the "Vita Nuova" is to tend towards this. +Say what you will of the irresistible force of original +constitution, it remains certain, and all history is +there as witness, that mankind—that is to say, the +only mankind in whom lies the initiative of good, +mankind which can judge and select—possesses the +faculty of feeling and acting in accordance with its +standard of feeling and action; the faculty in great +measure of becoming that which it thinks desirable +to become. Now to have perceived the even imaginary +existence of such a passion as that of Dante for Beatrice, +must be, for all who can perceive it, the first step +towards attempting to bring into reality a something +of that passion: the real passion conceived while +the remembrance of that ideal passion be still in the +mind will bear to it a certain resemblance, even as, +according to the ancients, the children born of mothers +whose rooms contained some image of Apollo or +Adonis would have in them a reflex, however faint, +of that beauty in whose presence they came into +existence. In short, it seems to me, that as the "Vita +Nuova" embodies the utmost ideal of absolutely +spiritual love, and as to spiritualize love must long +remain one of the chief moral necessities of the world, +there exists in this book a moral force, a moral value, +a power in its unearthly passion and purity, which, as +much as anything more deliberately unselfish, more +self-consciously ethical, we must acknowledge and +honour as holy.</p> + +<p>As the love of him who has read and felt the "Vita +Nuova" cannot but strive towards a purer nature, so +also the love of which poets sang became also nobler +as the influence of the strange Tuscan school of +platonic lyrists spread throughout literature, bringing +to men the knowledge of a kind of love born of that +idealizing and worshipping passion of the Middle +Ages; but of mediaeval love chastened by the manners +of stern democracy and passed through the sieve of +Christian mysticism and pagan philosophy. Of this influence +of the "Vita Nuova"—for the "Vita Nuova" had +concentrated in itself all the intensest characteristics +of Dante's immediate predecessors and contemporaries, +causing them to become useless and forgotten—of +this influence of the "Vita Nuova," there is perhaps no +more striking example than that of the poet who, +constituted by nature to be the mere continuator of +the romantically gallant tradition of the troubadours, +became, and hence his importance and glory, the +mediator between Dante and the centuries which +followed him; the man who gave to mankind, incapable +as yet of appreciating or enduring the spiritual +essence of the "Vita Nuova," that self-same essence of +intellectual love in an immortal dilution. I speak, of +course, of Petrarch. His passion is neither ideal nor +strong. The man is in love, or has been in love, existing +on a borderland of loving and not loving, with the +beautiful woman. His elegant, refined, half-knightly, +half-scholarly, and altogether courtly mind is delighted +with her; with her curly yellow hair, her good red +and white beauty (we are never even told that Dante's +Beatrice is beautiful, yet how much lovelier is she not +than this Laura, descended from all the golden-haired +bright-eyed ladies of the troubadours!), with her +manner, her amiability, her purity and dignity in this +ecclesiastical Babylon called Avignon. He maintains +a semi-artificial love; frequenting her house, writing +sonnet after sonnet, rhetorical exercises, studies from +the antique and the Provençal, for the most part; he, +who was born to be a mere troubadour like Ventadour +or Folquet, becomes, through the influence of Dante, +the type of the poet Abate, of the poetic <i>cavaliere +servente</i>; a good, weak man with aspirations, who, +failing to get the better of Laura's virtue, doubtless +consoles himself elsewhere, but returns to an habitual +contemplation of it. He is, being constitutionally a +troubadour, an Italian priest turned partly Provençal, +vexed at her not becoming his mistress; then (having +made up his mind, which was but little set upon her), +quite pleased at her refusal: it turns her into a kind +of Beatrice, and him, poor man, heaven help him! into +a kind of Dante—a Dante for the use of the world at +large. He goes on visiting Laura, and writing to her +a sonnet regularly so many times a week, and the +best, carefully selected, we feel distinctly persuaded, at +regular intervals. It is a determined cultus, a sort of +half-real affectation, something equivalent to lighting +a lamp before a very well-painted and very conspicuous +shrine. All his humanities, all his Provençal lore +go into these poems—written for whom? For her? +Decidedly; for she has no reason not to read the +effusions of this amiable, weak priestlet; she feels +nothing for him. For her; but doubtless also to be +handed round in society; a new sonnet or canzone +by that charming and learned man, the Abate +Petrarch. There is considerable emptiness in all this: +he praises Laura's chastity, then grows impatient, then +praises her again; adores her, calls her cruel, his +goddess, his joy, his torment; he does not really want +her, but in the vacuity of his feeling, thinks he does; +calls her alternately the flat, abusive, and eulogistic +names which mean nothing. He plays loud and soft +with this absence of desire; he fiddle faddles in +descriptions of her, not passionate or burning, but +delicately undressed: he sees her (but with chaste +eyes) in her bath; he envies her veil, &c.; he neither +violently intellectually embraces, nor humbly bows +down in imagination before her; he trifles gracefully, +modestly, half-familiarly, with her finger tips, with the +locks of her hair, and so forth. Fancy Dante abusing +Beatrice; fancy Dante talking of Beatrice in her +bath; the mere idea of his indignation and shame +makes one shameful and indignant at the thought. +But this perfect Laura is no Beatrice, or only a half-and-half +sham one. She is no ideal figure, merely a +figure idealized; this is no imaginative passion, merely +an unreal one. Compare, for instance, the suggestion +of Laura's possible death with the suggestion of the +possible death of Beatrice. Petrarch does not love +sufficiently to guess what such a loss would be. Then +Laura does die. Here Petrarch rises. The severing +of the dear old habits, the absence of the sweet reality, +the terrible sense that all is over, Death, the great +poetizer and giver of love philters, all this makes him +love Laura as he never loved her before. The poor +weak creature, who cannot, like a troubadour, go seek +a new mistress when the old one fails him, feels +dreadfully alone, the world dreadfully dreary around +him; he sits down and cries, and his crying is +genuine, making the tears come also into our eyes. +And Laura, as she becomes a more distant ideal, +becomes nobler, though noble with only a faint earthly +graciousness not comparable to the glory of the living +Beatrice. And, as he goes on, growing older and +weaker and more desolate, the thought of a glorified +Laura (as all are glorified, even in the eyes of the +weakest, by death) begins to haunt him as Dante +was haunted by the thought of Beatrice alive. Yet, +even at this very time, come doubts of the lawfulness +of having thus adored (or thought he had adored) a +mortal woman; he does not know whether all this +may not have been vanity and folly; he tries to turn +his thoughts away from Laura and up to God. Perhaps +he may be called on to account for having +given too much of his life to a mere earthly love. +Then, again, Laura reappears beautified in his +memory, and is again tremblingly half-conjured away. +He is weak, and sad, and helpless, and alone; and his +heart is empty; he knows not what to think nor how +to feel; he sobs, and we cry with him. Nowhere +could there be found a stranger contrast than this +nostalgic craving after the dead Laura, vacillating and +troubled by fear of sin and doubt of unworthiness of +object, with that solemn ending of the "Vita Nuova," +where the name of Beatrice is pronounced for the last +time before it be glorified in Paradise, where Dante +devotes his life to becoming worthy of saying "such +words as have never been said of any lady." The +ideal woman is one and unchangeable in glory, and +unchangeable is the passion of her lover; but of this +sweet dead Laura, whose purity and beauty and +cruelty he had sung, without a tremor of self-unworthiness +all her life, of her the poor weak Petrarch +begins to doubt, of her and her worthiness of all this +love; and when? when she is dead and himself is +dying.</p> + +<p>Such a man is Petrarch; and yet, by the irresistible +purifying and elevating power of the "Vita Nuova,'" +this man came to write not other <i>albas</i> and <i>serenas,</i> +not other love-songs to be added to the love-songs of +Provence, but those sonnets and canzoni which for +four centuries taught the world, too coarse as yet to +receive Dante's passion at first hand, a nobler and more +spiritual love. After Petrarch a gradual change takes +place in the poetic conception of love: except in +learned revivalisms or in loose buffooneries, the mere +fleshly love of Antiquity disappears out of literature; +and equally so, though by a slower process of gradual +transformation, vanishes also the adoring, but undisguisedly +adulterous love of the troubadours and minnesingers. +Into the love Instincts of mankind have +been mingled, however much diluted, some drops of +the more spiritual passion of Dante. The <i>puella</i> of +Antiquity, the noble dame of feudal days, is succeeded +in Latin countries, In Italy, and France, and Spain, +and Portugal, by the <i>gloriosa donna</i> imitated from. +Petrarch, and imitated by Petrarch from Dante; a long-line +of shadowy figures, veiled in the veil of Madonna +Laura, ladies beloved of Lorenzo and Michael Angelo, +of Ariosto, and Tasso, and Camoens, and Cervantes, +passes through the world; nay, even the sprightly-mistress +of Ronsard, half-bred pagan and troubadour +has airs of dignity and mystery which make us almost +think that in this dainty coquettish French body, of +Marie or Helene or Cassandrette, there really may be +an immortal soul. But with the Renaissance—that +movement half of mediaeval democratic progress, and +half of antique revivalism, and to which in reality +belongs not merely Petrarch, but Dante, and every +one of the Tuscan poets, Guinicelli, Lapo Gianni, +Cavalcanti, who broke with the feudal poetry of +Provence and Sicily—with the Renaissance, or rather +with its long-drawn-out end, comes the close, for the +moment, of the really creative activity of the Latin +peoples in the domain of poetry. All the things for +two centuries which Italy and France and Spain and +Portugal (which we must remember for the sake of +Camoens) continue to produce, are but developments +of parts left untouched; or refinements of extreme +detail, as in the case, particularly, of the French poets +of the sixteenth century; but poetry receives from these +races nothing new or vital, no fresh ideal or fruitful +marriage of ideals. And here begins, uniting in itself +all the scattered and long-dormant powers of Northern +poetry, the great and unexpected action of England. +It had slept through the singing period of the Middle +Ages, and was awakened, not by Germany or Provence, +but by Italy: Boccaccio and Petrarch spoke, and, as +through dreams, England in Chaucer's voice, made +answer. Again, when the Renaissance had drawn to a +close, far on in the sixteenth century, English poetry was +reawakened; and again by Italy. This time it was +completely wakened, and arose and slept no more. +And one of the great and fruitful things achieved by +English poetry in this its final awakening was to give +to the world the new, the modern, perhaps the definitive, +the final ideal of love. England drank a deep +draught—how deep we see from Sidney's and Spenser's +sonnets—of Petrarch; and in this pleasant dilution, +tasted and felt the burning essence of the "Vita Nuova;" +for though Dante remained as the poet, the poet of +heaven and hell, this happy half-and-half Petrarch had +for full two centuries completely driven into oblivion +the young Dante who had loved Beatrice. For +England, for this magnificent and marvellous outburst +of all the manifold poetic energy stored up and +quintupled during that long period of inertness, there +could however be no foreign imported ideal of love; +there was no possibility of a new series of spectral +Lauras, shadows projected by a shadow. Already, +long ago, at the first call of Petrarch, Chaucer, by the +side of the merely mediaeval love types—of brutish +lust and doglike devotion—of the Wife of Bath and of +Griseldis, had rough-sketched a kind of modern love, +the love which is to become that of Romeo and +Hamlet, in his story of Palemon and Arcite. Among +the poetic material which existed in England at the +close of the sixteenth century was the old, long-neglected, +domestic love, quiet, undemonstrative, essentially +unsinging, of the early Northern (as indeed +also of the Greek and Hindoo) epics; a domestic love +which, in a social condition more closely resembling +our own than any other, even than that of the Italian +democracies, which had preceded it; among a people +who permitted a woman to choose her own husband, and +forbade a man wooing another man's wife, had +already, in ballads and folk poetry, begun a faint-twitter +of song. To this love of the man and the woman +who hope to marry, strong and tender, but still (as +Coleridge remarked of several of the lesser Elizabethan +playwrights) most outspokenly carnal, was united by +the pure spirit of Spenser, by the unerring genius of +Shakespeare, that vivifying drop of burning, spiritual +love taken from out of the "Vita Nuova," which had +floated, like some sovereign essential oil, on the top +of Petrarch's rose-water. Henceforward the world +possesses a new kind of love: the love of Romeo, of +Hamlet, of Bassanio, of Viola, and of Juliet; the love +of the love poems of Shelley, of Tennyson, of Browning +and Browning's wife. A love whose blindness, +exaggeration of passion, all that might have made it +foolish and impracticable, leads no longer to folly and +sin, but to an intenser activity of mankind's imagination +of the good and beautiful, to a momentary realization +in our fancy of all our vague dreams of perfection; a +love which, though it may cool down imperceptibly +and pale in its intenseness, like the sunrise fires into +a serene sky, has left some glory round the head of +the wife, some glory in the heart of the husband, has +been, however fleeting, a vision of beauty which has +made beauty more real. And all this owing to the creation, +the storing up, the purification by the Platonic +poets of Tuscany, of that strange and seemingly so +artificial and unreal thing, mediaeval love; the very +forms and themes of whose poetry, the <i>serena</i> and +the <i>alba</i>, which had been indignantly put aside by the +early Italian lyrists, being unconsciously revived, and +purified and consecrated in the two loveliest love poems +of Elizabethan poetry: the <i>serena</i>, the evening song +of impatient expectation in Spenser's Epithalamium; +the <i>alba</i>, the dawn song of hurried parting, in the +balcony scene of "Romeo and Juliet."</p> + +<p>Let us recapitulate. The feudal Middle Ages gave +to mankind a more refined and spiritual love, a love +all chivalry, fidelity, and adoration, but a love steeped +in the poison of adultery; and to save the pure and +noble portions of this mediaeval love became the +mission of the Tuscan poets of that strange school of +Platonic love which in its very loveliness may sometimes +seem so unnatural and sterile. For, by reducing +this mediaeval love to a mere intellectual passion, +seeking in woman merely a self-made embodiment +of cravings after perfection, they cleansed away that +deep stain of adultery; they quadrupled the intensity +of the ideal element; they distilled the very essential +spirit of poetic passion, of which but a few drops, +even as diluted by Petrarch, precipitated, when +mingled with the earthly passion of future poets, to +the bottom, no longer to be seen or tasted, all baser +ingredients.</p> + +<p>And, while the poems of minnesingers and troubadours +have ceased to appeal to us, and remain merely +for their charm of verse and of graceful conceit; the +poetry written by the Italians of the thirteenth century +for women, whose love was but an imaginative fervour, +remains concentrated in the "Vita Nuova;" and will +remain for all time the sovereign purifier to which the +world must have recourse whenever that precipitate of +baser instincts, which thickened like slime the love +poetry of Antiquity, shall rise again and sully the +purity of the love poetry of to-day.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="EPILOGUE" id="EPILOGUE"></a>EPILOGUE.</h3> + +<p>More than a year has elapsed since the moment +when, fancying that this series of studies must be +well-nigh complete, I attempted to explain in an +introductory chapter what the nature of this book of +mine is, or would fain be. I had hoped that each of +these studies would complete its companions; and +that, without need for explicit explanation, my whole +idea would have become more plain to others than it +was at that time even to myself. But instead, it has +become obvious that the more carefully I had sought +to reduce each question to unity, the more that +question-subdivided and connected itself with other +questions; and that, with the solution of each separate +problem, had arisen a new set of problems which +infinitely complicated the main lessons to be deduced +from a study of that many-sided civilization to which, +remembering the brilliant and mysterious offspring of +Faustus and Helena, I have given the name of +Euphorion. Hence, as it seems, the necessity for a +few further words of explanation.</p> + +<p>In those introductory pages written some fifteen +months ago, I tried to bring home to the reader a +sense which has haunted me throughout the writing +of this volume; namely, that instead of having deliberately +made up my mind to study the Renaissance, +as one makes up one's mind to visit Greece or +Egypt or the Holy Land; I have, on the contrary, +quite accidentally and unconsciously, found myself +wandering about in spirit among the monuments of +this particular historic region, even as I might wander +about in the streets of Siena where I wrote last year, +of Florence whence I write at present; wandering +about among these things, and little by little feeling +a particular interest in one, then in another, according +as each happened to catch my fancy or to recall some +already known thing. Now these, which for want of +a better word I have just called monuments, and just +now, less clearly, but also less foolishly, merely <i>things</i>—these +things were in reality not merely individual +and really existing buildings, books, pictures, or statues, +individual and really registered men, women, and +events; they were the mental conceptions which I had +extracted out of these realities; the intellectual types +made up (as the mediaeval symbols of justice are +made up of the visible paraphernalia, robe, scales and +sword, for judging and weighing and punishing) of +the impressions left on the mind by all those buildings, +or books, or pictures, or statues, or men, women, and +events. They were not the iniquities of this particular +despot nor the scandalous sayings of that particular +humanist, but the general moral chaos of the Italian +fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; not the poem of +Pulci, of Boiardo, of Ariosto in especial, but a vast +imaginary poem made up of them all; not the mediaeval +saints of Angelico and the pagan demi-gods of +Michael Angelo, but the two tremendous abstractions: +the spirit of Mediaevalism in art, and the spirit of +Antiquity; the interest in the distressed soul, and the +interest in the flourishing body. And, as my thoughts +have gone back to Antiquity and onwards to our own +times, their starting-point has nevertheless been the +Tuscan art of the fifteenth century, their nucleus +some notes on busts by Benedetto da Maiano and +portraits by Raphael.</p> + +<p>My <i>dramatis persona</i> have been modes of feeling +and forms of art. I have tried to explain the life and +character, not of any man or woman, but of the moral +scepticism of Italy, of the tragic spirit of our Elizabethan +dramatists; I have tried to write the biography +of the romance poetry of the Middle Ages, of the +realism of the great portrait painters and sculptors of +the Renaissance. But these, my <i>dramatis persona,</i> +are, let me repeat it, abstractions: they exist only in +my mind and in the minds of those who think like +myself. Hence, like all abstractions, they represent +the essence of a question, but not its completeness, its +many-sidedness as we may see it in reality. Hence +it is that I have frequently passed over exceptions to +the rule which I was stating, because the explanation +of these exceptions would have involved the formulating +of a number of apparently irrelevant propositions; +so that any one who please may accuse me +of inexactness; and, to give an instance, cover the +margins of my essay on Mediaeval Love with a whole +list of virtuous love stories of the Middle Ages; or +else ferret out of Raynouard and Von der Hagen a +dozen pages of mediaeval poems in praise of rustic +life. These objections will be perfectly correct, and +(so far as my knowledge permitted me) I might have +puzzled the reader with them myself; but it remains +none the less certain that, in the main, mediaeval love +was not virtuous, and mediaeval peasantry not admired +by poets; and none the less certain, I think, also, that +in describing the characteristics and origin of an +abstract thing, such as mediaeval love, or mediaeval +feeling towards the country and country folk, it was +my business to state the rule and let alone the +exceptions.</p> + +<p>There is another matter which gives me far greater +concern. In creating and dealing with an abstraction, +one is frequently forced, if I may use the expression, +to cut a subject in two, to bring one of its sides into +full light and leave the other in darkness; nay, to +speak harshly of one side of an art or of a man without +being able to speak admiringly of another side.</p> + +<p>This one-sidedness, this apparent injustice of judgment, +has in some cases been remedied by the fact +that I have treated in one study those things which I +was forced to omit in another study; as, in two separate +essays, I have pointed out first the extreme inferiority +of Renaissance sculpture to the sculpture of +Antiquity with regard to absolute beauty of form; and +then the immeasurable superiority of Renaissance over +antique sculpture in the matter of that beauty and +interest dependent upon mere arrangement and handling, +wherein lies the beauty-creating power of realistic +schools. But most often I have shown one side, not +merely of an artist or an art, but of my own feeling, +without showing the other; and in one case this inevitable +one-sidedness has weighed upon me almost +like personal guilt, and has almost made me postpone +the publication of this book to the Greek Kalends, in +hopes of being able to explain and to atone. I am +alluding to Fra Angelico. I spoke of him in a study +of the progress of mere beautiful form, the naked +human form moreover, in the art of the Renaissance; +I looked at his work with my mind full of the unapproachable +superiority of antique form; I judged +and condemned the artist with reference to that superb +movement towards nature and form and bodily beauty +which was the universal movement of the fifteenth +century; I lost patience with this saint because he +would not turn pagan; I pushed aside, because he did +not seek for a classic Olympus, his exquisite dreams +of a mediaeval Paradise. I had taken part, as its +chronicler, with the art which seeks mere plastic perfection, +the art to which Angelico said, "Retro me +Sathana." It was my intention to close even this +volume with a study of the poetical conception of +early Renaissance painting, of that strange kind of +painting in which a thing but imperfect in itself, a +mere symbol of lovely ideas, brings home to our mind, +with a rush of associations, a sense of beauty and +wonder greater perhaps than any which we receive +from the sober reality of perfect form. Again, there +are the German masters—the great engravers, Kranach, +Altdorfer, Aldegrever, especially; of whom, for +their absolute pleasure in ugly women, for their filthy +delight in horrors, I have said an immense amount of +ill; and of whom, for their wonderful intuition of +dramatic situation, their instinct of the poetry of +common things, and their magnificently imaginative +rendering of landscape, I hope some day to say an +equal amount of good.</p> + +<p>I have spoken of the lesson which may be derived +from studies even as humble as these studies of mine; +since, in my opinion, we cannot treat history as a mere +art—though history alone can gives us now-a-days +tragedy which has ceased to exist on our stage, and +wonder which has ceased to exist in our poetry—we +cannot seek in it mere selfish enjoyment of imagination +and emotion, without doing our soul the great +injury of cheating it of some of those great indignations, +some of those great lessons which make it +stronger and more supple in the practical affairs of +life. Each of these studies of mine brings its own +lesson, artistic or ethical, important or unimportant; +its lesson of seeking certainty in our moral opinions, +beauty in all and whatever our forms of art, spirituality +in our love. But besides these I seem to perceive +another deduction, an historical fact with a practical +application; to see it as the result not merely perhaps +of the studies of which this book is the fruit, but of +those further studies, of the subtler sides of Mediaeval +and Renaissance life and art which at present occupy +my mind and may some day add another series +of essays to this: a lesson still vague to myself, but +which, satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily, I shall nevertheless +attempt to explain; if indeed it requires to be +brought home to the reader.</p> + +<p>Of the few forms of feeling and imagination which +I have treated—things so different from one another +as the feeling for nature and the chivalric poem, as +modern art, with its idealism and realism, and modern +love—of these forms, emotional and artistic, which +Antiquity did not know, or knew but little, the +reader may have observed that I have almost invariably +traced the origin deep into that fruitful +cosmopolitan chaos, due to the mingling of all that +was still unused of the remains of Antiquity with +all that was untouched of the intellectual and moral +riches of the barbarous nations, to which we give +the name of Middle Ages; and that I have, as invariably, +followed the development of these precious forms, +and their definitive efflorescence and fruit-bearing, +into that particular country where certain +mediaeval conditions had ceased to exist, namely Italy. +In other words, it has seemed to me that the things +which I have studied were originally produced during +the Middle Ages, and consequently in the mediaeval +countries, France, Germany, Provence; but did not +attain maturity except in that portion of the Middle +Ages which is mediaeval no longer, but already more +than half modern, the Renaissance, which began in +Italy not with the establishment of despotisms and +the coming of Greek humanists, but with the independence +of the free towns and with the revival of Roman +tradition.</p> + +<p>Why so? Because, it appears to me, after watching +the lines of my thought converging to this point, +because, with a few exceptions, the Middle Ages were +rich in great beginnings (indeed a good half of all +that makes up our present civilization seems to issue +from them): but they were poor in complete achievements; +full of the seeds of modern institutions, arts, +thoughts, and feelings, they yet show us but rarely +the complete growth of any one of them: a fruitful +Nile flood, but which must cease to drown and to +wash away, which must subside before the germs +that it has brought can shoot forth and mature. +The sense of this comes home to me most powerfully +whenever I think of mediaeval poetry and mediaeval +painting.</p> + +<p>The songs of the troubadours and minnesingers, +what are they to our feelings? They are pleasant, +even occasionally beautiful, but they are empty, +lamentably empty, charming arrangements of words; +poetry which fills our mind or touches our heart +comes only with the Tuscan lyrists of the thirteenth +century. The same applies to mediaeval narrative-verse: +it is, with one or two exceptions or half exceptions, +such as "The Chanson de Roland" and +Gottfried's "Tristan und Isolde," decidedly wearisome; +a thing to study, but scarcely a thing to +delight in. I do not mean to say that the old legends +of Wales and Scandinavia, subsequently embodied by +the French and German poets of the Middle Ages, +are without imaginative or emotional interest; nothing +can be further from my thoughts. The Nibelung +story possesses, both in the Norse and in the Middle +High German version, a tragic fascination; and a +quaint fairy-tale interest, every now and then rising +to the charm of a Decameronian <i>novella</i>, is possessed +by many of the Keltic tales, whether briefly told in +the Mabinogion or lengthily detailed by Chrestien de +Troyes and Wolfram von Eschenbach. But all this +is the interest of the mere story, and you would +enjoy it almost as much if that story were related not +by a poet but by a peasant; it is the fascination of +the mere theme, with the added fascination of our +own unconscious filling up and colouring of details. +And the poem itself, whence we extract this theme, +remains, for the most part, uninteresting. The figures +are vague, almost shapeless and colourless; they have +no well-understood mental and moral anatomy, so +that when they speak and act the writer seems to +have no clear conception of the motives or tempers +which make them do so; even as in a child's pictures, +the horses gallop, the men run, the houses stand, but +without any indication of the muscles which move +the horse, of the muscles which hold up the man, of +the solid ground upon which is built, nay rather, +into which is planted, the house. Hatred of Hagen, +devotion of Riidger, passionate piety of Parzival—all +these are things of which we do not particularly see +the how or why; we do not follow the reasons, in +event or character, which make these men sacrifice +themselves or others, weep, storm, and so forth; nay, +even when these reasons are clear from the circumstances, +we are not shown the action of the mechanism, +we do not see how Brunhilt is wroth, how Chriemhilt +is revengeful, how Herzeloid is devoted to Parzival. +There is, in the vast majority of this mediaeval poetry, +no clear conception of the construction and functions +of people's character, and hence no conception either +of those actions and reactions of various moral organs +which, after all, are at the bottom of the events related. +Herein lies the difference between the forms of the +Middle Ages and those of Antiquity; for how perfectly +felt, understood, is not every feeling and every +action of the Homeric heroes, how perfectly indicated! +We can see the manner and reason of the conflict +of Achilles and Agamemnon, of the behaviour of the +returned Odysseus, as clearly as we see the manner +and reason of the movements of the fighting Centaurs +and Lapithae, or the Amazons; nay, even the minute +mood of comparatively unimportant figures, as Helen, +Brisei's, and Nausicaa, is indicated in its moral anatomy +and attitude as distinctly as is the manner in which +the maidens of the Parthenon frieze slowly restrain +their steps, the boys curb their steeds, or the old men +balance their oil jars. Nothing of this in mediaeval +literature, except perhaps in "Flamenca" and "Tristan," +where the motive of action, mere imaginative +desire, is all-permeating and explains everything. +These people clearly had no interest, no perception, +connected with character: a valorous woman, a +chivalrous knight, an insolent steward, a jealous +husband, a faithful retainer; things recognized only +in outline, made to speak and act only according to +a fixed tradition, without knowledge of the internal +mechanism of motive; these sufficed. Hence it is +that mediaeval poetry is always like mediaeval painting +(for painting continued to be mediaeval with +Giotto's pupils long after poetry had ceased to be +mediaeval with Dante and his school), where the +Virgin sits and holds the child without body wherewith +to sit or arms wherewith to hold; where angels +flutter forward and kneel in conventional greeting, with +obviously no bended knees beneath their robes, nay, +with knees, waist, armpits, all anywhere; where men +ride upon horses without flat to their back; where +processions of the blessed come forth, guided by +fiddling seraphs, vague, faint faces, sweet or grand, +heads which might wave like pieces of cut-out paper +upon their necks, arms and legs here and there, not +clearly belonging to any one; creatures marching, +soaring, flying, singing, fiddling, without a bone or a +muscle wherewith to do it all. And meanwhile, in this +mediaeval poetry, as in this mediaeval painting, there +are yards and yards of elaborate preciousness: all the +embossed velvets, all the white-and-gold-shot brocades, +all the silks and satins, and jewel-embroidered stuffs +of the universe cast stiffly about these phantom men +and women, these phantom horses and horsemen. It +is not until we turn to Italy, and to the Northern +man, Chaucer, entirely under Italian influence, that +we obtain an approach to the antique clearness of +perception and comprehension; that we obtain not +only in Dante something akin to the muscularities +of Signorelli and Michael Angelo; but in Boccaccio +and Chaucer, in Cavalca and Petrarch, the equivalent +of the well-understood movement, the well-indicated +situation of the simple, realistic or poetic, sketches of +Filippino and Botticelli.</p> + +<p>This, you will say, is a mere impression; it is no +explanation, still less such an explanation as may +afford a lesson. Not so. This strange inconclusiveness +in all mediaeval things, till the moment comes +when they cease to be mediaeval; this richness in +germs and poverty in mature fruit, cannot be without +its reason. And this reason, to my mind, lies in one +word, the most terrible word of any, since it means +suffering and hopelessness; a word which has haunted +my mind ever since I have looked into mediaeval +things: the word Wastefulness. Wastefulness; the +frightful characteristic of times at once so rich and +so poor, the explanation of the long starvation and +sickness that mankind, that all mankind's concerns—art, +poetry, science, life—endured while the very +things which would have fed and revived and nurtured, +existed close at hand, and in profusion. Wastefulness, +in this great period of confusion, of the most precious +things that we possess: time, thought, and feeling +refused to the realities of the world, and lavished on +the figments of the imagination. Why this vagueness, +this imperfection in all mediaeval representations of +life? Because even as men's eyes were withdrawn, +by the temporal institutions of those days, from the +sight of the fields and meadows which were left to +the blind and dumb thing called serf; so also the +thoughts of mankind, its sympathy and intentions, +were withdrawn from the mere earthly souls, the +mere earthly wrongs and woes of men by the great +self-organized institution of mediaeval religion. Pity +of the body of Christ held in bondage by the Infidel; +love of God; study of the unknowable things of +Heaven: such are the noblest employments of the +mediaeval soul; how much of pity, of love, may +remain for man; how much of study for the knowable? +To Wastefulness like this—to misapplication +of mind ending almost in palsy—must we ascribe, I +think, the strange sterility of such mediaeval art as +deals not merely with pattern, but with the reality +of man's body and soul. And we might be thankful, +if, during our wanderings among mediaeval things, +we had seen the starving of only art and artistic +instincts; but the soul of man has lain starving also; +starving for the knowledge which was sought only of +Divine things, starving for the love which was given +only to God.</p> + +<p>The explanation, therefore, and its lesson, may thus +be summed up in the one word Wastefulness. And +the fruitfulness of the Renaissance, all that it has +given to us of art, of thought, of feeling (for the "Vita +Nuova" is its fruit), is due, as it seems to me, to the +fact that the Renaissance is simply the condition of +civilization when, thanks to the civil liberty and the +spiritual liberty inherited from Rome and inherited +from Greece, man's energies of thought and feeling +were withdrawn from the unknowable to the knowable, +from Heaven to Earth; and were devoted to +the developing of those marvellous new things which +Antiquity had not known, and which had lain neglected +and wasted during the Middle Ages.</p> + +<p>FLORENCE, <i>January</i>,1884.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="APPENDIX" id="APPENDIX"></a>APPENDIX.</h3> + +<p>I have seen the pictures and statues and towns which I have +described, and I have read the books of which I attempt to give +an impression; but here my original research, if such it may be +called, comes to an end. I have trusted only to myself for my +impressions; but I have taken from others everything that may +be called historical fact, as distinguished from the history of this +or that form of thought or of art which I have tried to elaborate. +My references are therefore only to standard historical works, +and to such editions of poets and prose writers as have come +into my hands. How much I am endebted to the genius of +Michelet; nay, rather, how much I am, however unimportant, +the thing made by him, every one will see and judge. With +regard to positive information I must express my great obligations +to the works of Jacob Burckhardt, of Prof. Villari, and of +Mr. J.A. Symonds in everything that concerns the political +history and social condition of the Renaissance. Mr. Symonds' +name I have placed last, although this is by no means the order +of importance in which the three writers appear in my mind, +because vanity compels me to state that I have deprived myself +of the pleasure and profit of reading his volumes on Italian +literature, from a fear that finding myself doubtless forestalled +by him in various appreciations, I might deprive my essays of +what I feel to be their principal merit, namely, the spontaneity +and wholeness of personal impression. With regard to philological +lore, I may refer, among a number of other works, +to M. Gaston Paris' work on the Cycle of Charlemagne, M. +de la Villemarqué's companion volume on Keltic romances, and +Professor Rajna's "Fonti dell' Ariosto." My knowledge of troubadours, +trouvères, and minnesingers is obtained mainly from the +great collections of Raynouard, Wackernagel, Mätzner, Bartsch, +and Von der Hagen, and from Bartsch's and Simrock's editions +and versions of Gottfried von Strassburg, Hartmann von Aue, +and Wolfram von Eschenbach. "Flamenca" I have read in +Professor Paul Meyer's beautiful edition, text and translation; +"Aucassin et Nicolette," in an edition published, if I remember +rightly, by Janet; and also in a very happy translation contained +in Delvau's huge collection of "Romans de Chevalerie," +which contains, unfortunately sometimes garbled, as many of +the prose stories of the Carolingian and Amadis cycle as I, at +all events, could endure to read. For the early Italian poets, +excepting Carducci's "Cino da Pistoia," my references are the +same as those in Rossetti's "Dante and his Cycle," especially the +"Rime Antiche" and the "Poeti del Primo Secolo." Professor +d'Ancona's pleasant volume has greatly helped me in the history +of the transformation of the courtly poetry of the early Middle +Ages into the folk poetry of Tuscany. I owe a good deal also, +with regard to this same essay "The Outdoor Poetry," to Roskoff's +famous "Geschichte des Teufels," and to Signor Novati's +recently published "Carmina Medii <i>Aevi</i>." The Italian <i>novellieri,</i> +Bandello, Cinthio, and their set, I have used in the +Florentine editions of 1820 or 1825; Masuccio edited by De +Sanctis. For the essay on the Italian Renaissance on the +Elizabethan Stage, I have had recourse, chiefly, to the fifteenth +century chronicles in the "Archivio Storico Italiano," and to +Dyce's Webster, Hartley Coleridge's Massinger and Ford, +Churton Collins' Cyril Tourneur, and J.O. Halliwell's +Marston.</p> + +<p>The essays on art have naturally profited by the now inevitable +Crowe and Cavalcaselle; but in this part of my work, while +I have relied very little on books, I have received more than +the equivalent of the information to be obtained from any writers +in the suggestions and explanations of my friend Mr. T. Nelson +MacLean, who has made it possible for a mere creature of pens +and ink to follow the differences of <i>technique</i> of the sculptors +and medallists of the fifteenth century; a word of thanks also, +for various such suggestions as can come only from a painter, +to my old friend Mr. John S. Sargent, of Paris.</p> + +<p>I must conclude these acknowledgments by thanking the +Editors of the <i>Contemporary, British Quarterly</i>, and <i>National +Reviews</i>, and of the <i>Cornhill Magazine</i>, for permission to republish +such of the essays or fragments of essays as have +already appeared in those periodicals.</p> + +<p>THE END.