themselves they might act very differently, but as it is, all the
girls in each district _must_ do the same thing, however silly. About
the real feelings of the girls these comedies tell us nothing
whatever. With coyness--that is, a woman's concealment of her feelings
toward a man she likes--these actions have no more to do than the man
in the moon has with anthropology. Least of all do they tell us
anything about love, for the girls must all act alike, whether they
favor a man or not. Regarding the absence of love we have, moreover,
the direct testimony of Dr. F. Kreutzwald (Schroeder, 233). That
marriages are made in heaven is, he declares, true in a certain sense,
so far as the Esthonians are concerned; for "the parties concerned
usually play a passive rôle.... Love is not one of the requisites, it
is an unknown phenomenon." Utilitarianism, he adds, is the basis of
their marriages. The suitor tries to ascertain if the girl he wants is
a good worker; to find this out he may even watch her secretly while
she is spinning, thrashing, or combing flax.

"Most of the men proceed at random, and it is not unusual
for a suitor who has been refused in one place and another
to proceed at once to a third or fourth.... Many a
bridegroom sees his bride for the first time at the ceremony
of the priestly betrothal, and he cannot therefore be blamed
for asking: 'Which of these girls is my bride?'"


GREEK AND ROMAN MERCENARY COYNESS

So far our search for that coyness which is an ingredient of modern
love has been in vain. At the same time it is obvious that since
coyness is widely prevalent at the present day it must have been in
the past of use to women, else it would not have survived and
increased. The question is: how far down in the scale of civilization
do we find traces of it? The literature of the ancient Greeks
indicates that, in a certain phase and among certain classes, it was
known to them. True, the respectable women, being always locked up and
having no choice in the selecting of their partners, had no occasion
for the exercise of any sort of coyness. But the hetairai appear to
have understood the advantages of assumed disdain or indifference in
making a coveted man more eager in his wooing. In the fifteenth of
Lucian's [Greek: Etairikoi dialogoi] we read about a wanton who locked
her door to her lover because he had refused to pay her two talents
for the privilege of exclusive possession. In other cases, the poets
still feel called upon to teach these women how to make men submissive
by withholding caresses from them. Thus in Lucian, Pythias exclaims:

"To tell the truth, dear Joessa, you yourself spoiled
him with your excessive love, which you even allowed
him to notice. You should not have made so much of him:
men, when they discover that, easily become
overweening. Do not weep, poor girl! Follow my advice
and keep your door locked once or twice when he tries
to see you again. You will find that that will make him
flame up again and become frantic with love and
jealousy."

In the third book of his treatise on the Art of Love, Ovid advises
women (of the same class) how to win men. He says, in substance:

"Do not answer his letters too soon; all delay inflames
the lover, provided it does not last too long.... What
is too readily granted does not long retain love. Mix
with the pleasure you give mortifying refusals, make
him wait in your doorway; let him bewail the 'cruel
door;' let him beg humbly, or else get angry and
threaten. Sweet things cloy, tonics are bitter."


MODESTY AND COYNESS

Feigned unwillingness or indifference in obedience to such advice may
perhaps be called coyness, but it is only a coarse primitive phase of
that attitude, based on sordid, mercenary motives, whereas true modern
coyness consists in an impulse, grounded in modesty, to conceal
affection. The germs of Greek venal coyness for filthy lucre may be
found as low down as among the Papuan women who, as Bastian notes
(Ploss, I., 460) exact payment in shell-money for their caresses. Of
the Tongans, highest of all Polynesians, Mariner says (Martin, II.,
174):

"It must not be supposed that these women are always
easily won; the greatest attentions and fervent
solicitations are sometimes requisite, even though
there be no other lover in the way. This happens
sometimes from a spirit of coquetry, at other times
from a dislike to the party, etc."

Now coquetry is a cousin of coyness, but in whatever way this Tongan
coquetry may manifest itself (no details are given) it certainly lacks
the regard for modesty and chastity which is essential to modern
coyness; for, as the writer just referred to attests, Tongan girls are
permitted to indulge in free intercourse before marriage, the only
thing liable to censure being a too frequent change of lovers.

