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recounted (p. 11). The importance of this condition will be best seen under Religion; more stress being there laid upon it, from the difficulties attending on the other conditions, especially the first.

2. The faults most liable to occur in connexion with Feeling are a further illustration of its requirements.

(1) Insipidity. This is common to all qualities, and may be owing to general inadequacy of the language used; but, most commonly, it comes from want of sufficient originality.

(2) Discords. The purity of the instrument, or, in other words, the absence of all inharmonious accompaniments, must be especially kept in view.

Discords will arise not only from the introduction of language inconsistent with Feeling, but also from a failure to maintain the consistency of the particular feeling in question.

(3) Extravagance and Overstraining: that is to say, greater profusion than the feeling is able to sustain. There is frequently waste of power upon situations of an exceptional kind, as in the tragedy of a first love, which, to be treated at all, demands the highest power of genius in order to redeem its hyperbolical character.

(4) Maudlin. This is a name for the most characteristic abuse of Tender feeling. It is the employment of it in excess, and out of relation to the object. The Ass of Sterne is still the best-known example of gross disproportion between the language of feeling and its occasion.

The assuaging outburst of grief under pain, is the extreme form of an organic process whose milder modes of stimulation are associated with the tender feeling on its genial side. If possible, nothing should be done to induce the spasmodic violence of the lachrymal flow, which is a mode of weakness and exhaustion of the system. The modes of refinement of the grosser passions are eminently applicable to the moderating of the tender emotions, if only for the sake of its physical

excesses.

As with the lachrymal flow, so with the embrace; the occasion should be adequate, and the actuality rare. It takes a considerable development of interest to make these outward tokens acceptable in artistic delineation.

(5) Confounding of Pathos and Strength. The cases where these come together without mutual injury have been adverted to already, and will appear again. There may be rapid alternation of the two without discord.

(6) Excess of the Horrible. Pain, as one of the exciting causes of tender feeling, in order to be effective must be kept from passing into pure horror and repugnance. This is the problem that arises under the concluding species of Tenderness-Sorrow or Pathos in the narrow sense.

FEELING EXEMPLIFIED.

The Subjects or Classes of Tender Feeling have been enumerated, and likewise the analyzed Constituents of Tenderness, which are repeated in more than one class. In the detailed exemplification, it will be enough to follow the order of the classes, regard being had to the ultimate constituents as the surest guide to the attainment of the desired effects.

EROTIC LITERATURE.

The general conditions of Tender Feeling are applicable to the poetry of Love, with some variations in the importance attached to each.

The more special conditions of Erotic feeling include (1) the interest of Plot, and (2) the various means of guarding against Extravagance and the Maudlin.

Harmony, Originality, Ideality, are all employed to heighten, purify and refine the love emotion. It is nevertheless liable, by its hyperbolical nature, to repel the sympathies of those that are not under its influence. This difficulty is overcome by the richness of the composition, by a proper degree of restraint, by bringing the passions through the ordeal of sufferings and trials, and by the noble behaviour of the lovers themselves.

As against maudlin especially, all these arts are available. So, also, is the device of alternating the interest and remitting the strain by other passions, especially some form of malevolence. Shakespeare understood the value of ridicule and humour in redeeming or palliating the excesses of the amorous flame.

The means available for the poetic expression of the sentiment of love may be summed up as follows:

(1) As in all other cases, we must put in the foreground the description of the object. This includes, first, personal charms depicted by proper selection of essential and sugges

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tive particulars; and, next, reciprocation, when it exists, and all the circumstances of mental and moral excellence that unite in heightening the attractions of sex.

(2) Harmonious surroundings are very largely adopted in love poetry. The beauties and charms of the outer world -all that department of nature interest that is akin to affection,-birds, flowers, streams, trees, the scenery of repose and quiescence, and even the heavenly bodies-are made to reflect the feelings of the entranced lover.

(3) The description or utterance of the lover's own feelings constitutes a great part of the poetry of love. The emotion may be expressed not only in direct forms but also by the vast variety of effects it produces on the thoughts, feelings and actions of the lover. Strong expression, being natural to the emotion, is not merely tolerated but expected in its utterance; and this may be increased by comparisons drawn from everything that is intense and hyperbolical. Even the absence of a reciprocated affection can be made to attest the vehemence of the one-sided devotion.

The passionate intensity of love, following the laws of intense emotion, has many consequences. It takes away self-control, and urges to hazardous deeds; emerging sometimes in horrible crimes, sometimes in heroic devotion, often in tragic conclusions. The poetic representation of its workings carves interest out of the consequences as well as out of the mere intensity of the feeling.