</p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Euphorion, by Vernon Lee + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EUPHORION *** + +***** This file should be named 31304-h.htm or 31304-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/3/0/31304/ + +Produced by Marc D'Hooghe + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Euphorion + Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the + Renaissance - Vol. II + +Author: Vernon Lee + +Release Date: February 17, 2010 [EBook #31304] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EUPHORION *** + + + + +Produced by Marc D'Hooghe + + + + +EUPHORION: BEING STUDIES OF THE ANTIQUE AND THE MEDIEVAL IN THE RENAISSANCE + +BY + +VERNON LEE + +_Author of "Studies of the 18th Century in Italy," "Belcaro," etc._ + +_VOL. II._ + + + +TABLE OF CONTENTS. + + +THE PORTRAIT ART + +THE SCHOOL OF BOIARDO + +MEDIAEVAL LOVE + +EPILOGUE + +APPENDIX + + + * * * * * + + +THE PORTRAIT ART + + +I. + +Real and Ideal--these are the handy terms, admiring or disapproving, +which criticism claps with random facility on to every imaginable +school. This artist or group of artists goes in for the real--the +upright, noble, trumpery, filthy real; that other artist or group of +artists seeks after the ideal--the ideal which may mean sublimity or +platitude. We summon every living artist to state whether he is a +realist or an idealist; we classify all dead artists as realists or +idealists; we treat the matter as if it were one of almost moral +importance. Now the fact of the case is that the question of realism and +idealism, which we calmly assume as already settled or easy to settle by +our own sense of right and wrong, is one of the tangled questions of +art-philosophy; and one, moreover, which no amount of theory, but only +historic fact, can ever set right. For, to begin with, we find realism +and idealism coming before us in different ways and with different +meaning and importance. All art which is not addressing (as decrepit art +is forced to do) faculties to which it does not spontaneously and +properly appeal--all art is decorative, ornamental, idealistic +therefore, since it consciously or unconsciously aims, not merely at +reproducing the already existing, but at producing something which shall +repay the looking at it, something which shall ornament, if not a place, +at least our lives; and such making of the ornamental, of the worth +looking at, necessarily implies selection and arrangement--that is to +say idealism. At the same time, while art aims definitely at being in +this sense decorative, art may very possibly aim more immediately at +merely reproducing, without, selection or arrangement, the actually +existing things of the world; and this in order to obtain the mere power +of representation. In short, art which is idealistic as a master will +yet be realistic as a scholar: it decorates when it achieves, it copies +when it studies. But this is only half the question. Certain whole +schools may be described as idealistic, others as realistic, in +tendency; and this, not in their study, but in their achievement. One +school will obviously be contented with forms the most unselected and +vulgar; others will go but little out of their way in search of +form-superiority; while yet others, and these we must emphatically call +idealistic, are squeamish to the last degree in the choice and +adaptation of form, anxious, to get the very best, and make the very +best of it. Yet, on thinking over it, we shall find that realistic and +idealistic schools are all, in their achievements, equally striving +after something which is not the mere reproduction of the already +existing as such--striving, in short, after decoration. The pupil of +Perugino will, indeed, wait patiently to begin his work until he can +find a model fit for a god or goddess; while the fellow-craftsman of +Rembrandt will be satisfied with the first dirty old Jew or besotten +barmaid that comes to hand. But the realistic Dutchman is not, +therefore, any the less smitten with beauty, any the less eager to be +ornamental, than the idealistic Italian: his man and woman he takes +indeed with off-hand indifference, but he places them in that of which +the Italian shall perhaps never have dreamed, in that on which he has +expended all his science, his skill, his fancy, in that which he gives +as his addition to the beautiful things of art--in atmosphere, in light, +which are to the everyday atmosphere and light what the patiently sought +for, carefully perfected god or goddess model of Raphael is to the +everyday Jew, to the everyday barmaid, of Rembrandt. + +The ideal, for the man who is quite coarsely realistic in his figures, +exists in the air, light, colour; and in saying this I have, so to +speak, turned over the page too quickly, forestalled the expression of +what I can prove only later: the disconnection of such comparative +realism and idealism as this (the only kind of realism, let us remember, +which can exist in great art) with any personal bias of the artist, its +intimate dependence upon the constitution and tendency of art, upon its +preoccupations about form, or colour, or light, in a given country and +at a given moment. And now I should wish to resume the more orderly +treatment of the subject, which will lead us in time to the second half +of the question respecting realism and idealism. These considerations +have come to me in connection with the portrait art of the Renaissance; +and this very simply. For portrait is a curious bastard of art, sprung +on the one side from a desire which is not artistic, nay, if anything, +opposed to the whole nature and function of art: the desire for the mere +likeness of an individual. The union with this interloping tendency, so +foreign to the whole aristocratic temper of art, has produced portrait; +and by the position of this hybrid, or at least far from regularly bred +creature; by the amount of the real artistic quality of beauty which it +is permitted to retain by the various schools of art, we can, even as by +the treatment of similar social interlopers we can estimate the +necessities and tendencies of various states of society, judge what are +the conditions in which the various schools of art struggle for the +object of their lives, which is the beautiful. + +I have said that art is realistic in its periods or moments of study; +and this is essentially the case even with the school which in many +respects was the most unmistakably decorative and idealistic in +intention: the school of Giotto. The Giottesques are more than +decorative artists, they are decorators in the most literal sense. +Painting with them is merely one of the several arts and crafts enslaved +by mediaeval architecture and subservient to architectural effects. Their +art is the only one which is really and successfully architecturally +decorative; and to appreciate this we must contrast their fresco-work +with that of the fifteenth century and all subsequent times. Masaccio, +Ghirlandajo, Signorelli, turn the wall into a mere badly made frame; a +gigantic piece of cardboard would do as well, and better; the colours +melt into one another, the figures detach themselves at various degrees +of relief; those upon the ceiling and pendentives are frequently upside +down; yet these figures, which are so difficult to see, are worth seeing +only in themselves, and not in relation to their position. The masonry +is no longer covered, but carved, rendered uneven with the cavities and +protrusions of perspective. In Mantegna's frescoes the wall becomes a +slanting theatre scene, cunningly perspectived like Palladio's Teatro +Olimpico; with Correggio, wall, masonry, everything, is dissolved, the +side or cupola of a church becomes a rent in the clouds, streaming with +light. + +Not so with the Giottesque frescoes: the wall, the vault, the triumphant +masonry is always present and felt, beneath the straight, flat bands of +uniform colour; the symmetrical compartments, the pentacles, triangles, +and segments, and borders of histories, whose figures never project, +whose colours are separate as those in a mosaic. The Giottesque +frescoes, with their tiers and compartments of dark blue, their vague +figures dressed in simple ultramarines, greens, dull reds, and purples; +their geometrical borders and pearlings and dog-tooths; cover the walls, +the ribbed and arched ceilings, the pointed raftering almost like some +beautiful brown, blue, and tarnished gold leather-hangings; the figures, +outlined in dark paint, have almost the appearance of being stencilled, +or even stamped on the wall. Such is Giottesque painting: an art which +is not merely essentially decorative, but which is, moreover, what +painting and sculpture remained throughout the Gothic period, +subservient to the decorative effect of another art; an art in which all +is subordinated to architectural effect, in which form, colour, figures, +houses, the most dramatic scenes of the most awful of all dramas, +everything is turned into a kind of colossal and sublime wall-paper; and +such an art as this would lead us to expect but little realism, little +deliberate and slavish imitation of the existing. Yet wherever there is +life in this Gothic art (which has a horrible tendency, piously +unobserved by critics, to stagnate into blundering repetition of the +same thing), wherever there is progress, there is, in the details of +that grandiose, idealistic decoration, realism of the crudest kind. +Those Giottesque workers, who were not content with a kind of Gothic +Byzantinism; those who really handed over something vital to their +successors of the fifteenth century, while repeating the old +idealistical decorations; were studying with extraordinary crudeness of +realism. Everything that was not conventional ornament or type was +portrait; and portrait in which the scanty technical means of the +artist, every meagre line and thin dab of colour, every timid stroke of +brush or of pencil, went towards the merciless delineation not merely of +a body but of a soul. And the greater the artist, the more cruel the +portrait: cruellest in representation of utter spiritual baseness in the +two greatest of these idealistic decorators; Giotto, and his latest +disciple, Fra Angelico. Of this I should like to give a couple of +examples. + +In Giotto's frescoes at Santa Croce--one of the most lovely pieces of +mere architectural decoration conceivable--there are around the dying +and the dead St. Francis two groups of monks, which are astoundingly +realistic. The solemn ending of the ideally beautiful life of sanctity +which was so fresh in the memory of Giotto's contemporaries, is nothing +beyond a set of portraits of the most absolutely mediocre creatures, +moral and intellectual, of creatures the most utterly incapable of +religious enthusiasm that ever made religion a livelihood. They gather +round the dying and the dead St. Francis, a noble figure, not at all +ecstatic or seraphic, but pure, strong, worn out with wise and righteous +labour, a man of thought and action, upon whose hands and feet the +stigmata of supernatural rapture are a mere absurdity. The monks are +presumably his immediate disciples, those fervent and delicate poetic +natures of whom we read in the "Fioretti di San Francesco." To represent +them Giotto has painted the likeness of the first half-dozen friars he +may have met in the streets near Santa Croce: not caricatures, nor +ideals, but portraits Giotto has attempted neither to exalt nor to +degrade them into any sort of bodily or spiritual interestingness. They +are not low nor bestial nor extremely stupid. They are in various +degrees dull, sly, routinist, prosaic, pedantic; their most noteworthy +characteristic is that they are certainly the men who are not called by +God. They are no scandal to the Church, but no honour; they are sloth, +stupidity, sensualism, and cunning not yet risen to the dignity of a +vice. They look upon the dying and the dead saint with indifference, +want of understanding, at most a gape or a bright look of stupid +miscomprehension at the stigmata: they do not even perceive that a saint +is a different being from themselves. With these frescoes of Giotto I +should wish to compare Fra Angelico's great ceremonial crucifixion in +the cloister chapel of San Marco of Florence; for it displays to an +extraordinary degree that juxtaposition of the most conventionally +idealistic, pious decorativeness with the realism straightforward, +unreflecting, and heartless to the point of becoming perfectly +grotesque. The fresco is divided into two scenes: on the one side the +crucifixion, the mystic actors of the drama, on the other the holy men +admitted to its contemplation. A sense that holy things ought to be +old-fashioned, a respect for Byzantine inanity which invariable haunted +the Giottesques in their capacity of idealistic decorators, of men who +replaced with frescoes the solemn lifeless splendours of mosaic; this +kind of artistico-religious prudery has made Angelico, who was able to +foreshorten powerfully the brawny crucified thieves, represent the +Saviour dangling from the cross bleached, boneless, and shapeless, a +thing that is not dead because it has never been alive. The holy persons +around stand rigid, vacant, against their blue nowhere of background, +with vague expanses of pink face looking neither one way nor the other; +mere modernized copies of the strange, goggle-eyed, vapid beings on the +old Italian mosaics. This is not a representation of the actual reality +of the crucifixion, like Tintoret's superb picture at S. Rocco, or +Duerer's print, or so many others, which show the hill, the people, the +hangman, the ladders and ropes and hammers and tweezers: it is a sort of +mystic repetition of it; subjective, if I may say so; existing only in +the contemplation of the saints on the opposite side, who are spectators +only in the sense that a contemplative Christian may be said to be the +mystic spectator of the Passion. The thing for the painter to represent +is fervent contemplation, ecstatic realization of the past by the force +of ardent love and belief; the condition of mind of St. Francis, St. +Catherine of Siena, Madame Guyon: it is the revelation of the great +tragedy of heaven to the soul of the mystic. Now, how does Fra Angelico +represent this? A row of saints, founders of orders, kneel one behind +the other, and by their side stand apostles and doctors of the Church; +admitting them to the sight of the super-human, with the gesture, the +bland, indifferent vacuity of the Cameriere Segreto or Monsignore who +introduces a troop of pilgrims to the Pope; they are privileged persons, +they respect, they keep up decorum, they raise their eyes and compress +their lips with ceremonious reverence; but, Lord! they have gone through +it all so often, they are so familiar with it, they don't look at it any +longer; they gaze about listlessly, they would yawn if they were not too +well bred for that. The others, meanwhile, the sainted pilgrims, the men +whose journey over the sharp stones and among the pricking brambles of +life's wilderness finds its final reward in this admission into the +presence of the Holiest, kneel one by one, with various expressions: one +with the stupid delight of a religious sightseer; his vanity is +satisfied, he will next draw a rosary from his pocket and get it blessed +by Christ Himself; he will recount it all to his friends at home. +Another is dull and gaping, a clown who has walked barefoot from +Valencia to Rome, and got imbecile by the way; yet another, prim and +dapper; the rest indifferent looking restlessly about them, at each +other, at their feet and hands, perhaps exchanging mute remarks about +the length of time they are kept waiting; those at the end of the +kneeling procession, St. Peter Martyr and St. Giovanni Gualberto +especially, have the bored, listless, devout look of the priestlets in +the train of a bishop. All these figures, the standing ones who +introduce and the kneeling ones who are being introduced, are the most +perfect types of various states of dull, commonplace, mediocre routinist +superstition; so many Camerlenghi on the one hand, so many Passionist or +Propagandists on the other: the first aristocratic, bland and bored; the +second, dull, listless, mumbling, chewing Latin Prayers which never +meant much to their minds, and now mean nothing; both perfectly +reverential and proper in behaviour, with no more possibility of +individual fervour of belief than of individual levity of disbelief: the +Church, as it exists in well-regulated decrepitude. And thus does the +last of the Giottesques, the painter of glorified Madonnas and dancing +angels, the saint, represent the saints admitted to behold the supreme +tragedy of the Redemption. + +Thus much for the Giottesques. The Tuscans of the early Renaissance +developed up to the utmost, assisted by the goldsmiths and sculptors, +who taught them modelling and anatomy, that realistic element of +Giottesque painting. Its ideal decorative part had become impossible. +Painting could no longer be a decoration of architecture, and it had not +yet the means of being ornamental in itself; it was an art which did +not achieve, but merely studied. Among its exercises in anatomy, +modelling, perspective, and so forth, always laborious and frequently +abortive, its only spontaneous, satisfactory, mature production was its +portrait work, Portraits of burghers in black robes and hoods; of +square-jawed youths with red caps stuck on to their fuzzy heads, of bald +and wrinkled scholars and magnificoes; of thinly bearded artizans; +people who stand round the preaching Baptist or crucified Saviour, look +on at miracle or martyrdom, stolid, self-complacent, heedless, against +their background of towered, walled, and cypressed city--of buttressed +square and street; ugly but real, interesting, powerful among the +grotesque agglomerations of bag-of-bones nudities, bunched and taped-up +draperies and out-of-joint architecture of the early Renaissance +frescoes; at best among its picture-book and Noah's-ark prettinesses of +toy-box cypresses, vine trellises, inlaid house fronts, rabbits in the +grass, and peacocks on the roofs; for the early Renaissance, with the +one exception of Masaccio, is in reality a childish time of art, giving +us the horrors of school-hour blunders and abortions varied with the +delights of nursery wonderland: maturity, the power of achieving, the +perception of something worthy of perception, comes only with the later +generation, the one immediately preceding the age of Raphael and Michael +Angelo; with Ghirlandajo, Signorelli, Filippino, Botticelli, Perugino, +and their contemporaries. + +But this period is not childish, is not immature in everything. Or, +rather, the various arts which exist together at this period are not all +in the same stage of development. While painting is in this immature +ugliness, and ideal sculpture, in works like Verrocchio's and +Donatello's David, only a cleverer, more experienced, but less +legitimate kind of painting, painting more successful in the present, +but with no possible future; the almost separate art of +portrait-sculpture arises again where it was left by Graeco-Roman +masters, and, developing to yet greater perfection, gives in marble the +equivalent of what painting will be able to produce only much later: +realistic art which is decorative; beautiful works made out of ugly +materials. + +The vicissitudes of Renaissance sculpture are strange: its life, its +power, depend upon death; it is an art developed in the burying vault +and cloister cemetery. During the Middle Ages sculpture had had its +reason, its vital possibility, its something to influence, nay, to keep +it alive, in architecture; but with the disappearance of Gothic building +disappears also the possibility of the sculpture which covers the +portals of Chartres and the belfry of Florence. The pseudo-classic +colonnades, entablatures, all the thin bastard Ionic and Corinthian of +Aberti and Bramante, did not require sculpture, or had their own little +supply of unfleshed ox-skulls, greengrocer's garlands, scallopings and +wave-linings, which, with a stray siren and one or two bloated emperors' +heads, amply sufficed. On the other hand, mediaeval civilization and +Christian dogma did not encourage the production of naked of draped +ideal statues like those which Antiquity stuck on countless temple +fronts, and erected at every corner of square, street, or garden. The +people of the Middle Ages were too grievously ill grown, distorted, +hideous, to be otherwise than indecent in nudity; they may have had an +instinct of the kind, and, ugly as they knew themselves to be, they must +yet have found in forms like those of Verrocchio's David insufficient +beauty to give much pleasure. Besides, if the Middle Ages had left no +moral room for ideal sculpture once freed from the service of +architecture; they had still less provided it with a physical place. +Such things could not be set up in churches, and only a very moderate +number of statues could be wanted as open-air monuments in the narrow +space of a still Gothic city; and, in fact, ideal heroic statues of the +early Renaissance are fortunately not only ugly, but comparatively few +in number. There remained, therefore, for sculpture, unless contented to +dwindle down into brass and gold miniature work, no regular employment +save that connected with sepulchral monuments. During the real Middle +Ages, and in the still Gothic north, the ornamentation of a tomb +belonged to architecture: from the superb miniature minsters, pillared +and pinnacled and sculptured, cathedrals within the cathedral, to the +humbler foliated arched canopy, protecting a simple sarcophagus at the +corner of many a street in Lombardy. The sculptor's work was but the +low relief on the church flags, the timidly carved, outlined, +cross-legged knight or praying priest, flattened down on his pillow as +if ashamed even of that amount of prominence, and in a hurry to be +trodden down and obliterated into a few ghostly outlines. But to this +humiliated prostrate image, to this flat thing doomed to obliteration, +came the sculptor of the Renaissance, and bade the wafer-like simulacrum +fill up, expand, raise itself, lift itself on its elbow, arise and take +possession of the bed of state, the catafalque raised high above the +crowd, draped with brocade, carved with rich devices of leaves and +beasts of heraldry, roofed over with a dais, which is almost a triumphal +arch, garlanded with fruits and flowers, upon which the illustrious dead +were shown to the people; but made eternal, and of eternal magnificence, +by the stone-cutter, and guarded, not for an hour by the liveried pages +or chaunting monks, but by winged genii for all eternity. Some people, I +know, call this a degradation, and say that it was the result of corrupt +pride, this refusal to have the dear or illustrious dead scraped out any +longer by the shoe-nails of every ruffian, rubbed out by the knees of +every kitchen wench; but to me it seems that it was due merely to the +fact that sculpture had lost its former employment, and that a great art +cannot (thank Heaven!) be pietistically self-humiliating. Be this as it +may, the sculpture of the Renaissance had found a new and singularly +noble line of work, the one in which it was great, unique, unsurpassed, +because untutored. It worked here without models, to suit modern +requirements, with modern spirit; it was emphatically-modern sculpture; +the only modern sculpture which can be talked of as something original, +genuine, valuable, by the side of antique sculpture. Greek Antiquity had +evaded death, and neglected the dead; a garland of maenads and fauns +among ivy leaves, a battle of amazons or centaurs; in the late +semi-Christian, platonic days, some Orphic emblem, or genius; at most, +as in the exquisite tombs of the Keramikos of Athens, a figure, a youth +on a prancing steed, like the Phidian monument of Dexileus; a maiden, +draped and bearing an urn; but neither the youth nor the maiden is the +inmate of the tomb: they are types, living types, no portraits. Nay, +even where Antiquity shows us Death or Hermes, gently leading away the +beloved; the spirit, the ghost, the dead one, is unindividual. +"Sarkophagen und Urnen bekraenzte der Heide mit Leben," said Goethe; but +it was the life which was everlasting because it was typical: the life +not which had been relinquished by the one buried there, but the life +which the world danced on, forgetful, round his ashes. The Romans, on +the contrary, graver and more retentive folk than the Greeks, as well as +more domestic, less coffee-house living, appear to have inherited from +the Etruscans a desire to preserve the effigy of the dead, a desire +unknown to the Greeks. But the Etrusco-Roman monuments, where husband +and wife stare forth togaed and stolaed, half reduced to a conventional +crop-headedness, grim and stiff as if sitting unwillingly for their +portrait; or reclining on the sarcophagus-lid, neither dead, nor asleep, +nor yet alive and awake, but with a hieratic mummy stare, have little of +aesthetic or sympathetic value. The early Renaissance, then, first +bethought it of representing the real individual in the real death +slumber. And I question whether anything more fitting could be placed on +a tomb than the effigy of the dead as we saw them just before the +coffin-lid closed down; as we would give our all to see them but one +little moment longer; as they continue to exist for our fancy within the +grave; for to any but morbid feelings the beloved can never suffer +decay. Whereas a portrait of the man in life, as the throning popes in +St. Peter's, seems heartless and derisive; such monuments striking us as +conceived and ordered by their inmates while alive, like Michael +Angelo's Pope Julius, and Browning's Bishop, who was so preoccupied +about his tomb in St. Praxed's Church. The Renaissance, the late Middle +Ages, felt better than this: on the extreme pinnacle, high on the roof, +they might indeed place against the russet brick or the blue sky, amid +the hum of life and the movement of the air, the living man, like the +Scaligers, the mailed knight on his charger, lance in rest: but in the +church below, under the funereal pall, they could place only the body +such as it may have lain on the bier. + +And that figure on the bier was the great work of Renaissance sculpture. +Inanimate and vulgar when in heroic figures they tried to emulate the +ancients, the sculptors of the fifteenth century have found their own +line. The modesty, the simplicity, the awful and beautiful repose of the +dead; the individual character cleared of all its conflicting meannesses +by death, simplified, idealized as it is in the memory of the +survivors--all these are things which belong to the Renaissance. As the +Greeks gave the strong, smooth life-current circulating through their +heroes; so did these men of the fifteenth century give the gentle and +harmonious ebbing after-life of death in their sepulchral monuments. +Things difficult to describe, and which must be seen and remembered. +There is the monument, now in the museum at Ravenna, by a sculptor whose +name, were it known, would surely be among the greatest, of the +condottiere, Braccioforte: the body prone in its heavy case of armour, +not yet laid out in state, but such as he may have been found in the +evening, when the battle was over, under a tree where they had carried +him to die while they themselves went back to fight; the head has fallen +back, side-ways, weighed down by the helmet, which has not even been +unbuckled, only the face, the clear-cut, austere features, visible +beneath the withdrawn vizor; the eyes have not been closed; and there +are few things more exquisite and solemn at once in all sculpture, than +the indication of those no longer seeing eyes, of that broken glance, +beneath the half-closed lids. There is Rossellino's Cardinal of Portugal +at S. Miniato a Monte: the slight body, draped in episcopal robes, lying +with delicate folded hands, in gracious decorum of youthful sanctity; +the strong delicate head, of clear feature and gentle furrow of +suffering and thought, a face of infinite purity of strength, strength +still ungnarled by action: a young priest, who in his virginal dignity +is almost a noble woman. And there is the Ilaria Guinigi of Jacopo della +Quercia (the man who had most natural affinity with the antique of all +these sculptors, as one may see from the shattered remains of the Fonte +Gaia of Siena), the lady stretched out on the rose-garlanded bed of +state in a corner of Lucca Cathedral, her feet upon her sleeping dog, +her sweet, girlish head, with wavy plaits of hair encircled by a +rose-wreathed, turban-like diadem, lying low on round cushions; the bed +gently giving way beneath the beautiful, ample-bosomed body, round which +the soft robe is chastely gathered, and across which the long-sleeved +arms are demurely folded; the most beautiful lady (whose majestic tread +through the palace rooms we can well imagine) that the art of the +fifteenth century has recorded. There is, above all, the Carlo +Marsuppini of Desiderio da Settignano, the humanist Secretary of the +Commonwealth, lying on the sarcophagus, superb with shell fretwork and +curling acanthus, in Santa Croce of Florence. For the youthful beauty +of the Cardinal of Portugal and of the Lady Ilaria are commonplace +compared with the refinement of this worn old face, with scant wavy hair +and thin, gently furrowed, but by no means ploughed-up features. The +slight figure looks as if in life it must have seemed almost +transparent; and the hands are very pathetic: noble, firm hands, subtle +of vein and wrist, crossed simply, neither in prayer nor in agony, but +in gentle weariness, over the book on his breast. That book is certainly +no prayer-book; rather a volume of Plato or Cicero: in his last moments +the noble old man has longed for a glance over the familiar pages; they +have placed the book on his breast, but it has been too late; the +drowsiness of death has overtaken him, and with his last sigh he has +gently folded his hands over the volume, with the faint, last clinging +to the things beloved in this world. + +Such is that portrait sculpture of the early Renaissance, its only +sculpture, if we except the exquisite work in babies and angels just out +of the nursery of the Robbias, which is a real achievement. But how +achieved? This art is great just by the things which Antiquity did not. +And what are those things? Shall we say that it is sentiment? But all +fine art has tact, antique art most certainly; and as to pathos, why, +any quiet figure of a dead man or woman, however rudely carved, has +pathos; nay, there is pathos in the poor puling hysterical art which +makes angels draw the curtains of fine ladies' bedchambers, and fine +ladies, in hoop or limp Grecian dress, faint (the smelling bottle, +Betty!) over their lord's coffin; there is pathos, to a decently +constituted human being, wherever (despite all absurdities) we can +imagine that there lies some one whom it was bitter to see departing, to +whom it was bitter to depart. Pathos, therefore, is not the question; +and, if you choose to call it sentiment, it is in reality a sentiment +for line and curve, for stone and light. The great question is, How did +these men of the Renaissance make their dead people look beautiful? For +they were not all beautiful in life, and ugly folk do not grow beautiful +merely because they are dead. The Cardinal of Portugal, the beautiful +Ilaria herself, were you to sketch their profile and place it by the +side of no matter what ordinary antique, would greatly fall short of +what we call sculpturesque beauty; and many of the others, old humanists +and priests and lawyers, are emphatically ugly: snub or absurdly hooked +noses, retreating or deformedly overhanging foreheads, fleshy noses, and +flabby cheeks, blear eyes and sunk-in mouths; and a perfect network of +wrinkles and creases, which, hard as it is to say, have been scooped out +not merely by age, but by low mind, fretting and triumphant animalism. +Now, by what means did the sculptor--the sculptor, too unacquainted with +sculptural beauty (witness his ugly ideal statues), to be able, like the +man who turned the successors of Alexander into a race of leonine though +crazy demi-gods--to insidiously idealize these ugly and insignificant +features; by what means did he turn these dead men into things beautiful +to see? I have said that he took up art where Graeco-Roman Antiquity had +left it. Remark that I say Graeco-Roman, and I ought to add much more +Roman than Greek. For Greek sculpture, nurtured in the habit of perfect +form, art to whom beauty was a cheap necessity, invariably idealized +portrait, idealized it into beauty or inanity. But when Greek art had +run its course; when beauty of form had well-nigh been exhausted or +begun to pall; certain artists, presumably Greeks, but working for +Romans, began to produce portrait work of quite a new and wonderful +sort: the beautiful portraits of ugly old men, of snub little boys, work +which was clearly before its right time, and was swamped by idealized +portraits, insipid, nay, inane, from the elegant revivalist busts of +Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius down to the bonnet blocks of the lower +empire. Of this Roman portrait art, of certain heads of half-idiotic +little Caesar brats, of sly and wrinkled old men, things which ought to +be so ugly and yet are so beautiful, we say, at least, perhaps +unformulated, we think, "How Renaissance!" And the secret of the beauty +of these few Graeco-Roman busts, which is also that of Renaissance +portrait sculpture, is that the beauty is quite different in kind from +the beauty of Greek ideal sculpture, and obtained by quite different +means. + +It is, essentially, that kind of beauty which I began by saying +belonged to realistic art, to the art which is not squeamish about the +object which it represents, but is squeamish about the manner and medium +in which that indifferent object is represented; it is a kind of beauty, +therefore, more akin to that of Rembrandt and Velasquez than to that of +Michael Angelo or Raphael. It is the beauty, not of large lines and +harmonies, beauty residing in the real model's forms, beauty real, +wholesale, which would be the same if the man were not marble but flesh, +not in a given position but moving; but it is a beauty of combinations +of light and surface, a beauty of texture opposed to texture, which +would probably be unperceived in the presence of the more regal beauty +of line and colour harmonies, and which those who could obtain this +latter would employ only as much as they were conducive to such larger +beauties. And this beauty of texture opposed to texture and light +combined with surface is a very real thing; it is the great reality of +Renaissance sculpture: this beauty, resulting from the combination, for +instance, in a commonplace face, of the roughness and coarser pore of +the close shaven lips and chin with the smoothness of the waxy hanging +cheeks; the one catching the light, the other breaking it into a ribbed +and forked penumbra. The very perfection of this kind of work is +Benedetto da Maiano's bust of Pietro Mellini in the Bargello at +Florence. The elderly head is of strongly marked osseous structure, yet +fleshed with abundant and flaccid flesh, hanging in folds or creases +round the mouth and chin, yet not flobbery and floppy, but solid, though +yielding, creased, wrinkled, crevassed rather as a sandy hillside is +crevassed by the trickling waters; semi-solid, promising slight +resistance, waxy, yielding to the touch. But all the flesh has, as it +were, gravitated to the lower part of the face, conglomerated, or rather +draped itself, about the mouth, firmer for sunken teeth and shaving; and +the skin has remained alone across the head, wrinkled, yet drawn in +tight folds across the dome-shaped skull, as if, while the flesh +disappeared, the bone also had enlarged. And on the temples the flesh +has once been thick, the bone (seemingly) slight; and now the skin is +being drawn, recently, and we feel more and more every day, into a +radiation of minute creases, as if the bone and flesh were having a last +struggle. Now in this head there is little beauty of line (the man has +never been good-looking), and there is not much character in the sense +of strongly marked mental or moral personality. I do not know, nor care, +what manner of man this may have been. The individuality is one, not of +the mind but of the flesh. What interests, attaches, is not the +character or temperament, but the bone and skin, the creases and folds +of flesh. And herein also lies the beauty of the work. I do not mean its +interest or mere technical skill, I mean distinctly visible and artistic +beauty. + +Thus does the sculptor of the Renaissance get beauty, visible beauty, +not psychologic interest, out of a plain human being; but the beauty +(and this is the distinguishing point of what I must call realistic +decorative art) does not exist necessarily in the plain human being: he +merely affords the beginning of a pattern which the artist may be able +to carry out. A person may have in him the making of a really beautiful +bust and yet be ugly; just as the same person may afford a subject for a +splendid painting and for an execrable piece of sculpture. The wrinkles +and creases in a face like that of Benedetto da Maiano's Mellini would +probably be ugly and perhaps disgusting in the real reddish, flaccid, +discoloured flesh; while they are admirable in the solid and +supple-looking marble, in its warm and delicate bistre and yellow. +Material has an extraordinary effect upon form; colour, though not a +positive element in sculpture, has immense negative power in +accentuating or obliterating the mere line. All form becomes vague and +soft in the dairy flaccidness of modern ivory; and clear and powerful in +the dark terra cotta, which can ennoble even the fattest and flattest +faces with its wonderful faculty for making mere surface markings, mere +crowsfeet, interesting. Thus also with bronze: the polished, worked +bronze, of fine chocolate burnish and reddish reflections, mars all +beauty of line; how different the unchased, merely rough cast, greenish, +with infinite delicate greys and browns, making, for instance, the head +of an old woman like an exquisite withered, shrivelled, veined autumnal +leaf. It is moreover, as I have said, a question of combination of +surface and light, this art which makes beautiful busts of ugly men. The +ideal statue of the Greeks intended for the open air; fit to be looked +at under any light, high or low, brilliant or veiled, had indeed to be +prepared to look well under any light; but to look well under any light +means not to use any one particular relation of light as an ally; the +surface was kept modestly subordinated to the features, the features +which must needs look well at all moments and from all points of view. +But the Renaissance sculptor knew where his work would be placed; he +could calculate the effect of the light falling invariably through this +or that window; he could make a fellow-workman of that light, present +for it to draw or to obliterate what features he liked, bid it sweep +away such or such surfaces with a broad stream, cut them with a deep +shadow, caress their smooth chiselling or their rough grainings, mark as +with a nail the few large strokes of the point which gave the firmness +to the strained muscle or stretched skin. Out of this model of his, this +plain old burgess, he and his docile friend the light, could make quite +a new thing; a new pattern of bosses and cavities, of smooth sweeps and +tracked lines, of creases and folds of flesh, of pliable linen and rough +brocade of dress: something new, something which, without a single +feature being straightened or shortened, yet changed completely the +value of the whole assemblage of features; something undreamed of by +nature in moulding that ugly old merchant or humanist. With this art +which produced works like Desiderio da Settignano's Carlo Marsuppini and +Benedetto da Maiano's Pietro Mellini, is intimately connected the art of +the great medallists of the Renaissance--Pasti, Guacialotti, Niccolo +Fiorentino, and, greatest of all, Pisanello. Its excellence depends +precisely upon its independence of the ideal work of Antiquity; nay, +even upon the fact that, while the ancients, striking their coins in +chased metal dies, obtained an astonishing minuteness and clearness of +every separate little stroke and dint, and were therefore forced into an +almost more than sculptural perfection of mere line, of mere profile and +throat and elaborately composed hair, a sort of sublime abstraction of +the possible beauty of a human face, as in the coins of Syracuse and +also of Alexander; the men of the fifteenth century employed the process +of casting the bronze in a concave mould obtained by the melting away of +a medallion in wax; in wax, which taking the living impress of the +artist's finger, and recalling in its firm and yet soft texture the real +substance of the human face, insensibly led the medallist to seek, not +sharp and abstract lines, but simple, strongly moulded bosses; not ideal +beauty, but the real appearance of life. It is, moreover, a significant +fact that while the men who, half a century or so later, made fine, +characterless die-stamped medals in imitation of the antique, Caradossi +and Benvenuto for instance, were goldsmiths and sculptors, workers with +the chisel, artists seeking essentially for abstract elegance of line; +the two greatest medallists of the early Renaissance, Vittore Pisano and +Matteo di Pasti, were both of them painters; and painters of the +Northern Italian school, to whom colour and texture were all important, +and linear form a matter of indifference. And indeed, if we look at the +best work of what I may call the wax mould medallists of the fifteenth +century, even at the magnificent marble medallions of the +laurel-wreathed head of Sigismund Malatesta on the pillars of his church +at Rimini, modelled by Pasti, we shall see that these men were +preoccupied almost exclusively with the almost pictorial effect of the +flesh in its various degrees of boss and of reaction of the light; and +that the character, the beauty even, which they attained, is essentially +due to a skilful manipulation of texture, and surface, and light--one +might almost say of colour. We all know Pisanello's famous heads of the +Malatesti of Rimini: the saturnine Sigismund, the delicate dapper +Novello, the powerful yet beautiful Isotta; but there are other +Renaissance medals which illustrate my meaning even better, and connect +my feelings on the subject of this branch of art more clearly with my +feelings towards such work as Benedetto's Pietro Mellini. Foremost among +these is the perhaps somewhat imperfect and decidedly grotesque, but +astonishingly powerful, naif and characteristic Lorenzo dei Medici by +Niccolo real grandeur of whose conception of this coarse yet imaginative +head may be profitably contrasted with the classicizing efforts after +the demi-god or successor of Alexander in Pollaiolo's famous medal of +the Pazzi conspiracy. Next to this I would place a medal by Guacialotti +of Bishop Niccolo Palmieri, with the motto, "Nudus egressus sic +redibo"--singularly appropriate to the shameless fleshliness of the +personage, with his naked fat chest and shoulders, his fat, pig-like +cheeks and greasy-looking bald head; a hideous beast, yet magnificent in +his bestiality like some huge fattened porker. These medals give us, as +does the bust of Pietro Mellini, beauty of the portrait despite ugliness +of the original. But there are two other medals, this time by Pisanello, +and, as it seems to me, perhaps his masterpieces, which show the quite +peculiar way in which this homely charm of portraiture amalgamates, so +as to form a homogeneous and most seemingly simple whole, with the +homely charm of certain kinds of pure and simple youthful types. One of +these (the reverse of which fantastically represents the four elements, +the wooded earth, the starry sky, the rippled sea, the sun, all in one +sphere) is the portrait of Don Inigo d'Avalos; the other that of Cecilia +Gonzaga. This slender beardless boy in the Spanish shovel hat and wisp +of scarf twisted round the throat; and this tall, long-necked girl, with +sloping shoulders and still half-developed bosom; are, so to speak, +brother and sister in art, in Pisanello's wonderful genius. The relief +of the two medals is extremely low, so that in certain lights the +effigies vanish almost completely, sink into the pale green surface of +the bronze; the portraits are a mere film, a sort of haze which has +arisen on the bronze and gathered into human likeness; but in this film, +this scarce perceptible relief, we are made to perceive the slender +osseous structure, the smooth, sleek, childish blond flesh and hair, the +delicate, undecided pallor of extreme youth and purity, even as we might +in some elaborate portrait by Velasquez, but with a spring-like +healthiness which Velasquez, painting his lymphatic Hapsburgs, rarely +has. + +Such is this Renaissance art of medals, this side branch of the great +realistic portraiture in stone of the Benedettos, Desiderios, and +Rossellinos; a perfect thing in itself; and one which, if we muse over +it in connection with the more important works of fifteenth century +sculpture, will perhaps lead us to think that, as the sculpture of +Antiquity, in its superb idealism, its devotion to the perfect line and +curve of beauty, achieved the highest that mere colourless art can +achieve--thanks to the very purity, sternness, and narrowness of its +sculpturesque feeling--so also, perhaps, modern sculpture, should it +ever re-arise, must be a continuation of the tendencies of the +Renaissance, must be the humbler sister of painting, must seek for the +realistic portrait and begin, perhaps, with the realistic medal. + + + + +II. + + +This kind of realism, where only the model is ugly, while the portrait +is beautiful; which seeks decorative value by other means than the +intrinsic excellence of form in the object represented, this kind of +realism is quite different in sort from the realisms of immature art, +which, aiming at nothing beyond a faithful copy, is content with +producing an ugly picture of an ugly thing. Now this latter kind of +realism endured in painting some time after decorative realism such as I +have described had reached perfection in sculpture. Nor was it till +later, and when the crude scholastic realism had completely come to an +end, that there became even partially possible in painting decorative +realism analogous to what we have noticed in sculpture; while it was not +till after the close of the Italian Renaissance period that the painters +arose in Spain and the Netherlands who were able to treat their subjects +with the uncompromising decorative realism of Desiderio or Rosellino or +Benedetto da Maiano. For the purely imitative realism of the painters of +the early Renaissance was succeeded in Italy by idealism, which matured +in the great art of intrinsically beautiful linear form of Michael +Angelo and Raphael, and the great art of intrinsically beautiful colour +form of Giorgione and Titian. These two schools were bound to be, each +in its degree, idealistic. Complete power of mere representation in +tint and colour having been obtained through the realistic drudgery of +the early Renaissance, selection in the objects thus to be represented +had naturally arisen; and the study of the antique had further hastened +and directed this movement of art no longer to study but to achieve, to +be decorative once more, decorative no longer in subservience to +architecture, but as the separate and self-sufficing art of painting. +Selection, therefore, which is the only practical kind of idealism, had +begun as soon as painting was possessed of the power of representing +objects in their relations of line and colour, with that amount of light +and shadow requisite to the just appreciation of the relations of form +and the just relations of colour. Now art which stops short at this +point of representation must inevitably be, if decorative at all, +idealistically decorative; it must be squeamish respecting the objects +represented, respecting their real structure, colour, position, and +grouping. For, of the visible impressions received from an object, some +are far more intrinsic than others. Suppose we see a woman, beautiful in +the structure of her body, and beautiful in the colour of her person and +her draperies, standing under a light which is such as we should call +beautiful and interesting: of these three qualities one will be +intrinsic in the woman, the second very considerably so, the third not +at all. For, let us call that woman away and replace her immediately by +another woman chosen at random. We shall immediately perceive that we +have lost one pleasurable impression, that of beautiful bodily +structure: the woman has taken away her well-shapen body. Next we shall +perceive a notable diminution in the second pleasurable impression: the +woman has taken with her, not indeed her well-tinted garments, which we +may have bestowed on her successor, but her beautifully coloured skin +and hair, so that of the pleasing colour-impression will remain only as +much as was due to, and may have been retained with, the original +woman's clothes. But if we look for our third pleasurable impression, +our beautiful light, we shall find that unchanged, whether it fall upon +a magnificently arrayed goddess or upon a sordid slut And, conversely, +the beautiful woman, when withdrawn from that light and placed in any +other, will be equally lovely in form, even if we cast her in plaster, +and lose the colour of her skin and hair; or if we leave her not only +the beautiful tints of her flesh and hair, but her own splendidly +coloured garments, we shall still have, in whatsoever light, a +magnificent piece of colour. But if we recall the poor ugly creature who +has succeeded her from out of that fine effect of light, we shall have +nothing but a hideous form invested in hideous colour. + +This rough diagram will be sufficient to explain my thought respecting +the relative degree to which the art dealing with linear form, that +dealing with colour and that dealing with light, with the medium in +which form and colour are perceived; is each respectively bound to be +idealistically or realistically decorative. Now painting was +aesthetically mature, possessed the means to achieve great beauty, at a +time when of the three modes of representation there had as yet +developed only those of linear form and colour; and the very possibility +and necessity of immediately achieving all that could be achieved by +these means delayed for a long time the development of the third mode of +representation: the representation of objects as they appear with +reference to the light through which they are seen. A beginning had +indeed been made. Certain of Correggio's effects of light, even more an +occasional manner of treating the flesh and hair, reducing both form and +colour to a kind of vague boss and vague sheen, such as they really +present in given effects of light, a something which we define roughly +as eminently modern in the painting of his clustered cherubs; all this +is certainly a beginning of the school of Velasquez. Still more so is it +the case with Andrea del Sarto, the man of genius whom critics love to +despatch as a mediocrity, because his art, which is art altogether for +the eyes, and in which he innovated more than any of his contemporaries, +does not afford any excuse for the irrelevancies of ornamental +criticism; with him the appearance of form and colour, acted upon by +light, the relative values of which flesh and draperies consist with +reference to the surrounding medium, all this becomes so evident a +preoccupation and a basis for decorative effects, as to give certain of +his works an almost startling air of being modern. But this tendency +comes to nothing: the men of the sixteenth century appear scarcely to +have perceived wherein lay the true excellence of this "Andrea senza +errori," deeming him essentially the artist of linear perfection; while +the innovations of Correggio in the way of showing the relations of +flesh tones and light ended in the mere coarse gala illuminations in +which his successors made their seraphs plunge and sprawl. There was too +much to be done, good and bad, in the way of mere linear form and mere +colour; and as art of mere linear form and colour, indifferent of all +else, did the art of the Italian Renaissance run to seed. + +I said at the beginning of this paper that the degree to which any art +is strictly idealistic, can be measured by the terms which it will make +with portrait. For as portrait is due to the desire to represent a +person quite apart from that person affording material for decoration, +it is evident that only the art which can call in the assistance of +decorative materials, independent of the represented