That the anxious regard for chastity, modesty, decorum, which cannot
be present in the coquetry of these Tongan women, is one of the
essential ingredients of modern coyness has long been felt by the
poets. After Juliet has made her confession of love which Romeo
overhears in the dark, she apologizes to him because she fears that he
might attribute her easy yielding to light love. Lest he think her too
quickly won she "would have frowned and been perverse, and said him
nay." Then she begs him trust she'll "_prove more true_ than those
that have more cunning to be strange." Wither's "That coy one in the
winning, _proves a true one_ being won," expresses the same sentiment.


UTILITY OF COYNESS

Man's esteem for virtues which he does not always practise himself, is
thus responsible, in part at least, for the existence of modern
coyness. Other factors, however, aided its growth, among them man's
fickleness. If a girl did not say nay (when she would rather say yes),
and hold back, hesitate, and delay, the suitor would in many cases
suck the honey from her lips and flit away to another flower.
Cumulative experience of man's sensual selfishness has taught her to
be slow in yielding to his advances. Experience has also taught women
that men are apt to value favors in proportion to the difficulty of
winning them, and the wisest of them have profited by the lesson.
Callimachus wrote, two hundred and fifty years before Christ, that his
love was "versed in pursuing what flies (from it), but flits past what
lies in its mid path"--a conceit which the poets have since echoed a
thousand times. Another very important thing that experience taught
women was that by deferring or withholding their caresses and smiles
they could make the tyrant man humble, generous, and gallant. Girls
who do not throw themselves away on the first man who happens along,
also have an advantage over others who are less fastidious and coy,
and by transmitting their disposition to their daughters they give it
greater vogue. Female coyness prevents too hasty marriages, and the
girls who lack it often live to repent their shortcomings at leisure.
Coyness prolongs the period of courtship and, by keeping the suitor in
suspense and doubt, it develops the imaginative, sentimental side of
love.


HOW WOMEN PROPOSE

Sufficient reasons, these, why coyness should have gradually become a
general attribute of femininity. Nevertheless, it is an artificial
product of imperfect social conditions, and in an ideal world women
would not be called upon to romance about their feelings. As a mark of
modesty, coyness will always have a charm for men, and a woman devoid
of it will never inspire genuine love. But what I have elsewhere
called "spring-chicken coyness"--the disposition of European girls to
hide shyly behind their mammas--as chickens do under a hen at the
sight of a hawk--is losing its charm in face of the frank
confidingness of American girls in the presence of gentlemen; and as
for that phase of coyness which consists in concealing affection for a
man, girls usually manage to circumvent it in a more or less refined
manner. Some girls who are coarse, or have little control of their
feelings, propose bluntly to the men they want. I myself have known
several such cases, but the man always refused. Others have a thousand
subtle ways of betraying themselves without actually "giving
themselves away." A very amusing story of how an ingenious maiden
tries to bring a young man to bay has been told by Anthony Hope.
Dowden calls attention to the fact that it is Juliet "who proposes and
urges on the sudden marriage." Romeo has only spoken of love; it is
she who asks him, if his purpose be marriage, to send her word next
day. In _Troilus and Cressida_ (III., 2), the heroine exclaims:

But, though I loved you well, I woo'd you not;
And yet, good faith, I wished myself a man,
Or that we women had men's privilege
Of speaking first.

In his _Old Virginia_ (II., 127) John Fiske tells a funny story of how
Parson Camm was wooed. A young friend of his, who had been courting
Miss Betsy Hansford of his parish, asked him to assist him with his
eloquence. The parson did so by citing to the girl texts from the
Bible enjoining matrimony as a duty. But she beat him at his own game,
telling him to take his Bible when he got home and look at 2 Sam. xii.
7, which would explain her obduracy. He did so, and found this: "And
Nathan said to David, _thou art the man._" The parson took the
hint--and the girl.


