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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 + +MEDIÆVAL 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 mediæval 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 Græco-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, mediæval 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 mænads 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 +æsthetic 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 Græco-Roman Antiquity had +left it. Remark that I say Græco-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 Cæsar 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 Græco-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, 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 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, 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 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 +æsthetically 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 anæmia 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 fè_, 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 mediæval +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 mediæval 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 mediæval 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 mediæval 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 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 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 +mediæval 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 +mediæval 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 mediæval 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 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 mediæval +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 mediæval 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 mediæval +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 mediæval 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 +æsthetico-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 æsthetic abstractions, +becoming the goal of an essentially æsthetic, 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 mediæval +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 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 +æsthetic, 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 Nirvâna. +This religious side of mediæval 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 Arimathæa, 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 mediæval 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 mediæval 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 mediæval 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 mediæval 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 mediæval 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 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 mediæval 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 Nirvâna 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 mediæval 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 mediæval _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 Cærleon 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 æsthetically 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 mediæval 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. Mediævalism, 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 mediæval 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 mediæval 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 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. + +The stuff of Boiardo and Ariosto is the same: that old mediæval 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 Cæsar, 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 +mediæval 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 mediæval +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 +mediæval 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 mediæval, 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 mediæval 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 à 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 +mediæval 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 mediæval 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 æsthetic 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 prætor 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 mediæval 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, æsthetical, 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. + +Mediæval 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. Mediæval love, therefore, never obtains its object, +however much it may obtain the woman; for the object of mediæval love, +as of mediæval 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 mediæval +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 +mediæval 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 mediæval love, an extraordinary sameness of +intonation, making it difficult to distinguish between the _bonâ 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 mediæval 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 æsthetical 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 mediæval 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 +mediæval 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 mediæval 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 +Mediæval Love. + +Has such a thing really existed? Are not these mediæval 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 mediæval 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 mediæval 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 mediæval 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 mediæval 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 mediæval love story, but twenty--not half a dozen mediæval 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. Mediæval 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. + +Mediæval 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 mediæval 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 +mediæval 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 +mediæval 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 mediæval +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 mediæval +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 mediæval 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 mediæval 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 mediæval 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 mediæval 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 mediæval +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 mediæval love, and that this is the case is proved by the whole +huge body of early mediæval 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 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. + + + Vos qui très 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 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 _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. Mediæval 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 +mediæval love lyrics is that comprising the Provençal _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 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 _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, 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 mediæval +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 æstheticism. 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 +mediæval 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 Phædrus 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 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 _cecisbeos_ of the +noble Italian ladies were sanctioned by the society of the seventeenth +and eighteenth centuries. In the mediæval 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 +mediæval 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 sîn 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 mediæval 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 +Clytæmnestra 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 mediæval +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 mediæval 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 mediæval 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 mediæval 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 mediæval +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 mediæval love. The most poetical and pathetic +of all mediæval 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 mediæval 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 mediæval +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 mediæval 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 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, mediæval 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 Phædra; 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 mediæval 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 mediæval 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, 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. + +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 +mediæval 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 _tête-à-tête_. 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 mediæval 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 mediæval 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 mediæval 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 _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 Provençal and German +love-songs: loose as are many of the _albas, serenas, wachtlieder_, 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 mediæval 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 _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 æsthetic 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 æsthetic perceptions and cravings; hence the possibility, once +the wish for such a passion present, of a kind of love which is mainly +æsthetic, 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 æsthetic 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 +æsthetic emotions already in their souls the mystical theorizings of +transcendental metaphysics, and the half-human, half-supernatural +ecstasy of mediæval 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 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 +mediæval 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 _malagueña_ 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 Phædrus 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 +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." + +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 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 +encyclopædic 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 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, _qui est per omnia sæcula 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 mediæval 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 _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 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. + +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 mediæval 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 mediæval 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, +mediæval 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 mediæval 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 mediæval 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 mediæval 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 mediæval saints of Angelico and the pagan +demi-gods of Michael Angelo, but the two tremendous abstractions: the +spirit of Mediævalism 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 Mediæval 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 mediæval 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, mediæval +love was not virtuous, and mediæval 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 mediæval love, +or mediæval 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 mediæval 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 Mediæval 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 mediæval 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 mediæval countries, France, +Germany, Provence; but did not attain maturity except in that portion of +the Middle Ages which is mediæval 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 mediæval poetry and +mediæval 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 mediæval 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 mediæval 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 Lapithæ, 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 mediæval 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 mediæval +poetry is always like mediæval painting (for painting continued to be +mediæval with Giotto's pupils long after poetry had ceased to be +mediæval 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 mediæval poetry, as in this mediæval 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 mediæval things, till the moment comes when they +cease to be mediæval; 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 mediæval 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 mediæval +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 mediæval 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 mediæval 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 mediæval 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 mediæval 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, 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 _Ævi_." 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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