individual, can +possibly make a beautiful picture out of an ugly man; while the art +which deals only with such visible peculiarities as are inherent in the +individual, has no kind of outlet, is cornered, and can make of a +repulsive original only a repulsive picture. The analogy to this we have +already noticed in sculpture: antique sculpture, considering only the +linear bosses which existed equally in the living man and in the statue, +could not afford to represent plain people; while Renaissance sculpture, +extracting a large amount of beauty out of combinations of surface and +light, was able, as long as it could arrange such an artificial +combination, to dispense with great perfection in the model. Nay, if we +except Renaissance statuary as a kind of separate art, we may say that +this independence of the object portrayed is a kind of analytic test, +enabling us to judge at a glance, and by the degree of independence from +the model, the degree to which any art is removed from the mere line and +boss of antique sculpture. In the statue standing free in any light that +may chance to come, every form must be beautiful from every point; but +in proportion as the new elements of painting enter, in proportion as +the actual linear form and boss is marked and helped out by grouping, +colour, and light and shade, does the actual perfection of the model +become less important; until, under the reign of light as the chief +factor, it becomes altogether indifferent. In this fact lies the only +rational foundation for the notion, made popular by Hegel, that painting +is an art in which beauty is of much less account than in sculpture; +failing to understand that the sum total of beauty remained the same, +whether dependent upon the concentration of a single element or obtained +by the co-operation of several consequently less singly important +elements. + +But to return to the question of portrait art. From what we have seen, +it is clear that art which requires perfection of form will be reduced +to ugliness if cramped in the obtaining of such perfection, whereas art +which can obtain beauty by other means will still have a chance when +reduced to imitate ugly object? Hence it is that while the realistically +decorative art of the seventeenth century can make actually beautiful +things of the portraits of ugly people, the idealistically decorative +art of the Renaissance produces portraits which are cruelly ugly in +proportion as the art is purely idealistic. Yet even in idealism there +are degrees: the more the art is confined to mere linear form, to the +exclusion of colour, the uglier will be the portraits. With Michael +Angelo the difficulty was simplified to impossibility: he could not +paint portrait at all; and in his sculptured portraits of the two +Medicean dukes at S. Lorenzo he evaded all attempt at likeness, making +those two men into scarcely more than two architectural monsters, +half-human cousins of the fantastic creatures who keep watch on the +belfries and gurgoyles of a Gothic cathedral. It is almost impossible to +think of Michael Angelo attempting portrait: the man's genius cannot be +constrained to it, and what ought to be mere ugliness would come out +idealized into grandiose monstrosity. Men like Titian and Tintoret are +at the other end of the scale of ideal decoration: they are bordering +upon the domain of realism. Hence they can raise into interest, by the +mere power of colour, many an insignificant type; yet even they are +incapable of dealing with absolute ugliness, with absence of fine +colour, or, if they do deal with it, there is an immediate improvement +upon the model, and the appearance of truthfulness goes. Between the +absolute incapacity for dealing with ugliness of Michael Angelo, and the +power of compromising with it of Titian and Tintoret, Raphael stands +half-way: he can call in the assistance of colour just sufficiently to +create a setting of carefully harmonized draperies and accessories, +beautiful enough to allow of his filling it up with the most cruelly +ugly likeness which any painter ever painted. Far too much has been +written about Raphael in general, but not half enough about Raphael as a +portrait-painter; for by the side of the eclectic idealist, who combined +and balanced beauty almost into insipidity, is the most terribly, +inflexibly veracious portrait-painter that ever was. Compared with those +sternly straightforward portraits of his Florentine and Roman time, +where ugliness and baseness are never attenuated by one tittle, and +alloyed nobility or amiability, as with his finer models, like the two +Donis, husband and wife, and Bibbiena, is never purified of its +troubling element; compared with them the Venetian portraits are mere +insincere, enormously idealized pieces of colour-harmony; nay, the +portraits of Velasquez are mere hints--given rapidly by a sickened +painter striving to make those scrofulous Hapsburgs no longer mere men, +but keynotes of harmonies of light--of what the people really are. For +Velasquez seems to show us the temperament, the potentiality of his +people, and to leave us, with a kind of dignified and melancholy silence +as to all further, to find out what life, what feelings and actions, +such a temperament implies. But Raphael shows us all: the temperament +and the character, the real active creature, with all the marks of his +present temper and habits, with all the indications of his immediate +actions upon him: completely without humour or bitterness, without the +smallest tendency to twist the reality into caricature or monstrosity, +nay, perhaps without much psychologic analysis to tell him the exact +meaning of what he is painting, going straight to the point, and utterly +ruthless from sheer absence of all alternative of doing otherwise than +he does. There is nothing more cruelly realistic in the world, cruel not +only to the base originals but to the feelings of the spectator, than +the harmony of villainies, of various combinations of black and hog-like +bestiality, and fox and wolf-like cunning and ferocity with wicked human +thought and self-command, which Raphael has enshrined in that splendid +harmony of scarlet silk and crimson satin, and purple velvet and dull +white brocade, as the portraits of Leo X. and his cardinals Rossi and +Dei Medici. + +The idealistic painter, accustomed to rely upon the intrinsic beauty +which he has hitherto been able to select or create; accustomed also to +think of form as something quite independent of the medium through which +it is seen, scarcely conscious of the existence of light and air in his +habit of concentrating all attention upon a figure placed, as it were, +in a sort of vacuum of indifference;--this idealistic artist is left +without any resources when bid to paint an ugly man or woman. With the +realistic artist, to whom the man or woman is utterly indifferent, to +whom the medium in which they are seen is everything, the case Is just +reversed: let him arrange his light, his atmospheric effect, and he will +work into their pattern no matter what plain or repulsive wretch. To +Velasquez the flaccid yellowish fair flesh, with its grey downy shadows, +the limp pale drab hair, which is grey in the light and scarcely +perceptibly blond in the shade, all this unhealthy, bloodless, feebly +living, effete mass of humanity called Philip IV. of Spain, shivering in +moral anaemia like some dog thorough bred into nothingness, becomes +merely the foundation for a splendid harmony of pale tints. Again, the +poor little baby princess, with scarce visible features, seemingly +kneaded (but not sufficiently pinched and modelled) out of the wet ashes +of an _auto da fe_, in her black-and-white frock (how different from the +dresses painted by Raphael and Titian!), dingy and gloomy enough for an +abbess or a cameriera major, this childish personification of courtly +dreariness, certainly born on an Ash Wednesday, becomes the principal +strands for a marvellous tissue of silvery and ashy light, tinged +yellowish in the hair, bluish in the eyes and downy cheeks, pale red in +the lips and the rose in the hair; something to match which in beauty +you must think of some rarely seen veined and jaspered rainy twilight, +or opal-tinted hazy winter morning. Ugliness, nay, repulsiveness, +vanish, subdued into beauty, even as noxious gases may be subdued into +health-giving substances by some cunning chemist. The difference between +such portraits as these and the portraits by Raphael does not however +consist merely in the beauty: there is also the fact that if you take +one of Velasquez's portraits out of their frame, reconstitute the living +individual, and bid him walk forth in whatsoever light may fall upon +him, you will have something infinitely different from the portrait, and +of which your only distinct feeling will be that a fine portrait might +be made of the creature; whereas it is a matter of complete indifference +whether you see Raphael's Leo X. in the flesh or in his gilded frame. + +Whatever may fairly be said respecting the relative value of idealistic +and realistic decorative art is really also connected with this latter +point. Considering that realistic art is merely obtaining beauty by +attention to other factors than those which preoccupy idealistic art, +that the one fulfils what the other neglects--taking the matter from +this point of view, it would seem as if the two kinds of arts were, so +to speak, morally equal; and that any vague sense of mysterious +superior dignity clinging to idealistic art was a mere shred of long +discarded pedantry. But it is not so. For realistic art does more than +merely bring into play powers unknown to idealistic art: it becomes, by +the possession of these powers, utterly indifferent to the intrinsic +value of the forms represented: it is so certain of making everything +lovely by its harmonies of light and atmosphere that it almost prefers +to choose inferior things for this purpose. I am thinking at present of +a picture by I forget what Dutchman in our National Gallery, +representing in separate compartments five besotten-looking creatures, +symbolical of the five senses: they are ugly, brutish, with I know not +what suggestion of detestable temperament in their bloodshot flesh and +vermilion lips, as if the whole man were saturated with his appetite. +Yet the Dutchman has found the means of making these degraded types into +something which we care to look at, and to look at on account of its +beauty; even as, in lesser degree, Rubens has always managed to make us +feel towards his flaccid, veal-complexioned, fish-eyed women, something +of what we feel towards the goddesses of the Parthenon; towards the +white-robed, long-gloved ladies, with meditative face beneath their +crimped auburn hair, of Titian. + +Viewed in one way, there is a kind of nobility in the very fact that +such realistic art can make us pardon, can redeem, nay almost sanctify, +so much. But is it right thus to pardon, redeem, and sanctify; thus to +bring the inferior on to the level of the superior? Nay, is it not +rather wrong to teach us to endure so much meanness and ugliness in +creatures, on account of the nobility with which they are represented? +Is this not vitiating our feelings, blunting our desire for the better, +our repugnance for the worse? + +A great and charitable art, this realistic art of the seventeenth +century, and to be respected for its very tenderness towards the scorned +and castaway things of reality; but accustoming us, perhaps too much, +like all charitable and reclaiming impulses, to certain unworthy +contacts: in strange contrast herein with that narrow but ascetic and +aristocratic art of idealism, which, isolated and impoverished though it +may be, has always the dignity of its immaculate purity, of its +unswerving judgment, of its obstinate determination to deal only with +the best. A hard task to judge between them. But be this as it may, it +is one of the singular richnesses of the Italian Renaissance that it +knew of both tendencies; that while in painting it gave the equivalent +of that rigid idealism of the Greeks which can make no compromise with +ugliness; in sculpture it possessed the equivalent of the realism of +Velasquez, which can make beauty out of ugly things, even as the chemist +can make sugar out of vitriol. + + + * * * * * + + +THE SCHOOL OF BOIARDO. + +"Le donne, i cavalieri, l' armi, gli amori." + + + +I. + +Throughout the tales of Charlemagne and his warriors, overtopping by far +the crowd of paladins and knights, move two colossal mailed and vizored +figures--Roland, whom the Italians call Orlando and the Spaniards +Roldan, the son of Milon d'Angers and of Charlemagne's sister; and +Renaud or Rinaldo, the lord of Montauban, and eldest of the famous four +sons of Aymon. These are the two representative heroes, equal but +opposed, the Achilles and Odysseus, the Siegfried and Dietrich, of the +Carolingian epic; and in each is personified, by the unconscious genius +of the early Middle Ages, one of the great political movements, of the +heroic struggles, of feudalism. For there existed in feudalism two +forces, a centripetal and a centrifugal--a force which made for the +supremacy of the kingly overlordship, and a force which made for the +independence of the great vassals. Hence, in the poetry which is the +poetry of feudalism, two distinct currents of feeling, two distinct +epics---the epic of the devoted loyalty of all the heroes of France to +their wise and mighty emperor Charlemagne, triumphant even in +misfortune; and the epic of the hopeless resistance against a craven and +capricious despot Charles of the most righteous and whole-hearted among +his feudatories: the epic of Roland, and the epic of Renaud. Of the +first there remains to us, in its inflexible and iron solemnity, an +original rhymed narrative, "The Chanson de Roland," which we may read +perhaps almost in the self-same words in which it was sung by the +Normans of William in their night watch before the great battle. The +centripetal force of feudalism gained the upper hand, and the song of +the great empire, of the great deeds of loyal prowess, was consecrated +in the feudal monarchy. The case was different with the tale of +resistance and rebellion. The story of Renaud soon became a dangerous +lesson for the great barons; it fell from the hands of the nobles to +those of humbler folk; and it is preserved to us no longer in mediaeval +verse, but in a prose version, doubtless of the fifteenth century, under +the name, familiar on the stalls of village fairs, of "The Quatre Fils +Aymon." But, as Renaud is the equal of Roland, so is this humble prose +tale nevertheless the equal of the great song of Roncevaux; and even +now, it would be a difficult task to decide which were the grander, the +tale of loyalty or the tale of resistance. + +In each of these tales,"The Chanson de Roland" and "The Quatre Fils +Aymon," there is contained a picture of its respective hero, which sums +up, as it were, the whole noble character of the book; and which, the +picture of the dying Roland and the picture of the dying Renaud, I would +fain bring before you before speaking of the other Roland and the other +Renaud, the Orlando of Ariosto and the Rinaldo of Boiardo. The traitor +Ganelon has enabled King Marsile to overtake with all his heathenness +the rear-guard of Charlemagne between the granite walls of Roncevaux; +the Franks have been massacred, but the Saracens have been routed; +Roland has at last ceded to the prayers of Oliver and of Archbishop +Turpin; three times has he put to his mouth his oliphant and blown a +blast to call back Charlemagne to vengeance, till the blood has foamed +round his lips and his temple has burst. Oliver is dead, the archbishop +is dying, Roland himself is slowly bleeding to death. He goes down into +the defile, heaped with corpses, and seeks for the bodies of the +principal paladins, Ivon and Ivaire, the Gascon Engelier, Gerier and +Gerin, Berenger and Otho, Anseis and Salamon, and the old Gerard of +Rousillon; and one by one drags them to where the archbishop lies dying. +And then, when to these knights Roland has at last added his own beloved +comrade Oliver, he bids the archbishop bless all the dead, before he die +himself. Then, when he has reverently crossed Turpin's beautiful +priestly hands over his breast, he goes forth to shatter his sword +Durendal against the rocks; but the good sword has cut the rock without +shivering; and the coldness of death steals, over Roland. He stretches +himself upon a hillock looking towards Spain, and prays for the +forgiveness of his sins; then, with Durendal and his ivory horn by his +side, he stretches out the glove of his right hand to God. "He has +stretched forth to God the glove of his right hand; St. Gabriel has +received it... Then his head has sunk on his arm; he has gone, with +clasped hands, to his end. God sends him one of his cherubim and St. +Michael of Peril. St. Gabriel has come with them. They carry the soul of +the Count: up to paradise." + +More solitary, and solemn and sad even, is the end of the other hero, of +the great rebel Renaud of Montauban. At length, after a lifetime wasted +in fruitless, attempts to resist the iniquity of the emperor, to baffle +his power, to shame him by magnanimity into, justice, the four sons of +Aymon, who have given up their youth, their manhood, the dearest things +to their heart, respect to their father and loyalty to their sovereign, +rather than countenance the injustice of Charlemagne to their kinsman, +have at last obtained to be pardoned; to be pardoned, they, heroes, by +this, dastardly tyrant, and to quietly sink, broken-hearted into +nothingness. The eldest, Renaud, returning from his exile and the Holy +Land, finds that his wife Clarisse has pined for him and died; and +then, putting away his armour from him, and dressing in a pilgrim's +frock made of the purple serge of the dead lady's robe, he goes forth to +wander through the world; not very old in years, but broken-spirited; at +peace, but in solitude of heart. And one evening he arrives at Cologne. +We can imagine the old knight, only half aware of the sunshine of the +evening, the noise of the streets, the looks of the crowd, the great +minster rising half-finished in the midst of the town by the Rhine, the +cries and noise and chipping of the masons; unconscious of all this, +half away: with his brothers hiding in the Ardennes, living on roots and +berries, at bay before Charlemagne; or wandering ragged and famishing +through France; with King Yon brilliant at Toulouse, seeing perhaps for +the first time his bride Clarisse, or the towers of Montauban rising +under the workmen's hands; thinking perhaps of the frightful siege, when +all, all had been eaten in the fortress, and his children Aymonnet and +Yonnet, all thin and white, knelt down and begged him to slaughter his +horse Bayard that they might eat; perhaps of that journey, when he and +his brothers, all in red-furred robes with roses in their hands, rode +prisoners of King Charles across the plain of Vaucouleurs; perhaps of +when he galloped up to the gallows at Montfaucon, and cut loose his +brother Richard; or of that daring ride to Paris, where he and his horse +won the race, snatched the prize from before Charlemagne and sped off +crying out that the winner was Renaud of Montauban; or, perhaps, seeing +once more the sad, sweet face of the Lady Clarisse, when she had burned +all her precious stuffs and tires in the castle-yard, and lay dead +without him to kiss her cold mouth; of seeing once more his good horse +Bayard, when he kissed him in his stall before giving him to be killed +by Charlemagne. Thinking of all that past, seeing it all within his +mind, and seeing but little of the present; as, in the low yellow light, +he helped, for his bread, the workmen to heave the great beams, to carry +the great stones of the cathedral, to split the huge marble masses while +they stared in astonished envy; as he sat, unconscious of their +mutterings, eating his dry bread and porridge in the building docks by +the river. And then, when wearied, he had sunk to sleep in the hay-loft, +dreaming perchance that all this evil life was but a dream and the +awakening therefrom to happiness and strength; the jealous workmen came +and killed him with their base tools, and cast him into the Rhine. They +say that the huge body floated on the water, surrounded by a great halo; +and that when the men of the banks, seeing this, reverently fished it +out, they found that the noble corpse was untouched by decay, and still +surrounded by a light of glory. And thus, it seems to me, this Renaud, +this rebel baron of whose reality we know nothing, has floated +surrounded by a halo of poetry down the black flood of the Middle Ages +(in which so much has sunk); and when we look upon his face, and see +its beauty and strength and solemness, we feel, like the people of the +Rhine bank, inclined to weep, and to say of this mysterious corpse, +"Surely this is some great saint." + +Of each of these heroes thus shown us by the Middle Ages, the Italian +Renaissance also, by the hand of two of her greatest poets, has given us +a picture. And first, of Roland. Of him, of Count Orlando, we are told +by Messer Lodovico Ariosto, that in consequence of his having +discovered, in a certain pleasant grotto among the ferns and maidenhair, +words graven on the rock (interrupted, doubtless, by the lover's kisses) +which revealed that the Princess Angelica of Cathay had disdained him +for Medoro, the fair-haired page of the King of the Moors; Count Orlando +went straightway out of his mind, and hanging up his armour and +stripping off his clothes, galloped about on his bare-backed horse, +slaughtering cows and sheep instead of Saracens; until it pleased God, +moved by the danger of Christendom and the prayers of Charlemagne, to +permit Astolfo to ride on the hippogriffs back up to the moon, and bring +back thence the wits of the great paladin contained in a small phial. We +all know that merry tale. What the Renaissance has to say of Renaud of +Montauban is even stranger and more fantastic. One day, says Matteo +Boiardo, in the fifteenth canto of the second part of his "Orlando +Innamorato," as Rinaldo of Montalbano, the contemner of love, was riding +in the Ardennes, he came to a clearing in the forest, where, close to +the fountain of Merlin, a wonderful sight met his eyes. On a flowery +meadow were dancing three naked damsels, and singing with them danced +also a naked youth, dark of eyes and fair of hair, the first down on his +lips, so that some might have said it was and others that it was not +there. On Rinaldo's approach they broke through their singing and +dancing, and rushed upon him, pelting him with roses and hyacinths and +violets from their baskets, and beating him with great sheaves of +lilies, which burnt like flames through the plates of his armour to the +very marrow of his bones. Then when they had dragged him, tied with +garlands, by the feet round and round the meadow; wings, eyed not with +the eyes of a peacock but with the eyes of lovely damsels, suddenly +sprouted out of their shoulders, and they flew off, leaving the poor +baron, bruised on the grass, to meditate upon the vanity of all future +resistance to love. + +Such are the things which the Middle Ages and the Renaissance found to +tell us of the two great heroes of Carolingian poetry. And the +explanation of how it came to pass, that for the Roland of the song of +Roncevaux was substituted the Orlando of Ariosto, and for the Renaud of +"The Quatre Fils Aymon" the Rinaldo of Matteo Boiardo--means simply that +which I desire here to study: the metamorphoses of mediaeval romance +stuffs, and, more especially, the vicissitudes of the cycle of +Charlemagne. + + + + +II. + + +We are apt to think of the Middle Ages as if they were the +companion-piece to Antiquity; but no such ideal correspondence exists +between the two periods. Antiquity is all of a piece, and the Middle +Ages, on the contrary, are heterogeneous and chaotic. For Antiquity is +the steady and uniform development of civilization in one direction and +with one meaning; there are great differences between its various +epochs, but they are as the differences between the budding, the +blossoming, and the fading stages of one plant: life varies, but is one. +The Middle Ages, on the other hand, are a series of false starts, of +interruptions and of new departures; a perpetual confusion. For, if we +think over them, we shall see that these centuries called mediaeval are +occupied by the effort of one people, or one generation, to put to +rights and settle down among as much as it can save of the civilization +of Antiquity. And the sudden overwhelming of this people or this +generation by another, which puts all the elaborate arrangements into +disarray, adds to the ruins of Antiquity the ruins of more recent times; +and then this destroying generation tries to put things straight, to +settle down, and is in its turn interrupted by the advent of some new +comer who begins the game afresh. + +As it is with peoples, so also is it with ideas; scarcely has a scheme +of life or of philosophy or of art taken shape and consistence before, +from out of the inexhaustible chaos of mediaeval thought and feeling, +there issue new necessities, new aspirations, which put into confusion +all previous ones. The Middle Ages were like some financial crisis: a +little time, a little credit, money will fructify, wealth will reappear, +the difficult moment will be tided over; and so with civilization. But +unfortunately the wealth of ideas began to accumulate in the storehouse +only just long enough to bring down a rout of creditors, people who +rifled the bank, and went home to consume or invest their money in order +to be succeeded by others. Hence, in the matter of civilization, the +Middle Ages ended in an extraordinary slow ruin, a bankruptcy like that +which overtook France before '89, and from which, as France was restored +by the bold seizure and breaking up of property of the revolution, the +world was restored by the bold breaking of feudal and spiritual +mortmain, the restoring of wasted energies to utility, of that great +double revolution, the Renaissance and the Reformation. Be this as it +may, mankind throughout the Middle Ages appears to have been in a +chronic condition of packing up and unpacking, and packing up again; one +after another a nation, a race, a philosophy, a political system came to +the front and was pushed back again into limbo: Germans and Kelts and +Latins, French civilization of the day of Abelard, Provencal +civilization of the days of the Raymonds, brilliant and evanescent +Hohenstauffen supremacy, papacy at Canossa and at Avignon, Templars +triumphant and Templars persecuted; scholasticism, mysticism, feudalism, +democracy, communism: influences all these perpetually rising up and +being trodden down, till they all rotted away in the great stagnation of +the fifteenth century; and only in one part of the world, where the +conflict was more speedily ended, where one set of tendencies early +triumphed, where stability was temporarily obtained, in Italy alone did +civilization continue to be nurtured and developed for the benefit of +all mankind. In such a state of affairs only such things could flourish +and mature as were safe from what I have called, for want of a better +expression, the perpetual unpacking and repacking, the perpetual being +on the move, of the Middle Ages; and among such things foremost was art, +the essential art of the times, architecture, which, belonging to the +small towns, to the infinite minority of the democracy, who worked and +made money and let the great changes pass over their heads, thrived +almost as something too insignificant for notice. But it was different +with literature. Cathedrals once built cannot so easily be changed; new +peoples, new ideas, must accept them. But poetry--the thing which every +nation insists upon having to suit its own taste, the thing which every +nation and every generation carries about with it hither and thither, +the thing which can be altered to suit every passing whim--poetry was, +of all the fluctuating things of the Middle Ages, perhaps the most +fluctuating. And fluctuating also because, as none of these various +nations, tendencies, aspirations, dominated sufficiently long to produce +any highly organized art, there remained no standard works, nothing +recognizedly perfect, which would be kept for its perfection and gather +round it imitations, so as to form the nucleus of any homogeneous +tradition. The Middle Ages, so full of fashions in literary matters, +possessed no classics; the minnesingers knew nothing of the stern old +Teutonic war songs; the meistersaengers had forgotten the minnesingers; +the trouveres and troubadours knew nothing of "The Chanson de Roland," +and Villon knew nothing of them; only in Italy, where the Middle Ages +came to an end and the Renaissance began with the Lombard league, was +there established a tradition of excellence, with men like Dante, +Petrarch, and Boccaccio, handed down from generation to generation; even +as, while in the north there came about the strange modification which +substituted the French of Rabelais for the French of Chrestien de +Troyes, the German of Luther for the German of Wolfram von Eschenbach, +the Italian language, from Ciullo d'Alcamo almost to Boiardo and Lorenzo +dei Medici, remained virtually identical. The result of this, which I +may call the heterogeneousness and instability of the Middle Ages was +that not merely literary forms were for ever arising and being +superseded, but literary subject matter was continually undergoing a +process of transformation. While in Antiquity the great epic and tragic +stuffs remained well-nigh unaltered, and the stories of Valerius Flaccus +and Apollonius Rhodius were merely the stories which had been current +since the days of Homer, during the course of the Middle Ages every epic +cycle, and every tale belonging thereunto, was gradually adulterated, +mingled with, swamped by, some other cycle or tale; nay, rather, every +other, cycle and every other tale, the older ones trying to save their +popularity by admixture with the more recent, till at last all mythical +significance, all historical meaning, all national character, all +psychological reality, were lost in the chaotic result. And meanwhile, +in the absence of any stable language, of any durable literary fashion, +the Middle Ages were unable to give to these epic stuffs, at any one +period of their life of metamorphose, a form sufficiently artistically +valuable to secure anything beyond momentary vogue, to secure for them +the immortality of the great Greek tales of adventure and warfare and +love. Thus it came about that the epic cycle of Charlemagne, after +supplanting in men's minds the grand sagas of the pagan North, was +itself supplanted by the Arthurian cycle; that the Frankish stories +absorbed the wholly discrepant elements of their more fortunate Keltic +rivals; that both cycles, having lost all character through fusion and +through obliteration by time, became more meaningless generation by +generation and year by year, until when the Middle Ages had come to an +end, and the great poets of the Renaissance were ready to give this old +mediaeval epic stuff a definitive and durable artistic shape, there came +to the hands of Boiardo and Ariosto, of Tasso and Spenser, only a +strange, trumpery material, muddled by jongleurs and romance writers, +and reduced to mere fairy stuff, taken seriously only by Don Quixote, +and by the authors of the volumes of insane twaddle called after Amadis +of Gaul and all his kinsmen. + +Such a condition of perpetual change as explains, in my belief, why the +mediaeval epic subjects were wanted, can be made clear only by examples. +I shall therefore try to show the transformations which were undergone +by one or two principal mediaeval epic subjects as a result of a mixture +with other epic cycles; of a gradual adaptation to a new state of +civilization; and finally of their gradual separation from all kind of +reality and real interests. + +First of all, let us look at the epic cycle, which, although known to us +only in poems no older than those of the trouveres and minnesingers who +sang of Charlemagne and Arthur, is in reality far more ancient, and on +account of its antiquity and its consequent disconnection with mediaeval +religious and political interests, was thrown aside even by the nations +to which it belonged, by the Scandinavians who took to writing sagas +about the wars of Charlemagne against Saracens, and by the Germans who +preferred to hear the adventures of Welsh and Briton, Launcelots and +Tristrams. I am alluding to the stories connected with the family and +life of the hero called Sigurd by the Scandinavians, and Siegfried by +the Germans. Of these we possess a Norse version called the Volsunga +Saga, magnificently done into English by Mr. William Morris; which, +although written down at the end of the twelfth century, in the very +time therefore of Chrestien de Troyes, Wolfram von Eschenbach, and +Gottfried von Strassburg, and subsequently to the presumed writing of +"The Chanson de Roland" and the Nibelungenlied, shows us in reality the +product of a people, the distant Scandinavians of Iceland, who were five +or six hundred years behind the French, Germans, and English of the +twelfth century. In the Volsunga Saga, neither Christianity nor +feudalism is yet dreamed of; and it is for this reason that I wish to +compare it with the Nibelungenlied, in order to show how enormously the +old epic stuff was altered by the new civilization. The whole social and +moral condition of the two versions is different. In the old +Scandinavian civilization, where the Viking is surrounded and served by +clansmen, the feeling of blood relationship is the strongest in people's +hearts; strangely and fearfully shown in the introductory tale of Signy, +who, in order to avenge her father Volsung, killed by her husband, +murders her children by the latter, and then, altered in face by magic +arts, goes forth to the woods to her brother Sigmund, that, +un-wittingly, he may beget with her the only man fit to avenge the +Volsungs. And then she sends the boy Sinfjotli to the man he has +hitherto considered merely as his uncle, bidding the latter kill him if +he prove unworthy of his incestuous birth, or train him to vengeance. +The three together murder the husband and legitimate children of Signy, +and set the palace on fire; which, being done, the queen, having +accomplished her duty to her kin, accomplishes that towards her husband, +and calmly returns to die in the burning hall. Here (and apparently +again in the case of the children of Sigurd and Brynhilt) incest becomes +a family virtue. This being the frightful preponderance of the feeling +of blood relationship, it is quite natural that the Scandinavian +Chriemhilt (called in the Volsunga Saga, Gudrun) should not resent the +murder of her husband Siegfried or Sigurd by her brothers at the +instigation of the jealous Brynhilt (who has in a manner been Sigurd's +wife before he made her over to Chriemhilt's eldest brother); and that, +so far from seeking any revenge against them, she should, when her second +husband Atli sends for her brothers in order to rob and murder them, +first vainly warn them of the plot, and then, when they have been +massacred, kill Atli and her children by him in order to avenge her +brothers. The slackening of the tribal feeling, the idea of fidelity in +love and sanctity of marriage belonging to Christianity and feudalism, +rendered such a story unintelligible to the Germans of the Othos and +Henrys. In the Nibelungenlied, the whole story of the massacre of the +brothers is changed. Chriemhilt never forgives the murder of Siegfried, +and it is not Etzel--Atli for the sake of plunder, but she herself for +the sake of revenge, who decoys her brothers and murders them; it is she +who with her own hand cuts off the head of Gunther to expiate his murder +of Siegfried. To our feelings, more akin to those of the feudal +Christians of Franconia than to those of the tribal Scandinavians of the +Edda, the second version is far more intelligible and interesting--the +story of this once gentle and loving Chriemhilt, turned by the murder of +her beloved into a fury, and plotting to avenge his death by the death +of all his kinsfolk, must be much grander and more pathetic than the +story of this strange Gudrun, who sits down patiently beneath the injury +done to her by her brothers, but savagely avenges them on her new +husband, and her own and his innocent children; to us this persistence +of tribal feeling, destroying all indignation and love, is merely +unnatural, confusing, and repulsive. But this alteration for the better +in one of the incidents of the tale is a mere fluke; and the whole main +plot of the originally central figures are completely obliterated by the +new state of civilization, and rendered merely trivial and grotesque. In +the Volsunga Saga Sigurd, overcome by enchantments, has forgotten his +wife (or mistress, a vague mythical relationship); and, with all sense +of the past obliterated, has made her over to the brother of his new +wife Gudrun; and Brynhilt kills her faithless love to dissolve the +second marriage and be reunited with him in death. In the Nibelungenlied +Siegfried, although the flower of knighthood, conquers by foul play the +Amazon Brunhilt to reward Gunther for the hand of his sister; nay, in a +comic and loathsome scene he forces her into the embraces of the craven +Gunther; and then he gets killed by Brunhilt's machinations; when, after +most unqueenly bickerings, the proud Amazon is brutally told by +Siegfried's wife of the dirty trick which has given her to Gunther. +After this, it is impossible to realize, when Siegfried is murdered and +all our sympathies called on to his side, the utterly out-of-character, +blackguardly behaviour which has brought the hero to his death. +Similarly the conception of the character and position of Brynhilt is +entirely disfigured and rendered inane in the Nibelungenlied: of that +superb demi-goddess of the Scandinavians, burnt on the pyre with her +falcons and dogs and horses and slaves, by the side of the demi-god +Sigurd, whom she has loved and killed, lest the door of Valhalla, +swinging after him, should shut her out from his presence; of her there +remains in the German mediaeval poem only a virago (more like the +giantesses of the Amadis romances) enraged at having been defeated and +grotesquely and grossly pummelled into wedlock by a man not her husband, +and then slanged like a fishwife by her envious sister-in-law. + +The old, consistent, grandly tragic tale of the mysterious incests and +revenges of a race of demi-gods has lost its sense, its point in the +attempt to arrange it to suit Christian and feudal ideas. The really +fine portions of the Nibelungenlied are exactly those which have no real +connection with the original story, gratuitous additions by mediaeval +poets. The delicately indicated falling in love of Siegfried and +Chriemhilt, the struggles of Markgraf Ruedger between obedience to his +feudal superior and fidelity towards his friends and guests; and, above +all, the canto of the death of Siegfried. This last is different, +intensely different, from the rugged and dreary monotony of the rest; +this most poetical, almost Spenserian or Ariostesque realization of the +scene; this beautiful picture (though worked with the needle of the +arras-worker rather than with pencil or brush) of the wood, the hunt, +the solitary fountain in the Odenwald, where, with his spear leaned +against the lime-tree, Siegfried was struck down into the clover and +flowers, and writhed with Hagen's steel through his back. This canto is +certainly interpolated by some first-rate poet, at least a Gottfried or +a Walther, to whom that passage of the savage old droning song of death +had suggested a piece of new art; it is like the fragments of +exquisitely chiselled leafage and figures which you sometimes find +encrusted--by whom? wherefore?--quite isolated in the midst of the rough +and lichen-stained stones of some rude Lombard church. All the rest of +the Nibelungenlied gives an impression of effeteness; there is no +definiteness of idea such as that of the Volsunga Saga; the battles are +mere vague slaughter, no action, no realized movement, or (excepting +Ruedger) no realized motive of conduct. Shape and colour would seem to +have been obliterated by repetition and alteration. Yet even these +alterations could not make the tale of Siegfried survive among the +Germans of the Middle Ages; nay, the more the alterations the less the +interest; the want of consistency and colour due to rearrangement merely +accelerated the throwing aside of a subject which, dating from pagan and +tribal times, had become repugnant to the new generations. All the +mutilations in the world could not make the old Scandinavian tales of +betrayed trust, of revenge and triumphant bloodshed, at all sympathetic +to men whose religious and social ideals were those of forgiveness and +fidelity; even stripped of its incestuous mysteries and of its fearful +tribal love, the tale of Sigurd and Brynhilt, reduced to the tale of +Chriemhilt's revenge, was unpalatable: no more attempts were made at +re-writing it, and the poems of Walther, of Gottfried, of Wolfram, of +Ulrich, and of Tannhaeuser, full as they are of references to stories of +the Carolingian and Arthurian cycles, nay, to Antique and Oriental +tales, contain no allusion to the personages of the Nibelungenlied. The +old epic of the Gothic races had been pushed aside by the triumphant +epic of the obscure and conquered Kelts. + +There are few phenomena in the history of ideas and forms more singular +than that of the sudden conquest of the poetry of dominant or distant +nations by the poetic subjects of a comparatively small race, sheared of +all political importance, restricted to a trifling territory, and +well-nigh deprived of their language; and of this there can be found no +more striking example than the sudden ousting of the Carolingian epic by +the cycle of Arthur. + +The Kelts of Britain and Ireland possessed an epic cycle of their own, +which came to notice only when they were dispossessed of their last +strongholds by Saxons and Normans, and which immediately spread with +astounding rapidity all over Europe. The vanquished race became +fashionable; themselves, their art and their poetry, began to be sought +for as a precious and war-enhanced loot. The heroic tales of the Kelts +were transcribed in Welsh, and translated into Latin, by order of the +Norman and Angevine kings, glad, it would seem, to oppose the Old Briton +to the Saxon element. The Keltic songs were carried all over France by +Breton bards, to whose music and rhymes, with only a general idea of the +subjects, the neo-Latin-speaking Franks listened with the sort of stolid +satisfaction with which English or Germans of a hundred years ago +listened to Italians singing Metastasio's verses. But soon the songs and +tales were translated; and French poets imitated in their language, +northern and southern, the graceful metres of the Keltic lays, and +altered and arranged their subjects. So that, in a very short time, +France, and through it Germany, was inundated with Keltic stories. This +triumph of the vanquished race was not without reason. The Kelts, early +civilized by Rome and Christianity, had a set of stories and a set of +heroes extremely in accordance with mediaeval ideas, and requiring but +very little alteration. The considerable age of their civilization had +long obliterated all traces of pagan and tribal feeling in their tales. +Their heroes, originally, like those of all other people, divinities +intimately connected with natural phenomena, had long lost all cosmic +characteristics, long ceased to be gods, and, manipulated by the fancy +of a race whose greatness was quite a thing of the past, had become a +sort of golden age ideals--the men of a distant period of glory, which +was adorned with every kind of perfection, till it became as unreal as +fairyland. Fairyland, in good sooth, was this country of the Keltic +tales; and there is a sort of symbolical significance in the fact of its +lawgiver Merlin, and its emperor Arthur, being both of them not dead, +like Sigurd, like Dietrich, like Charlemagne and Roland, but lying in +enchanted sleep. Long inaction and the day-dreaming of idleness had +refined and idealized the heroes of this Keltic race--a race of +brilliant fancy and almost southern mobility, and softened for a long +time by contact with Roman colonists and Christian priests. They were +not the brutal combatants of an active fighting age, like the heroes of +the Edda and of the Carolingian cycles; nor had they any particular +military work to do, belonging as they did to a people huddled away into +inactivity. Their sole occupation was to extend abroad that ideal +happiness which reigned in the ideal court of Arthur; to go forth on the +loose and see what ill-conditioned folk there might yet be who required +being subdued or taught manners in the happy kingdom, which the poor +insignificant Kelts connected with some princelet of theirs who +centuries before may have momentarily repelled the pagan Saxons. Hence +in the Keltic stories, such as they exist in the versions previous to +the conquest by the Norman kings, and previous also to any +communications with other peoples, the distinct beginning of what was +later to be called knight-errantry; of heroes, creations of an inactive +nation, having no special military duties, going forth to do what good +they may at random, unforced by any necessity, and following a mere +aesthetico-romantic plan of perfecting themselves by deeds of valour to +become more worthy of their God, their King, and their Lady: religion, +loyalty, and love, all three of them mere aesthetic abstractions, +becoming the goal of an essentially aesthetic, unpractical system of +self-improvement, such as was utterly incompatible with any real and +serious business in life. Idle poetic fancies of an inert people, the +Knights of the Round Table have no mission save that of being +poetically perfect. Such was the spirit of Keltic poetry; and, as it +happened, this spirit satisfied the imaginative wants of mediaeval +society just at the moment when political events diffused in other +countries the knowledge of the Arthurian legends. The old Teutonic tales +of Sigurd, Gudrun, and Dietrich, had long ceased to appeal, in their +mutilated and obliterated condition, to a society to whom tribal feeling +and pagan heroism were odious, and whose religion distinctly reproved +revenge. These semi-mythological tales had been replaced by another +cycle: the purely realistic epic, which had arisen during the struggles +between the Christian west against the pagan north-east and the +Mohammedan south, and which, originating in the short battle-songs +narrating the exploits of the predecessors and help-mates of +Charlemagne, had constituted itself into large narratives of which the +"Song of Roland" represents artistic culmination. These narratives of +mere military exploits, of the battles of a strong feudal aristocracy +animated by feudal loyalty and half-religious, half-patriotic fury +against invading heathenness, had perfectly satisfied the men of the +earliest Middle Ages, of the times when feudalism was being established +and the church being reformed; when the strong military princelets of +the North were