To rise to the occasion, the poet must strike out imagery both intense and original, and harmonize it with the genuine amatory sentiment. These demands are rarely complied with in the highest degree. As the passion is irrational and often ruinous, its exaggerations are justified only by the utmost poetic charms.

(4) The interest of Plot.

No other variety of tender emotion is so well suited to give the fascination of Plot: hence one reason for the adoption of Sexual Love as the main theme in the interest of Prose Fiction. The parental feeling may be as strong by nature, but it does not readily fall into a narrative plot, like a courtship.

The main points of interest and importance in Erotic Literature may now be illustrated by a review of some of its leading instances.

To begin with the Ancients.

In ancient literature, the tender sentiment between the sexes had not yet reached the highest pitch. The passion,

however, has never been wanting in the human race: it appears in the earliest poetry, and, so far as recognized, receives poetic treatment. But its literary interest throughout the ancient world ranked at a much lower figure than the interest of war. Although the extraordinary charms of Helen are set down as the motive of the great Trojan war, she seldom appears in person; and there are no love scenes detailed, the art of the poet being expended on the warlike incidents of the siege.

Nevertheless, a beginning is made in the expression of feminine attractions. Both the strong and the weak points of erotic description are shown in the earliest poetry of Greece.

The fascination of Helen turned entirely on her personal beauty, and not on her conduct; for this was objectionable, with only the redeeming qualities of kindliness and self-reproach. Her person is not described; but the imagination of the sculptor and of the painter, in after-times, helped the Greeks to conceive a bodily representation suited to her supposed charms. The Homeric art consists in setting forth the wonderful impression that she made wherever she showed herself. The most notable is the testimony of the elders of Troy (Iliad, Book III.), who, for a moment, excused the quarrel and the war on her account, as they gazed on her person while she passed by.

This mode of delineating beauty by the impression made on beholders is not equal in effect to a fairly adequate description of the beautiful personality itself. By enormous exaggeration and iteration, it excites at last in our minds a vague estimate of something in the highest degree wonderful, but can never take the same hold of our imagination as an actual picture. The expressions used by Homer are intended to set in motion the erotic fancy of mankind, as when he tells us that she had charms to soothe the soul and drown the memory of the saddest things': that she had 'beauty such as never woman wore’.

·

Postponing the pathetic domestic scene of the parting of Hector and Andromache, we have to refer for the best examples of Homer's treatment of the love affection to the Odyssey. This poem being occupied with adventures and not with warlike operations, except on a very small scale, finds room for the romance of the affections. Most notable of all the incidents of this kind is the episode of Nausicaa,

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in the Sixth Book. Ulysses, being cast ashore in the country of the Phæacians, is destitute of food and raiment. He encounters the royal princess with her maidens, who are there by divine direction to meet him. His promptitude and power of speech are called into play, as he addresses the princess in terms of the most tasteful and consummate flattery; giving to all time a model of this prime art of lovemaking:

"I supplicate thee, O queen, whether thou art a goddess or a mortal! If indeed thou art a goddess of them that keep the wide heaven; to Artemis, then, the daughter of great Zeus, I mainly liken thee, for beauty and stature and shapeliness. But if thou art one of the daughters of men who dwell on earth, thrice blessed are thy father and thy lady mother, and thrice blessed thy brethren. Surely their souls ever glow with gladness for thy sake, each time they see thee entering the dance, so fair a flower of maidens. But he is of heart the most blessed beyond all other who shall prevail with gifts of wooing, and lead thee to his home. Never have mine eyes beheld such an one among mortals, neither man nor woman; great awe comes upon me as I look on thee."

Nausicaa responds, on her part, with equal art and self-restraint; she gives the hero every encouragement to sue for her hand; yet is reconciled to her fate in not being successful. The approaches to love by mutual compliment could hardly be better conceived or expressed.

The previous adventure of Ulysses in the island of Calypso, who also was love-smitten, and had the power to detain him, until divine interference ordered his release, is redeemed by the fine generosity of the amorous goddess in equipping him for his departure; while he, on his side, maintains a passive resistance to all her charms, in his constancy towards Penelope.

The hero's next love-making is with Circe, the enchantress, whom he first subdues, and then consents to be her lover, for a whole year. The poet's genius does not adorn this connexion, or provide an additional example of erotic treatment.

While Homer supplied a few indications of erotic art, the great Tragedians almost entirely passed it over. Female characters they had--notably Antigone; but these did not appear in the love relationships of the sexes so

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