V. HOPE AND DESPAIR--MIXED MOODS

_She never told her love_;
But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,
Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought;
And, with a green and yellow melancholy,
She sat, like Patience on a monument,
_Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed_?

asks Viola in _As You Like It_. It _was_ love indeed; but only two
phases of it are indicated in the lines quoted--coyness ("She never
told her love") and the mixture of emotions ("smiling at grief"),
which is another characteristic of love. Romantic love is a pendulum
swinging perpetually between hope and despair. A single unkind word or
sign of indifference may make a lover feel the agony of death, while a
smile may raise him from the abyss of despair to heavenly heights of
bliss. As Goethe puts it:

Himmelhoch jauchzend
Zum Tode betrübt,
Glücklich allein
Ist die Seele die liebt.


AMOROUS ANTITHESES

When a Marguerite plucks the petals of a marguerite, muttering "he
loves me--he loves me not," her heart flutters in momentary anguish
with every "not," till the next petal soothes it again.

I cannot bound a pitch above dull woe;
Under love's heavy burden do I sink,

wails Romeo; and again:

Why then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
O anything, of nothing first create!
O heavy lightness! serious vanity!
Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!

*       *       *       *       *

Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs;
Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes;
Being vex'd, a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears;
What is it else? a madness most discreet,
A choking gall and a preserving sweet.

In commenting on Romeo, who in his love for Rosaline indulges in
emotion for emotion's sake, and "stimulates his fancy with the
sought-out phrases, the curious antitheses of the amorous dialect of
the period," Dowden writes:

"Mrs. Jameson has noticed that in _All's Well that Ends
Well_ (I., 180-89), Helena mockingly reproduces this style
of amorous antithesis. Helena, who lives so effectively in
the world of fact, is contemptuous toward all unreality and
affectation."

Now, it is quite true that expressions like "cold fire" and "sick
health" sound unreal and affected to sober minds, and it is also true
that many poets have exercised their emulous ingenuity in inventing
such antitheses just for the fun of the thing and because it has been
the fashion to do so. Nevertheless, with all their artificiality, they
were hinting at an emotional phenomenon which actually exists.
Romantic love is in reality a state of mind in which cold and heat may
and do alternate so rapidly that "cold fire" seems the only proper
expression to apply to such a mixed feeling. It is literally true
that, as Bailey sang, "the sweetest joy, the wildest woe is love;"
literally true that "the sweets of love are washed with tears," as
Carew wrote, or, as H.K. White expressed it, "'Tis painful, though
'tis sweet to love." A man who has actually experienced the feeling of
uncertain love sees nothing unreal or affected in Tennyson's

The cruel madness of love
The honey of poisoned flowers,

or in Drayton's

'Tis nothing to be plagued in hell
But thus in heaven tormented,

or in Dryden's

I feed a flame within, which so torments me
That it both pains my heart, and yet enchants me:
'Tis such a pleasing smart, and I so love it,
That I had rather die than once remove it,

or in Juliet's

Good-night! good-night! parting is such sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good-night till it be morrow.

This mysterious mixture of moods, constantly maintained through the
alternations of hope and doubt, elation and despair,

And hopes, and fears that kindle hope,
An undistinguishable throng

as Coleridge puts it; or

Where hot and cold, where sharp and sweet,
In all their equipages meet;
Where pleasures mixed with pains appear,
Sorrow with joy, and hope with fear

as Swift rhymes it, is thus seen to be one of the essential and most
characteristic ingredients of modern romantic love.


COURTSHIP AND IMAGINATION

Here, again, the question confronts us, How far down among the strata
of human life can we find traces of this ingredient of love? Do we
find it among the Eskimos, for instance? Nansen relates (II., 317),
that

"In the old Greenland days marriage was a simple and
speedy affair. If a man took a fancy to a girl, he
merely went to her home or tent, caught her by the hair
or anything else which offered a hold, and dragged her
off to his dwelling without further ado."