embarking with their barons to conquer new kingdoms in +England and in Italy and Greece; when the whole of feudal Europe hurled +itself against Asia in the first Crusades. But the condition of things +soon altered: the feudal hierarchy was broken up into a number of +semi-independent little kingdoms or principalities, struggling, with the +assistance of industrial and mercantile classes, to become absolute +monarchies; princes who had been mere generals became stay-at-home +diplomatists, studious of taxation and intrigue, surrounded no longer by +armed vassals, but by an essentially urban court, in constant +communication with the money-making burghers. Religion, also, instead of +being a matter of fighting with infidel invaders, turned to fantastic +sectarianism and emotional mysticism. With the sense of futility, of +disappointment, attendant on the later Crusades, came also a habit of +roaming in strange countries, of isolated adventure in search of wealth +or information, a love of the distant, the half-understood, the +equivocal; perhaps even a hankering after a mysterious compromise +between the religion of Europe and the religions of the East, such as +appears to have existed among the Templars and other Franks settled in +Asia. + +There was, throughout feudal society, a sort of enervated languor, a +morbid longing for something new, now that the old had ceased to be +possible or had proved futile; after the great excitement of the +Crusades it was impossible to be either sedately idle or quietly active, +even as it is with all of us during the days of weariness and +restlessness after some long journey. To such a society the strongly +realistic Carolingian epic had ceased to appeal: the tales of the Welsh +and Breton bards, repeated by trouvere and jongleur, troubadour and +minnesinger, came as a revelation. The fatigued, disappointed, morbid, +imaginative society of the later Crusades recognized in this fairyland +epic of a long refined, long idle, nay, effete race, the realization of +their own ideal: of activity unhampered by aim or organization, of +sentiment and emotion and action quite useless and unnecessary, purely +subservient to imaginative gratification. These Arthurs, Launcelots, +Tristrams, Kays, and Gawains, fantastic phantoms, were also far more +artistically malleable than the iron Rolands, Olivers, and Renauds of +earlier days; that unknown kingdom of Britain could much more easily be +made the impossible ideal, in longing for which squeamish and lazy minds +might refuse all coarser reality. Moreover, those who listened to the +tales of chivalry were different from those who had listened to the +Carolingian stories; and, therefore, required something different. They +were courtiers, and one half of them were women. Now the Carolingian +tales, originally battle-songs, sung in camps and castles to mere +soldiers, had at first possessed no female characters at all; and when +gradually they were introduced, it was in the coarsest barrack or +tap-room style. The Keltic tales, on the contrary, whether from national +tradition, or rather from longer familiarity with Christian culture and +greater idleness of life, naturally made women and women's love the +goal of a great many adventures which an effete nation could no longer +ascribe to patriotic movements. But this was not all. The religious +feeling of the day was extremely inclined to mysticism, in which +aesthetic, erotic, and all kinds of morbid and ill-defined tendencies +were united, which was more than anything else tinged with a +semi-Asiatic quietism, a longing for the passive ecstasy of Nirvana. +This religious side of mediaeval life was also gratified by the Arthurian +romances. Oddly enough, there existed an old Welsh or Breton tale about +the boy Peredur, who from a complete simpleton became the prince of +chivalry, and his many adventures connected with a certain mysterious +blood-dripping lance, and a still more mysterious basin or _grail_ (an +allusion to which is said by M. de la Villemarque to be contained in the +originally Keltic name of Percival), which possessed magic properties +akin to those of the purse of Fortunatus, or the pipkin in the story of +"Little pot, boil!" The story, whose original mythical meaning had been +lost in the several centuries of Christianity, was very decayed and +obscure; and the fact of the blood on the lance being that of a murdered +kinsman of Peredur, and of the basin containing the head of the same +person cut off by Gloucester witches, was evidently insufficient to +account for all the mystery with which these objects were surrounded. +The French poets of the Middle Ages, strongly imbued with Oriental +legends brought back by the Crusaders, saw at a glance the meaning of +the whole story: the lance was the lance with which Longinus had pierced +the Saviour's side; the Grail was the cup which had received His blood, +nay, it was the cup of the Last Supper. A tale about the preservation of +these precious relics by Joseph of Arimathaea, was immediately connected +therewith; a theory was set up (doubtless with the aid of quite +unchristian, Oriental legends) of a kind of kingdom of the keepers of +the Grail, of a vague half-material, half-spiritual state of bliss +connected with the service of the Grail, which fed its knights (and here +the Templars and their semi-oriental mysteries, for which they were +later so frightfully misused, certainly come into play) with food which +is at once of the body and of the soul. Thus the Keltic Peredur, bent +upon massacring the Gloucester witches to avenge his uncle, was turned +into a saintly knight, seeking throughout a more and more perfect life +for the kingdom of the Grail: the Perceval of Chrestien de Troyes, the +Parzifal of Wolfram von Eschenbach, whom later romance writers (wishing +to connect everything more closely with Arthur's court) replaced by the +Sir Galahad of the "Morte d'Arthur," while the guest of the Grail became +a sort of general mission of several knights, a sort of spiritual +crusade to whose successful champions Percival, Bors, and Galahad, the +Middle Ages did not hesitate to add the arch-adulterer Launcelot. + +Thus did the Arthurian tales answer the requirements of the languid, +dreamy, courtly, lady-serving and religiously mystic sons and grandsons +of those earlier Crusaders whose aspirations had been expressed by the +rough and solemn heroes of Carolingian tales. The Carolingian tales were +thrown aside, or were kept by the noble mediaeval poets only on condition +of their original meaning being completely defaced by wholesale +admixture of the manners and adventures belonging to the Arthurian +cycles. The paladins were forced to disport themselves in the same +fairyland as the Knights of the Round Table; and many mediaeval poems the +heroes of which, like Ogier of Denmark and Huon of Bordeaux, already +existed in the Carolingian tales, are in reality, with their romantic +loves, their useless adventures, their Morgana's castles and Oberon's +horns, offshoots of the Keltic stories, which were as rich in every kind +of supernatural (being, in fact, pagan myths turned into fairy tales) as +the genuine Carolingian subjects, whose origin was entirely historical, +were completely devoid of such things. Arthur and his ladies and +knights: Guenevere, Elaine, Enid, Yseult, Launcelot, Geraint, Kay, +Gawain, Tristram, and Percival-Galahad, were the real heroes and +heroines of the courtly nobles and the courtly poets of this second +phase of mediaeval life. The Teuton Charlemagne, Roland and Oliver were +as completely forgotten of the poets who met in that memorable combat of +the Wartburg, as were the Teuton Sigurd and Dietrich. And if the +Carolingian cycle survived, however much altered, I think it must have +been thanks to the burghers and artizans of the Netherlands and of +Provence, to whom the bluff, matter-of-fact heroism, the simple, gross, +but not illegitimate amours of Carolingian heroes, were more +satisfactory than any mystic quest of the Grail, any refined adultery of +Guenevere or Yseult. + +But the inevitable fate of all mediaeval epics awaited this triumphant +Arthurian cycle: the fate of being obliterated by passing from one +nation and civilization to another, long before the existence of any +poetic art adequate to its treatment. Of this I will take as an example +one of the mediaeval poems which has the greatest reputation the +masterpiece (according to most critics, with whom I find it difficult, +in the presence of a poet like Gottfried von Strassburg, to agree) of +probably the most really poetical and earnest school of poetry which the +pre-Dantesque Middle Ages possessed--the "Parzifal" of Wolfram von +Eschenbach. + +The paramount impression (I cannot say the strongest, for strong +impressions are incompatible with such work as this) left by the +masterpiece of Wolfram von Eschenbach, is that of the most astonishing +vagueness, fluidity, haziness, vaporousness. In reading it one looks +back to that rudely hewn and extremely obliterated Nibelungenlied, as to +something quite astonishingly clear, detailed and strongly marked as to +something distinctly artistic. Indeed by the side of "Parzifal" +everything seems artistic; Hartmann von Aue reads like Chaucer, +"Aucassin et Nicolette" is as living as "Cymbeline," "Chevy Chase" seems +as good as the battles of Homer. It is not a narrative, but a vague +mooning; a knight illiterate, not merely like his fellow minnesingers, +in the way of reading and writing, but in the sense of complete absence +of all habit of literary form; extremely noble and pure of mind, chaste, +gentle, with a funny, puzzled sense of humour, reminding one distantly +of Jean Paul in his drowsy moments; a hanger-on of courts, but perfectly +simple-hearted and childlike; very poor and easily pleased: such is, for +good and for bad, Herr Wolfram von Eschenbach, the only real personality +in his poem. And he narrates, in a mooning, digressive, good-natured, +drowsy tone, with only a rare awaking of interest, a story which he has +heard from some one else, and that some one else from a series of other +some one elses (Chrestien de Troyes, a legendary Provencal Chiot or +Guyot, perhaps even the original Welsh bard); all muddled, monotonous, +and droning; events and persons ill-defined, without any sense of the +relative importance of anything, without clear perception of what it is +all about, or at least without the power of keeping the matter straight +before the reader. A story, in point of fact, which is no story at all, +but a mere series of rambling adventures (adventures which are scarcely +adventures, having no point or plot) of various people with not much +connection and no individuality--Gachmuret, Parzifal, Gawain, +Loherangrein, Anfortas, Feirefis--pale ghosts of beings, moving in a +country of Kennaqwhere, Aquitaine, Anjou, Brittany, Wales, Spain, and +heaven knows what wondrous Oriental places; a misty country with woods +and towns and castles which are infinitely far apart and yet quite near +each other; which seem to sail about like cloud castles round the only +solid place in the book, Plimizoel, where Arthur's court, with round +table constantly spread, is for ever established. A no place, nowhere; +yet full of details; minute inventories of the splendid furniture of +castles (castles where? how reached?); infinitely inferior in this +matter even to the Nibelungenlied, where you are made to feel so vividly +(one of the few modern and therefore clear things therein) the long, +dreary road from Worms to Bechlarn, and thence to Etzelburg, though of +none of them is there anything beyond a name. For the Nibelungen story +had been localized in what to narrator and audience was a reality, the +country in which themselves lived, where themselves might seek out the +abbey in which Siegfried was buried, the well in the Odenwald near which +he was stabbed; where they knew from merchant and pilgrim the road taken +by the Nibelungs from Santen to Worms, by the Burgundians from Worms to +Hungary. But here in "Parzifal" we are in a mere vague world of +anywhere, the world of Keltic and Oriental romance become mere cloudland +to the Thuringian knight. And similarly have the heroes of other +nations, the Arthurs, Gawains, Gachmurets, of Wales and Anjou, become +mere vague names; they have become liquified, lost all shape and local +habitation. They are mere names, these ladies and knights of Herr +Wolfram, names with fair pink and white faces, names magnificently +draped in bejewelled Oriental stuffs and embossed armour; they have no +home, no work, nothing to do. This is the most remarkable characteristic +of "Parzifal," and what makes it so typical of the process of growing +inane through overmuch alteration, which prevented the mediaeval epics +ever turning into an Iliad or an Odyssey; this that it is essentially +idle and all about nothing. The feudal relations strongly marked in the +German Nibelungenlied have melted away like the distinctions of race: +every knight is independent, not a vassal nor a captain, a Volker or +Hagen, or Roland or Renaud followed by his men; but an isolated +individual, without even a squire, wandering about alone through this +hazy land of nowhere. Knight-errantry, in the time of the great Guelph +and Ghibelline struggles, every bit as ideal as that of Spenser or +Cervantes; and with the difference that Sir Calidore and Sir Artegal +have an appointed task, some Blatant Beast or other nuisance to +overcome; and that Don Quixote has the general rescuing of all the +oppressed Princesse Micomiconas, and the destruction of all windmills, +and the capturing of all helmets of Mambrino, and the establishing all +over the world of the worship of Dulcinea. But these knights of Wolfram +von Eschenbach have no more this mission than they have the +politico-military missions, missions of a Ruedger or a Roland. They are +all riding about at random, without any particular pagans, necromancers, +or dragons to pursue. The very service of the Holy Grail, which is the +main interest of the poem, consists in nothing apparently except living +virtuously at the Castle of Montselvaesche, and virtuously eating and +drinking the victuals provided miraculously. To be admitted to this +service, no initiation, no mission, nothing preliminary seems required. +Parzifal himself merely wanders about vaguely, without doing any +specified thing. The fact is that in this poem all has become purely +ideal; ideal to the point of utter vacuity: there is no connection with +any human business. Of all the heroes and heroines we hear that they are +perfectly chaste, truthful, upright; and they are never put into any +situation to test these qualities: they are never placed in the way of +temptation, never made to fight with evil, or to decide between it and +good. The very religion of the Holy Grail consists in doing nothing: not +a word about relieving the poor or oppressed, of tending the sick, of +delivering the Holy Sepulchre, of defending that great injured One, +Christ. To be Grail Knight or even Grail King means to be exactly the +same as before. Where in this vague dreamland of passive purity and +heroism, of untempted chastity and untried honour, where are the earthly +trials of Tristram, of Guenevere, of Ruedger, of Renaud? Where the moral +struggles of the Middle Ages? Where is Godfrey, or Francis, or Dominick? +Nowhere. All has disappeared, melted away; Christianity and Paganism +themselves have melted away or into each other, as in the easy meeting +of the Pagan Feirefis and the Christian Parzifal, and in the double +marriage of Gachmuret with the Indian Belakane and the Welsh Herzeloid; +there remains only a kind of Buddhistic Nirvana of vague passive +perfection, but without any renunciation; and in a world devoid of evil +and full of excellent brocade and armour and eatables, and lovely +maidens who dress and undress you, and chastely kiss you on the mouth; a +world without desire, aspiration, or combat, vacantly happy and +virtuous. A world purely ideal, divorced from all reality, unsubstantial +like the kingdom of Gloriana, but, unlike Spenser's, quite unshadowed by +any puritan sadness, by any sense of evil, untroubled by allegorical +vices; cheerful, serene, filled with flowers and song of birds, but as +unreal as the illuminated arabesques of a missal. In truth, perhaps more +to be compared with an eighteenth century pastoral, an ideal created +almost in opposition to reality; a dream of passiveness and liberty (as +of light leaves blown about) as the ideal of the fiercely troubled, +struggling, tightly fettered feudal world. The ideal, perhaps, of only +one moment, scarcely of a whole civilization; or rather (how express my +feeling?) an accidental combination of an instant, as of spectre vapour +arisen from the mixture of Kelt and Teuton, of Frank and Moslem. Is it +Christian, Pagan, Mohammedan? None of all these. A simple-looking +vaporous chaos of incongruous, but not conflicting, elements: a poem of +virtue without object, of knighthood without work, of religion without +belief; in this like its central interest, the Grail: a mystery, a cup, +a stone; a thing which heals, feeds, speaks; animate or inanimate? Stone +of the Caaba or chalice of the Sacrament? Merely a mysterious holy of +holies and good of goods, which does everything and nothings means +nothing and requires nothing--is nothing. + + + + +III. + + +Thus was obliterated, in all its national and traditional meaning, the +heroic cycle of Arthur; and by the same process of slow adaptation to +new intellectual requirements which had completely wiped out of men's +memory the heroic tales of Siegfried, which had entirely altered the +originally realistic character of the epic of Charlemagne. But unreal +and ideal as had become the tales of the Round Table, and disconnected +with any national tradition, the time came when even these were not +sufficiently independent of reality to satisfy the capricious +imagination of the later Middle Ages. At the end of the fourteenth +century was written, most probably in Portuguese by Vasco de Lobeira, +the tale of "Amadis de Gaula," which was followed by some forty or fifty +similar books telling the adventures of all the brothers, nephews, +sons, grandsons sons, and great-grandsons, an infinite succession, of +the original Amadis; which, translated into all languages and presently +multiplied by the press, seem to have usurped the place of the Arthurian +stories in feudal countries until well-nigh the middle of the sixteenth +century; and which were succeeded by no more stories of heroes, but by +the realistic comic novels of the type of "Lazarillo de Tormes," and the +buffoon philosophic extravaganzas of "Gargantua." Further indeed it was +impossible to go than did mediaeval idealism in the Amadises. Compared +with them the most fairy-tale-like Arthurian stories are perfect +historical documents. There remains no longer any connection whatsoever +with reality, historical or geographical: the whole world seems to have +been expeditiously emptied of all its contents, to make room for +kingdoms of Gaul, of Rome, of the Firm Island, of Sobradisa, etc., which +are less like the Land West of the Moon and East of the Sun than they +are like Sancho Panza's island. All real mankind, past, present, and +future, has similarly been swept away and replaced by a miraculous race +of Amadises, Lisvarts, Galaors, Gradasilias, Orianas, Pintiquinestras, +Fradalons, and so forth, who flit across our vision, in company with the +indispensable necromancers, fairies, dwarfs, giants, and duennas, like +some huge ballet: things without character, passions, pathos; knights +who are never wounded or killed, princesses who always end with +marrying the right man, enchanters whose heads are always chopped off, +foundlings who are always reinstated in their kingdom, inane paper +puppets bespangled with impossible sentiment, tinsel and rags which are +driven about like chaff by the wind-puffs of romance. The advent of the +Amadises is the coming of the Kingdom of Nonsense, the sign that the +last days of chivalric romance have come; a little more, and the +Licentiate Alonzo Perez will take his seat in Don Quixote's library, and +Nicholas the Barber light his faggots in the yard. + +But, as if in compensation of the usurpation of which they had been the +victims, the Carolingian tales, pushed out of the way by the Arthurian +cycle, were not destined to perish. Thrown aside with contempt by the +upper classes, engrossed with the Round Table and the Holy Grail, the +tales of Charlemagne and his paladins, largely adulterated with +Arthurian elements, were apparently cherished by a lower class of +society: burgesses, artizans, and such-like, for whom that Arthurian +world was far too etherial and too delicately immoral; and to this +circumstance is due the fact that the humiliated Carolingian tales +eventually received an artistic embodiment which was not given to the +Arthurian stories. While troubadours and minnesingers were busy with the +court of Arthur, and grave Latinists like Rusticiano of Pisa wrote of +Launcelot and Guenevere; the Carolingian epics seem to have been mainly +sung about by illiterate jongleurs, and to have busied the pens of +prose hackwriters for the benefit of townsfolk. The free towns of the +Netherlands and of Germany appear to have been full of this +unfashionable literature: the Carolingian cycle had become democratic. +And, inasmuch as it was literature no longer for knights and courtiers, +but for artizans and shopkeepers, it went, of course, to the +pre-eminently democratic country of the Middle Ages--Italy. This was at +a time when Italian was not yet a recognized language, and when the men +and women who talked in Tuscan, Lombard, or Venetian dialects, wrote in +Latin and in French; and while Francesca and Paolo read the story of +Launcelot most probably in good mediaeval _langue d'oil_, as befitted +people of high birth; the jongleurs, who collected crowds so large as to +bar the streets and require the interference of the Bolognese +magistrates, sang of Roland and Oliver in a sort of _lingua Franca_ of +French Lombard. French jongleurs singing in impossible French-Italian; +Italian jongleurs singing in impossible French; Paduan penny-a-liners +writing Carolingian cyclical novels in French, not of Paris, assuredly, +but of Padua--a comical and most hideous jabber of hybrid +languages--this was how the Carolingian stories became popular in Italy. +Meanwhile, the day came when the romantic Arthurian tales had to +dislodge in Italy before the invasion of the classic epic. Troy, Rome, +and Thebes had replaced Tintagil and Caerleon in the interest of the +cultured classes long before the beginning of the fifteenth century; +when Poggio, in the very midst of the classic revival, still told of the +comically engrossed audience which surrounded the vagabonds singing of +Orlando and Rinaldo. The effete Arthurian cycle, superseded in Spain and +France by the Amadis romances, was speedily forgotten in Italy; but the +Carolingian stories remained; and when Italian poetry arose once more +after the long interregnum between Petrarch and Lorenzo dei Medici, and +looked about for subjects, it laid its hand upon them. But when, in the +second half of the fifteenth century, those old tales of Charlemagne +received, after so many centuries of alterations and ephemeral +embodiments, that artistic form which the Middle Ages had been unable to +give them, the stories themselves, and the way in which they were +regarded, were totally different from what they had been in the time of +Theroulde, or of the anonymous author of "The Quatre Fils Aymon;" the +Renaissance, with its keen artistic sense, made out of the Carolingian +tales real works of art, but works of art which were playthings. To +begin with, the Carolingian stories had been saturated with Arthurian +colour: they had been furnished with all the knight-rrantry, all the +gallantry, all the enchantments, the fairies, giants, and necromancers +of the Keltic legends; and, moreover, they had lost, by infinite +repetition, all the political realism and meaning so striking in "The +Chanson de Roland" and "The Quatre Fils Aymon;" a confusion and +unreality further increased by the fact that the Italians had no +original connection with those tales, that to them real men and plans +were no better than imaginary ones, and that the minstrels who sang in +the market-place, and the laborious prose-writers who compiled such +collections as that called of the "Reali di Francia," were equally free +in their alterations and adaptations, creating unknown relationships, +inventing new adventures, suppressing essential historical points, with +no object save amusing their audience or readers with new stories about +familiar heroes. Such was the condition of the stories themselves. The +attitude of the public towards them was, by the middle of the fifteenth +century, one of complete incredulity and frivolous amusement; the +paladins were as unreal as the heroes of any granny's fairy tale. The +people wanted to hear of wonderful battles and adventures, of +enchantments and love-makings; but they wanted also to laugh; and, +sceptical, practical, democratic, the artizans and shopkeepers of +Florence--to whom, paying, as they did, expensive mercenaries who stole +poultry and never got wounded on any account, all chivalry or real +military honour was the veriest nursery rubbish--such people as crowded +round the _cantastoria_ of _mercato vecchio_, must indeed have found +much to amuse them in these tales of so different an age. + +And into such crowds there penetrated to listen and watch (even as the +Magnificent Lorenzo had elbowed among the carnival ragamuffins of +Florence, and had slid in among the holiday-making peasants of Poggio a +Caiano) a learned man, a poet, an intimate of the Medicis, of Politian, +Ficino, and Pico della Mirandola, Messer Luigi Pulci, the same who had +written the semi-allegorical, semi-realistic poem about Lorenzo dei +Medici's gala tournament. There was a taste in the house of the Medici, +together with those for platonic philosophy, classical erudition, +religious hymns, and Hebrew kabbala, for a certain kind of realism, for +the language and mode of thinking of the lower classes, as a reaction +from Petrarchesque conventionality. As the Magnificent Lorenzo had had +the fancy to string together in more artistic shape the quaint and +graceful love poems, hyperbolical, realistic, tender, and abusive, of +the Tuscan peasantry; so also Messer Luigi Pulci appears to have been +smitten with the notion of trying his hand at a chivalric poem like +those to which he and his friends had listened among the butchers and +pork-shops, the fishmongers and frying booths of the market, and giving +an impression, in its ideas and language, of the people to whom such +strains were sung. But Luigi Pulci was vastly less gifted as a poet than +Lorenzo dei Medici; Florentine prentices are less aesthetically pleasing +than Tuscan peasants, and the "Morgante Maggiore" is a piece of work of +a sort utterly inferior to the "Nencia da Barberino." Still the +"Morgante Maggiore" remains, and will remain, as a very remarkable +production of grotesque art. Just as Lorenzo dei Medici was certainly +not without a deliberate purpose of selecting the quaintness and +gracefulness of peasant life; even so, and perhaps more, Luigi Pulci +must have had a deliberate intention of producing a ludicrous effect; in +both cases the deliberate attempt is very little perceptible, in the +"Nencia da Barberino" from the genius of Lorenzo, in the "Morgante +Maggiore" from the stolidity of Pulci. The "Morgante," of which parts +were probably written as a mere sample to amuse a supper party, became +interesting to Pulci, in the mere matter of inventing and stringing +together new incidents; and despite its ludicrous passages, it must have +been more seriously written by him, and more seriously listened to by +his friends, than would a similar production now-a-days. For the men of +the Renaissance, no matter how philosophized and cultured, retained the +pleasure in mere incident, which we moderns seem to have given over to +children and savages; and Lorenzo, Ficino, and Politian probably +listened to the adventures of Luigi Pulci's paladins and giants with +much the same interest, and only a little more conscious sense of +grotesqueness, with which the crowd in the market listened to Cristofano +dell' Altissimo and similar story-tellers. The "Morgante Maggiore," +therefore, is neither really comic nor really serious. It is not a piece +of realistic grotesqueness like "Gargantua" or "Pantagruel," any more +than it is a serious ideal work like "Amadis de Gaula:" the proportion +of deliberately sought effects is small; the great bulk, serious or +comic, seems to have come quite at random. It is not a caricatured +reproduction of the poems of chivalry sung in the market, for they were +probably serious, stately, and bald, with at most an occasional joke; it +is the reproduction of the joint impression received from the absurd, +harum-scarum, unpractical world of chivalry of the poet, and the real +world of prose, of good-humoured buffoonish coarseness with which the +itinerant poet was surrounded. The paladins are no Don Quixotes, the +princesses no Dulcineas, the battles are real battles; but the language +is that of Florentine wool-workers, housewives, cheese-sellers, and +ragamuffins, crammed with the slang of the market-place, its heavy jokes +and perpetual sententious aphorism. Moreover the prominence given to +food and eating is unrivalled except by Rabelais: the poet must have +lounged with delight through the narrow mediaeval lanes, crowded with +booths and barrows, sniffing with rapture the mingled scents of cheese, +pork, fish, spices, and a hundred strange concomitant market smells. And +the market, that classic _mercato vecchio_ (alas, finally condemned and +destroyed by modern sanitary prudishness, and which only those who have +seen can conceive in its full barbarous, nay, barbaric Pantagruelian +splendour of food, blood, and stenches) of Florence, is what we think of +throughout the poem. And, when Messer Luigi comes to narrate, with real +gravity and after the due invocation of the Virgin, the Trinity, and +the saints, the tremendous disaster of Roncevaux, he uses such words and +such similes, that above the neighing of horses and the clash of +hurtling armour and the yells of the combatants we suddenly hear the +nasal sing-song of Florentine tripe-vendors and pumpkin-pod-sellers, the +chaffer and oaths and laughter of the gluttonous crowd pouring through +the lanes of Calimala and Pellicceria; nay (horrible and grotesque +miracle), there seems to rise out of the confused darkness of the +battle-filled valley, there seems to disengage itself (as out of a mist) +from the chaos of heaped bodies, and the flash of steel among the +whirlwinds of dust, a vision, more and more distinct and familiar, of +the crowded square with its black rough-hewn, smoke-stained houses, +ornamented with Robbia-ware angels and lilies or painted madonnas; of +its black butchers dens, outside which hang the ghastly disembowelled +sheep with blood-stained fleeces, the huge red-veined hearts and livers; +of the piles of cabbage and cauli-flowers, the rows of tin ware and +copper saucepans, the heaps of maccaroni and pastes, of spices and +drugs; the garlands of onions and red peppers and piles of apples; the +fetid sliminess of the fish tressels; the rough pavement oozy and black, +slippery with cabbage-stalks, puddled with bullock's blood, strewn with +plucked feathers--all under the bright blue sky, with Giotto's +dove-coloured belfry soaring high above; a vision, finally, of one of +those deep dens, with walls, all covered with majolica plates and +dishes and flashing brass-embossed trenchers, in the dark depths of +which crackles perennially a ruddy fire, while a huge spit revolves, +offering to the flames now one now the other side of scores of legs of +mutton, rounds of beef, and larded chickens, trickling with the butter +unceasingly ladled by the white-dressed cooks. Roncisvalle, Charlemagne, +the paladins, paganism, Christendom--what of them? "I believe in capon, +roast or boiled, and sometimes done in butter; in mead and in must; and +I believe in the pasty and the pastykins, mother and children; but above +all things I believe in good wine "--as Margutte snuffles out in his +catechism; and as to Saracens and paladins, past, present, and future, a +fig for them! + +But meanwhile, for all that Florentine burgesses, artizans, and +humorists may think, there is in this Italy of the Renaissance something +besides Florence; there is a school of poetry, disconnected with the +realisms of Lorenzo and Pulci, with the Ovidian Petrarchisms of +Politian. There is Ferrara. Lying, as they do, between the Northern +Apennine slopes of Modena and the Euganean hills, the dominions of the +House of Este appear at first sight merely as part and parcel of +Lombardy, and we should expect from them nothing very different from +that which we expect from Milan or Bologna or Padua. But the truth is +different; all round Ferrara, indeed, stretches the fertile flatness of +Lombard cornfields, and they produce, as infallibly as they produce +their sacks of grain and tuns of wine and heaps of silk cocoon, the +intellectual and social equivalents of such things in Renaissance Italy: +industry, wealth, comfort, scepticism, art. But on either side, into the +defiles of the Euganean hills to the north, into the widening torrent +valleys of the Modenese Apennines to the south, the Marquisate of Este +stretches up into feudalism, into chivalry, into the imaginative kingdom +of the Middle Ages. Mediaevalism, feudalism, chivalry, indeed, of a very +modified sort; and as different from that of France and Germany as +differ from the poverty-stricken plains and forests and and moors of the +north these Italian mountain slopes, along which the vines crawl in long +trellises, and the chestnuts rise in endlessly superposed tiers of +terraces, cultivated by a peasant who is not the serf, but the equal +sharer in profits with the master of the soil. And on one of those +fertile hill-sides, looking down upon a narrow valley all a green-blue +shimmer with corn and vine-bearing elms, was born, in the year 1434, +Matteo Maria Boiardo, in the village which gave him the title, one of +the highest in the Estensian dominions, of Count of Scandiano. Here, in +the Apennines, Scandiano is a fortified village, also a castle, +doubtless half turned into a Renaissance villa, but mediaeval and feudal +nevertheless; but the name of Scandiano belongs also, I know not for +what reason, to a certain little red-brick palace on the outskirts of +Ferrara, beautifully painted with half-allegorical, half-realistic +pageant frescoes by Cosimo Tura, and enclosing a sweet tangled +orchard-garden; to all of which, being the place to which Duke Borso and +Duke Ercole were wont to retire for amusement, the Ferrarese have given +the further name of Schifanoia, which means, "fly from cares." This +little coincidence of Scandiano the feudal castle in the Apennines, and +Scandiano the little pleasure palace at Ferrara, seems to give, by +accidental allegory, a fair idea of the double nature of Matteo Boiardo, +of the Ferrarese court to which he belonged, and of the school of poetry +(including the more notable but less original work of Ariosto) which the +genius of the man and the character of the court succeeded together in +producing. + +To understand Boiardo we must compare him with Ariosto; and to +understand Ariosto we must compare him with Boiardo; both belong to the +same school, and are men of very similar genius, and where the one +leaves off the other begins. But first, in order to understand the +character of this poetry which, in the main, is identical in Boiardo and +in his more successful but less fascinating pupil Ariosto, let us +understand Ferrara. It was, in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth +centuries, a chivalric town of Ariostesque chivalry: feudalism turned +courtly and elegant, and moreover, very liberal and comfortable by +preponderance of democratic and industrial habits; a military court, of +brave mercenary captains full of dash and adventure, not mere brigands +and marauders having studied strategy, like the little Umbrian +chieftains; a court orderly, elegant, and brilliant: a prince not risen +from behind a counter like Medicis and Petruccis, nor out of blood like +Baglionis and Sforzas, but of a noble old house whose beginnings are +lost in the mist of real chivalry and real paladinism; a duke with a +pretence of feudal honour and decorum, at whose court men were all brave +and ladies all chaste--with the little licenses of baseness and +gallantry admitted by Renaissance chivalry. A bright, brilliant court at +the close of the fifteenth century; and more stable than the only one +which might have rivalled it, the Feltrian court of Urbino, too small +and lost among the Umbrian bandits. A bright, brilliant town, also, this +Ferrara: not mercantile like Florence, not mere barracks like Perugia; a +capital, essentially, in its rich green plain by the widened Po, with +its broad handsome streets (so different from the mediaeval exchanges of +Bologna, and the feudal alleys of Perugia), its well-built houses, so +safe and modern, needing neither _bravi_ nor iron window bars, protected +(except against some stray murder by one of the Estensi themselves), by +the duke's well-organized police; houses with well-trimmed gardens, like +so many Paris hotels; and with the grand russet brick castle, military +with its moat and towers, urban with its belvederes and balconies, in +the middle, well placed to sweep away with its guns (the wonderful guns +of the duke's own making) any riot, tidily, cleanly, without a nasty +heap of bodies and slop of blood as in the narrow streets of other +towns Imagine this bright capital, placed, moreover, in the richest +centre of Lombardy, with glitter of chivalry from the Euganean hills and +Apennines (castellated with Este, Monselice, Canossa, and Boiardo's own +Scandiano); with gorgeous rarities of commerce from Venice and Milan--a +central, unique spot. It is the natural home of the chivalrous poets of +the Renaissance, Boiardo, Ariosto, Tasso; as Florence is of the +Politians and Pulcis (Hellenism and back-shopery); and Venice of the +literature of lust, jests, cynicism, and adventure, Aretine, Beolco, +Calmo, and Poliphilo-Colonna. In that garden, where the white +butterflies crowd among the fruit trees bowed down to the tall grass of +the palace of Schifanoia--a garden neither grand nor classic, but +elegiac and charming--we can imagine Boiardo or Ariosto reading their +poems to just such a goodly company as Giraldi Cinthio (a Ferrarese, and +fond of romance, too) describes in the prologue of his "Ecatomiti:" +gentle and sprightful ladies, with the splendid brocaded robes, and the +gold-filleted golden hair of Dosso Dossi's wonderful Alcina Circe; +graceful youths like the princely St. John of Benvenuto Garofalo; +jesters like Dosso's at Modena; brilliant captains like his St. George +and St. Michael; and a little crowd of pages with doublets and sleeves +laced with gold tags, of sedate magistrates in fur robes and scarlet +caps, of white-dressed maids with instruments of music and embroidery +frames and hand looms, like those which Cosimo Tura painted for Duke +Borso on the walls of this same Schifanoia palace. Such is the audience; +now for the poems. + +The stuff of Boiardo and Ariosto is the same: that old mediaeval stuff of +the Carolingian poems, coloured, scented with Arthurian chivalry and +wonder. The knight-errantry of the Keltic tales is cleverly blended with +the pseudo-historical military organization of the Carolingian cycle. +Paladins and Saracens are ingeniously manoeuvred about, now scattered in +little groups of twos and threes, to encounter adventures in the style +of Sir Launcelot or Amadis; now gathered into a compact army to crash +upon each other as at Roncevaux; or else wildly flung up by the poet to +alight in fairyland, to find themselves in the caverns of Jamschid, in +the isles where Oberon's mother kept Caesar, and Morgana kept Ogier, in +the boats, entering subterranean channels, of Sindbad and Huon of +Bordeaux; a constant alternation of individual adventure and wholesale +organized campaigns, conceived and carried out with admirable ingenuity. +So much for the deeds of arms. The deeds of love are also compounded of +Carolingian and Arthurian, but flavoured with special Renaissance +feeling. There is a great deal of rapid love-making between too gallant +knights and too impressionable ladies; licentious amours which we +moderns lay at the door of Boiardo and Ariosto, not knowing that the +licentiousness of the Olivers and Ogiers and Guerins and Huons of +mediaeval poetry, of the sentimental Amadises, Galaors, and Lisvarts of +the fourteenth century, whom the Renaissance has toned down in Rogers +and Rinaldos and Ricciardettos, is by many degrees worse. A moral +improvement also (for all the immorality of the Renaissance) in the +eschewing of the never-failing adultery of the Arthurian romances, and +the appropriation to legitimately faithful love of the poetical devotion +which Tristram and Launcelot bear to other men's wives. To this are +added, and more by Ariosto than by Boiardo, two essentially Italian +elements: something of the nobility of passion of the Platonic +sonneteers; and a good dose of the ironical, scurrilous, moralizing +immoral anecdote gossiping of Boccaccio and Sacchetti. Such is the +stuff. The conception, though rarely comic, and sometimes _bond fide_ +serious, is never earnest. All this is a purely artistic world, a world +of decorative arabesque incident, intended to please, scarcely ever to +move, or to move, at most, like some Decameronian tale of Isabella and +the Basil Plant, or Constance and Martuccio. On the other hand, there is +none of the grotesque irreverence of Pulci. Boiardo and Ariosto are not +in earnest; they are well aware that their heroes and heroines are mere +modern men and women tricked out in pretty chivalric trappings, driven +wildly about from Paris to Cathay, and from Spain to the Orkneys--on +Tony Lumpkin's principle of driving his mother round and round the +garden plot till she thought herself on a heath six miles off--without +ever really changing place. But they do not, like Pulci, make fun of +their characters. They write chivalry romances not for Florentine +pork-butchers and wool-carders, but for gallant ladies and gentlemen, to +whom, with duels, tournaments, serenades, and fine speeches, chivalry is +an admired name, though no longer a respected reality. + +The heroes of Boiardo and of Ariosto are always bold and gallant and +glittering, the spirit of romance is in them; a giant Sancho Panza like +Morgante, redolent of sausage and cheese, would never be admitted into +the society of a Ferrarese Orlando. The art of Boiardo and of Ariosto is +eminently pageant art, in which sentiment and heroism are but as one +element among many; there is no pretence at reality (although there is a +good deal of incidental realism), and no thought of the interest in +subject and persons which goes with reality. It is a masquerade, and one +whose men and women must, I think, be imagined in a kind of artistic +fancy costume: a mixture of the Renaissance dress and of the antique, as +we see it in the prints of contemporary pageants, and in Venetian and +Ferrarese pictures; that Circe of Dosso's, in the Borghese gallery of +Rome, seated in her stately wine-lees and gold half-heraldically and +half-cabalistically patterned brocade, before the rose-bushes of the +little mysterious wood, is the very ideal of the Falerinas and Alcinas, +of the enchantresses of Boiardo and Ariosto. Pageant people, these of +the Ferrarese poets; they only play at being in forests and deserts, as +children play at being on volcanoes or in Green-land by the nursery +fire. It is a kind of dressing up, a masquerading of the fancy; not +disguising in order to deceive, but rather laying hold of any pretty or +brilliant impressive garb that comes to hand, and putting that on in +conjunction with many odds and ends, as an artist's guests might do with +the silks and velvets and Oriental properties of a studio. These knights +and ladies, for ever tearing about from Scotland to India, never, in +point of fact, get any further than the Apennine slopes where Boiardo +was born, where Ariosto governed the Garfagnana. They ride for ever +(while supposed to be in the Ardennes or in Egypt) across the velvet +moss turf, all patterned with minute starry clovers and the fallen white +ropy chestnut blossom, amidst the bracken beneath the slender chestnut +trees, the pale blue sky looking in between their spreading branches; at +most they lose their way in the intricacies of some seaside pineta, +where the feet slip on the fallen needles, and the sun slants along the +vistas of serried, red, scaly trunks, among the juniper and gorse and +dry grass and flowers growing in the sea sand. Into the vast mediaeval +forests of Germany and France, Boiardo and Ariosto's fancy never +penetrated. + +Such is the school: a school represented in its typical character only +by Boiardo and Ariosto, but to which belong, nevertheless, with whatever +differences, Tasso, Spenser, Camoens, all the poets of Renaissance +romance. Now of the two leaders thereof. Here I feel that I can speak +only personally; tell only of my own personal impressions and +preferences. Comparing together Boiardo and Ariosto, I am, of course, +aware of the infinite advantages of the latter. Ariosto is a man of far +more varied genius; he is an artist, while Boiardo is an amateur; he is +learned in arranging and ornamenting; he knows how to alternate various +styles, how to begin and how to end. Moreover, he is a scholarly person +of a more scholarly time: he is familiar with the classics, and, what is +more important, he is familiar with the language in which he is writing. +He writes exquisitely harmonious, supple, and brilliant Tuscan verse, +with an infinite richness of diction; while poor Boiardo jogs along in a +language which is not the Lombard dialect in which he speaks, and which +is very uncouth and awkward, as is every pure language for a provincial; +indeed, so much so, that the pedantic Tuscans require Berni to make +Tuscan, elegant, to _ingentilire_, with infinite loss to quaintness and +charm, the "Orlando Innamorato" of poor Ferrarese Boiardo. Moreover, +Ariosto has many qualities unknown to Boiardo; wit, malice, stateliness, +decided eloquence and power of simile and apostrophe; he is a symphony +for full orchestra, and Boiardo a mere melody played on a single fiddle, +which good authorities (and no one dare contest with Italians when they +condemn anything not Tuscan as jargon) pronounce to be no Cremona. All +these advantages Ariosto certainly has; and I do not quarrel with those +who prefer him for them. But many of them distinctly take away from my +pleasure. I confess that I am bored by the beautifully written moral and +allegorical preludes of Ariosto's cantos; I would willingly give all his +aphorism and all his mythology to get quickly to the story. Also, I +resent his admirable rhetorical flourishes about his patrons, his +Ercoles, Ippolitos, and Isabellas they ring false, dreadfully false and +studied; and Boiardo's quickly despatched friendly greeting of his +friends, his courteous knights and gentle ladies, pleases me much +better. Moreover, the all-pervading consciousness of the existence of +Homer, Virgil, nay, Statius and Lucan, every trumpery antique +epic-monger, annoys me, giving an uncomfortable doubt as to whether +Ariosto did not try to make all this nonsense serious, and this romance +into an epic; all this occasional Virgilian stateliness, alternated with +a kind of polished Decameronian gossipy cynicism, diverts my attention, +turns paladins and princesses too much into tutor-educated gentlemen, +into Bandello and Cinthio-reading ladies of the sixteenth century. The +picture painted by Ariosto is finer, but you see too much of the +painter; he and his patrons take up nearly the whole foreground, and +they have affected, idealized faces and would-be dignified and +senatorial poses. For these and many other reasons, I personally prefer +Boiardo; and perhaps the best reason for my preference is the +irrational one that he gives me more pleasure. My preferences, my +impressions, I have said, are in this matter, much less critical than +personal. Hence I can speak of Boiardo only as he affects me. + +When first I read Boiardo, I was conscious of a curious phenomenon in +myself. I must confess to reading books usually in a very ardent or +rather weary manner, either way in a hurry to finish them. As it +happened, when I borrowed Boiardo, I had a great many other things on +hand which required my time and attention; yet I could not make up my +mind to return the book until I had finished it, though my intention had +been merely to satisfy my curiosity by a dip into it. I went on, without +that eager desire to know what follows which one has in a novel; +drowsily with absolute reluctance to leave off, like the reluctance to +rise from the grass beneath the trees with only butterflies and shadows +to watch, or the reluctance to put aside some fairy book of Walter +Crane's. It was like strolling in some quaint, ill-trimmed, old garden, +finding fresh flowers, fresh bits of lichened walls, fresh fragments of +broken earthenware ornaments; or, rather, more like a morning in the +Cathedral Library at Siena, the place where the gorgeous choir books are +kept, itself illuminated like missal pages by Pinturicchio: amused, +delighted, not moved nor fascinated; finding every moment something new, +some charming piece of gilding, some sweet plumed head, some quaint +little tree or town; making a journey of lazy discovery in a sort of +world of Prince Charmings, the real realm of the "Faery Queen," quite +different in enchantment from the country of Spenser's Gloriana, with +its pale allegoric ladies and knights, half-human, half-metaphysical, +and its make-believe allegorical ogres and giants. This is the real +Fairyland, this of Boiardo: no mere outskirts of Ferrara, with real, +playfully cynical Ferrarese men and women tricked out as paladins and +Amazons, and making fun of their disguise, as in Ariosto; no wonderland +of Tasso, with enchanted gardens copied out of Bolognese pictures and +miraculous forests learned from theatre mechanicians, wonders imitated +by a great poet from the cardboard and firework wonders of Bianca +Cappello's wedding feasts. This is the real fairyland, the wonderland of +mediaeval romance and of Persian and Arabian tales, no longer solemn or +awful, but brilliant, sunny, only half believed in; the fairyland of the +Renaissance, superficially artistic, with its lightest, brightest +fancies, and its charming realities; its cloistered and painted courts +with plashing fountains, its tapestried and inlaid rooms, its towered +and belvedered villas, its quaint clipped gardens full of strange +Oriental plants and beasts; and all this transported into a country of +wonders, where are the gardens of the Hesperides, the fountain of +Merlin, the tomb of Narcissus, the castle of Morgan-le-Fay; every quaint +and beautiful fancy, antique and mediaeval, mixed up together, as in some +Renaissance picture of Botticelli or Rosselli or Filippino, where +knights in armour descend from Pegasus before Roman temples, where +swarthy white-turbaned Turks, with oddly bunched-up trousers and +jewelled caftans, and half-naked, oak-crowned youths, like genii +descended, pensive and wondering, from some antique sarcophagus, and +dapper princelets and stalwart knights, and citizens and monks, all +crowd round the altar of some wonder-working Macone or Apolline or +Trevigante; some comic, dreadful, apish figure, mummed up in +half-antique, half-oriental garb. Or else we are led into some dainty, +pale-tinted panel of Botticelli, where the maidens dance in white +clinging clothes, strewing flowers on to the flower-freaked turf; or +into some of Poliphilo's vignettes, where the gentle ladies, seated with +lute and viol under vine-trellises, welcome the young gallant, or poet, +or knight. + +Such is the world of Boiardo. Spenser has once or twice peeped in, +painted it, and given us exquisite little pictures, as that of +Malecasta's castle, all hung with mythological tapestries, that of the +enchanted chamber of Britomart, and those of Sir Calidore meeting the +Graces and of Hellenore dancing with the Satyrs; but Spenser has done it +rarely, trembling to return to his dreary allegories. Equal to these +single pictures by Spenser, Boiardo has only one or two, but he keeps us +permanently in the world where such pictures are painted. Boiardo is not +a great artist like Spenser: but he is a wizard, which is better. He +leads us, unceasingly, through the little dreamy laurelwoods, where we +meet crisp-haired damsels tied to pine-trees, or terrible dragons, or +enchanted wells, through whose translucent green waters we see brocaded +rooms full of fair ladies; he ferries us ever and anon across shallow +streams, to the castles where _gentil donzelle_ wave their kerchiefs +from the pillared belvedere; he slips us unseen into the camps and +council-rooms of the splendidly trapped Saracens, like so many figures +out of Filippino's frescoes; he conducts us across the bridges where +giants stand warders, to the mysterious carved tombs whence issue green +and crested snakes, who, kissed by a paladin, turn into lovely +enchantresses; he takes us beneath the beds of rivers and through the +bowels of the earth where kings and knights turned into statues of gold, +sit round tables covered with jewels, illumined by carbuncles more +wonderful than that of Jamschid; or through the mazes of fairy gardens, +where every ear of corn, cut off, turns into a wild beast, and every +fallen leaf into a bird, where hydras watch in the waters and lamias +rear themselves in the grass, where Orlando must fill his helmet with +roses lest he hear the voice of the sirens; where all the wonders of +Antiquity--the snake-women, the Circes, the sirens, the hydras and fauns +live, strangely changed into something infinitely quaint and graceful, +still half-antique, yet already half-Arabian or Keltic, in the midst of +the fairyland of Merlin and of Oberon--live, move, transform themselves +afresh; where the golden-haired damsels and the stripling knights, +delicate like Pinturicchio's Prince Charmings, gallop for ever on their +enchanted coursers, within enchanted armour, invincible, invulnerable, +under a sky always blue, and through an unceasing spring, ever onwards +to new adventures. Adventures which the noble, gentle Castellan of +Scandiano, poet and knight and humorist, philanthropical philosopher +almost from sheer goodness of heart, yet a little crazy, and capable of +setting all the church bells ringing in honour of the invention of the +name of Rodomonte relates not to some dully ungrateful Alfonso or +Ippolito, but to his own guests, his own brilliant knights and ladies, +with ever and anon an effort to make them feel, through his verse, some +of those joyous spring-tide feelings which bubble up in himself; as when +he remembers how, "Once did I wander on a May morning in a fair +flower-adorned field on a hillside overlooking the sea, which was all +tremulous with light; and there, among the roses of a green thorn-brake, +a damsel was singing of love; singing so sweetly that the sweetness +still touches my heart; touches my heart, and makes me think of the +great delight it was to listen;" and how he would fain repeat that song, +and indeed an echo of its sweetness runs through his verse. Meanwhile, +stanza pours out after stanza, adventure grows out of adventure, each +more wonderful, more gorgeous than its predecessor. To which listen the +ladies, with their white, girdled dresses and crimped golden locks; the +youths, with their soft beardless faces framed in combed-out hair, with +their daggers on their hips and their plumed hats between their fingers; +and the serious bearded men, in silken robes; drawing nearer the poet, +letting go lute or violin or music-book as they listen on the villa +terrace or in some darkened room, where the sunset sky turns green-blue +behind the pillared window, and the roses hang over the trellise of the +cloister. And as they did four hundred years ago, so do we now, rejoice. +The great stalwart naked forms of Greece no longer leap and wrestle or +carry their well-poised baskets of washed linen before us; the mailed +and vizored knights of the Nibelungen no longer clash their armour to +the sound of Volker's red fiddle-bow; the glorified souls of Dante no +longer move in mystic mazes of light before the eyes of our fancy. All +that is gone. But here is the fairyland of the Renaissance. And thus +Matteo Boiardo, Count of Scandiano, goes on, adding adventure to +adventure, stanza to stanza, in his castle villa, or his palace at +Ferrara. But suddenly he stops and his bright fiddle and lute music jars +and ends: "While I am singing, O Redeeming God, I see all Italy set on +fire by these Gauls, coming to ravage I know not what fresh place." + +And thus, with the earlier and more hopeful Renaissance of the fifteenth +century, Matteo Boiardo broke off with his "Orlando Innamorato." The +perfect light-heartedness, the delight in play of a gentle, serious, +eminently kindly nature, which gives half the charm to Boiardo's work, +seems to have become impossible after the ruin of Italian liberty and +prosperity the frightful showing up of Italy's moral and social and +political insignificance at the beginning of the sixteenth century. +Lombardy especially became a permanent battle-field, and its towns mere +garrison places of French, German, Spanish, and Swiss barbarians, whose +presence meant slaughter and pillage and every foulest outrage; and +then, between the horrors of the unresisted invasions and the unresisted +exactions, came plague and famine, and industry and commerce gradually +died out. A few princes, subsidised and guarded by French or +Imperialists, kept up an appearance of cheerfulness, but the courts even +grew more gloomy as the people grew more miserable. There is more +joking, more resonant laughter in Ariosto than in Boiardo, but there is +very much less serenity and cheerfulness; ever and anon a sort of +bitterness, a dreary moralizing tendency, a still more dreary fit of +prophesying future good in which he has no belief, comes over Ariosto. +Berni, who rewrote the "Orlando Innamorato" in choice Tuscan, and who +underlined every faintly marked jest of Boiardo's, with evident +preoccupation of the ludicrous effects of the "Morgante Maggiore"--Berni +even could not keep up his spirits; into the middle of Boiardo's serene +fairyland adventures he inserted a description of the sack of Rome which +is simply harrowing. All real cheerfulness departed from the people, to +be replaced only by pleasure in the debaucheries of the buffoonish +obscenity of Aretino, Bandello, and so forth, to which the men of the +dying Italy of the Renaissance listened as the roysterers of the plague +of Florence, with the mortal sickness almost upon them, may have +listened to the filthy songs which they trolled out in their +drunkenness. Or at best, the poor starved, bruised, battered, humiliated +nation may have tried to be cheerful on the principle of its harlequin +playwright Beolco, who, more honest than the Ariostos and Bibbienas, and +Aretines, came forward on his stage of planks at Padua, and after +describing the ruin and wretchedness of the country, the sense of +dreariness and desolation, which made young folk careless of marriage, +and the very nightingales (he thought) careless of song, recommended his +audience, since they could not even cry thoroughly and to feel any the +better for it, to laugh, if they still were able. Boiardo was forgotten; +his spirit was unsuited to the depression, gloomy brutality, gloomy +sentimentality, which grew every day as Italy settled down after its +Renaissance-Shrovetide in the cinders and fasting of the long Lent of +Spanish and Jesuit rule. + +Still the style of Boiardo was not yet exhausted; the peculiar kind of +fairy epic, the peculiar combination of chivalric and classic elements +of which the "Orlando Innamorato" and the "Orlando Furioso," had been +the great examples, still fascinated poets and public. The Renaissance, +or what remained of it, was now no longer confined to Italy; it had +spread, paler, more diluted, shallower, over the rest of Europe. To +follow the filiation of schools, to understand the intellectual +relationships of individuals, of the latter half of the sixteenth +century, it becomes necessary to move from one country to another. And +thus the two brother poets of the family of Boiardo, its two last and +much saddened representatives, came to write in very different languages +and under very different circumstances. These two are Tasso and our own +Spenser. They are both poets of the school of the "Orlando Innamorato," +both poets of a reaction, of a kind of purified Renaissance: the one of +the late Italian Renaissance emasculated by the Council of Trent and by +Spain; the other of the English Renaissance, in its youth truly, but, in +the individual case of Spenser, timidly drawn aside from the excesses of +buoyant life around. In the days of the semi-atheist dramatists, all +flesh and blood and democracy, Spenser steeps himself in Christianity +and chivalry, even as Tasso does, following on the fleshly levity and +scepticism of Boiardo, Berni, and Ariosto. There is in both poets a +paleness, a certain diaphanous weakness, an absence of strong tint or +fibre or perfume; in Tasso the pallor of autumn, in Spenser the paleness +of spring: autumn left sad and leafless by the too voluptuous heat and +fruitfulness of summer; spring still pale and pinched by winter, with +timid nipped grass and unripe stiff buds and catkins, which never +suggest the tangle of bush, grasses, and magnificent flowers and fruits, +sweet, splendid, or poisonous, which the sun will make out of them. The +Renaissance, in the past for Tasso, in the proximate and very visible +future for Spenser, has frightened both; the cynicism and bestiality of +men like Machiavelli and Aretino; the godless, muscular lustiness of +Marlowe, Greene, and Peele, seen in a glimpse by Tasso and Spenser, have +given a shock to their sensitive nature, have made them turn away and +hide themselves from a second sight of it. They both take refuge in a +land of fiction, of romance, from the realities into which they dread to +splash; a world unsubstantial, diaphanous, faint-hued, almost +passionless, which they make out of beauty and heroism and purity, which +they alembicize and refine, but into which there never enters any vital +element, anything to give it flesh and bone and pulsing life: it is a +mere soap bubble. And beautiful as is this world of their own making, it +is too negative even for them; they move in it only in imagination, +calm, serene, vacant, almost sad. There is in it, and in themselves, a +something wanting; and the remembrance of that unholy-life of reality +which jostled and splashed their delicate souls, comes back and haunts +them with its evil thought. There is no laugh--what is worse, no smile +--in these men. Incipient puritanism, not yet the terrible brawny +reality of Bunyan, but a vague, grey spectre, haunts Spenser; and the +puritanism of Don Quixote, the vague, melancholy, fantastic reverting +from the evil world of to-day to an impossible world of chivalry, is +troubling the sight of Tasso. He cannot go crazy like Don Quixote, and +instead he grows melancholy; he cannot believe in his own ideals; he +cannot give them life, any more than can Spenser give life to his +allegoric knights and ladies, because the life would have to be fetched +by Tasso out of the flesh of Ariosto, and by Spenser out of the blood of +Marlowe; and both Tasso and Spenser shrink at the thought of what might +with it be inoculated or transfused; and they rest satisfied with +phantoms. The phantoms of Spenser are more shadowy much more utterly +devoid of human character; they are almost metaphysical abstractions, +and they do not therefore sadden us: they are too unlike living things +to seem very lifeless. But the phantoms of Tasso, he would fain make +realities; he works at every detail of character, history, or geography, +which may make his people real; they are not, as with Spenser, elves and +wizards flitting about in a nameless fairyland, characterless and +passionless; they are historical creatures, captains and soldiers in a +country mapped out by the geographer; but they are phantoms all the more +melancholy, these beautiful and heroic Clorindas and Erminias and +Tancreds and Godfreys--why? because the real world around Tasso is +peopled with Brachianos and Corombonas, and Annabellas and Giovannis, +creatures for Webster and Ford; and because this world of chivalry is, +in his Italy, as false as the world of Amadis and Esplandian in Toboso +and Barcelona for poor Don Quixote. Melancholy therefore, and dreamy, +both Tasso and Spenser, with nothing they can fully love in reality, +because they see it tainted with reality and evil; without the cheerful +falling back upon everyday life of Ariosto and Shakespeare, and with a +strange fancy for fairyland, for the distant, for the Happy Islands, the +St. Brandan's Isles, the country of the fountain of youth, the country +of which vague reports have come back with the ships of Raleigh and +Ponce de Leon. Tasso and Spenser are happiest, in their calm, melancholy +way, when they can let themselves go in day-dreams, and talk of things +in which they do not believe, of diamond shields which stun monsters of +ointments which cure all ills of body and of soul of enchanted groves +whose trees sound with voices, and lutes, of boats in which, steered by +fairies, we can glide across the scarcely rippled summer sea, and +watching the ruins of the past, time and reality left behind, set sail +for some strange land of bliss. And there is in the very sensuousness +and love of beauty-of these men a vagueness and melancholy, a constant: +sense of the fleeting and of the eternal, as in that passage, translated +from the languidly sweet Italian perfection of Tasso into the timid, +almost scentless, English of Spenser--"Cosi trapassa al trapassar d'un +giorno." + + + So passeth, in the passing of a day, + + Of mortall life the leafe, the bud, the flowre + + No more doth florish after first decay, + That earst was sought to deck both bed and bowre + Of many a lady, and many a Paramowre. + Gather therefore the Rose whilest yet is prime, + For soone comes age that will her pride deflowre; + Gather the Rose of love whitest yet is time, + Whitest loving thou mayest loved be withe equall crime. + + +A sense of evanescence, of dreamlikeness, quite different from the +thoughtless enjoyment of Boiardo, from the bold and manly facing of the +future, the solemn, strong sense of life and death as of waking +realities, of the Elizabethan dramatists, even of weaklings like +Massinger and Beaumont. In Tasso and in Spenser there is no such +joyousness, no such solemnity; only a dreamy watching, a regret which is +scarcely a regret, at the evanescence of pale beauty and pale life, of +joys feebly felt and evils meekly borne. + +With Tasso and Spenser comes to a close the school of Boiardo, the small +number of real artists who finally gave an enduring and beautiful shape +to that strangely mixed and altered material of romantic epic left +behind by the Middle Ages; comes to an end at least till our own day of +appreciative and deliberate imitation and selection and rearrangement of +the artistic forms of the past. Until the revival (after much study and +criticism) by our own poets of Arthur and Gudrun and the Fortunate +Isles, the world had had enough of mediaeval romance. Chivalry had +avowedly ended in chamberlainry; the devotion to women in the official +routine of the _cicisbeo_; the last romance to which the late +Renaissance had clung, which made it sympathize with Huon, Ogier, +Orlando, and Rinaldo, which had made it take delight still in the +fairyland of Oberon, of Fallerina, of Alcina, of Armida, of Acrasia, the +romance of the new world, had also turned into prose, prose of +blood-stained filth. The humanistic and rationalistic men of the +Renaissance had doubtless early begun to turn up their noses in dainty +dilettantism or scientific contempt, at what were later to be called by +Montaigne, "Ces Lancelots du Lac, ces Amadis, ces Huons et tels fatras +di livres a quoy l'enfance s'amuse;" and by Ben Jonson: + + + Public nothings, + Abortives of the fabulous dark cloister, + Sent out to poison courts, and infect manners-- + + +the public at large was more constant, and still retained a love for +mediaeval romance. But more than humanities, more than scientific +scepticism and religious puritanism, did the slow dispelling of the +illusion of Eldorado and the Fortunate Isles. Mankind set sail for +America in brilliant and knightly gear, believing in fountains of youth +and St. Brandan's Isles, with Ariosto, Tasso, and Spenser still in its +pockets. It returns from America either as the tattered fever-stricken +ruffian, or as the vulgar, fat upstart of Spanish comedy, returns +without honour or shame, holding money (and next to money, negroes) of +greater account than any insignia of paladinship or the Round Table; it +is brutal, vulgar, cynical; at best very sad, and it gets written for +its delectation the comic-tragic novels of rapscallions, panders, +prostitutes, and card-sharpers, which from "Lazarillo de Tormes" to "Gil +Blas," and from "Gil Blas" to "Tom Jones," finally replace the romances +of the Launcelots, Galahads, Rinaldos, and Orlandos. + + + +Thus did the mediaeval romantic-epic stuffs suffer alteration, +adulteration, and loss of character, throughout the long period of the +Middle Ages, without ever receiving an artistic shape, such as should +make all men preserve and cherish them for the only thing which makes +men preserve and cherish such things--that never to be wasted quality, +beauty. The Middle Ages were powerless to endow therewith their own +subjects; so the subjects had to wait, altering more and more with every +passing day, till the coming of the Renaissance. And by that time these +subjects had ceased to have any serious meaning whatever; the Roland of +the song of Roncevaux had become the crazy Orlando of Ariosto; the +Renaud of "The Quatre Fils Aymon," had become the Rinaldo, thrashed with +sheaves of lilies by Cupid, of Matteo Boiardo. The Renaissance took up +the old epic-romantic materials and made out of them works of art; but +works of art which, as I said before, were playthings gets written for +its delectation the comic-tragic novels of rapscallions, panders, +prostitutes, and card-sharpers, which, from "Lazarillo de Tormes" to +"Gil Bias," and from "Gil Bias" to "Tom Jones," finally replace the +romances of the Launcelots, Galahads, Rinaldos, and Orlandos. + + + + * * * * * + + +MEDIEVAL LOVE. + + +On laying down the "Vita Nuova" our soul is at first filled and +resounding with the love of Beatrice. Whatever habits or capacities of +noble loving may lurk within ourselves, have been awakened by the solemn +music of this book, and have sung in unison with Dante's love till we +have ceased to hear the voice of his passion and have heard only the +voice of our own. When the excitement has diminished, when we have grown +able to separate from our own feelings the feelings of the man dead +these five centuries and a half, and to realize the strangeness, the +obsoleteness of this love which for a moment had seemed our love; then a +new phase of impressions has set in, and the "Vita Nuova" inspires us +with mere passionate awe: awe before this passion which we feel to be no +longer our own, but far above and distant from us, as in some rarer +stratum of atmosphere; awe before this woman who creates it, or rather +who is its creation. Even as Dante fancied that the people of Florence +did when the bodily presence of this lady came across their path, so do +we cast down our glance as the image of Beatrice passes across our mind. +Nay, the glory of her, felt so really while reading the few, meagre +words in the book, is stored away in our heart, and clothes with a faint +aureole the lady--if ever in our life we chance to meet her--in whom, +though Dante tells us nothing of stature, features, eyes or hair, we +seem to recognize a likeness to her on whose passage "ogni lingua divien +tremando muta, e gli occhi non ardiscon di guardare." Passion like this, +to paraphrase a line of Rossetti's, is genius; and it arouses in such as +look upon it the peculiar sense of wonder and love, of awe-stricken +raising up of him who contemplates, which accompanies the contemplation +of genius. + +But it may be that one day we feel, instead of this, wonder indeed, but +wonder mingled with doubt. This ideal love, which craves for no union +with its object; which seeks merely to see, nay, which is satisfied with +mere thinking on the beloved one, will strike us with the cold and +barren glitter of the miraculous. This Beatrice, as we gaze on her, will +prove to be no reality of flesh and blood like ourselves; she is a form +modelled in the semblance of that real, living woman who died six +centuries ago, but the substance of which is the white fire of Dante's +love. And the thought will arise that this purely intellectual love of a +scarce-noticed youth for a scarce-known woman is a thing which does not +belong to life, neither sweetening nor ennobling any of its real +relations; that it is, in its dazzling purity and whiteness, in fact a +mere strange and sterile death light, such as could not and should not, +in this world of ours, exist twice over. And, lest we should ever be +tempted to think of this ideal love for Beatrice as of a wonderful and +beautiful, but scarcely natural or useful phenomenon, I would wish to +study the story of its origin and its influence. I would wish to show +that had it not burned thus strangely concentrated and pure, the poets +of succeeding ages could not have taken from that white flame of love +which Dante set alight upon the grave of Beatrice, the spark of ideal +passion which has, in the noblest of our literature, made the desire of +man for woman and of woman for man burn clear towards heaven, leaving +behind the noisome ashes and soul-enervating vapours of earthly lust. + + +I. + +The centuries have made us; forcing us into new practices, teaching us +new habits, creating for us new capacities and wants; adding, ever and +anon, to the soul organism of mankind features which at first were but +accidental peculiarities, which became little by little qualities +deliberately sought for and at lengths inborn and hereditary +characteristics. And thus, in, what we call the Middle Ages, there was +invented by the stress of circumstances, elaborated by half-conscious +effort and bequeathed as an unalienable habit, a new manner of loving. + +The women of classical Antiquity appear to us in poetry and imaginative +literature as one of two things: the wife or the mistress. The wife, +Penelope, Andromache, Alkestis, nay, even the charming young bride in +Xenophon's "Oeconomics," is, while excluded from many concerns, +distinctly reverenced and loved in her own household capacity; but the +reverence is of the sort which the man feels for his parents and his +household gods, and the affection is calm and gently rebuking like that +for his children. The mistress, on the other hand, is the object of +passion which is often very vehement, but which is always either simply +fleshly or merely fancifully aesthetic or both, and which entirely +precludes any save a degrading influence upon the sensual and suspicious +lover. Even Tibullus, in love matters one of the most modern among the +ancients, and capable of painting many charming and delicate little +domestic idyls even in connection with a mere bought mistress, is +perpetually accusing his Delia of selling herself to a higher bidder, +and sighing at the high probability of her abandoning him for the +Illyrian praetor or some other rich amateur of pretty women. The +barbarous North--whose songs have come down to us either, like the +Volsunga Saga translated by Mr. Morris, in an original pagan version, or +else, as the Nibelungenlied, recast during the early Middle Ages--the +North tells us nothing of the venal paramour, but knows nothing also +beyond the wedded wife; more independent and mighty perhaps than her +counterpart of classical Antiquity, but although often bought, like +Brynhilt or Gudrun, at the expense of tremendous adventures, cherished +scarcely more passionately than the wives of Odysseus and Hector. Thus, +before the Middle Ages, there existed as a rule only a holy, but +indifferent and utterly unlyrical, love for the women, the equals of +their husbands, wooed usually of the family and solemnly given in +marriage without much consultation of their wishes; and a highly +passionate and singing, but completely profligate and debasing, desire +for mercenary though cultivated creatures like the Delias and Cynthlas +of Tibullus and Propertius, or highborn women, descended, like Catullus' +Lesbia, in brazen dishonour to their level, women towards whom there +could not possibly exist on the part of their lovers any sense of +equality, much less of inferiority. To these two kinds of love, chaste +but cold, and passionate but unchaste, the Middle Ages added, or rather +opposed, a new manner of loving, which, although a mere passing +phenomenon, has left the clearest traces throughout our whole mode of +feeling and writing. + +To describe mediaeval love is a difficult matter, and to describe it +except in negations is next to impossibility. I conceive it to consist +in a certain sentimental, romantic, idealistic attitude towards women, +not by any means incompatible however with the grossest animalism; an +attitude presupposing a complete moral, aesthetical, and social +superiority on the part of the whole sex, inspiring the very highest +respect and admiration independently of the individual's qualities; and +reaching the point of actual worship, varying from the adoration of a +queen by a courtier to the adoration of a shrine by a pilgrim, in the +case of the one particular lady who happens to be the beloved; an +attitude in the relations of the sexes which results in love becoming an +indispensable part of a noble life, and the devoted attachment to one +individual woman, a necessary requisite of a gentlemanly training. + +Mediaeval love is not merely a passion, a desire, an affection, a habit; +it is a perfect occupation. It absorbs, or is supposed to absorb, the +Individual; it permeates his life like a religion. It is not one of the +interests of life, or, rather, one of life's phases; it is the whole of +life, all other interests and actions either sinking into an unsingable +region below it, or merely embroidering a variegated pattern upon its +golden background. Mediaeval love, therefore, never obtains its object, +however much it may obtain the woman; for the object of mediaeval love, +as of mediaeval religious mysticism, is not one particular act or series +of acts, but is its own exercise, of which the various incidents of the +drama between man and woman are merely so many results. It has not its +definite stages, like the love of the men of classical Antiquity or the +heroic time of the North: its stages of seeking, obtaining, cherishing, +guarding; it is always at the same point, always in the same condition +of half-religious, half-courtier-like adoration, whether it be +triumphantly successful or sighingly despairing. The man and the +woman--or rather, I should say, the knight and the lady, for mediaeval +love is an aristocratic privilege, and the love of lower folk is not a +theme for song--the knight and the lady, therefore, seem always, however +knit together by habit, nay, by inextricable meshes of guilt, somehow at +the same distance from one another. Once they have seen and loved each +other, their passion burns on always evenly, burns on (at least +theoretically) to all eternity. It seems almost as if the woman were a +mere shrine, a mysterious receptacle of the ineffable, a grail cup, a +consecrated wafer, but not the ineffable itself. For there is always in +mediaeval love, however fleshly the incidents which it produces, a +certain Platonic element; that is to say, a craving for, a pursuit of, +something which is an abstraction; an abstraction impossible to define +in its constant shifting and shimmering, and which seems at one moment a +social standard, a religious ideal, or both, and which merges for ever +in the dazzling, vague sheen of the Eternal Feminine. Hence, one of the +most distinctive features of mediaeval love, an extraordinary sameness of +intonation, making it difficult to distinguish between the _bona fide_ +passion for which a man risks life and honour, and the mere +conventional gallantry of the knight who sticks a lady's glove on his +helmet as a compliment to her rank; nay, between the impure adoration of +an adulterous lamia like Yseult, and the mystical adoration of a +glorified Mother of God; for both are women, both are ladies, and +therefore the greatest poet of the early Middle Ages, Gottfried von +Strassburg, sings them both with the same religious respect, and the +same hysterical rapture. This mediaeval love is furthermore a +deliberately expected, sought-for, and received necessity in a man's +life; it is not an accident, much less an incidental occurrence to be +lightly taken or possibly avoided: it is absolutely indispensable to +man's social training, to his moral and aesthetical self-improvement; it +is part and parcel of manhood and knighthood. Hence, where it does not +arise of itself (and where a man is full of the notion of such love, it +is rare that it does not come but too soon) it has to be sought for. +Ulrich von Liechtenstein, in his curious autobiography written late in +the twelfth century, relates how ever since his childhood he had been +aware of the necessity of the loyal love service of a lady for the +accomplishment of knightly duties; and how, as soon as he was old enough +to love, he looked around him for a lady whom he might serve; a +proceeding renewed in more prosaic days and with a curious pedantic +smack, by Lorenzo dei Medici; and then again, perhaps for the last time, +by the Knight of La Mancha, in that memorable discussion which ended in +the enthronement as his heart's queen of the unrivalled Dulcinea of +Toboso. _Frowendienst,_ "lady's service," is the name given by Ulrich +von Liechtenstein, a mediaeval Quixote, outshining by far the mad +Provencals Rudel and Vidal, to the memoirs very delightfully done into +modern German by Ludwig Tieck; and "lady's service" is the highest +occupation of knightly leisure, the subject of the immense bulk of +mediaeval poetry. "Lady's service" in deeds of arms and song, in constant +praise and defence of the beloved, in heroic enterprise and madcap +mummery, in submission and terror to the wondrous creature whom the +humble servant, the lover, never calls by her sacred name, speaking of +her in words unknown to Antiquity, _dompna, dame, frowe, madonna_--words +of which the original sense has almost been forgotten, although there +cleave to them even now ideas higher than those associated with the +_puella_ of the ancients, the _wib_ of the heroic days--lady, +mistress--the titles of the Mother of God, who is, after all, only the +mystical Soul's Paramour of the mediaeval world. "Lady's service"--the +almost technical word, expressing the position, half-serf-like, +half-religious, the bonds of complete humility and never-ending +faithfulness, the hopes of reward, the patience under displeasure, the +pride in the livery of servitude, the utter absorption of the life of +one individual in the life of another; which constitute in Provence, in +France, in Germany, in England, in Italy, in the fabulous kingdoms of +Arthur and Charlemagne, the strange new thing which I have named +Mediaeval Love. + +Has such a thing really existed? Are not these mediaeval poets leagued +together in a huge conspiracy to deceive us? Is it possible that strong +men have wept and fainted at a mere woman's name, like the Count of +Nevers in "Flamenca," or that their mind has swooned away in months of +reverie like that of Parzifal in Eschenbach's poem; that worldly wise +and witty men have shipped off and died on sea for love of an unseen +woman like Jaufre Rudel; or dressed in wolf's hide and lurked and fled +before the huntsmen-like Peire Vidal; or mangled their face and cut off +their finger, and, clothing themselves in rags more frightful than +Nessus' robe, mixed in the untouchable band of lepers like Ulrich von +Liechtenstein? Is it possible to believe that the insane enterprises of +the Amadises, Lisvarts and Felixmartes of late mediaeval romance, that +the behaviour of Don Quixote in the Sierra Morena, ever had any serious +models in reality? Nay, more difficult still to believe--because the +whole madness of individuals is more credible than the half-madness of +the whole world--is it possible to believe that, as the poems of +innumerable trouveres and troubadours, minnesingers and Italian poets, +as the legion of mediaeval romances of the cycles of Charlemagne, Arthur, +and Amadis would have it, that during so long a period of time society +could have been enthralled by this hysterical, visionary, artificial, +incredible religion of mediaeval love? It is at once too grotesque and +too beautiful, too high and too low, to be credible; and our first +impulse, on closing the catechisms and breviaries, the legendaries and +hymn-books of this strange new creed, is to protest that the love poems +must be allegories, the love romances solar myths, the Courts of Love +historical bungles; that all this mediaeval world of love is a figment, a +misinterpretation, a falsehood. + +But if we seek more than a mere casual impression; if, instead of +feeling sceptical over one or two fragments of evidence, we attempt to +collect the largest possible number of facts together; if we read not +one mediaeval love story, but twenty--not half a dozen mediaeval love +poems, but several scores; if we really investigate into the origin of +the apparent myth, the case speedily alters. Little by little this which +had been inconceivable becomes not merely intelligible, but inevitable; +the myth becomes an historical phenomenon of the most obvious and +necessary sort. Mediaeval love, which had seemed to us a poetic fiction, +is turned into a reality; and a reality, alas, which is prosaic. Let us +look at it. + +Mediaeval love is first revealed in the sudden and almost simultaneous +burst of song which, like the twitter and trill so dear to trouveres, +troubadours, and minnesingers, fills the woods that yesterday were +silent and dead, and greeted the earliest sunshine, the earliest faint +green after the long winter numbness of the dark ages, after the +boisterous gales of the earliest Crusade. The French and Provencals +sang first, the Germans later, the Sicilians last; but although we may +say after deliberate analysis, such or such a form, or such or such a +story, was known in this country before it appeared in that one, such +imitation or suggestion was so rapid that with regard to the French, the +Provencals, and the Germans at least, the impression is simultaneous; +only the Sicilians beginning distinctly later, forerunners of the new +love lyric, wholly different from that of trouveres, troubadours, and +minnesingers, of the Italians of the latter thirteenth century. And this +simultaneous revelation of mediaeval love takes place in the last quarter +of the twelfth century, when Northern France had already consolidated +into a powerful monarchy, and Paris, after the teachings of Abelard, was +recognized as the intellectual metropolis of Europe; when south of the +Loire the brilliant Angevine kings held the overlordship of the cultured +Raymonds of Toulouse and of the reviving Latin municipalities of +Provence \ when Germany was welded as a compact feudal mass by the most +powerful of the Stauffens; and the papacy had been built up by Gregory +and Alexander into a political wall against which Frederick and Henry +vainly battered; when the Italian commonwealths grew slowly but surely, +as yet still far from guessing that the day would come when their +democracy should produce a new civilization to supersede this triumphant +mediaeval civilization of the early Capetiens, the Angevines, and the +Hohenstauffens. Europe was setting forth once more for the East; but no +longer as the ignorant and enthusiastic hordes of Peter the Hermit: Asia +was the great field for adventure, the great teacher of new luxuries, at +once the Eldorado and the grand tour of all the brilliant and +inquisitive and unscrupulous chivalry of the day. And, while into the +West were insidiously entering habits and modes of thought of the East; +throughout Germany and Provence, and throughout the still obscure free +burghs of Italy, was spreading the first indication of that emotional +mysticism which, twenty or thirty years later, was to burst out in the +frenzy of spiritual love of St. Francis and his followers. The moment is +one of the most remarkable in all history: the premature promise in the +twelfth century of that intellectual revival which was delayed +throughout Northern Europe until the sixteenth. It is the moment when +society settled down, after the anarchy of eight hundred years, on its +feudal basis; a basis fallaciously solid, and in whose presence no one +might guess that the true and definitive Renaissance would arise out of +the democratic civilization of Italy. + +Such is the moment when we first hear the almost universal song of +mediaeval love. This song comes from the triumphantly reorganized portion +of society, not from the part which is slowly working its way to +reorganization; not from the timidly encroaching burghers, but from the +nobles. The reign of town poetry, of fabliaux and meistersang, comes +later; the poets of the early Middle Ages, trouveres, troubadours, and +minnesingers are, with barely one or two exceptions, all knights. And +their song comes from the castle. Now, in order to understand mediaeval +love, we must reflect for a moment upon this feudal castle, and upon the +kind of life which the love poets of the late twelfth and early +thirteenth century--whether lords like Bertram de Born, and Guillaume de +Poitiers, among the troubadours; the Vidame de Chartres, Meurisses de +Craon, and the Duke of Brabant among the trouveres of Northern France; +like Ulrich von Liechtenstein among the minnesingers; or retainers and +hangers-on like Bernard de Ventadour and Armand de Mareulh, like +Chrestiens de Troyes, Gaisses Brulez, or Quienes de Bethune, like +Walther, Wolfram, and Tannhaeuser--great or small, good or bad, saw +before them and mixed with in that castle. The castle of a great +feudatory of the early Middle Ages, whether north or south of the Loire, +in Austria or in Franconia, is like a miniature copy of some garrison +town in barbarous countries: there is an enormous numerical +preponderance of men over women; for only the chiefs in command, the +overlord, and perhaps one or two of his principal kinsmen or adjutants, +are permitted the luxury of a wife; the rest of the gentlemen are +subalterns, younger sons without means, youths sent to learn their +military duty and the ways of the world: a whole pack of men without +wives, without homes, and usually without fortune. High above all this +deferential male crowd, moves the lady of the castle: highborn, proud, +having brought her husband a dower of fiefs often equal to his own, and +of vassals devoted to her race. About her she has no equals; her +daughters, scarcely out of the nurse's hands, are given away in +marriage; and her companions, if companions they may be called, are the +waiting ladies, poor gentlewomen situated between the maid of honour and +the ladies' maid, like that Brangwaine whom Yseult sacrifices to her +intrigue with Tristram, or those damsels whom Flamenca gives over to the +squires of her lover Guillems; at best, the wife of one of her husband's +subalterns, or some sister or aunt or widow kept by charity. Round this +lady--the stately, proud lady perpetually described by mediaeval +poets--flutters the swarm of young men, all day long, in her path: +serving her at meals, guarding her apartments, nay, as pages, admitted +even into her most secret chamber; meeting her for ever in the +narrowness of that castle life, where every unnecessary woman is a +burden usurping the place of a soldier, and, if possible, replaced by a +man. Servants, lacqueys, and enjoying the privileges of ubiquity of +lacqueys, yet, at the same time, men of good birth and high breeding, +good at the sword and at the lute; bound to amuse this highborn woman, +fading away in the monotony of feudal life, with few books to read or +unable to read them, and far above all the household concerns which +devolve on the butler, the cellarer, the steward, the gentleman, +honourably employed as a servant. To them, to these young men, with few +or no young women of their own age to associate, and absolutely no +unmarried girls who could be a desirable match, the lady of the castle +speedily becomes a goddess, the impersonation at once of that feudal +superiority before which they bow, of that social perfection which they +are commanded to seek, and of that womankind of which the castle affords +so few examples. To please her, this lazy, bored, highbred woman, with +all the squeamishness and caprice of high birth and laziness about her, +becomes their ideal; to be favourably noticed, their highest glory; to +be loved, these wretched mortals, by this divinity--that thought must +often pass through their brain and terrify them with its delicious +audacity; oh no, such a thing is not possible. But it is. The lady at +first, perhaps most often, singles out as a pastime some young knight, +some squire, some page; and, in a half-queenly, half-motherly way, +corrects, rebukes his deficiencies, undertakes to teach him his duty as +a servant. The romance of the "Petit Jehan de Saintre," written in the +fifteenth century, but telling, with a delicacy of cynicism worthy of +Balzac, what must have been the old, old story of the whole feudal +Middle Ages, shows the manner in which, while feeling that he is being +trained to knightly courtesy and honour, the young man in the service of +a great feudal lady is gradually taught dissimulation, lying, intrigue; +is initiated by the woman who looms above him like a saint into all the +foulness of adultery. Adultery; a very ugly word, which must strike +almost like a handful of mud in the face whosoever has approached this +subject of mediaeval love in admiration of its strange delicacy and +enthusiasm. Yet