Primitive Love and Love-Stories
by
Henry Theophilus Finck
Part 18 out of 19
"sentimental" customs was for a captor to make his prisoner, before he
was eaten, cohabit with his (the captor's) sister or daughter, the
offspring of this union being allowed to grow up and then was devoured
too, the first mouthful being given to the mother. (Southey, I., 218.)
I mention this because Dr. Brinton says that the evidence that the
sentiment of love was awake among these tribes "is corroborated by the
incidents we learn of their domestic life."
[246] _U.S. Geogr. and Geol Survey Rocky Mt. Region_, Pt. I., 181-89.
[247] It is of the Modocs of this region that Joaquin Miller wrote
that "Indians have their loves, and as they have but little else,
these fill up most of their lives." The above poems indicate the
quality of this Indian love. In Joaquin Miller's narrative of his
experience with the Modocs, the account of his own marriage is of
special interest. At a Modoc marriage a feast is given by the girl's
father, "to which all are invited, but the bride and bridegroom do not
partake of food. ... Late in the fall, the old chief made the marriage
feast, and at that feast neither I nor his daughter took meat, or any
part." It is a pity that the rest of this writer's story is, by his
own confession, part romance, part reality. A lifelike description of
his Modoc experience would have done more to ensure immortality for
his book than any amount of romancing.
[248] _Journal of Amer. Folklore_, 1888, 220-26.
[249] _Internat. Archiv. fur Ethnogr., Supplement zu Bd._ IX. 1896,
pp. 1-6.
[250] These lines by their fervid eroticism quite suggest the
existence of a masculine Indian Sappho. See the comments on Sappho in
the chapter on Greek love.
[251] Such a procedure does well enough if the object is to amuse idle
readers; and when a writer confesses, as Cornelius Mathews did in the
_Indian Fairy Book_, that he bestowed on the stories "such changes as
similar legends most in vogue in other countries have received to
adapt them to the comprehension and sympathy of general readers," no
harm is done. But for scientific purposes it is necessary to sift down
all alleged Indian stories and poems to the solid bed-rock of facts.
It is significant that in the stories collected by men of science and
recorded literally in anthropological journals all romantic and
sentimental features are conspicuously absent, being often replaced by
the Indian's abounding obscenity. Rand's _Legends of the Micmacs_ and
Grinnell's _Blackfoot Lodge Tales_ are on the whole free from the
errors of Schoolcraft and his followers. It ought to be obvious to
every collector of aboriginal folk-lore that Indian tales, like the
Indians themselves, are infinitely more interesting in war paint and
buffalo robes than in "boiled shirts" and "store-clothes."
[252] _U.S. Geogr. and Geol. Survey of Rocky Mt. Region_, IX., 90.
[253] Related in G. White's _Historical Collection of Georgia_, 571.
[254] See Brinton's _The American Race_, 59-67, for an excellent
summary of our present knowledge of the Eskimos (on the favorable
side).
[255] _Journal Ethnol. Soc_., I., 299.
[256] Cranz, I., 155, 134; Hall, II., 87, I., 187; Hearne, 161.
[257] Hall, _Narrat. of Second Arctic Exp._, 102; Cranz, I, 207-12
(German ed.); Letourneau, _E.d.M._, 72.
[258] Among the Nagas, we read in Dalton (43), "maidens are prized for
their physical strength more than for their beauty and family;" and
the reason is not far to seek. "The women have to work incessantly,
while the men bask in the sun."
[259] Shortt in _Trans. Ethnol. Soc_., _N.S._, VII., 464.
[260] For our purposes it is needless to continue this list; but I may
add that of the very few tribes Westermarck ventured to claim
specifically for his side, three at any rate--the Miris, Todas, and
Kols (Mundas) do not belong there. The state of mind prevalent among
the Miris is indicated by Dalton's observation (33) that "two brothers
will unite and from the proceeds of their joint labor buy a wife
between them." In regard to the Todas, Westermarck apparently forgot
what he himself had written about them on a previous page (53), after
Shortt:
"When a man marries a girl, she becomes the wife of his
brothers as they successively reach manhood, and they
become the husbands of all her sisters, when they are
old enough to marry."
To speak of "liberty of choice" in such cases, or of the marriage
being only "ostensibly" arranged by the parents, is nonsense. As for
the Kols, what Dalton says about the Mundas (194) not only indicates
that parental interference is more than "ostensible," but makes clear
that what these girls enjoy is not free choice but what is
euphemistically called "free love," before marriage:
"Among Mundas having any pretensions to respectability
the young people are not allowed to arrange these
affairs [matrimonial] for themselves. Their parents
settle it all for them, French fashion, and after the
liberty they have enjoyed, and the liaisons they are
sure to have made, this interference on the part of the
old folk must be very aggravating to the young ones."