Nay, in some cases, even this unceremonious "courtship" was
perpetrated by proxy! The details regarding the marriage customs of
lower races already cited in this volume, with the hundreds more to be
given in the following pages, cannot fail to convince the reader that
primitive courtship--where there is any at all--is habitually a
"simple and speedy affair"--not always as simple and speedy as with
Nansen's Greenlanders, but too much so to allow of the growth and play
of those mixed emotions which agitate modern swains. Fancy the
difference between the African of Yariba who, as Lander tells us (I.,
161), "thinks as little of taking a wife as of cutting an ear of
corn," and the modern lover who suffers the tortures of the inferno
because a certain girl frowns on him, while her smiles may make him so
happy that he would not change places with a king, unless his beloved
were to be queen. Savages cannot experience such extremes of anguish
and rapture, because they have no imagination. It is only when the
imagination comes into play that we can look for the joys and sorrows,
the hopes and fears, that help to make up the sum and substance of
romantic love.


EFFECTS OF SENSUAL LOVE

At the same time it would be a great mistake to assume that the
manifestation of mixed moods proves the presence of romantic love.
After all, the alternation of hope and despair which produces those
bitter-sweet paradoxes of the varying and mixed emotions, is one of
the _selfish_ aspects of passion: the lover fears or hopes for
_himself_, not for the other. There is, therefore, no reason why we
should not read of troubled or ecstatic lovers in the poems of the
ancient writers, who, while knowing love only as selfish lust,
nevertheless had sufficient imagination to suffer the agonies of
thwarted purpose and the delights of realized hopes. As a boat-load of
shipwrecked sailors, hungry and thirsty, may be switched from deadly
despair to frantic joy by the approach of a rescuing vessel, so may a
man change his moods who is swayed by what is, next to hunger and
thirst, the most powerful and imperious of all appetites. We must not,
therefore, make the reckless assumption that the Greek and Sanscrit
writers must have known romantic love, because they describe men and
women as being prostrated or elated by strong passion. When Euripides
speaks of love as being both delectable and painful; when Sappho and
Theocritus note the pallor, the loss of sleep, the fears and tears of
lovers; when Achilles Tatius makes his lover exclaim, at sight of
Leucippe: "I was overwhelmed by conflicting feelings: admiration,
astonishment, agitation, shame, assurance;" when King Pururavas, in
the Hindoo drama, _Urvasi_ is tormented by doubts as to whether his
love is reciprocated by the celestial Bayadère (apsara); when, in
_Malati_, a love-glance is said to be "anointed with nectar and
poison;" when the arrows of the Hindoo gods of love are called hard,
though made of flowers; burning, though not in contact with the skin;
voluptuous, though piercing--when we come across such symptoms and
fancies we have no right as yet to infer the existence of romantic
love; for all these things also characterize sensual passion, which is
love only in the sense of _self_-love, whereas, romantic love is
affection for _another_--a distinction which will be made more and
more manifest as we proceed in our discussion of the ingredients of
love, especially the last seven, which are altruistic. It is only when
we find these altruistic ingredients associated with the hopes and
fears and mixed moods that we can speak of romantic love. The symptoms
referred to in this paragraph tell us about selfish longings, selfish
pleasures and selfish pains, but nothing whatever about affection for
the person who is so eagerly coveted.


VI. HYPERBOLE

As long as love was supposed to be an uncompounded emotion and no
distinction was made between appetite and sentiment--that is between
the selfish desire of eroticism and the self-sacrificing ardor of
altruistic affection--it was natural enough that the opinion should
have prevailed that love has been always and everywhere the same,
inasmuch as several of the traits which characterize the modern
passion--stubborn preference for an individual, a desire for exclusive
possession, jealousy toward rivals, coy resistance and the resulting
mixed moods of doubt and hope--were apparently in existence in earlier
and lower stages of human development. We have now seen, however, that
these indications are deceptive, for the reason that lust as well as
love can be fastidious in choice, insistent on a monopoly, and jealous
of rivals; that coyness may spring from purely mercenary motives, and
that the mixed moods of hope and despair may disquiet or delight men
and women who know love only as a carnal appetite. We now take up our
sixth ingredient--Hyperbole--which has done more than any other to
confuse the minds of scholars as regards the antiquity of romantic
love, for the reason that it presents the passion of the ancients in
its most poetic and romantic aspects.