it is a word which must be spoken, for in it is the +explanation of the whole origin and character of this passion which +burst into song in the early Middle Ages. This almost religious love, +this love which conceives no higher honour than the service of the +beloved, no higher virtue than eternal fidelity--this love is the love +for another man's wife. Between unmarried young men and young women, +kept carefully apart by the system which gives away a girl without her +consent and only to a rich suitor, there is no possibility of love in +these early feudal courts; the amours, however licentious, between +kings' daughters and brave knights, of the Carolingian tales, belong to +a different rank of society, to the prose romances made up in the +fourteenth century for the burgesses of cities; the intrigues, ending in +marriage, of the princes and princesses of the cycle of Amadis, belong +to a different period, to the fifteenth century, and to courts where +feudal society scarcely exists; the squires, the young knights who hang +about a great baronial establishment of the twelfth and thirteenth +centuries, have still to make their fortune, and do not dream of +marriage. The husband, on the other hand, the great lord or successful +knightly adventurer, married late in life, and married from the +necessity, for ever pressing upon the feudal proprietor, of adding on +new fiefs and new immunities, of increasing his importance and +independence in proportion to the hourly increasing strength and claims +of the overlord, the king, who casts covetous eyes upon him--the husband +has not married for love; he has had his love affairs with the wives of +other men in his day, or may still have them; this lady is a mere feudal +necessity, she is required to give him a dower and give him an heir, +that is all. If the husband does not love, how much less can the wife; +married, as she is, scarce knowing what marriage is, to a man much older +than herself, whom most probably she has never seen, to whom she is a +mere investment. Nay, there is not even the after-marriage love of the +ancients: this wife is not the housekeeper, the woman who works that the +man's house may be rich and decorous; not even the nurse of his +children, for the children are speedily given over to the squires and +duennas; she is the woman of another family who has come into his, the +stranger who must be respected (as that most typical mediaeval wife, +Eleanor of Guienne, was respected by her husbands) on account of her +fiefs, her vassals, her kinsfolk; but who cannot be loved. Can there be +love between man and wife? There cannot be love between man and wife. +This is no answer of mine, fantastically deduced from mediaeval poetry. +It is the answer solemnly made to the solemnly asked question by the +Court of Love held by the Countess of Champagne in 1174, and registered +by Master Andrew the King of France's chaplain: "Dicimus enim et +stabilito tenore firmamus amorem non posse inter duos jugales suas +extendere vires." And the reason alleged for this judgment brings us +back to the whole conception of mediaeval love as a respectful service +humbly waiting for a reward: "For," pursues the decision published by +Andre le Chapelain, "whereas lovers grant to each other favours freely +and from no legal necessity, married people have the duty of obeying +each other's wishes and of refusing nothing to one another." "No love is +possible between man and wife," repeat the Courts of Love which, +consisting of all the highborn ladies of the province and presided by +some mighty queen or princess, represent the social opinions of the day. +"But this lady," says a knight (Miles) before the love tribunal of Queen +Eleanor, "promised to me that if ever she should lose the love of her +lover, she would take me in his place. She has wedded the man who was +her lover, and I have come to claim fulfilment of her promise." The +court discusses for awhile. "We cannot," answers Queen Eleanor, "go +against the Countess of Champagne's decision that love cannot exist +between man and wife. We therefore desire this lady to fulfil her +promise and give you her love." Again, there come to the Court of Love +of the Viscountess of Narbonne a knight and a lady, who desire to know +whether, having been once married, but since divorced, a love engagement +between them would be honourable. The viscountess decides that "Love +between those who have been married together, but who have since been +divorced from one another, is not to be deemed reprehensible; nay, that +it is to be considered as honourable." And these Courts of Love, be it +remarked, were frequently held on occasion of the marriage of great +personages; as, for instance, of that between Louis VII. and Eleanor of +Poitiers in 1137. The poetry of the early Middle Ages follows implicitly +the decisions of these tribunals, which reveal a state of society to +which the nearest modern approach is that of Italy in the eighteenth +century, when, as Goldoni and Parini show us, as Stendhal (whose "De +l'Amour" may be taken as the modern "Breviari d'Amor") expounds, there +was no impropriety possible as long as a lady was beloved by any one +except her own husband. No love, therefore, between unmarried people +(the cyclical romances, as before stated, and the Amadises, belong to +another time of social condition, and the only real exception to my rule +of which I can think is the lovely French tale of "Aucassin et +Nicolette"); and no love between man and wife. But love there must be; +and love there consequently is; love for the married woman from the man +who is not her husband. The feudal lady, married without being consulted +and without having had a chance of knowing what love is, yet lives to +know love; lives to be taught it by one of these many bachelors bound to +flutter about her in military service or social duty; lives to teach it +herself. And she is too powerful in her fiefs and kinsmen, too powerful +in the public opinion which approves and supports her, to be hampered by +her husband. The husband, indeed, has grown up in the same habits, has +known, before marrying, the customs sanctioned by the Courts of Love; he +has been the knight of some other man's wife in his day, what right has +he to object? As in the days of Italian _cecisbei_, the early mediaeval +lover might say with Goldoni's Don Alfonso or Don Roberto, "I _serve_ +your wife--such or such another serves mine, what harm can there be in +it?" ("Io servo vostra moglie, Don Eugenio favorisce la mia; che male c' +e?" I am quoting from memory.) And as a fact, we hear little of +jealousy; the amusement of En Barral when Peire Vidal came in and kissed +his sleeping wife; and the indignation of all Provence for the murder of +Guillems de Cabestanh (buried in the same tomb with the lady who had +been made to eat of his heart)--showing from opposite sides how the +society accustomed to Courts of Love looked upon the duties of husbands. + +Such was the social life in those feudal courts whence first arises the +song of mediaeval love, and that this is the case is proved by the whole +huge body of early mediaeval poetry. We must not judge, as I have said, +either by poems of much earlier date, like the Nibelungen and the +Carolingian _chansons de geste_, which merely received a new form in the +early Middle Ages; still less from the prose romances of Melusine, +Milles et Amys, Palemon and Arcite, and a host of others which were +elaborated only later and under the influence of the quite unfeudal +habits of the great cities; and least of all from that strange late +southern cycle of the Amadises, from which, odd as it seems, many of our +notions of chivalric love have, through our ancestors, through the +satirists or burlesque poets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, +been inherited. We must look at the tales which, as we are constantly +being told by trouveres, troubadours, and minnesingers, were the +fashionable reading of the feudal classes of the twelfth and thirteenth +centuries: the tales best known to us in the colourless respectability +of the collection made in the reign of Edward IV. by Sir Thomas Malory, +and called by him the "Morte d'Arthur"--of the ladies and knights of +Arthur's court; of the quest of the Grail by spotless knights who were +bastards and fathers of bastards; of the intrigues of Tristram of +Lyoness and Queen Yseult; of Launcelot and Guenevere; the tales which +Francesca and Paolo read together. We must look, above all, at the lyric +poetry of France, Provence, Germany, and Sicily in the early Middle +Ages. + + + Vos qui tres bien ameis i petit mentendeis + Por l'amor de Ihesu les pucelles ameis. + Nos trouvons en escris de sainte auctoriteis + Ke pucelle est la fleur de loyaulment ameir. + + +This strange entreaty to love the maidens for the sake of Christ's love, +this protest of a nameless northern French poet (Wackernagel, +Altfranzoesische Lieder and Leiche IX.) against the adulterous passion of +his contemporaries, comes to us, pathetically enough, solitary, faint, +unnoticed in the vast chorus, boundless like the spring song of birds or +the sound of the waves, of poets singing the love of other men's wives. +But, it may be objected--how can we tell that these love songs, so +carefully avoiding all mention of names, are not addressed to the +desired bride, to the legitimate wife of the poet? For several reasons; +and mainly, for the crushing evidence of an undefinable something which +tells us that they are not. The other reasons are easily stated. We know +that feudal habits would never have allowed to unmarried women (and +women were married when scarcely out of their childhood) the +opportunities for the relations which obviously exist between the poet +and his lady; and that, if by some accident a young knight might fall in +love with a girl, he would address not her but her parents, since the +Middle Ages, who were indifferent to adultery, were, like the southern +nations among whom the married woman is not expected to be virtuous, +extreme sticklers for the purity of their unmarried womankind. Further, +we have no instance of an unmarried woman being ever addressed during +the early Middle Ages, in those terms of social respect--_madame, +domna, frowe, madonna_--which essentially belong to the mistress of a +household; nor do these stately names fit in with any theory which would +make us believe that the lady addressed by the poet is the jealously +guarded daughter of the house with whom he is plotting a secret +marriage, or an elopement to end off in marriage. This is not the way +that Romeo speaks to Juliet, nor even that the princesses in the +cyclical romances and in the Amadises are wooed by their bridegrooms. +This is not the language of a lover who is broaching his love, and who +hopes, however timidly, to consummate it before all the world by +marriage. It is obviously the language of a man either towards a woman +who is taking a pleasure in keeping him dangling without favours which +she has implicitly or explicitly promised; or towards a woman who is +momentarily withholding favours which her lover has habitually enjoyed. +And in a large proportion of cases the poems of trouveres, troubadours, +and minnesingers are the expression of fortunate love, the fond +recollection or eager expectation of meetings with the beloved. All this +can evidently not be connected with the wooing, however stealthy, +however Romeo-and-Juliet-like of a bride; still less can it be explained +in reference to love within wedlock. A man does not, however loving, +worship his wife as his social superior; he does not address her in +titles of stiff respect; he does not sigh and weep and supplicate for +love which is his due, and remind his wife that she owes it him in +return for loyal, humble, discreet service. Above all, a man (except in +some absurd comedy perhaps, where the husband, in an age of _cicisbeos_, +is in love with his own wife and dares not admit it before the society +which holds "that there can be no love between married folk ")--a +husband, I repeat, does not beg for, arrange, look forward to, and +recall with triumph or sadness, secret meetings with his own wife. Now +the secret meeting is, in nearly every aristocratic poet of the early +poetry, the inevitable result of the humble praises and humble requests +for kindness; it is, most obviously, _the_ reward for which the poet is +always importuning. Mediaeval love poetry, compared with the love poetry +of Antiquity and the love poetry of the revival of letters, is, in its +lyric form, decidedly chaste; but it is perfectly explicit; and, for all +its metaphysical tendencies and its absence of clearly painted pictures, +the furthest possible removed from being Platonic. One of the most +important, characteristic, and artistically charming categories of +mediaeval love lyrics is that comprising the Provencal _serena_ and +_alba,_ with their counterparts in the _langue d'oil_, and the so-called +_Wachtlieder_ of the minnesingers; and this category of love poetry may +be defined as the drama, in four acts, of illicit love. The faithful +lover has received from his lady an answer to his love, the place and +hour are appointed; all the day of which the evening is to bring him +this honour, he goes heavy hearted and sighing: "Day, much do you grow +for my grief, and the evening, the evening and the long hope kills me." +Thus far the _serena_, the evening song, of Guiraut Riquier. A lovely +anonymous _alba,_ whose refrain, "Oi deus, oi deus; de l' alba, tan tost +ve!" is familiar to every smatterer of Provencal, shows us the lady and +her knight in an orchard beneath the hawthorn, giving and taking the +last kisses while the birds sing and the sky whitens with dawn. "The +lady is gracious and pleasant, and many look upon her for her beauty, +and her heart Is all in loving loyally; alas, alas, the dawn! how soon +it: comes!--" "Oi deus, oi deus; de l'alba, tan tost ve!" The real _alba_ +is the same as the German _Wachtlieder,_ the song of the squire or +friend posted at the garden gate or outside the castle wall, warning the +lovers to separate. "Fair comrade (Bel Companho), I call to you singing. +'Sleep no more, for I hear the birds announcing the day in the trees, +and I fear that the jealous one may find you;' and in a moment it will +be day, 'Bel Companho, come to the window and look at the signs in the +sky! you will know me a faithful messenger; if you do it not, it will be +to your harm" and in a moment it will be dawn (et ades sera l' alba)... +Bel Companho, since I left you I have not slept nor raised myself from +my knees; for I have prayed to God the Son of Saint Mary, that he should +send me: back my faithful comrade, and in a moment it will be dawn In +this _alba_ of Guiraut de Borneulh, the lover comes at last to the +window, and cries to his watching comrade that he is too happy to care +either for the dawn or for the jealous one. The German _Wachtlieder_ are +even more explicit. "He must away at once and without delay," sings the +watchman in a poem of Wolfram, the austere singer of Parzifal and the +Grail Quest; "let him go, sweet lady; let him away from thy love so that +he keep his honour and life. He trusted himself to me that I should +bring him safely hence; it is day ..." "Sing what thou wilt, watchman," +answers the lady, "but leave him here." In a far superior, but also far +less chaste poem of Heinrich von Morungen, the lady, alone and +melancholy, wakes up remembering the sad white light of morning, the sad +cry of the watchman, which separated her from her knight. Still more +frankly, and in a poem which is one of the few real masterpieces of +Minnesang, the lady in Walther von der Vogelweide's "Under der linden an +der Heide" narrates a meeting in the wood. "What passed between us shall +never be known by any! never by any, save him and me--yes, and by the +little nightingale that sang _Tandaradei_! The little bird will surely +be discreet." + +The songs of light love for another's wife of troubadour, trouvere, and +minnesinger, seem to have been squeezed together, so that all their +sweet and acrid perfume is, so to speak, sublimated, in the recently +discovered early Provencal narrative poem called "Flamenca." Like the +"Tristram" of Gottfried von Strassburg, like all these light mediaeval +love _lyrics,_ of which I have been speaking, the rhymed story of +"Flamenca," a pale and simple, but perfect petalled daisy, has come up +in a sort of moral and intellectual dell in the winter of the Middle +Ages--a dell such as you meet in hollows of even the most wind-swept +southern hills, where, while all round the earth is frozen and the short +grass nibbled away by the frost, may be found even at Christmas a bright +sheen of budding wheat beneath the olives on the slope, a yellow haze of +sun upon the grass in which the little aromatic shoots of fennel and +mint and marigold pattern with greenness the sere brown, the +frost-burnt; where the very leafless fruit trees have a spring-like rosy +tinge against the blue sky, and the tufted little osiers flame a joyous +orange against the greenness of the hill. + +Such spots there are--and many--in the winter of the Middle Ages; though +it is not in them, but where the rain beats, and the snow and the wind +tugs, that grow, struggling with bitterness, the great things of the +day: the philosophy of Abelard, the love of man of St. Francis, the +patriotism of the Lombard communes; nor that lie dormant, fertilized in +the cold earth, the great things of art and thought, the great things to +come. But in them arise the delicate winter flowers which we prize: +tender, pale things, without much life, things either come too soon or +stayed too late, among which is "Flamenca;" one of those roses, nipped +and wrinkled, but stained a brighter red by the frost, which we pluck in +December or in March; beautiful, bright, scentless roses, which, scarce +in bud, already fall to pieces in our hand. "Flamenca" is simply the +narrative of the loves of the beautiful wife of the bearish and jealous +Count Archambautz, and of Guillems de Nevers, a brilliant young knight +who hears of the lady's sore captivity, is enamoured before he sees her, +dresses up as the priest's clerk, and speaks one word with her while +presenting the mass book to be kissed, every holiday; and finally +deceives the vigilance of the husband by means of a subterranean +corridor, which he gets built between his inn and the bath-room of the +lady at the famous waters of Bourbon-les-Bains. In this world of +"Flamenca," which is in truth the same world as that of the "Romaunt of +the Rose," the "Morte d'Arthur," and of the love poets of early France +and Germany, conjugal morality and responsibility simply do not exist. +It seems an unreal pleasure-garden, with a shadowy guardian--impalpable +to us gross moderns--called Honour, but where, as it seems, Love only +reigns. Love, not the mystic and melancholy god of the "Vita Nuova," but +a foppish young deity, sentimental at once and sensual, of fashionable +feudal life: the god of people with no apparent duties towards others, +unconscious of any restraints save those of this vague thing called +honour; whose highest mission for the knight, as put in our English +"Romaunt of the Rose" is to-- + + Set thy might and alle thy witte + Wymmen and ladies for to plese, + And to do thyng that may hem ese; + +while, for the lady, it is expressed with perfect simplicity of +shamelessness by Flamenca herself to her damsels, teaching them that the +woman must yield to the pleasure of her lover. Now love, when young, +when, so to speak, but just born and able to feed (as a newborn child on +milk, without hungering for more solid food) on looks and words and +sighs; love thus young, is a fair-seeming godhead, and the devotion to +him a pretty and delicate piece of aestheticism. And such it is here in +"Flamenca," where there certainly exists neither God nor Christ, both +complete absentees, whose priest becomes a courteous lover's valet, +whose church the place for amorous rendezvous, whose sacrifice of mass +and prayer becomes a means of amorous correspondence: Cupid, in the +shape of his slave Guillems de Nevers--become _patarin_(zealot) for +love--peeping with shaven golden head from behind the missal, touching +the lady's hand and whispering with the words of spiritual peace the +declaration of love, the appointment for meeting. God and Christ, I +repeat, are absentees. Where they are I know not; perhaps over the Rhine +with the Lollards in their weavers' dens, or over the Alps in the cell +of St. Francis; not here, certainly, or if here, themselves become the +mere slaves of love. But this King Love, as long as a mere infant, is a +sweet and gracious divinity, surrounded by somewhat of the freshness and +hawthorn sweetness of spring which seem to accompany his favourite +Guillems. Guillems de Nevers, "who could still grow," this brilliant +knight and troubadour, in his white silken and crimson and purple +garments and soundless shoes embroidered with flowers, this prince of +tournaments and _tensos_, who hearing the sorrows of the beautiful +Flamenca, loves her unseen, sits sighing in sight of her prison bower, +and faints like a hero of the Arabian Nights at her name, and has +visions of her as St. Francis has of Christ; this younger and brighter +Sir Launcelot, is an ideal little figure, whom you might mistake for +Love himself as described in the "Romaunt of the Rose;" Love's avatar or +incarnation, on whose appearance the year blooms into spring, the fruit +trees blossom, the birds sing, the girls dance at eve round the +maypoles; behind whom, while reading this poem, we seem to see the corn +shine green beneath the olives, the white-blossomed branches slant +across the blue sky. For is he not the very incarnation of chivalry, of +beauty, and of love? So much for this King Love while but quite young. +Unfortunately he is speedily weaned of his baby food of mere blushing +glances and sighed-out names; and then his aspect, his kingdom's aspect, +the aspect of his votaries, undergoes a change. The profane but charming +game of the loving clerk and the missal is exchanged for the more +coarse hide-and-seek of hidden causeways and tightened bolts, with +jealous husbands guarding the useless door; Guillems becomes but an +ordinary Don Juan or Lovelace, Flamenca but a sorry, sneaking +adulteress, and the gracious damsels mere common sluts, curtseying at +the loan (during the interview of nobler folk) of the gallant's squires. +For the scent of May, of fresh leaves and fallen blossoms, we get the +nauseous vapours of the bath-room; and, alas, King Love has lost his +aureole and his wings and turned keeper of the hot springs, sought out +by the gouty and lepers, of Bourbon-les-Bains; and in closing this book, +so delightfully begun, we sicken at the whiff of hot and fetid moral air +as we should sicken in passing over the outlet of the polluted hot +water. + +"But where is the use of telling us all this?" the reader will ask; +"every one knows that illicit passion existed and exists, and has its +chroniclers, its singers in prose and in verse. But what has all this +poetry of common adultery to do with a book like the 'Vita Nuova,' with +that strange new thing, that lifelong worship of a woman, which you call +mediaeval love?" This much: that out of this illicit love, and out of it, +gross as it looks, alone arises the possibility of the "Vita Nuova;" +arises the possibility of the romantic and semi-religious love of the +Middle Ages. Or, rather, let us say that this mere loose love of the +_albas_ and _Wachtlieder_ and "Flamenca," is the substratum, nay, is the +very flesh and blood, of the spiritual passion to which, in later days, +we owe the book of Beatrice. + +It is a harsh thing to say, but one which all sociology teaches us, that +as there exists no sensual relation which cannot produce for its +ennoblement a certain amount of passion, so also does there exist no +passion (and Phaedrus is there to prove it) so vile and loathsome as to +be unable to weave about itself a glamour of ideal sentiment. The poets +of the Middle Ages strove after the criminal possession of another man's +wife. This, however veiled with fine and delicate poetic expressions, is +the thing for which they wait and sigh and implore; this is the reward, +the supremely honouring and almost sanctifying reward which the lady +cannot refuse to the knight who has faithfully and humbly served her. +The whole bulk of the love lyrics of the early Middle Ages are there to +prove it; and if the allusions in them are not sufficiently clear, those +who would be enlightened may study the discussions of the allegorical +persons even in the English (and later) version of Guillaume de Lorris' +"Roman de la Rose;" and turn to what, were it in _langue d'oc_, we +should call a _tenso_ of Guillaume li Viniers among Maetzner's +"Altfranzoesische Lieder-dichter." The catastrophe of Ulrich von +Liechtenstein's "Frowendienst," where the lady, the "virtuous," the +"pure," as he is pleased to call her, after making him cut off his +finger, dress in leper's clothes, chop off part of his upper lip, and go +through the most marvellous Quixotic antics dressed in satin and pearls +and false hair as Queen Venus, and jousting in this costume with every +knight between Venice and Styria, all for her honour and glory; pulls +the gallant in a basket up to her window, and then lets him drop down +into the moat which is no better than a sewer; this grotesque and +tragically resented end of Ulrich's first _love service_ speaks volumes +on the point. The stones in Nostradamus' "Lives of the Troubadours," the +incidents in Gottfried's "Tristan und Isolde," nay, the adventures even +in our expunged English "Morte d'Arthur," relating to the birth of Sir +Galahad, are as explicit as anything in Brantome or the Queen of +Navarre; the most delicate love songs of Provence and Germany are +cobwebs spun round Decameronian situations. And all this is permitted, +admitted, sanctioned by feudal society even as the _cecisbeos_ of the +noble Italian ladies were sanctioned by the society of the seventeenth +and eighteenth centuries. In the mediaeval castle, where, as we have +seen, the lady, separated from her own sex, is surrounded by a swarm of +young men without a chance of marriage, and bound to make themselves +agreeable to the wife of a military superior; the woman soon ceases to +be the exclusive property of her husband, and the husband speedily +discovers that the majority, hence public ridicule, are against any +attempt at monopolizing her. Thus adultery becomes, as we have seen, +accepted as an institution under the name of _service_; and, like all +other social institutions, developes a morality of its own--a morality +within immorality, of faithfulness within infidelity. The lady must be +true to her knight, and the knight must be true to his lady: the Courts +of Love solemnly banish from society any woman who is known to have more +than one lover. Faithfulness is the first and most essential virtue of +mediaeval love; a virtue unknown to the erotic poets of Antiquity, and +which modern times have inherited from the Middle Ages as a requisite, +even (as the reproaches of poets of the Alfred de Musset school teach +us) in the most completely illicit love. Tristram and Launcelot, the two +paragons of knighthood, are inviolably constant to their mistress: the +husband may and must be deceived, but not the wife who helps to deceive +him. Yseult of Brittany and Elaine, the mother of Galahad, do not +succeed in breaking the vows made to Yseult the Fair and to Queen +Guenevere. The beautiful lady in the hawthorn _alba_ "a son cor en amar +lejalmens." But this loyal loving is for the knight who is warned to +depart, certainly not for the husband, the _gilos_, in whose despite +("Bels dous amios, baizem nos eu e vos--Aval els pratzon chantols +auzellos--_Tot O fassam en despeit del gilos_") they are meeting. The +ladies of the minnesingers are "pure," "good," "faithful" (and each and +all are pure, good, and faithful, as long as they do not resist) from +the point of view of the lover, not of the husband, if indeed a husband +be permitted to have any point of view at all. And as fidelity is the +essential virtue in these adulterous connections, so infidelity is the +greatest crime that a woman (and even a man) can commit, the greatest +misfortune which fate can send to an unhappy knight. That he leaves a +faithful mistress behind him is the one hope of the knight who, taking +the cross, departs to meet the scimitars of Saladin's followers, the +fevers, the plagues, the many miserable deaths of the unknown East. "If +any lady be unfaithful," says Quienes de Bethune, "she will have to be +unfaithful with some base wretch." + + + Et les dames ki castement vivront + Se loiaute font a ceus qui iront; + Et seles font par mal conseil folaje, + A lasques gens et mauvais le feront, + Car tout li bon iront en cest voiage. + + +"I have taken the cross on account of my sins," sings Albrecht von +Johansdorf, one of the most earnest of the minnesingers; "now let God +help, till my return, the woman who has great sorrow on my account, in +order that I may find her possessed of her honour; let Him grant me this +prayer. But if she change her life (_i.e_., take to bad courses), then +may God forbid my ever returning." The lady is bound (the Courts of Love +decide this point of honour) to reward her faithful lover. "A knight," +says a lady, in an anonymous German song published by Bartsch, "has +served me according to my will. Before too much time elapse, I must +reward him; nay, if all the world were to object, he must have his way +with me" ("und waerez al der Werlte leit, so muoz sin wille an mir +ergaen"). But, on the other hand, the favoured knight is bound to protect +his lady's good fame. + + + Se jai mamie en tel point mis, + Que tout motroit (m'octroit) sans esformer, + Tant doi je miex sonnor gaiter-- + + +thus one of the interlocutors in a French _jeu-parti_, published by +Maetzner; a rule which, if we may judge from the behaviour of Tristram +and Launcelot, and from the last remnants of mediaeval love lore in +modern French novels, means simply that the more completely a man has +induced a woman to deceive her husband, the more stoutly is he bound to +deny, with lies, rows, and blows, that she has ever done anything of the +sort. Here, then, we find established, as a very fundamental necessity +of this socially recognized adultery, a reciprocity of fidelity between +lover and mistress which Antiquity never dreamed of even between husband +and wife (Agamemnon has a perfect right to Briseis or Chryseis, but +Clytaemnestra has no right to Aegisthus); and which indeed could scarcely +arise as a moral obligation except where the woman was not bound to love +the man (which the wife is) and where her behaviour towards him depended +wholly upon her pleasure, that is to say, upon her satisfaction with his +behaviour towards her. This, which seems to us so obvious, and of which +every day furnishes us an example in the relations of the modern suitor +and his hoped-for wife, could not, at a time when women were married by +family arrangement, arise except as a result of illegitimate love. +Horrible as it seems, the more we examine into this subject of mediaeval +love, the more shall we see that our whole code of Grandisonian chivalry +between lovers who intend marriage is derived from the practice of the +Launcelots and Gueneveres, not from that of the married people (we may +remember the manner in which Gunther woos his wife Brunhilt in the +Nibelungenlied) of former ages; nay, the more we shall have to recognize +that the very feeling which constitutes the virtuous love of modern +poets is derived from the illegitimate loves of the Middle Ages. + +Let us examine what are the habits of feeling and thinking which grow +out of this reciprocal fidelity due to the absence of all one-sided +legal pressure in this illegitimate, but socially legitimated, love of +the early Middle Ages; which are added on to it by the very necessities +of illicit connection. The lover, having no right to the favours of his +mistress, is obliged, in order to win and to keep them, to please her by +humility, fidelity, and such knightly qualities as are the ideal plumage +of a man: he must bring home to her, by showing the world her colours +victorious in serious warfare, in the scarcely less dangerous play of +tournaments, and by making her beauty and virtues more illustrious in +his song than are those of other women in the songs of their lovers--he +must bring home to her that she has a more worthy servant than her +rivals; he must determine her to select him and to adhere to her +selection. Now mediaeval husbands select their wives, instead of being +selected; and once the woman and the dowry are in their hands, trouble +themselves but little whether they are approved of or not. On the other +hand, the mistress appears to her lover invested with imaginative, ideal +advantages such as cannot surround her in the eyes of her husband: she +is, in nearly every case, his superior in station and the desired of +many beholders; she is bound to him by no tie which may grow prosaic and +wearisome; she appears to him in no domestic capacity, can never descend +to be the female drudge; her possession is prevented from growing stale, +her personality from becoming commonplace, by the difficulty, rareness, +mystery, adventure, danger, which even in the days of Courts of Love +attach to illicit amours; above all, being for this man neither the +housewife nor the mother, she remains essentially and continually the +mistress, the beloved. Similarly the relations between the knight and +the lady, untroubled by domestic worries, pecuniary difficulties, and +squabbles about children, remain, exist merely as love relations, +relations of people whose highest and sole desire is to please one +another. Moreover, and this is an important consideration, the lady, who +is a mere inexperienced, immature girl when she first meets her husband, +is a mature woman, with character and passions developed by the +independence of conjugal and social life. When she meets her lover, +whatever power or dignity of character she may possess is ripe; whatever +intensity of aspiration and passion may be latent is ready to come +forth; for the first time there is equality in love. Equality? Ah, no. +This woman who is the wife of his feudal superior, this woman surrounded +by all the state of feudal sovereignty, this woman who, however young, +has already known so much of life, this woman whose love is a free, gift +of grace to the obscure, trembling vassal who has a right not even to be +noticed; this lady of mediaeval love must always remain immeasurably +above her lover. And, in the long day-dreams while watching her, as he +thinks unseen, while singing of her, as he thinks unheard, there cluster +round her figure, mistily seen in his fancy, those vague and-mystic +splendours which surround the new sovereign of the Middle Ages, the +Queen of Heaven; there mingles in the half-terrified raptures of the +first kind glance, the first encouraging word, the ineffable passion +stored up in the Christian's heart for the immortal beings who, in the +days of Bernard and Francis, descend cloud-like on earth and fill the +cells of the saints with unendurable glory. + +And thus, out of the baseness of habitual adultery, arises incense-like, +in the early mediaeval poetry, a new kind of love--subtler, more +imaginative, more passionate, a love of the fancy and the heart, a love +stimulating to the perfection of the individual as is any religion; +nay, a religion, and one appealing more completely to the complete man, +flesh and soul, than even the mystical beliefs of the Middle Ages. And +as, in the fantastic song of Ritter Tannhaeuser, whose liege lady, so +legend tells, was Dame Venus herself, the lady bids the knight go forth +and fetch her green water which has washed the setting sun, salamanders +snatched from the flame, the stars out of heaven; so would it seem as if +this new power in the world, this poetically worshipped woman, had sent +forth mankind to seek wonderful new virtues, never before seen on earth. +Nay, rather, as the snowflakes became green leaves, the frost blossoms +red and blue flowers, the winter wind a spring-scented breeze, when +Bernard de Ventadorn was greeted by his mistress; so also does it seem +as if, at the first greeting of the world by this new love, the mediaeval +winter had turned to summer, and there had budded forth and flowered a +new ideal of manly virtue, a new ideal of womanly grace. + +But evil is evil, and evil is its fruit. Out of circumstances hitherto +unknown, circumstances come about for the first time owing to the +necessities of illegitimate passion, have arisen certain new and nobler +characters of sexual love, certain new and beautiful conceptions of +manly and womanly nature. The circumstances to which these are owed are +pure in themselves, they are circumstances which in more modern times +have characterized the perfectly legitimate passion of lovers held +asunder by no social law, but by mere accidental barriers--from Romeo +and Juliet to the Master of Ravenswood and Lucy Ashton; and pure so far +have been the spiritual results. But these circumstances were due, in +the early Middle Ages, to the fact of adultery; and to the new ideal of +love has clung, even in its purity, in its superior nobility, an element +of corruption as unknown to gross and corrupt Antiquity as was the +delicacy and nobility of mediaeval love. The most poetical and pathetic +of all mediaeval love stories, the very incarnation of all that is most +lyric at once and most tragic in the new kind of passion, is the story, +told and retold by a score of poets and prose writers, of the loves of +Yseult of Ireland and of Sir Tristram who, as the knight was bringing +the princess to his uncle and her affianced, King Mark of Cornwall drank +together by a fatal mistake a philter which made all such as partook of +it in common inseparable lovers even unto death. Every one knows the +result r: how Yseult came to her husband already the paramour of +Tristram; how Brangwaine, her damsel, feeling that this unhallowed +passion was due to her having left-within reach the potion intended for +the King and Queen of Cornwall, devoted herself, at the price of her +maidenhood, to connive in the amours of the lovers whom she had made; +how King Mark was deceived, and doubted, and was deceived again; how +Tristram fled to Brittany, but how, despite his seeming marriage with +another and equally lovely Yseult, he remained faithful to the Queen of +Cornwall. One version tells that Mark slew his nephew while he sat +harping to Queen Yseult; another that Tristram died of grief because his +scorned though wedded wife told him that the white-sailed ship, bearing +his mistress to meet him, bore the black sail which meant that she was +not on board; but all versions, I think, agree in ending with the fact, +that the briar-rose growing on the tomb of the one, slowly trailed its +flowers and thorns along till it had reached also the grave of the +other, and knit together, as love had knit together with its sweet +blossoms and sharp spines, the two fated lovers. The Middle Ages were +enthralled by this tale; but they were also, occasionally, a little +shocked by it. Poets and prose writers tampered every now and then with +incidents and characters, seeking to make it appear that, owing to the +substitution of the waiting-maid, and the neglect of the wedded princess +of Brittany, Yseult had never belonged to any man save Tristram, nor +Tristram to any woman save Yseult; or that King Mark had sent his nephew +to woo the Irish queen's daughter merely in hopes of his perishing in +the attempt, and that his whole subsequent conduct was due to a mere +unnatural hatred of a better knight than himself; touching up here and +there with a view to justifying and excusing to some degree the long +series of deceits which constituted the whole story. Thus the more timid +and less gifted. But when, in the very first years (1210) of the +thirteenth century, the greatest mediaeval poet that preceded Dante, the +greatest German poet that preceded Goethe, Meister Gottfried von +Strassburg, took in hand the old threadbare story of "Tristan und +Isolde," he despised all alterations of this sort, and accepted the +original tale in its complete crudeness. + +For, consciously or unconsciously, Gottfried had conceived this story as +a thing wholly unknown in his time, and no longer subject to any of +those necessities of constant rearrangement which tormented mediaeval +poets: he had conceived it not as a tale, but as a novel. Gottfried +himself was probably but little aware of what he was doing; the poem +that he was writing probably fell for him into the very same category as +the poems of other men; but to us, with our experience of so many +different forms of narrative, it must be evident that "Tristan und +Isolde" is a new departure, inasmuch as it is not the story of deeds and +the people who did them, like the true epic from Homer to the +Nibelungen; nor the story of people and the adventures which happened to +them, like all romance poetry from "Palemon and Arcite," to the "Orlando +Furioso;" but, on the contrary, the story of the psychological +relations, the gradual metamorphosis of soul by soul, between two +persons. The long introductory story of Tristram's youth must not +mislead us, nor all the minute narrations of the killing of dragons and +the drinking of love philters: Gottfried, we must remember, was +certainly no deliberate innovator, and these thing's are the mere +inevitable externalities of mediaeval poetry, preserved with dull slavish +care by the re-writer of a well-known tale, but enclosing in reality +something essentially and startlingly modern: the history of a passion +and of the spiritual changes which it brings about in those who are its +victims. + +To meet again this purely psychological interest we must skip the whole +rest of the Middle Ages, nay, skip even the great period of dramatic +literature, not stopping till we come to the end of the seventeenth and +beginning of the eighteenth century, to the "Princesse de Cleves," to +"Clarissa Harlowe," nay, really, to "The Nouvelle Heloise." For even in +Shakespeare there is always interest and importance in the action and +reaction of subsidiary characters, in the event, in the accidental; +there is intrigue, chance, misunderstanding, fate--active agencies of +which Othello and Hamlet, King Lear and Romeo, are helpless victims; +there is, even in this psychological English drama of the Elizabethans, +fate in the shape of Iago, in the shape of the Ghost, in the shape of +the brothers of Webster's duchess; fate in the shape of a ring, a +letter, a drug, but fate always. And in this "Tristan und Isolde" of +Gottfried von Strassburg is there not fate also in the love potion +intended for King Mark, and given by the mistake of Brangwaine to Mark's +bride and his nephew? To this objection, which will naturally occur to +any reader who is not acquainted with the poem of Gottfried, I simply +answer, there is not. The love potion there is, but it does not play the +same part as do, for instance, the drugs of Friar Laurence and his +intercepted letter. Suppose the friar's narcotic to have been less +enduring in its action, or his message to have reached in safety, why +then Juliet would have been awake instead of asleep, or Romeo would not +have supposed her to be dead, and instead of the suicide of the two +lovers, we should have had the successful carying off of Juliet by +Romeo. Not so with Gottfried. The philter is there, and a great deal is +talked about it; but it is merely one of the old, threadbare trappings +of the original story, which he has been too lazy to suppress; it is +merely, for the reader, the allegorical signal for an outburst of +passion which all our subsequent knowledge of Tristram and Yseult shows +us to be absolutely inevitable. In Gottfried's poem, the drinking of the +potion signifies merely that all the rambling, mediaeval prelude, not to +be distinguished from the stories of "Morte d'Arthur," and of half the +romances of the Middle Ages, has come to a close and may be forgotten; +and that the real work of the great poet, the real, matchless tragedy of +the four actors--Tristram, Yseult, Mark, and Brangwaine--has begun. + +Yet if we seek again to account to ourselves for this astonishing +impression of modernness which we receive from Gottfried's poem, we +recognize that it is due to something far more important than the mere +precocious psychological interest; nay, rather, that this psychological +interest is itself dependent upon the fact which makes "Tristan und +Isolde," so modern to our feelings. This fact is simply that the poem of +Gottfried is the earliest, and yet perhaps almost the completest, +example of a literary anomaly which Antiquity, for all its abominations, +did not know: the glorification of fidelity in adultery, the +glorification of excellence within the compass of guilt. Older times +--more distant from our own in spirit, though not necessarily in +years--have presented us with many themes of guilt: the guilt which +exists according to our own moral standard, but not according to that of +the narrator, as the magnificently tragic Icelandic incest story of +Sigmund and Signy; the guilt which has come about no one well knows how, +an unfortunate circumstance leaving the sinner virtually stainless, in +his or her own eyes and the eyes of others, like the Homeric Helen; the +heroic guilt, where the very heroism seems due to the self-sacrifice of +the sinner's innocence, of Judith; the struggling, remorseful guilt, +hopelessly overcome by fate and nature, of Phaedra; the dull and dogged +guilt, making the sinner scarce more than a mere physical +stumbling-block for others, of the murderer Hagen in the Nibelungenlied; +and, finally, the perverse guilt, delighting in the consciousness of +itself, of demons like Richard and Iago, of libidinous furies like the +heroines of Tourneur and Marston. The guilt theme of "Tristan und +Isolde" falls into none of these special categories. This theme, +unguessed even by Shakespeare, is that of the virtuous behaviour towards +one another of two individuals united in sinning against every one else. +Gottfried von Strassburg narrates with the greatest detail how Tristram +leads to the unsuspecting king the unblushing, unremorseful woman +polluted by his own embraces; how Yseult substitutes on the wedding +night her spotless damsel Brangwaine for her own sullied self; then, +terrified lest the poor victim of her dishonour should ever reveal it, +attempts to have her barbarously murdered, and, finally, seeing that +nothing can shake the heroic creature's faith, admits her once more to +be the remorseful go-between in her amours. He narrates how Tristram +dresses as a pilgrim and carries the queen from a ship to the shore, in +order that Yseult may call on Christ to bear witness by a miracle that +she is innocent of adultery, never having been touched save by that +pilgrim and her own husband; and how, when the followers of King Mark +have surrounded the grotto in the wood, Tristram places the drawn sword +between himself and the sleeping queen, as a symbol of their chastity +which the king is too honest to suspect. He draws, with a psychological +power truly extraordinary in the beginning of the thirteenth century, +the two other figures in this love drama: King Mark, cheated, +dishonoured, oscillating between horrible doubt, ignominious suspicion +and more ignominious credulity, his love for his wife, his trust in his +nephew, his incapacity for conceiving ill-faith and fraud, the very +gentleness and generosity of his nature, made the pander of guilt in +which he cannot believe; and, on the other side, Brangwaine, the +melancholy, mute victim of her fidelity to Yseult, the weak, heroic +soul, rewarded only with cruel ingratitude, and condemned to screen and +help the sin which she loathes and for which she assumes the awful +responsibility. All this does Gottfried do, yet without ever seeming to +perceive the baseness and wickedness of this tissue of lies, +equivocations, and perjuries in which his lovers hide their passion; +without ever seeming to guess at the pathos and nobility of the man and +the woman who are the mere trumpery obstacles or trumpery aids to their +amours. He heaps upon Tristram and Yseult the most extravagant praises: +he is the flower of all knighthood, and she, the kindest, gentlest, +purest, and noblest of women; he insists upon the wickedness of the +world which is for ever waging war upon their passion, and holds up to +execration all those who seek to spy out their secret. Gottfried is most +genuinely overcome by the ideal beauty of this inextinguishable +devotion, by the sublimity of this love which holds the whole world as +dross; the crimes of the lovers are for him the mere culminating point +of their moral grandeur, which has ceased to know any guilt save +absence of love, any virtue save loving. And so serene is the old +minnesinger's persuasion, that it obscures the judgment and troubles the +heart even of his reader; and we are tempted to ask ourselves, on laying +down the book, whether indeed this could have been sinful, this love of +Tristram and Yseult which triumphed over everything in the world, and +could be quenched only by death. That circle of hell where all those who +had sinfully loved were whirled incessantly in the perse, dark, stormy +air, appeared in the eyes even of Dante as a place less of punishment +than of glory; and, especially since the Middle Ages, all mankind looks +upon that particular hell-pit with admiration rather than with loathing. +And herein consists, more even than in any deceptions practised upon +King Mark or any ingratitude manifested towards Brangwaine, the +sinfulness of Tristram and Yseult: sinfulness which is not finite like +the individual lives which it offends, but infinite and immortal as the +heart and the judgment which it perverts. For such a tale, and so told, +as the tale of Gottfried von Strassburg, makes us sympathize with this +fidelity and devotion of a man and woman who care for nothing in the +world save for each other, who are dragged and glued together by the +desire and habit of mutual pleasure; it makes us admire their readiness +to die rather than be parted, when their whole life is concentrated in +their reciprocal sin, when their miserable natures enjoy, care for, +know, only this miserable love. It makes us wink with leniency at the +dishonour, the baseness, the cruelty, to which all this easy virtue is +due. And such sympathy, such admiration, such leniency, for howsoever +short a time they may remain in our soul, leave it, if they ever leave +it completely and utterly less strong, less clean than it was before. We +have all of us a lazy tendency to approve of the virtue which costs no +trouble; to contemplate in ourselves or others, with a spurious moral +satisfaction, the development of this or that virtuous quality in souls +which are deteriorating in undoubted criminal self-indulgence. We have +all of us, at the bottom of our hearts, a fellow feeling for all human +affection; and the sinfulness of sinners like Tristram and Yseult lies +largely in the fact that they pervert this legitimate and holy sympathy +into a dangerous leniency for any strong and consistent love, into a +morbid admiration for any irresistible mutual passion, making us forget +that love has in itself no moral value, and that while self-indulgence +may often be innocent, only self-abnegation can ever be holy. + +The great mediaeval German poem of Tristram and Yseult remained for +centuries a unique phenomenon; only John Ford perhaps, that grander and +darker twin spirit of Gottfried von Strassburg, reviving, even among the +morbidly psychological and crime-fascinated followers of Shakespeare, +that new theme of evil--the heroism of unlawful love. But Gottfried had +merely manipulated with precocious analytical power a mode of feeling +and thinking which was universal in the feudal Middle Ages; the great +epic of adultery was forgotten, but the sympathetic and admiring +interest in illegitimate passion remained; and was transmitted, wherever +the Renaissance or the Reformation did not break through such +transmission of mediaeval habits, as an almost inborn instinct from +father to son, from mother to daughter. And we may doubt whether the +important class of men and women who write and read the novels of +illicit love, could ever have existed, had not the psychological artists +of modern times, from Rousseau to George Sand, and from Stendhal to +Octave Feuillet, found ready prepared for them in the countries not +re-tempered by Protestantism, an assoiation of romance, heroism, and +ideality with mere adulterous passion, which was unknown to the +corruption of Antiquity and to the lawlessness of the Dark Ages, and +which remained as a fatal alloy to that legacy of mere spiritual love +which was left to the world by the love poets of early feudalism. + + +II. + +The love of the troubadours and minnesingers, of the Arthurian tales, +which show that love in narrative form, was, as we have seen, polluted +by the selfishness, the deceitfulness, the many unclean necessities of +adulterous passion. Elevated and exquisite though it was, it could not +really purify the relations of man and woman, since it was impure. Nay, +we see that through its influence the grave and simple married love of +the earlier tales of chivalry, the love of Siegfried for Chriemhilt, of +Roland for his bride Belle Aude, of Renaud for his wife Clarisse, is +gradually replaced in later fiction by the irregular love-makings of +Huon of Bordeaux, Ogier the Dane, and Artus of Brittany; until we come +at last to the extraordinary series of the Amadis romances, where every +hero without exception is the bastard of virtuous parents, who +subsequently marry and discover their foundling: a state of things +which, even in the corrupt Renaissance, Boiardo and Ariosto found it +necessary to reform in their romantic poems. With idealizing refinement, +the chivalric love of the French, Provencal, and German poets brings +also a kind of demoralization which, from one point of view, makes the +spotless songs of Bernard de Ventadour and Armaud de Mareulh, of Ulrich +von Liechtenstein and Frauenlob, less pure than the licentious poems +addressed by the Greeks and Romans to women who, at least, were not the +wives of other men. + +Shall all this idealizing refinement, this almost religious fervour, +this new poetic element of chivalric love remain useless; or serve only +to subtly pollute while pretending to purify the great singing passion? +Not so. But to prevent such waste of what in itself is pure and +precious, is the mission of another country, of another civilization; of +a wholly different cycle of poets who, receiving the new element of +mediaeval love after it has passed through and been sifted by a number +of hands, shall cleanse and recreate it in the fire of intellectual and +almost abstract passion, producing that wonderful essence of love which, +as the juices squeezed by alchemists out of jewels purified the body +from all its ills, shall purify away all the diseases of the human soul. + +While the troubadours and minnesingers had been singing at the courts of +Angevine kings and Hohenstauffen emperors, of counts of Toulouse and +dukes of Austria; a new civilization, a new political and social system, +had gradually been developing in the free burghs of Italy; a new life +entirely the reverse of the life of feudal countries. The Italian cities +were communities of manufacturers and merchants, into which only +gradually, and at the sacrifice of every aristocratic privilege and +habit, a certain number of originally foreign feudatories were gradually +absorbed. Each community consisted of a number of mercantile families, +equal before the law, and illustrious or obscure according to their +talents or riches, whose members, instead of being scattered over a wide +area like the members of the feudal nobility, were most often gathered +together under one roof--sons, brothers, nephews, daughters, sisters and +daughters-in-law, forming a hierarchy attending to the business of +factory or counting-house under the orders of the father of the family, +and to the economy of the house-under the superintendence of the mother; +a manner of living at once business-like and patriarchal, expounded +pounded by the interlocutors in Alberti's "Governo della Famiglia," and +which lasted until the dissolution of the commonwealths and almost to +our own times. Such habits imply a social organization, an intercourse +between men and women, and a code of domestic morality the exact +opposite to those of feudal countries. Here, in the Italian cities, +there are no young men bound to loiter, far from their homes, round the +wife of a military superior, to whom her rank and her isolation from all +neighbours give idleness and solitude. The young men are all of them in +business, usually with their own kinsfolk; not in their employer's +house, but in his office; they have no opportunity of seeing a woman +from dawn till sunset. The women, on their side, are mainly employed at +home: the whole domestic arrangement depends upon them, and keeps their +hands constantly full; working, and working in the company of their +female relatives and friends. Men and women are free comparatively +little, and then they are free all together in the same places; hence no +opportunities for _tete-a-tete_. Early Italian poetry is fond of showing +us the young poet reading his verses or explaining his passion to those +gentle, compassionate women learned in love, of whom we meet a troop, +beautiful, vague, half-arch, half-melancholy faces, consoling Dante in +the "Vita Nuova," and reminding Guido Cavalcanti of his lady far off at +Toulouse. But such women almost invariably form a group; they cannot be +approached singly. Such a state of society inevitably produces a high +and strict morality. In these early Italian cities a case of in' +fidelity is punished ruthlessly; the lover banished or killed; the wife +for ever lost to the world, perhaps condemned to solitude and a +lingering death in the fever tracts, like Pia dei Tolomei. A complacent +deceived husband is even more ridiculous (the deceived husband is +notoriously the chief laughing stock of all mediaeval free towns) than is +a jealous husband among the authorized and recognized _cicisbeos_ of a +feudal court. Indeed the respect for marriage vows inevitable in this +busy democratic mediaeval life is so strong, that long after the +commonwealths have turned into despotisms, and every social tie has been +dissolved in the Renaissance, the wives and daughters of men stained +with every libidinous vice, nay, of the very despots themselves +--Tiberiuses and Neros on a smaller scale--remain spotless in the midst +of evil; and authorized adultery begins in Italy only under the Spanish +rule in the late sixteenth century. + +Such were the manners and morals of the Italian commonwealths when, +about the middle of the thirteenth century, the men of Tuscany, now free +and prosperous, suddenly awoke to the consciousness that they had a soul +which desired song, and a language which was spontaneously singing. It +was the moment when painting was beginning to claim for the figures of +real men and women the walls and vaulted spaces whence had hitherto +glowered, with vacant faces and huge ghostlike eyes, mosaic figures, +from their shimmering golden ground; the moment when the Pisan artists +had sculptured solemnly draped madonnas and kings not quite unworthy of +the carved sarcophagi which stood around them; the moment when, merging +together old Byzantine traditions and Northern examples, the architects +of Florence, Siena, and Orvieto conceived a style which made cathedrals +into marvellous and huge reliquaries of marble, jasper, alabaster, and +mosaics. The mediaeval flowering time had come late, very late, in Italy; +but the atmosphere was only the warmer, the soil the richer, and Italy +put forth a succession of exquisite and superb immortal flowers of art +when the artistic sap of other countries had begun to be exhausted. But +the Italians, the Tuscans, audacious in the other arts, were diffident +of themselves with regard to poetry. Architecture, painting, sculpture, +had been the undisputed field for plebeian craftsmen, belonging +exclusively to the free burghs and disdained by the feudal castles; but +poetry was essentially the aristocratic, the feudal art, cultivated by +knights and cultivated for kings and barons. It was probably an unspoken +sense of this fact which caused the early Tuscan poets to misgive their +own powers and to turn wistfully and shyly towards the poets of Provence +and of Sicily. There, beyond the seas, under the last lords of Toulouse +and the brilliant mongrel Hohenstauffen princes, were courts, knights, +and ladies; there was the tradition of this courtly art of poetry; and +there only could the sons of Florentine or Sienese merchants, +clodhoppers in gallantry and song, hope to learn the correct style of +thing. Hence the history of the Italian lyric before Dante is the +history of a series of transformations which connect a style of poetry +absolutely feudal and feudally immoral, with the hitherto unheard-of +platonic love subtleties of the "Vita Nuova." And it is curious, in +looking over the collections of early Italian lyrists, to note the +alteration in tone as Sicily and the feudal courts are left further and +further behind. Ciullo d' Alcamo, flourishing about 1190, is the only +Italian-writing poet absolutely contemporaneous with the earlier and +better trouveres, troubadours, and minnesingers; and he is also the only +one who resembles them very closely. His famous _tenso_, beginning "Rosa +fresca aulentissima" (a tolerably faithful translation heads the +beautiful collection of the late Mr. D.G. Rossetti), is indeed more +explicitly gross and immoral than the majority of Provencal and German +love-songs: loose as are many of the _albas, serenas, wachtlieder_, and +even many of the less special forms of German and Provencal poetry, I am +acquainted with none of them which comes up to this singular dialogue, +in which a man, refusing to marry a woman, little by little wins her +over to his wishes and makes her brazenly invite him to her dishonour. +Between Ciullo d' Alcamo and his successors there is some gap of time, +and a corresponding want of gradation. Yet the Sicilian poets of the +courts of Hohenstauffen and Anjou, recognizable by their name or the +name of their town, Inghilfredi, Manfredi, Ranieri and Ruggierone da +Palermo, Tommaso and Matteo da Messina, Guglielmotto d' Otranto, Rinaldo +d'Aquino, Peir delle Vigne, either maintain altogether unchanged the +tone of the troubadours, or only gradually, as in the remarkable case of +the Notary of Lentino, approximate to the platonic poets of Tuscany. The +songs of the archetype of Sicilian singers, the Emperor Frederick II., +are completely Provencal in feeling as in form, though infinitely +inferior in execution. With him it is always the pleasure which he hopes +from his lady, or the pleasure which he has had--"Quando ambidue stavamo +in allegranza alla dolce fera;" "Pregovi donna mia--Per vostra +cortesia--E pregovi che sia--Quello che lo core disia." Again: "Sospiro +e sto in rancura--Ch' io son si disioso--E pauroso--Mi fate penare--Ma +tanto m' assicura--Lo suo viso amoroso--E lo gioioso--Riso e lo +sguardare--E lo parlare--Di questa criatura--Che per paura--Mi fate +penare--E di morare--Tant' e fina e pura--Tanto e saggia e cortese--Non +credo che pensasse--Ne distornasse--Di cio he m' impromise." It is, this +earliest Italian poetry, like the more refined poetry of troubadours and +minnesingers, eminently an importuning of highborn but loosely living +women. From Sicily and Apulia poetry goes first, as might be expected +(and as probably sculpture went) to the seaport Pisa, thence to the +neighbouring Lucca, considerably before reaching Florence. And as it +becomes more Italian and urban, it becomes also, under the strict +vigilance of burgher husbands, considerably more platonic. In Bologna, +the city of jurists, it acquires (the remark is not mine merely, but +belongs also to Carducci) the very strong flavour of legal quibbling +which distinguishes the otherwise charming Guido Guinicelli; and once in +Florence, among the most subtle of all subtle Tuscans, it becomes at +once what it remained even for Dante, saturated with metaphysics: the +woman is no longer paramount, she is subordinated to Love himself; to +that personified abstraction Amor, the serious and melancholy son of +pagan philosophy and Christian mysticism. The Tuscans had imported from +Provence and Sicily the new element of mediaeval love, of life devotion, +soul absorption in loving; if they would sing, they must sing of this; +any other kind of love, at a time when Italy still read and relished her +would-be Provencals, Lanfranc Cicala and Sordel of Mantua, would have +been unfashionable and unendurable. But in these Italian commonwealths, +as we have seen, poets are forced, nilly-willy, to be platonic; an +importuning poem found in her work-basket may send a Tuscan lady into a +convent, or, like Pia, into the Maremma; an _alba_ or a _serena_ +interrupted by a wool-weaver of Calimara or a silk spinner of Lucca, may +mean that the imprudent poet be found weltering in blood under some +archway the next morning. The chivalric sentimentality of feudalism must +be restrained; and little by little, under the pressure of such very +different social habits, it grows into a veritable platonic passion. +Poets must sing, and in order that they sing, they must adore; so men +actually begin to seek out, and adore and make themselves happy and +wretched about women from whom they can hope only social distinctions; +and this purely aesthetic passion goes on by the side nay, rather on the +top, of their humdrum, conjugal life or loosest libertinage. Petrarch's +bastards were born during the reign of Madonna Laura; and that they +should have been, was no more a slight or infidelity to her than to the +other Madonna, the one in heaven. Laura had a right to only ideal +sentiments ideal relations; the poet was at liberty to carry more +material preferences elsewhere. + +But could such love as this exist, could it be genuine? To my mind, +indubitably. For there is, in all our perceptions and desires of +physical and moral beauty, an element of passion which is akin to love; +and there is, in all love that is not mere lust, a perception of, a +craving for, beauty, real or imaginary which is identical with our +merely aesthetic perceptions and cravings; hence the possibility, once +the wish for such a passion present, of a kind of love which is mainly +aesthetic, which views the beloved as gratifying merely to the wish for +physical or spiritual loveliness, and concentrates upon one exquisite +reality all dreams of ideal perfection. Moreover there comes, to all +nobler natures, a love dawning: a brightening and delicate flushing of +the soul before the actual appearance of the beloved one above the +horizon, which is as beautiful and fascinating in its very clearness, +pallor, and coldness, as the unearthly purity of the pale amber and +green and ashy rose which streaks the heavens before sunrise. The love +of the early Tuscan poets (for we must count Guinicelli, in virtue of +his language, as a Tuscan) had been restrained, by social necessities +first, then by habit and deliberate aesthetic choice, within the limits +of this dawning state; and in this state, it had fed itself off mere +spiritual food, and acquired the strange intensity of mere intellectual +passions. We give excessive weight, in our days, to spontaneity in all +things, apt to think that only the accidental, the unsought, can be +vital; but it is true in many things, and truest in all matters of the +imagination and the heart, that the desire to experience any sentiment +will powerfully conduce to its production, and even give it a strength +due to the long incubation of the wish. Thus the ideal love of the +Tuscan poets was probably none the weaker, but rather the stronger, for +the desire which they felt to sing such passion; nay, rather to hear it +singing in themselves. The love of man and wife, of bride and +bridegroom, was still of the domain of prose; adulterous love forbidden; +and the tradition of, the fervent wish for, the romantic passion of the +troubadours consumed them as a strong artistic craving. Platonic love +was possible, doubly possible in souls tense with poetic wants; it +became a reality through the strength of the wish for it. + +Nor was this all. In all imaginative passions, intellectual motives are +so much fuel; and in this case the necessity of logically explaining the +bodiless passion for a platonic lady, of understanding why they felt in +a manner so hitherto unknown to gross mankind, tended greatly to +increase the love of these Tuscans, and to bring it in its chastity to +the pitch of fervour of more fleshly passions, by mingling with the +aesthetic emotions already in their souls the mystical theorizings of +transcendental metaphysics, and the half-human, half-supernatural +ecstasy of mediaeval religion. For we must remember that Italy was a +country not merely of manufacturers and bankers, but of philosophers +also and of saints. + +Among the Italians of the thirteenth century the revival of antique +literature was already in full swing; while in France, Germany, and +Provence there had been, in lyric poetry at least, no trace of classic +lore. Whereas the trouveres and troubadours had possessed but the light +intellectual luggage of a military aristocracy; and the minnesingers +had, for the most part, been absolutely ignorant of reading and writing +(Wolfram says so of himself, and Ulrich von Liechtenstein relates how he +carried about his lady's letter for days unread until the return of his +secretary); the poets of Italy, from Brunetto Latini to Petrarch, were +eminently scholars; men to whom, however much they might be politicians +and ringleaders, like Cavalcanti, Donati, and Dante, whatever existed of +antique learning was thoroughly well known. Such men were familiar with +whatever yet survived of the transcendental theories of Plato and +Plotinus; and they seized at once upon the mythic metaphysics of an +antenatal condition, of typical ideas, of the divine essence of beauty, +on all the mystic discussions on love and on the soul, as a +philosophical explanation of their seemingly inexplicable passion for an +unapproachable woman. The lady upon whom the poetic fervour, the +mediaeval love, inherited from Provence and France, was now expended, and +whom social reasons placed quite beyond the reach of anything save the +poet's soul and words, was evidently beloved for the sake of that much +of the divine essence contained in her nature; she was loved for purely +spiritual reasons, loved as a visible and living embodiment of virtue +and beauty, as a human piece of the godhead. So far, therefore, from +such an attachment being absurd, as absurd it would have seemed to +troubadours and minnesingers, who never served a lady save for what they +called a reward; it became, in the eyes of these platonizing Italians, +the triumph of the well-bred soul; and as such, soon after, a necessary +complement to dignities, talents, and wealth, the very highest +occupation of a liberal mind. Thus did their smattering of platonic and +neo-platonic philosophy supply the Tuscan poets with a logical reality +for this otherwise unreal passion. + +But there was something more. In this democratic and philosophizing +Italy, there was not the gulf which separated the chivalric poets, men +of the sword and not of books, from the great world of religious +mysticism; for, though the minnesingers especially were extremely devout +and sang many a strange love-song to the Virgin; they knew, they could +know, nothing of the contemplative religion of Eckhardt and his +disciples--humble and transcendental spirits, whose words were treasured +by the sedentary, dreamy townsfolk of the Rhine, but would have conveyed +no meaning even to the poet of the Grail epic, with its battles and +feasts, its booted and spurred slapdash morality, Wolfram von +Eschenbach. In the great manufacturing cities of Italy, such religious +mysticism spread as it could never spread in feudal courts; it became +familiar, both in the mere passionate sermons and songs of the wandering +friars, and in the subtle dialectics of the divines; above all, it +became familiar to the poets. Now the essence of this contemplative +theology of the Middle Ages, which triumphantly held its own against the +cut-and-dry argumentation of scholastic rationalism, was love. Love +which assuredly meant different things to different minds; a passionate +benevolence towards man and beast to godlike simpletons like Francis of +Assisi; a mere creative and impassive activity of the divinity to +deep-seeing (so deep as to see only their own strange passionate eyes +and lips reflected in the dark well of knowledge) and almost pantheistic +thinkers like Master Eckhardt; but love nevertheless, love. "Amor, +amore, ardo d' amore," St. Francis had sung in a wild rhapsody, a sort +of mystic dance, a kind of furious _malaguena_ of divine love; and that +he who would wish to know God, let him love--"Qui vult habere notitiam +Dei, amet," had been written by Hugo of St. Victor, one of the subtlest +of all the mystics. "Amor oculus est," said Master Eckhardt; love, +love--was not love then the highest of all human faculties, and must not +the act of loving, of perceiving God's essence in some creature which +had virtue, the soul's beauty, and beauty, the body's virtue, be the +noblest business of a noble life? Thus argued the poets; and their +argument, half-passionate, half-scholastic, mixing Phaedrus and +Bonaventura, the Schools of Alexandria and the Courts of Love of +Provence, resulted in adding all the fervid reality of philosophical and +religious aspiration to their clear and cold phantom of disembodied love +of woman. + +Little by little therefore, together with the carnal desires of +Provencals and Sicilians, the Tuscan poets put behind them those little +coquetries of style and manner, complications of metre and rhythm +learned and fantastic as a woman's plaited and braided hair; those +metaphors and similes, like bright flowers or shining golden ribbons +dropped from the lady's bosom and head and eagerly snatched by the +lover, which we still find, curiously transformed and scented with the +rosemary and thyme of country lanes, in the peasant poetry of modern +Tuscany. Little by little does the love poetry of the Italians reject +such ornaments; and cloth itself in that pale garment, pale and stately +in heavy folds like a nun's or friar's weeds, but pure and radiant and +solemn as the garment of some painted angel, which we have all learned +to know from the "Vita Nuova." + +To describe this poetry of the immediate precursors and contemporaries +of Dante is to the last degree difficult: it can be described only by +symbols, and symbols can but mislead us. Dante Rossetti himself, after +translating with exquisite beauty the finest poems of this school, +showed how he had read into them his own spirit, when he drew the +beautiful design for the frontispiece of his collection. These two +lovers--the youth kneeling in his cloth of silver robe, lifting his long +throbbing neck towards the beloved; the lady stooping down towards him, +raising him up and kissing him; the mingled cloud of waving hair, the +four tight-clasped hands, the four tightly glued lips, the profile +hidden by the profile, the passion and the pathos, the eager, wistful +faces, nay, the very splendour of brocade robes and jewels, the very +sweetness of blooming rose spaliers; all this is suitable to illustrate +this group of sonnets or that of the "House of Life;" but it is false, +false in efflorescence and luxuriance of passion, splendour and colour +of accessory, to the poetry of these early Tuscans. Imaginative their +poetry certainly is, and passionate; indeed the very concentration of +imaginative passion; but imagination and passion unlike those of all +other poets; perhaps because more rigorously reduced to their elements: +imagination purely of the heart, passion purely of the intellect, +neither of the senses: love in its most essential condition, but, just +because an essence, purged of earthly alloys, rarefied, sublimated into +a cultus or a philosophy. + +These poems might nearly all have been written by one man, were it +possible for one man to vary from absolute platitude to something like +genius, so homogeneous is their tone: everywhere do we meet the same +simplicity of diction struggling with the same complication and subtlety +of thought, the same abstract speculation strangely mingled with most +individual and personal pathos. The mode of thinking and feeling, the +conception of all the large characteristics of love, and of all its +small incidents are, in this _cycle_ of poets, constantly the same; and +they are the same in the "Vita Nuova;" Dante having, it would seem, +invented and felt nothing unknown to his immediate predecessors and +contemporaries, but merely concentrated their thoughts and feelings by +the greater intenseness of his genius. This platonic love of Dante's +days is, as I have said, a passion sublimated into a philosophy and a +cultus. The philosophy of love engages much of these poets' attention; +all have treated of it, but Guido Cavalcanti, Dante's elder brother in +poetry, is love's chief theologian. He explains, as Eckhardt or +Bonaventura might explain the mysteries of God's being and will, the +nature and operation of love. "Love, which enamours us of excellence, +arises out of pure virtue of the soul, and equals us to God," he tells +us; and subtly developes his theme. This being the case, nothing can be +more mistaken than to suppose, as do those of little sense, that Love is +blind, and goes blindly about ("Da sentir poco, e da credenza vana--Si +move il dir di cotal grossa gente--Ch' amor fa cieco andar per lo suo +regno"). Love is omniscient, since love is born of the knowledge and +recognition of excellence. Such love as this is the only true source of +happiness, since it alone raises man to the level of the divinity. +Cavalcanti has in him not merely the subtlety but the scornfulness of a +great divine. His wrath against all those who worship or defend a +different god of Love knows no bounds. "I know not what to say of him +who adores the goddess born of Saturn and sea-foam. His love is fire: it +seems sweet, but its result is bitter and evil. He may indeed call +himself happy; but in such delights he mingles himself with much +baseness." Such is this god of Love, who, when he descended into Dante's +heart, caused the spirit of life to tremble terribly in his secret +chamber, and trembling to cry, "Lo, here is a god stronger than myself, +who coming will rule over me. Ecce Deus fortior me, qui veniens +dominabitur mihi!" + +The god, this chaste and formidable archangel Amor, is the true subject +of these poets' adoration; the woman into whom he descends by a mystic +miracle of beauty and of virtue becomes henceforward invested with +somewhat of his awful radiance. She is a gentle, gracious lady; a +lovable and loving woman, in describing whose grey-green eyes and colour +as of snow tinted with pomegranate, the older Tuscans would fain linger, +comparing her to the new-budded rose, to the morning star, to the golden +summer air, to the purity of snowflakes falling silently in a serene +sky; but the sense of the divinity residing within her becomes too +strong. From her eyes dart spirits who strike awe into the heart; from +her lips come words which make men sigh; on her passage the poet casts +down his eyes; notions, all these, with which we are familiar from the +"Vita Nuova;" but which belong to Cavalcanti, Lapo Gianni, nay, even to +Guinicelli, quite as much as to Dante. The poet bids his verse go forth +to her, but softly; and stand before her with bended head, as before the +Mother of God. She is a miracle herself, a thing sent from heaven, a +spirit, as Dante says in that most beautiful of all his sonnets, the +summing up of all that the poets of his circle had said of their +lady--"Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare." + +"She passes along the street so beautiful and gracious," says +Guinicelli, "that she humbles pride in all whom she greets, and makes +him of our faith if he does not yet believe. And no base man can come +into her presence. And I will tell you another virtue of her: no man can +think ought of evil as long as he looks upon her." "The noble mind which +I feel, on account of this youthful lady who has appeared, makes me +despise baseness and vileness," says Lapo Gianni. The women who surround +her are glorified in her glory, glorified in their womanhood and +companionship with her. "The ladies around you," says Cavalcanti, "are +dear to me for the sake of your love; and I pray them as they are +courteous, that they should do you all honour." She is, indeed, scarcely +a woman, and something more than a saint: an avatar, an incarnation of +that Amor who is born of virtue and beauty, and raises men's minds to +heaven; and when Cavalcanti speaks of his lady's portrait behind the +blazing tapers of Orsanmichele, it seems but natural that she should be +on an altar, in the Madonna's place. The idea of a mysterious +incarnation of love in the lady, or of a mystic relationship between her +and love, returns to these poets. Lapo Gianni tells us first that she is +Amor's sister, then speaks of her as Amor's bride; nay, in this love +theology of the thirteenth century, arises the same kind of confusion as +in the mystic disputes of the nature of the Godhead. A Sienese poet, Ugo +da Massa, goes so far as to say, "Amor and I are all one thing; and we +have one will and one heart; and if I were not, Amor were not; mind you, +do not think I am saying these things from subtlety ('e non pensate ch' +io 'l dica per arte'); for certainly it is true that I am love, and he +who should slay me would slay love." + +Together with the knowledge of public life and of scholastic theories, +together with the love of occult and cabalistic science, and the craft +of Provencal poetry, Dante received from his Florence of the thirteenth +century the knowledge of this new, this exotic and esoteric intellectual +love. And, as it is the mission of genius to gather into an undying +whole, to model into a perfect form, the thoughts and feelings and +perceptions of the less highly endowed men who surround it, so Dante +moulded out of the love passion and love philosophy of his day the "Vita +Nuova." Whether the story narrated in this book is fact; whether a real +woman whom he called Beatrice ever existed; some of those praiseworthy +persons, who prowl in the charnel-house of the past, and put its poor +fleshless bones into the acids and sublimates of their laboratory, have +gravely doubted. But such doubts cannot affect us. For if the story of +the "Vita Nuova" be a romance, and if Beatrice be a mere romance +heroine, the real meaning and value of the book does not change in our +eyes; since, to concoct such a tale, Dante must have had a number of +real experiences which are fully the tale's equivalent; and to conceive +and create such a figure as Beatrice, and such a passion as she inspires +her poet, he must have felt as a poignant reality the desire for such a +lady, the capacity for such a love. A tale merely of the soul, and of +the soul's movements and actions, this "Vita Nuova;" so why should it +matter if that which could never exist save in the spirit, should have +been but the spirit's creation? It is, in its very intensity, a vision +of love; what if it be a vision merely conceived and never realized? +Hence the futility of all those who wish to destroy our faith and +pleasure by saying "all this never took place." Fools, can you tell what +did or did not take place in a poet's mind? Be this as it may, the "Vita +Nuova," thank heaven, exists; and, thank heaven, exists as a reality to +our feelings. The longed-for ideal, the perfection whose love, said +Cavalcanti, raises us up to God, has seemed to gather itself into a +human shape; and a real being has been surrounded by the halo of +perfection emanated from the poet's own soul. The vague visions of glory +have suddenly taken body in this woman, seen rarely, at a distance; the +woman whom, as a child, the poet, himself a child, had already looked at +with the strange, ideal fascination which we sometimes experience in our +childhood. People are apt to smile at this opening of the "Vita Nuova;" +to put aside this narrative of childish love together with the pathetic +little pedantries of learned poetry and Kabbala, of the long gloses to +each poem, and the elaborate calculations of the recurrence and +combination of the number nine (and that curious little bit of +encyclopaedic display about the Syrian month _Tismin_) as so much pretty +local colouring or obsolete silliness. But there is nothing at which to +laugh in such childish fascinations; the wonderful, the perfect, is more +open to us as children than it is afterwards: a word, a picture, a +snatch of music will have for us an ineffable, mysterious meaning; and +how much more so some human being, often some other, more brilliant +child from whose immediate contact we are severed by some circumstance, +perhaps by our own consciousness of inferiority, which makes that other +appear strangely distant, above us, moving in a world of glory which we +scarcely hope to approach; a child sometimes, or sometimes some grown +person, beautiful, brilliant, who sings or talks or looks at us, the +child, with ways which we do not understand, like some fairy or goddess. +No indeed, there is nothing to laugh at in this, in this first +blossoming of that love for higher and more beautiful things, which in +most of us is trodden down, left to wither, by our maturer selves; +nothing to make us laugh; nay, rather to make us sigh that later on we +see too well, see others too much on their real level, scrutinize too +much; too much, alas, for what at best is but an imperfect creature. And +in this state of fascination does the child Dante see the child +Beatrice, as a strange, glorious little vision from a childish sphere +quite above him; treasuring up that vision, till with his growth it +expands and grows more beautiful and noble, but none the less +fascinating and full of awfulness. When, therefore, the grave young +poet, full of the yearning for Paradise (but Paradise vaguer, sweeter, +less metaphysic and theological than the Paradise of his manhood); as +yet but a gracious, learned youth, his terrible moral muscle still +undeveloped by struggle, the noble and delicate dreamer of Giotto's +fresco, with the long, thin, almost womanish face, marked only by dreamy +eyes and lips, wandering through this young Florence of the Middle +Ages--when, I say, he meets after long years, the noble and gentle +woman, serious and cheerful and candid; and is told that she is that +same child who was the queen and goddess of his childish fancies; then +the vague glory with which his soul is filled expands and enwraps the +beloved figure, so familiar and yet so new. And the blood retreats from +his veins, and he trembles; and a vague god within him, half allegory, +half reality, cries out to him that a new life for him has begun. +Beatrice has become the ideal; Beatrice, the real woman, has ceased to +exist; the Beatrice of his imagination only remains, a piece of his own +soul embodied in a gracious and beautiful reality, which he follows, +seeks, but never tries to approach. Of the real woman he asks nothing; +no word throughout the "Vita Nuova" of entreaty or complaint, no shadow +of desire, not a syllable of those reproaches of cruelty which Petrarch +is for ever showering upon Laura. He desires nothing of Beatrice, and +Beatrice cannot act wrongly; she is perfection, and perfection makes him +who contemplates humble at once and proud, glorifying his spirit. Once, +indeed, he would wish that she might listen to him; he has reason to +think that he has fallen in her esteem, has seemed base and uncourteous +in her eyes, and he would explain. But he does not wish to address her; +it never occurs to him that she can ever feel in any way towards him; it +is enough that he feels towards her. Let her go by and smile and +graciously salute her friends: the sight of her grave and pure +regalness, nay, rather divinity, of womanhood, suffices for his joy; +nay, later the consciousness comes upon him that it is sufficient to +know of her existence and of his love even without seeing her. And, as +must be the case in such ideal passion, where the action is wholly in +the mind of the lover, he is at first ashamed, afraid; he feels a terror +lest his love, if known to her, should excite her scorn; a horror lest +it be misunderstood and befouled by the jests of those around him, even +of those same gentle women to whom he afterwards addresses his praise of +Beatrice. He is afraid of exposing to the air of reality this ideal +flower of passion. But the moment comes when he can hide it no longer; +and, behold, the passion flower of his soul opens out more gloriously in +the sunlight of the world. He is proud of his passion, of his worship; +he feels the dignity and glory of being the priest of such a love. The +women all round, the beautiful, courteous women, of whom, only just +now, he was so dreadfully afraid, become his friends and confidants; +they are quite astonished (half in love, perhaps, with the young poet) +at this strange way of loving; they sympathize, admire, are in love with +his love for Beatrice. And to them he speaks of her rather than to men, +for the womanhood which they share with his lady consecrates them in his +eyes; and they, without jealousy towards this ideal woman, though +perhaps not without longing for this ideal love, listen as they might +listen to some new and unaccountably sweet music, touched and honoured, +and feeling towards Dante as towards some beautiful, half-mad thing. He +talks of her, sings of her, and is happy; the strangest thing in this +intensely real narrative of real love is this complete satisfaction of +the passion in its own existence, this complete absence of all desire or +hope. But this happiness is interrupted by the sudden, terrible thought +that one day all this must cease; the horrible, logical necessity coming +straight home to him, that one day she must die--"Di necessita conviene +che la gentilissima Beatrice alcuna volta si muoia." There is nothing +truer, more intensely pathetic, in all literature, than this frightful +pang of evil, not real, but first imagined; this frightful nightmare +vision of the end coming when reality is still happy. Have we not all of +us at one time felt the horrible shudder of that sudden perception that +happiness must end; that the beloved, the living, must die; that this +thing the present, which we clasp tight with our arms, which throbs +against our breast, will in but few moments be gone, vanished, leaving +us to grasp mere phantom recollections? Compared with this the blow of +the actual death of Beatrice is gentle. And then, the truthfulness of +his narration how, with yearning, empty heart, hungering after those +poor lost realities of happiness, after that occasional glimpse of his +lady, that rare catching of her voice, that blessed consciousness of her +existence, he little by little lets himself be consoled, cradled to +sleep like a child which has sobbed itself out, in the sympathy, the +vague love, of another--the Donna della Finestra--with whom he speaks of +Beatrice; and the sudden, terrified, starting up and shaking off of any +such base consolation, the wrath at any such mental infidelity to the +dead one, the indignant impatience with his own weakness, with his +baseness in not understanding that it is enough that Beatrice has lived +and that he has loved her, in not feeling that the glory and joy of the +ineffaceable past is sufficient for all present and future. A revolution +in himself which gradually merges in that grave final resolve, that +sudden seeing how Beatrice can be glorified by him, that solemn, quiet, +brief determination not to say any more of her as yet; not till he can +show her transfigured in Paradise. "After this sonnet there appeared +unto me a marvellous vision, in which I beheld things that made me +propose unto myself to speak no more of this blessed one, until the +time when I might more worthily treat of her. And that this may come to +pass, I strive with all my endeavour, even as she truly knows it. Thus, +if it should please Him, through whom all things do live, that my life +continue for several more years, I hope to say of her such things as +have never been said of any lady. And then may it please Him, who is the +lord of all courtesy, that my soul shall go forth to see the glory of +its lady, that is to say, of that blessed Beatrice, who gloriously looks +up into the face of Him, _qui est per omnia saecula benedictus_" + +Thus ends the "Vita Nuova;" a book, to find any equivalent for whose +reality and completeness of passion, though it is passion for a woman +whom the poet scarcely knows and of whom he desires nothing, we must go +back to the merest fleshly love of Antiquity, of Sappho or Catullus; for +modern times are too hesitating and weak. So at least it seems; but in +fact, if we only think over the matter, we shall find that in no earthly +love can we find this reality and completeness: it is possible only in +love like Dante's. For there can be no unreality in it: it is a reality +of the imagination, and leaves, with all its mysticism and idealism, no +room for falsehood. Any other kind of love may be set aside, silenced, +by the activity of the mind; this love of Dante's constitutes that very +activity. And, after reading that last page which I have above +transcribed, as those closing Latin words echo through our mind like the +benediction from an altar, we feel as if we were rising from our knees +in some secret chapel, bright with tapers and dim with incense; among a +crowd kneeling like ourselves; yet solitary, conscious of only the glory +we have seen and tasted, of that love _qui est per omnia scecula +benedictus._ + + +III. + +But is it right that we should feel thus? Is it right that love, +containing within itself the potentialities of so many things so sadly +needed in this cold real world, as patience, tenderness, devotion, and +loving-kindness--is it right that love should thus be carried away out +of ordinary life and enclosed, a sacred thing for contemplation, in the +shrine or chapel of an imaginary Beatrice? And, on the other hand, is it +right that into the holy places of our soul, the places where we should +come face to face with the unattainable ideal of our own conduct