GIRLS AND FLOWERS

Amorous hyperbole may be defined as obvious exaggeration in praising
the charms of a beloved girl or youth; Shakspere speaks of
"exclamations hyperbolical ... praises sauced with lies." Such
"praises sauced with lies" abound in the verse and prose of Greek and
Roman as well as Sanscrit and other Oriental writers, and they assume
as diverse forms as in modern erotic literature. The commonest is that
in which a girl's complexion is compared to lilies and roses. The
Cyclops in Theocritus tells Galatea she is "whiter than milk ...
brighter than a bunch of hard grapes." The mistress of Propertius has
a complexion white as lilies; her cheeks remind him of "rose leaves
swimming on milk."

Lilia non domina sunt magis alba mea;
Ut Moeotica nix minio si certet Eboro,
Utque rosae puro lacte natant folia.
(II., 2.)

Achilles Tatius wrote that the beauty of Leucippe's countenance

"might vie with the flowers of the meadow; the narcissus was
resplendent in her general complexion, the rose blushed upon
her cheek, the dark hue of the violet sparkled in her eyes,
her ringlets curled more closely than do the clusters of the
ivy--her face, therefore, was a reflex of the meadows."

The Persian Hafiz declares that "the rose lost its color at sight of
her cheeks and the jasmines silver bud turned pale." A beauty in the
_Arabian Nights_, however, turns the tables on the flowers. "Who dares
to liken me to a rose?" she exclaims.

"Who is not ashamed to declare that my bosom is as lovely as
the fruit of the pomegranate-tree? By my beauty and grace!
by my eyes and black hair, I swear that any man who repeats
such comparison shall be banished from my presence and
killed by the separation; for if he finds my figure in the
ban-tree and my cheeks in the rose, what then does he seek
in me?"

This girl spoke more profoundly than she knew. Flowers are beautiful
things, but a spot red as a rose on a cheek would suggest the hectic
flush of fever, and if a girl's complexion were as white as a lily she
would be shunned as a leper. In hyperbole the step between the sublime
and the ridiculous is often a very short one; yet the rose and lily
simile is perpetrated by erotic poets to this day.


EYES AND STARS

The eyes are subjected to similar treatment, as in Lodge's lines

Her eyes are sapphires set in snow
Resembling heaven by every wink.

Thomas Hood's Ruth had eyes whose "long lashes veiled a light that had
else been all too bright." Heine saw in the blue eyes of his beloved
the gates of heaven. Shakspere and Fletcher have:

And those eyes, the break of day,
Lights that do mislead the morn!

When Romeo exclaims:

Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
Having some business, do entreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they return.
... her eyes in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright
That birds would sing and think it were not night,

he excels, both in fancy and in exaggeration, all the ancient poets;
but it was they who began the practice of likening eyes to bright
lights. Ovid declares (_Met._, I., 499) that Daphne's eyes shone with
a fire like that of the stars, and this has been a favorite comparison
at all times. Tibullus assures us (IV., 2) that "when Cupid wishes to
inflame the gods, he lights his torches at Sulpicia's eyes." In the
Hindoo drama _Malati and Madhava_, the writer commits the extravagance
of making Madhava declare that the white of his mistresses eyes
suffuses him as with a bath of milk!

Theocritus, Tibullus ("candor erat, qualem praefert Latonia Luna"),
Hafiz, and other Greek, Roman, and Oriental poets are fond of
comparing a girl's face or skin to the splendors of the moon, and even
the sun is none too bright to suggest her complexion. In the _Arabian
Nights_ we read: "If I look upon the heaven methinks I see the sun
fallen down to shine below, and thee whom I desire to shine in his
place." A girl may, indeed, be superior to sun and moon, as we see in
the same book: "The moon has only a few of her charms; the sun tried
to vie with her but failed. Where has the sun hips like those of the
queen of my heart?" An unanswerable argument, surely!


LOCKS AND FRAGRANCE

When William Allingham wrote: "Her hair's the brag of Ireland, so
weighty and so fine," he followed in the wake of a hundred poets, who
had made a girl's tresses the object of amorous hyperbole. Dianeme's
"rich hair which wantons with the love-sick air" is a pretty conceit.
The fanciful notion that a beautiful woman imparts her sweetness to
the air, especially with the fragrance of her hair, occurs frequently
in the poems of Hafiz and other Orientals. In one of these the poet
chides the zephyr for having stolen its sweetness while playing with
the beloved's loose tresses. In another, a youth declares that if he
should die and the fragrance of his beloved's locks were wafted over
his grave, it would bring him back to life. Ben Jonson's famous lines
to Celia:

I sent thee late a rosy wreath,
Not so much honoring thee
As giving it a hope that there
It could not withered be;
But thou thereon did'st only breathe
And sent'st it back to me;
Since when it grows, and smells, I swear,
Not of itself but thee!

are a free imitation of passages in the Love Letters (Nos. 30 and 31)
of the Greek Philostratus: "Send me back some of the roses on which
you slept. Their natural fragrance will have been increased by that
which you imparted to them." This is a great improvement on the
Persian poets who go into raptures over the fragrant locks of fair
women, not for their inherent sweetness, however, but for the
artificial perfumes used by them, including the disgusting musk! "Is a
caravan laden with musk returning from Khoten?" sings one of these
bards in describing the approach of his mistress.


POETIC DESIRE FOR CONTACT

Besides such direct comparisons of feminine charms to flowers, to sun
and moon and other beautiful objects of nature, amorous hyperbole has
several other ways of expressing itself. The lover longs to be some
article of dress that he might touch the beloved, or a bird that he
might fly to her, or he fancies that all nature is love-sick in
sympathy with him. Romeo's

See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
O, that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek!

is varied in Heine's poem, where the lover wishes he were a stool for
her feet to rest on, a cushion for her to stick pins in, or a
curl-paper that he might whisper his secrets into her ears; and in
Tennyson's dainty lines:

It is the miller's daughter,
And she is grown so dear, so dear,
That I would be the jewel
That trembles at her ear;
For hid in ringlets day and night
I'd touch her neck so warm and white.

And I would be the girdle
About her dainty, dainty waist,
And her heart would beat against me
In sorrow and in rest;
And I should know if it beat right,
I'd clasp it round so close and tight.

And I would be the necklace,
And all day long to fall and rise
Upon her balmy bosom
With her laughter or her sighs,
And I would be so light, so light,
I scarce should be unclasped at night.

Herein, too, our modern poets were anticipated by the ancients.
Anacreon wishes he were a mirror that he might reflect the image of
his beloved; or the gown she wears every day; or the water that laves
her limbs; or the balm that anoints her body; or the pearl that adorns
her neck; or the cloth that covers her breast; or the shoes that are
trodden by her feet.

The author of an anonymous poem in the Greek _Anthology_ wishes he
were a breath of air that he might be received in the bosom of his
beloved; or a rose to be picked by her hand and fastened on her bosom.
Others wish they were the water in the fountain from which a girl
drinks, or a dolphin to carry her on its back, or the ring she wears.
After the Hindoo Sakuntala has lost her ring in the river the poet
expresses surprise that the ring should have been able to separate
itself from that hand. The Cyclops of Theocritus wishes he had been
born with the gills of a fish so that he might dive into the sea to
visit the nymph Galatea and kiss her hands should her mouth be
refused. One of the goatherds of the same bucolic poet wishes he were
a bee that he might fly to the grotto of Amaryllis. From such fancies
it is but a short step to the "were I a swallow, to her I would fly"
of Heine and other modern poets.


NATURE'S SYMPATHY WITH LOVERS

In the ecstasy of his feeling Rosalind's lover wants to have her name
carved on every tree in the forest; but usually the lover assumes that
all things in the forests, plants or animals, sympathize with him even
without having his beloved's name thrust upon them.

For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And, thou away, the very birds are mute;
Or if they sing, 't is with so dull a cheer,
That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near.

"Why are the roses so pale?" asks Heine.

"Why are the violets so dumb in the green grass? Why does
the lark's song seem so sad, and why have the flowers lost
their fragrance? Why does the sun look down upon the meadows
so cold and morose, and why is the earth so gray and
desolate? Why am I ill and melancholy, and why, my love, did
you leave me?"

In another poem Heine declares:

"If the flowers knew how deeply my heart is wounded,
they would weep with me. If the nightingales knew how
sad I am, they would cheer me with their refreshing
song. If the golden stars knew my grief, they would
come down from their heights to whisper consolation to
me."