that we +may strive after something nobler than mere present pleasure and +profit--is it right that into such holy places, destined but for an +abstract perfection, there should be placed a mere half-unknown, vaguely +seen woman? In short, is not this "Vita Nuova" a mere false ideal, one +of those works of art which, because they are beautiful, get worshipped +as holy? + +This question is a grave one, and worthy to make us pause. The world is +full of instances of the fatal waste of feelings misapplied: of human +affections, human sympathy and compassion, so terribly necessary to +man, wasted in various religious systems, upon Christ and God: of +religious aspirations, contemplation, worship, and absorption, necessary +to the improvement of the soul, wasted in various artistic or poetic +crazes upon mere pleasant works, or pleasant fancies, of man; +wastefulness of emotions, wastefulness of time, which constitute +two-thirds of mankind's history and explain the vast amount of evil in +past and present. The present question therefore becomes, is not this +"Vita Nuova" merely another instance of this lamentable carrying off of +precious feelings in channels where they result no longer in +fertilization, but in corruption? The Middle Ages, especially, in its +religion, its philosophy, nay, in that very love of which I am writing, +are one succession of such acts of wastefulness. This question has come +to me many a time, and has left me in much doubt and trouble. But on +reflection I am prepared to answer that such doubts as these may safely +be cast behind us, and that we may trust that instinct which, whenever +we lay down the "Vita Nuova," tells us that to have felt and loved this +book is one of those spiritual gains in our life which, come what may, +can never be lost entirely. + +The "Vita Nuova" represents the most exceptional of exceptional moral +and intellectual conditions. Dante's love for Beatrice is, in great +measure, to be regarded as an extraordinary and exquisite work of art, +produced not by the volition of man, but by the accidental combination +of circumstances. It is no more suited to ordinary life than would a +golden and ivory goddess of Phidias be suited to be the wife of a mortal +man. But it may not therefore be useless; nay, it may be of the highest +utility. It may serve that high utilitarian mission of all art, to +correct the real by the ideal, to mould the thing as it is in the +semblance of the thing as it should be. Herein, let it be remembered, +consists the value, the necessity of the abstract and the ideal. In the +long history of evolution we have now reached the stage where selection +is no longer in the mere hands of unconscious nature, but of conscious +or half-conscious man; who makes himself, or is made by mankind, +according to not merely physical necessities, but to the intellectual +necessity of realizing the ideal, of pursuing the object, of imitating +the model, before him. No man will ever find the living counterpart of +that chryselephantine goddess of the Greeks; ivory and gold, nay, +marble, fashioned by an artist, are one thing; flesh is another, and +flesh fashioned by mere blind accident. But the man who should have +beheld that Phidian goddess, who should have felt her full perfection, +would not have been as easily satisfied as any other with a mere +commonplace living woman; he would have sought--and seeking, would have +had more likelihood of finding--the woman of flesh and blood who nearest +approached to that ivory and gold perfection. The case is similar with +the "Vita Nuova." No earthly affection, no natural love of man for +woman, of an entire human being, body and soul, for another entire human +being, can ever be the counterpart of this passion for Beatrice, the +passion of a mere mind for a mere mental ideal. But if the old +lust-fattened evil of the world is to diminish rather than to increase, +why then every love of man for woman and of woman for man should tend, +to the utmost possibility, to resemble that love of the "Vita Nuova." +For mankind has gradually separated from brute kind merely by the +development of those possibilities of intellectual and moral passion +which the animal has not got; an animal man will never cease to be, but +a man he can daily more and more become, until from the obscene +goat-legged and goat-faced creature which we commonly see, he has turned +into something like certain antique fauns: a beautiful creature, not +noticeably a beast, a beast in only the smallest portion of his nature. +In order that this may come to pass--and its coming to pass means, let +us remember, the enormous increase of happiness and diminution of misery +upon earth--it is necessary that day by day and year by year there +should enter into man's feelings, emotions, and habits, into his whole +life, a greater proportion of that which is his own, and is not shared +by the animal; that his actions, preferences, the great bulk of his +conscious existence, should be busied with things of the soul, truth, +good, and beauty, and not with things of the body. Hence the love of +such a gradually improving and humanizing man for a gradually improving +and humanizing woman, should become, as much as is possible, a +connection of the higher and more human, rather than of the lower and +more bestial, portions of their nature; it should tend, in its +reciprocal stimulation, to make the man more a man, the woman more a +woman, to make both less of the mere male and female animals that they +were. In brief, love should increase, instead, like that which oftenest +profanes love's name, of diminishing, the power of aspiration, of +self-direction, of self-restraint, which may exist within us. Now to +tend to this is to tend towards the love of the "Vita Nuova;" to tend +towards the love of the "Vita Nuova" is to tend towards this. Say what +you will of the irresistible force of original constitution, it remains +certain, and all history is there as witness, that mankind--that is to +say, the only mankind in whom lies the initiative of good, mankind which +can judge and select--possesses the faculty of feeling and acting in +accordance with its standard of feeling and action; the faculty in great +measure of becoming that which it thinks desirable to become. Now to +have perceived the even imaginary existence of such a passion as that of +Dante for Beatrice, must be, for all who can perceive it, the first step +towards attempting to bring into reality a something of that passion: +the real passion conceived while the remembrance of that ideal passion +be still in the mind will bear to it a certain resemblance, even as, +according to the ancients, the children born of mothers whose rooms +contained some image of Apollo or Adonis would have in them a reflex, +however faint, of that beauty in whose presence they came into +existence. In short, it seems to me, that as the "Vita Nuova" embodies +the utmost ideal of absolutely spiritual love, and as to spiritualize +love must long remain one of the chief moral necessities of the world, +there exists in this book a moral force, a moral value, a power in its +unearthly passion and purity, which, as much as anything more +deliberately unselfish, more self-consciously ethical, we must +acknowledge and honour as holy. + +As the love of him who has read and felt the "Vita Nuova" cannot but +strive towards a purer nature, so also the love of which poets sang +became also nobler as the influence of the strange Tuscan school of +platonic lyrists spread throughout literature, bringing to men the +knowledge of a kind of love born of that idealizing and worshipping +passion of the Middle Ages; but of mediaeval love chastened by the +manners of stern democracy and passed through the sieve of Christian +mysticism and pagan philosophy. Of this influence of the "Vita +Nuova"--for the "Vita Nuova" had concentrated in itself all the +intensest characteristics of Dante's immediate predecessors and +contemporaries, causing them to become useless and forgotten--of this +influence of the "Vita Nuova," there is perhaps no more striking example +than that of the poet who, constituted by nature to be the mere +continuator of the romantically gallant tradition of the troubadours, +became, and hence his importance and glory, the mediator between Dante +and the centuries which followed him; the man who gave to mankind, +incapable as yet of appreciating or enduring the spiritual essence of +the "Vita Nuova," that self-same essence of intellectual love in an +immortal dilution. I speak, of course, of Petrarch. His passion is +neither ideal nor strong. The man is in love, or has been in love, +existing on a borderland of loving and not loving, with the beautiful +woman. His elegant, refined, half-knightly, half-scholarly, and +altogether courtly mind is delighted with her; with her curly yellow +hair, her good red and white beauty (we are never even told that Dante's +Beatrice is beautiful, yet how much lovelier is she not than this Laura, +descended from all the golden-haired bright-eyed ladies of the +troubadours!), with her manner, her amiability, her purity and dignity +in this ecclesiastical Babylon called Avignon. He maintains a +semi-artificial love; frequenting her house, writing sonnet after +sonnet, rhetorical exercises, studies from the antique and the +Provencal, for the most part; he, who was born to be a mere troubadour +like Ventadour or Folquet, becomes, through the influence of Dante, the +type of the poet Abate, of the poetic _cavaliere servente_; a good, weak +man with aspirations, who, failing to get the better of Laura's virtue, +doubtless consoles himself elsewhere, but returns to an habitual +contemplation of it. He is, being constitutionally a troubadour, an +Italian priest turned partly Provencal, vexed at her not becoming his +mistress; then (having made up his mind, which was but little set upon +her), quite pleased at her refusal: it turns her into a kind of +Beatrice, and him, poor man, heaven help him! into a kind of Dante--a +Dante for the use of the world at large. He goes on visiting Laura, and +writing to her a sonnet regularly so many times a week, and the best, +carefully selected, we feel distinctly persuaded, at regular intervals. +It is a determined cultus, a sort of half-real affectation, something +equivalent to lighting a lamp before a very well-painted and very +conspicuous shrine. All his humanities, all his Provencal lore go into +these poems--written for whom? For her? Decidedly; for she has no reason +not to read the effusions of this amiable, weak priestlet; she feels +nothing for him. For her; but doubtless also to be handed round in +society; a new sonnet or canzone by that charming and learned man, the +Abate Petrarch. There is considerable emptiness in all this: he praises +Laura's chastity, then grows impatient, then praises her again; adores +her, calls her cruel, his goddess, his joy, his torment; he does not +really want her, but in the vacuity of his feeling, thinks he does; +calls her alternately the flat, abusive, and eulogistic names which mean +nothing. He plays loud and soft with this absence of desire; he fiddle +faddles in descriptions of her, not passionate or burning, but +delicately undressed: he sees her (but with chaste eyes) in her bath; +he envies her veil, &c.; he neither violently intellectually embraces, +nor humbly bows down in imagination before her; he trifles gracefully, +modestly, half-familiarly, with her finger tips, with the locks of her +hair, and so forth. Fancy Dante abusing Beatrice; fancy Dante talking of +Beatrice in her bath; the mere idea of his indignation and shame makes +one shameful and indignant at the thought. But this perfect Laura is no +Beatrice, or only a half-and-half sham one. She is no ideal figure, +merely a figure idealized; this is no imaginative passion, merely an +unreal one. Compare, for instance, the suggestion of Laura's possible +death with the suggestion of the possible death of Beatrice. Petrarch +does not love sufficiently to guess what such a loss would be. Then +Laura does die. Here Petrarch rises. The severing of the dear old +habits, the absence of the sweet reality, the terrible sense that all is +over, Death, the great poetizer and giver of love philters, all this +makes him love Laura as he never loved her before. The poor weak +creature, who cannot, like a troubadour, go seek a new mistress when the +old one fails him, feels dreadfully alone, the world dreadfully dreary +around him; he sits down and cries, and his crying is genuine, making +the tears come also into our eyes. And Laura, as she becomes a more +distant ideal, becomes nobler, though noble with only a faint earthly +graciousness not comparable to the glory of the living Beatrice. And, +as he goes on, growing older and weaker and more desolate, the thought +of a glorified Laura (as all are glorified, even in the eyes of the +weakest, by death) begins to haunt him as Dante was haunted by the +thought of Beatrice alive. Yet, even at this very time, come doubts of +the lawfulness of having thus adored (or thought he had adored) a mortal +woman; he does not know whether all this may not have been vanity and +folly; he tries to turn his thoughts away from Laura and up to God. +Perhaps he may be called on to account for having given too much of his +life to a mere earthly love. Then, again, Laura reappears beautified in +his memory, and is again tremblingly half-conjured away. He is weak, and +sad, and helpless, and alone; and his heart is empty; he knows not what +to think nor how to feel; he sobs, and we cry with him. Nowhere could +there be found a stranger contrast than this nostalgic craving after the +dead Laura, vacillating and troubled by fear of sin and doubt of +unworthiness of object, with that solemn ending of the "Vita Nuova," +where the name of Beatrice is pronounced for the last time before it be +glorified in Paradise, where Dante devotes his life to becoming worthy +of saying "such words as have never been said of any lady." The ideal +woman is one and unchangeable in glory, and unchangeable is the passion +of her lover; but of this sweet dead Laura, whose purity and beauty and +cruelty he had sung, without a tremor of self-unworthiness all her +life, of her the poor weak Petrarch begins to doubt, of her and her +worthiness of all this love; and when? when she is dead and himself is +dying. + +Such a man is Petrarch; and yet, by the irresistible purifying and +elevating power of the "Vita Nuova,'" this man came to write not other +_albas_ and _serenas,_ not other love-songs to be added to the +love-songs of Provence, but those sonnets and canzoni which for four +centuries taught the world, too coarse as yet to receive Dante's passion +at first hand, a nobler and more spiritual love. After Petrarch a +gradual change takes place in the poetic conception of love: except in +learned revivalisms or in loose buffooneries, the mere fleshly love of +Antiquity disappears out of literature; and equally so, though by a +slower process of gradual transformation, vanishes also the adoring, but +undisguisedly adulterous love of the troubadours and minnesingers. Into +the love Instincts of mankind have been mingled, however much diluted, +some drops of the more spiritual passion of Dante. The _puella_ of +Antiquity, the noble dame of feudal days, is succeeded in Latin +countries, in Italy, and France, and Spain, and Portugal, by the +_gloriosa donna_ imitated from. Petrarch, and imitated by Petrarch from +Dante; a long-line of shadowy figures, veiled in the veil of Madonna +Laura, ladies beloved of Lorenzo and Michael Angelo, of Ariosto, and +Tasso, and Camoens, and Cervantes, passes through the world; nay, even +the sprightly-mistress of Ronsard, half-bred pagan and troubadour has +airs of dignity and mystery which make us almost think that in this +dainty coquettish French body, of Marie or Helene or Cassandrette, there +really may be an immortal soul. But with the Renaissance--that movement +half of mediaeval democratic progress, and half of antique revivalism, +and to which in reality belongs not merely Petrarch, but Dante, and +every one of the Tuscan poets, Guinicelli, Lapo Gianni, Cavalcanti, who +broke with the feudal poetry of Provence and Sicily--with the +Renaissance, or rather with its long-drawn-out end, comes the close, for +the moment, of the really creative activity of the Latin peoples in the +domain of poetry. All the things for two centuries which Italy and +France and Spain and Portugal (which we must remember for the sake of +Camoens) continue to produce, are but developments of parts left +untouched; or refinements of extreme detail, as in the case, +particularly, of the French poets of the sixteenth century; but poetry +receives from these races nothing new or vital, no fresh ideal or +fruitful marriage of ideals. And here begins, uniting in itself all the +scattered and long-dormant powers of Northern poetry, the great and +unexpected action of England. It had slept through the singing period of +the Middle Ages, and was awakened, not by Germany or Provence, but by +Italy: Boccaccio and Petrarch spoke, and, as through dreams, England in +Chaucer's voice, made answer. Again, when the Renaissance had drawn to a +close, far on in the sixteenth century, English poetry was reawakened; +and again by Italy. This time it was completely wakened, and arose and +slept no more. And one of the great and fruitful things achieved by +English poetry in this its final awakening was to give to the world the +new, the modern, perhaps the definitive, the final ideal of love. +England drank a deep draught--how deep we see from Sidney's and +Spenser's sonnets--of Petrarch; and in this pleasant dilution, tasted +and felt the burning essence of the "Vita Nuova;" for though Dante +remained as the poet, the poet of heaven and hell, this happy +half-and-half Petrarch had for full two centuries completely driven into +oblivion the young Dante who had loved Beatrice. For England, for this +magnificent and marvellous outburst of all the manifold poetic energy +stored up and quintupled during that long period of inertness, there +could however be no foreign imported ideal of love; there was no +possibility of a new series of spectral Lauras, shadows projected by a +shadow. Already, long ago, at the first call of Petrarch, Chaucer, by +the side of the merely mediaeval love types--of brutish lust and doglike +devotion--of the Wife of Bath and of Griseldis, had rough-sketched a +kind of modern love, the love which is to become that of Romeo and +Hamlet, in his story of Palemon and Arcite. Among the poetic material +which existed in England at the close of the sixteenth century was the +old, long-neglected, domestic love, quiet, undemonstrative, essentially +unsinging, of the early Northern (as indeed also of the Greek and +Hindoo) epics; a domestic love which, in a social condition more closely +resembling our own than any other, even than that of the Italian +democracies, which had preceded it; among a people who permitted a woman +to choose her own husband, and forbade a man wooing another man's wife, +had already, in ballads and folk poetry, begun a faint-twitter of song. +To this love of the man and the woman who hope to marry, strong and +tender, but still (as Coleridge remarked of several of the lesser +Elizabethan playwrights) most outspokenly carnal, was united by the pure +spirit of Spenser, by the unerring genius of Shakespeare, that vivifying +drop of burning, spiritual love taken from out of the "Vita Nuova," +which had floated, like some sovereign essential oil, on the top of +Petrarch's rose-water. Henceforward the world possesses a new kind of +love: the love of Romeo, of Hamlet, of Bassanio, of Viola, and of +Juliet; the love of the love poems of Shelley, of Tennyson, of Browning +and Browning's wife. A love whose blindness, exaggeration of passion, +all that might have made it foolish and impracticable, leads no longer +to folly and sin, but to an intenser activity of mankind's imagination +of the good and beautiful, to a momentary realization in our fancy of +all our vague dreams of perfection; a love which, though it may cool +down imperceptibly and pale in its intenseness, like the sunrise fires +into a serene sky, has left some glory round the head of the wife, some +glory in the heart of the husband, has been, however fleeting, a vision +of beauty which has made beauty more real. And all this owing to the +creation, the storing up, the purification by the Platonic poets of +Tuscany, of that strange and seemingly so artificial and unreal thing, +mediaeval love; the very forms and themes of whose poetry, the _serena_ +and the _alba_, which had been indignantly put aside by the early +Italian lyrists, being unconsciously revived, and purified and +consecrated in the two loveliest love poems of Elizabethan poetry: the +_serena_, the evening song of impatient expectation in Spenser's +Epithalamium; the _alba_, the dawn song of hurried parting, in the +balcony scene of "Romeo and Juliet." + +Let us recapitulate. The feudal Middle Ages gave to mankind a more +refined and spiritual love, a love all chivalry, fidelity, and +adoration, but a love steeped in the poison of adultery; and to save the +pure and noble portions of this mediaeval love became the mission of the +Tuscan poets of that strange school of Platonic love which in its very +loveliness may sometimes seem so unnatural and sterile. For, by reducing +this mediaeval love to a mere intellectual passion, seeking in woman +merely a self-made embodiment of cravings after perfection, they +cleansed away that deep stain of adultery; they quadrupled the intensity +of the ideal element; they distilled the very essential spirit of poetic +passion, of which but a few drops, even as diluted by Petrarch, +precipitated, when mingled with the earthly passion of future poets, to +the bottom, no longer to be seen or tasted, all baser ingredients. + +And, while the poems of minnesingers and troubadours have ceased to +appeal to us, and remain merely for their charm of verse and of graceful +conceit; the poetry written by the Italians of the thirteenth century +for women, whose love was but an imaginative fervour, remains +concentrated in the "Vita Nuova;" and will remain for all time the +sovereign purifier to which the world must have recourse whenever that +precipitate of baser instincts, which thickened like slime the love +poetry of Antiquity, shall rise again and sully the purity of the love +poetry of to-day. + + + + + +EPILOGUE. + +More than a year has elapsed since the moment when, fancying that this +series of studies must be well-nigh complete, I attempted to explain in +an introductory chapter what the nature of this book of mine is, or +would fain be. I had hoped that each of these studies would complete its +companions; and that, without need for explicit explanation, my whole +idea would have become more plain to others than it was at that time +even to myself. But instead, it has become obvious that the more +carefully I had sought to reduce each question to unity, the more that +question-subdivided and connected itself with other questions; and that, +with the solution of each separate problem, had arisen a new set of +problems which infinitely complicated the main lessons to be deduced +from a study of that many-sided civilization to which, remembering the +brilliant and mysterious offspring of Faustus and Helena, I have given +the name of Euphorion. Hence, as it seems, the necessity for a few +further words of explanation. + +In those introductory pages written some fifteen months ago, I tried to +bring home to the reader a sense which has haunted me throughout the +writing of this volume; namely, that instead of having deliberately made +up my mind to study the Renaissance, as one makes up one's mind to visit +Greece or Egypt or the Holy Land; I have, on the contrary, quite +accidentally and unconsciously, found myself wandering about in spirit +among the monuments of this particular historic region, even as I might +wander about in the streets of Siena where I wrote last year, of +Florence whence I write at present; wandering about among these things, +and little by little feeling a particular interest in one, then in +another, according as each happened to catch my fancy or to recall some +already known thing. Now these, which for want of a better word I have +just called monuments, and just now, less clearly, but also less +foolishly, merely _things_--these things were in reality not merely +individual and really existing buildings, books, pictures, or statues, +individual and really registered men, women, and events; they were the +mental conceptions which I had extracted out of these realities; the +intellectual types made up (as the mediaeval symbols of justice are made +up of the visible paraphernalia, robe, scales and sword, for judging and +weighing and punishing) of the impressions left on the mind by all +those buildings, or books, or pictures, or statues, or men, women, and +events. They were not the iniquities of this particular despot nor the +scandalous sayings of that particular humanist, but the general moral +chaos of the Italian fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; not the poem of +Pulci, of Boiardo, of Ariosto in especial, but a vast imaginary poem +made up of them all; not the mediaeval saints of Angelico and the pagan +demi-gods of Michael Angelo, but the two tremendous abstractions: the +spirit of Mediaevalism in art, and the spirit of Antiquity; the interest +in the distressed soul, and the interest in the flourishing body. And, +as my thoughts have gone back to Antiquity and onwards to our own times, +their starting-point has nevertheless been the Tuscan art of the +fifteenth century, their nucleus some notes on busts by Benedetto da +Maiano and portraits by Raphael. + +My _dramatis persona_ have been modes of feeling and forms of art. I +have tried to explain the life and character, not of any man or woman, +but of the moral scepticism of Italy, of the tragic spirit of our +Elizabethan dramatists; I have tried to write the biography of the +romance poetry of the Middle Ages, of the realism of the great portrait +painters and sculptors of the Renaissance. But these, my _dramatis +persona,_ are, let me repeat it, abstractions: they exist only in my +mind and in the minds of those who think like myself. Hence, like all +abstractions, they represent the essence of a question, but not its +completeness, its many-sidedness as we may see it in reality. Hence it +is that I have frequently passed over exceptions to the rule which I was +stating, because the explanation of these exceptions would have involved +the formulating of a number of apparently irrelevant propositions; so +that any one who please may accuse me of inexactness; and, to give an +instance, cover the margins of my essay on Mediaeval Love with a whole +list of virtuous love stories of the Middle Ages; or else ferret out of +Raynouard and Von der Hagen a dozen pages of mediaeval poems in praise of +rustic life. These objections will be perfectly correct, and (so far as +my knowledge permitted me) I might have puzzled the reader with them +myself; but it remains none the less certain that, in the main, mediaeval +love was not virtuous, and mediaeval peasantry not admired by poets; and +none the less certain, I think, also, that in describing the +characteristics and origin of an abstract thing, such as mediaeval love, +or mediaeval feeling towards the country and country folk, it was my +business to state the rule and let alone the exceptions. + +There is another matter which gives me far greater concern. In creating +and dealing with an abstraction, one is frequently forced, if I may use +the expression, to cut a subject in two, to bring one of its sides into +full light and leave the other in darkness; nay, to speak harshly of one +side of an art or of a man without being able to speak admiringly of +another side. + +This one-sidedness, this apparent injustice of judgment, has in some +cases been remedied by the fact that I have treated in one study those +things which I was forced to omit in another study; as, in two separate +essays, I have pointed out first the extreme inferiority of Renaissance +sculpture to the sculpture of Antiquity with regard to absolute beauty +of form; and then the immeasurable superiority of Renaissance over +antique sculpture in the matter of that beauty and interest dependent +upon mere arrangement and handling, wherein lies the beauty-creating +power of realistic schools. But most often I have shown one side, not +merely of an artist or an art, but of my own feeling, without showing +the other; and in one case this inevitable one-sidedness has weighed +upon me almost like personal guilt, and has almost made me postpone the +publication of this book to the Greek Kalends, in hopes of being able to +explain and to atone. I am alluding to Fra Angelico. I spoke of him in a +study of the progress of mere beautiful form, the naked human form +moreover, in the art of the Renaissance; I looked at his work with my +mind full of the unapproachable superiority of antique form; I judged +and condemned the artist with reference to that superb movement towards +nature and form and bodily beauty which was the universal movement of +the fifteenth century; I lost patience with this saint because he would +not turn pagan; I pushed aside, because he did not seek for a classic +Olympus, his exquisite dreams of a mediaeval Paradise. I had taken part, +as its chronicler, with the art which seeks mere plastic perfection, the +art to which Angelico said, "Retro me Sathana." It was my intention to +close even this volume with a study of the poetical conception of early +Renaissance painting, of that strange kind of painting in which a thing +but imperfect in itself, a mere symbol of lovely ideas, brings home to +our mind, with a rush of associations, a sense of beauty and wonder +greater perhaps than any which we receive from the sober reality of +perfect form. Again, there are the German masters--the great engravers, +Kranach, Altdorfer, Aldegrever, especially; of whom, for their absolute +pleasure in ugly women, for their filthy delight in horrors, I have said +an immense amount of ill; and of whom, for their wonderful intuition of +dramatic situation, their instinct of the poetry of common things, and +their magnificently imaginative rendering of landscape, I hope some day +to say an equal amount of good. + +I have spoken of the lesson which may be derived from studies even as +humble as these studies of mine; since, in my opinion, we cannot treat +history as a mere art--though history alone can gives us now-a-days +tragedy which has ceased to exist on our stage, and wonder which has +ceased to exist in our poetry--we cannot seek in it mere selfish +enjoyment of imagination and emotion, without doing our soul the great +injury of cheating it of some of those great indignations, some of +those great lessons which make it stronger and more supple in the +practical affairs of life. Each of these studies of mine brings its own +lesson, artistic or ethical, important or unimportant; its lesson of +seeking certainty in our moral opinions, beauty in all and whatever our +forms of art, spirituality in our love. But besides these I seem to +perceive another deduction, an historical fact with a practical +application; to see it as the result not merely perhaps of the studies +of which this book is the fruit, but of those further studies, of the +subtler sides of Mediaeval and Renaissance life and art which at present +occupy my mind and may some day add another series of essays to this: a +lesson still vague to myself, but which, satisfactorily or +unsatisfactorily, I shall nevertheless attempt to explain; if indeed it +requires to be brought home to the reader. + +Of the few forms of feeling and imagination which I have treated--things +so different from one another as the feeling for nature and the +chivalric poem, as modern art, with its idealism and realism, and modern +love--of these forms, emotional and artistic, which Antiquity did not +know, or knew but little, the reader may have observed that I have +almost invariably traced the origin deep into that fruitful cosmopolitan +chaos, due to the mingling of all that was still unused of the remains +of Antiquity with all that was untouched of the intellectual and moral +riches of the barbarous nations, to which we give the name of Middle +Ages; and that I have, as invariably, followed the development of these +precious forms, and their definitive efflorescence and fruit-bearing, +into that particular country where certain mediaeval conditions had +ceased to exist, namely Italy. In other words, it has seemed to me that +the things which I have studied were originally produced during the +Middle Ages, and consequently in the mediaeval countries, France, +Germany, Provence; but did not attain maturity except in that portion of +the Middle Ages which is mediaeval no longer, but already more than half +modern, the Renaissance, which began in Italy not with the establishment +of despotisms and the coming of Greek humanists, but with the +independence of the free towns and with the revival of Roman tradition. + +Why so? Because, it appears to me, after watching the lines of my +thought converging to this point, because, with a few exceptions, the +Middle Ages were rich in great beginnings (indeed a good half of all +that makes up our present civilization seems to issue from them): but +they were poor in complete achievements; full of the seeds of modern +institutions, arts, thoughts, and feelings, they yet show us but rarely +the complete growth of any one of them: a fruitful Nile flood, but which +must cease to drown and to wash away, which must subside before the +germs that it has brought can shoot forth and mature. The sense of this +comes home to me most powerfully whenever I think of mediaeval poetry and +mediaeval painting. + +The songs of the troubadours and minnesingers, what are they to our +feelings? They are pleasant, even occasionally beautiful, but they are +empty, lamentably empty, charming arrangements of words; poetry which +fills our mind or touches our heart comes only with the Tuscan lyrists +of the thirteenth century. The same applies to mediaeval narrative-verse: +it is, with one or two exceptions or half exceptions, such as "The +Chanson de Roland" and Gottfried's "Tristan und Isolde," decidedly +wearisome; a thing to study, but scarcely a thing to delight in. I do +not mean to say that the old legends of Wales and Scandinavia, +subsequently embodied by the French and German poets of the Middle Ages, +are without imaginative or emotional interest; nothing can be further +from my thoughts. The Nibelung story possesses, both in the Norse and in +the Middle High German version, a tragic fascination; and a quaint +fairy-tale interest, every now and then rising to the charm of a +Decameronian _novella_, is possessed by many of the Keltic tales, +whether briefly told in the Mabinogion or lengthily detailed by +Chrestien de Troyes and Wolfram von Eschenbach. But all this is the +interest of the mere story, and you would enjoy it almost as much if +that story were related not by a poet but by a peasant; it is the +fascination of the mere theme, with the added fascination of our own +unconscious filling up and colouring of details. And the poem itself, +whence we extract this theme, remains, for the most part, uninteresting. +The figures are vague, almost shapeless and colourless; they have no +well-understood mental and moral anatomy, so that when they speak and +act the writer seems to have no clear conception of the motives or +tempers which make them do so; even as in a child's pictures, the horses +gallop, the men run, the houses stand, but without any indication of the +muscles which move the horse, of the muscles which hold up the man, of +the solid ground upon which is built, nay rather, into which is planted, +the house. Hatred of Hagen, devotion of Ruedger, passionate piety of +Parzival--all these are things of which we do not particularly see the +how or why; we do not follow the reasons, in event or character, which +make these men sacrifice themselves or others, weep, storm, and so +forth; nay, even when these reasons are clear from the circumstances, we +are not shown the action of the mechanism, we do not see how Brunhilt is +wroth, how Chriemhilt is revengeful, how Herzeloid is devoted to +Parzival. There is, in the vast majority of this mediaeval poetry, no +clear conception of the construction and functions of people's +character, and hence no conception either of those actions and reactions +of various moral organs which, after all, are at the bottom of the +events related. Herein lies the difference between the forms of the +Middle Ages and those of Antiquity; for how perfectly felt, understood, +is not every feeling and every action of the Homeric heroes, how +perfectly indicated! We can see the manner and reason of the conflict of +Achilles and Agamemnon, of the behaviour of the returned Odysseus, as +clearly as we see the manner and reason of the movements of the fighting +Centaurs and Lapithae, or the Amazons; nay, even the minute mood of +comparatively unimportant figures, as Helen, Brisei's, and Nausicaa, is +indicated in its moral anatomy and attitude as distinctly as is the +manner in which the maidens of the Parthenon frieze slowly restrain +their steps, the boys curb their steeds, or the old men balance their +oil jars. Nothing of this in mediaeval literature, except perhaps in +"Flamenca" and "Tristan," where the motive of action, mere imaginative +desire, is all-permeating and explains everything. These people clearly +had no interest, no perception, connected with character: a valorous +woman, a chivalrous knight, an insolent steward, a jealous husband, a +faithful retainer; things recognized only in outline, made to speak and +act only according to a fixed tradition, without knowledge of the +internal mechanism of motive; these sufficed. Hence it is that mediaeval +poetry is always like mediaeval painting (for painting continued to be +mediaeval with Giotto's pupils long after poetry had ceased to be +mediaeval with Dante and his school), where the Virgin sits and holds the +child without body wherewith to sit or arms wherewith to hold; where +angels flutter forward and kneel in conventional greeting, with +obviously no bended knees beneath their robes, nay, with knees, waist, +armpits, all anywhere; where men ride upon horses without flat to their +back; where processions of the blessed come forth, guided by fiddling +seraphs, vague, faint faces, sweet or grand, heads which might wave like +pieces of cut-out paper upon their necks, arms and legs here and there, +not clearly belonging to any one; creatures marching, soaring, flying, +singing, fiddling, without a bone or a muscle wherewith to do it all. +And meanwhile, in this mediaeval poetry, as in this mediaeval painting, +there are yards and yards of elaborate preciousness: all the embossed +velvets, all the white-and-gold-shot brocades, all the silks and satins, +and jewel-embroidered stuffs of the universe cast stiffly about these +phantom men and women, these phantom horses and horsemen. It is not +until we turn to Italy, and to the Northern man, Chaucer, entirely under +Italian influence, that we obtain an approach to the antique clearness +of perception and comprehension; that we obtain not only in Dante +something akin to the muscularities of Signorelli and Michael Angelo; +but in Boccaccio and Chaucer, in Cavalca and Petrarch, the equivalent of +the well-understood movement, the well-indicated situation of the +simple, realistic or poetic, sketches of Filippino and Botticelli. + +This, you will say, is a mere impression; it is no explanation, still +less such an explanation as may afford a lesson. Not so. This strange +inconclusiveness in all mediaeval things, till the moment comes when they +cease to be mediaeval; this richness in germs and poverty in mature +fruit, cannot be without its reason. And this reason, to my mind, lies +in one word, the most terrible word of any, since it means suffering and +hopelessness; a word which has haunted my mind ever since I have looked +into mediaeval things: the word Wastefulness. Wastefulness; the frightful +characteristic of times at once so rich and so poor, the explanation of +the long starvation and sickness that mankind, that all mankind's +concerns--art, poetry, science, life--endured while the very things +which would have fed and revived and nurtured, existed close at hand, +and in profusion. Wastefulness, in this great period of confusion, of +the most precious things that we possess: time, thought, and feeling +refused to the realities of the world, and lavished on the figments of +the imagination. Why this vagueness, this imperfection in all mediaeval +representations of life? Because even as men's eyes were withdrawn, by +the temporal institutions of those days, from the sight of the fields +and meadows which were left to the blind and dumb thing called serf; so +also the thoughts of mankind, its sympathy and intentions, were +withdrawn from the mere earthly souls, the mere earthly wrongs and woes +of men by the great self-organized institution of mediaeval religion. +Pity of the body of Christ held in bondage by the Infidel; love of God; +study of the unknowable things of Heaven: such are the noblest +employments of the mediaeval soul; how much of pity, of love, may remain +for man; how much of study for the knowable? To Wastefulness like +this--to misapplication of mind ending almost in palsy--must we ascribe, +I think, the strange sterility of such mediaeval art as deals not merely +with pattern, but with the reality of man's body and soul. And we might +be thankful, if, during our wanderings among mediaeval things, we had +seen the starving of only art and artistic instincts; but the soul of +man has lain starving also; starving for the knowledge which was sought +only of Divine things, starving for the love which was given only to +God. + +The explanation, therefore, and its lesson, may thus be summed up in the +one word Wastefulness. And the fruitfulness of the Renaissance, all that +it has given to us of art, of thought, of feeling (for the "Vita Nuova" +is its fruit), is due, as it seems to me, to the fact that the +Renaissance is simply the condition of civilization when, thanks to the +civil liberty and the spiritual liberty inherited from Rome and +inherited from Greece, man's energies of thought and feeling were +withdrawn from the unknowable to the knowable, from Heaven to Earth; and +were devoted to the developing of those marvellous new things which +Antiquity had not known, and which had lain neglected and wasted during +the Middle Ages. + +FLORENCE, _January_,1884. + + + + + +APPENDIX. + +I have seen the pictures and statues and towns which I have described, +and I have read the books of which I attempt to give an impression; but +here my original research, if such it may be called, comes to an end. I +have trusted only to myself for my impressions; but I have taken from +others everything that may be called historical fact, as distinguished +from the history of this or that form of thought or of art which I have +tried to elaborate. My references are therefore only to standard +historical works, and to such editions of poets and prose writers as +have come into my hands. How much I am endebted to the genius of +Michelet; nay, rather, how much I am, however unimportant, the thing +made by him, every one will see and judge. With regard to positive +information I must express my great obligations to the works of Jacob +Burckhardt, of Prof. Villari, and of Mr. J.A. Symonds in everything that +concerns the political history and social condition of the Renaissance. +Mr. Symonds' name I have placed last, although this is by no means the +order of importance in which the three writers appear in my mind, +because vanity compels me to state that I have deprived myself of the +pleasure and profit of reading his volumes on Italian literature, from a +fear that finding myself doubtless forestalled by him in various +appreciations, I might deprive my essays of what I feel to be their +principal merit, namely, the spontaneity and wholeness of personal +impression. With regard to philological lore, I may refer, among a +number of other works, to M. Gaston Paris' work on the Cycle of +Charlemagne, M. de la Villemarque's companion volume on Keltic romances, +and Professor Rajna's "Fonti dell' Ariosto." My knowledge of +troubadours, trouveres, and minnesingers is obtained mainly from the +great collections of Raynouard, Wackernagel, Maetzner, Bartsch, and Von +der Hagen, and from Bartsch's and Simrock's editions and versions of +Gottfried von Strassburg, Hartmann von Aue, and Wolfram von Eschenbach. +"Flamenca" I have read in Professor Paul Meyer's beautiful edition, text +and translation; "Aucassin et Nicolette," in an edition published, if I +remember rightly, by Janet; and also in a very happy translation +contained in Delvau's huge collection of "Romans de Chevalerie," which +contains, unfortunately sometimes garbled, as many of the prose stories +of the Carolingian and Amadis cycle as I, at all events, could endure to +read. For the early Italian poets, excepting Carducci's "Cino da +Pistoia," my references are the same as those in Rossetti's "Dante and +his Cycle," especially the "Rime Antiche" and the "Poeti del Primo +Secolo." Professor d'Ancona's pleasant volume has greatly helped me in +the history of the transformation of the courtly poetry of the early +Middle Ages into the folk poetry of Tuscany. I owe a good deal also, +with regard to this same essay "The Outdoor Poetry," to Roskoff's famous +"Geschichte des Teufels," and to Signor Novati's recently published +"Carmina Medii _AEvi_." The Italian _novellieri,_ Bandello, Cinthio, and +their set, I have used in the Florentine editions of 1820 or 1825; +Masuccio edited by De Sanctis. For the essay on the Italian Renaissance +on the Elizabethan Stage, I have had recourse, chiefly, to the fifteenth +century chronicles in the "Archivio Storico Italiano," and to Dyce's +Webster, Hartley Coleridge's Massinger and Ford, Churton Collins' Cyril +Tourneur, and J.O. Halliwell's Marston. + +The essays on art have naturally profited by the now inevitable Crowe +and Cavalcaselle; but in this part of my work, while I have relied very +little on books, I have received more than the equivalent of the +information to be obtained from any writers in the suggestions and +explanations of my friend Mr. T. Nelson MacLean, who has made it +possible for a mere creature of pens and ink to follow the differences +of _technique_ of the sculptors and medallists of the fifteenth century; +a word of thanks also, for various such suggestions as can come only +from a painter, to my old friend Mr. John S. Sargent, of Paris. + +I must conclude these acknowledgments by thanking the Editors of the +_Contemporary, British Quarterly_, and _National Reviews_, and of the +_Cornhill Magazine_, for permission to republish such of the essays or +fragments of essays as have already appeared in those periodicals. + +THE END. + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Euphorion, by Vernon Lee + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EUPHORION *** + +***** This file should be named 31304.txt or 31304.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/3/0/31304/ + +Produced by Marc D'Hooghe + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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