This phase of amorous hyperbole also was known to the ancient poets.
Theocritus (VII., 74) relates that Daphnis was bewailed by the oaks
that stood on the banks of the river, and Ovid (151) tells us, in
Sappho's epistle to Phaon, that the leafless branches sighed over her
hopeless love and the birds stopped their sweet song. Musaeus felt
that the waters of the Hellespont were still lamenting the fate which
overtook Leander as he swam toward the tower of Hero.


ROMANTIC BUT NOT LOVING

If a romantic love-poem were necessarily a poem of romantic love, the
specimens of amorous hyperbole cited in the preceding pages would
indicate that the ancients knew love as we know it. In reality,
however, there is not, in all the examples cited, the slightest
evidence of genuine love. A passion which is merely sensual may
inspire a gifted poet to the most extravagantly fanciful expressions
of covetous admiration, and in all the cases cited there is nothing
beyond such sensual admiration. An African Harari compares the girl he
likes to "sweet milk fresh from the cow," and considers that coarse
remark a compliment because he knows love only as an appetite. A gypsy
poet compares the shoulders of his beloved to "wheat bread," and a
Turkish poem eulogizes a girl for being like "bread fried in butter."
(Ploss, L, 85, 89.)

The ancient poets had too much taste to reveal their amorous desires
quite so bluntly as an appetite, yet they, too, never went beyond the
confines of self-indulgence. When Propertius says a girl's cheeks are
like roses floating on milk; when Tibullus declares another girl's
eyes are bright enough to light a torch by; when Achilles Tatius makes
his lover exclaim: "Surely you must carry about a bee on your lips,
they are full of honey, your kisses wound"--what is all this except a
revelation that the poet thinks the girl pretty, that her beauty
_gives him pleasure_, and that he tries to express that pleasure by
comparing her to some other object--sun, moon, honey, flowers--that
pleases his senses? Nowhere is there the slightest indication that he
is eager to _give her pleasure_, much less that he would be willing to
sacrifice his own pleasures for her, as a mother, for instance, would
for a child. His hyperboles, in a word, tell us not of love for
another but of a self-love in which the other figures only as a means
to an end, that end being his own gratification.

When Anacreon wishes he were the gown worn by a girl, or the water
that laves her limbs, or the string of pearls around her neck, he does
not indicate the least desire to make _her_ happy, but an eagerness to
please _himself_ by coming in contact with her. The daintiest poetic
conceit cannot conceal this blunt fact. Even the most fanciful of all
forms of amorous hyperbole--that in which the lover imagines that all
nature smiles or weeps with him--what is it but the most colossal
egotism conceivable?

The amorous hyperbole of the ancients is romantic in the sense of
fanciful, fictitious, extravagant, but not in the sense in which I
oppose romantic love to selfish sensual infatuation. There is no
intimation in it of those things that differentiate love from
lust--the mental and moral charms of the women, or the adoration,
sympathy, and affection, of the men. When one of Goethe's characters
says: "My life began at the moment I fell in love with you;" or when
one of Lessing's characters exclaims: "To live apart from her is
inconceivable to me, would be my death"--we still hear the note of
selfishness, but with harmonic overtones that change its quality, the
result of a change in the way of regarding women. Where women are
looked down on as inferiors, as among the ancients, amorous hyperbole
cannot be sincere; it is either nothing but "spruce affectation" or
else an illustration of the power of sensual love. No ancient author
could have written what Emerson wrote in his essay on Love, of the
visitations of a power which

"made the face of nature radiant with purple light, the
morning and the night varied enchantments; when a
single tone of one voice could make the heart bound,
and the most trivial circumstance associated with one
form is put in the amber of memory; when he became all
eye when one was present, and all memory when one was
gone; when the youth becomes a watcher of windows and
studious of a glove, a veil, a ribbon, or the wheels of
a carriage.... When the head boiled all night on the
pillow with the generous deed it resolved on.... When
all business seemed an impertinence, and all men and
women running to and fro in the streets, mere
pictures."


THE POWER OF LOVE