If the dissolute or imbecile advocates of "free love" had their way,
we should sink to the level of these wild tribes of India; but there
is no danger of our losing again the large "tracts of mind, and
thought, and feeling" we have acquired since our ancestors, who came
from India, were in such a degraded state as these neighbors of
theirs.
[261] Statistics have shown that twenty-eight per cent of the females
were married before their fourth year. The ancient _Sutras_ ordained
the age of six to seven the best for girls to marry, and declared that
a father who waits till his daughter is twelve years old must go to
hell. The evils are aggravated by the fact noted by Dr. Ryder (who
gives many pathetic details) that a Hindoo girl of ten often appears
like an European child of six, owing to the weak physique inherited
from these girl mothers. Yet Mrs. Mansell relates:
"Many pitiable child-wives have said to me, 'Oh, Doctor
mem Sahib, I implore you, do give me medicine that I
may become a mother.' I have looked at their innocent
faces and tender bodies, and asked, 'Why?' The reply
has invariably been, 'My husband will discard me if I
do not bear a child.'"
[262] _Journal of Nat. Indian Assoc._, 1881, 543-49.
[263] The roots of this superstition, which has created such
unspeakable misery in India, go back to the oldest times of which
there are records. The Vedas say, "Endless are the worlds for those
men who have sons; but there is no place for those who have no male
offspring."
[264] Dr. S. Armstrong-Hopkins writes in her recent volume _Within the
Purdah_ (51-52): "A few years ago the English Government passed a law
to the effect that no bride should go to the house of her
mother-in-law before she arrived at the age of twelve years. I am
witness, however, as is every practising physician in India, that this
law is utterly ignored.... Often and often have I treated little women
patients of five, six, seven, eight, nine years, who were at that time
living with their husbands."
[265] If Darwin had dwelt on such facts in his _Descent of Man_, and
contrasted man's vileness with the devotion, sympathy, and
self-sacrifice shown by birds and other animals, he would have aroused
less indignation among his ignorant contemporaries. In these respects
it was the animals who had cause to resent his theory.
[266] Dr. Ryder says in her pathetic book, _Little Wives of India_: "A
man may be a vile and loathsome creature; he may be blind, a lunatic,
an idiot, a leper, or diseased in any form; he may be fifty, sixty, or
seventy years old, and may be married to a child of five or ten, who
positively loathes his presence; but if he claims her she must go.
There is no other form of slavery equal to it on the face of the
earth."
[267] The London _Times_ of November 11, 1889, had the following in
its column about India:
"Two shocking cases of wife killing lately came before
the courts, in both cases the result of child marriage.
In one a child aged ten was strangled by her husband.
In the second case a child of tender years was ripped
open with a wooden peg. Brutal sexual exasperation was
the sole apparent reason in both instances. Compared
with the terrible evils of child marriage, widow
cremation is of infinitely inferior magnitude."
[268] Manu's remark that "where women are honored there the gods are
pleased" is one of those expressions of unconscious humor which
naturally escaped him, but should not have escaped European
sociologists. What he understands by "honoring women" may be gathered
from many maxims in his volume like the following (the references
being to the pages of Burnell and Hopkins's version):
"This is the nature of women, to seduce men here" (40);
"One should not be seated in a secluded place with a
mother, sister, or daughter; the powerful host of the
senses compels even a wise man" (41).
"No act is to be done according to (her) own will by a
young girl, a young woman, or even by an old woman,
though in (their own) houses."
"In her childhood (a girl) should be under the will of
her father; in (her) youth, of (her) husband; her
husband being dead, of her sons; a woman should never
enjoy her own will" (130).
"Though of bad conduct or debauched, or even devoid of
good qualities, a husband must always be worshipped
like a god by a good wife."
"For women there is no separate sacrifice, nor vow, nor
even fast; if a woman obeys her husband, by that she is
exalted in heaven" (131).
"Day and night should women be kept by the male members
of the family in a state of dependence" (245)....
"Women being weak creatures, and having no share in the
_mantras_, are falsehood itself" (247).
Quite in the spirit of these ordinances of the great Manu are the
directions for wives given in the _Padma Purana_, one of the books of
highest authority, whose rules are, as Dubois informs us (316), kept
up in full vigor to this day. A wife, we read therein, must regard her
husband as a god, though he be a very devil. She must laugh if he
laughs, eat after him, abstain from food which _he_ dislikes, burn
herself after his death. If he has another wife she must not
interfere, must always keep her eyes on her master, ready to receive
his commands; she must never be gloomy or discontented in his
presence; and though he abuse or even beat her she must return only
meek and soothing words.
[269] In Calcutta nearly one-half the females--42,824 out of
98,627--were widows. In India in general one-fifth of the women (or,
excluding the Mohammedans, one-third) are widows.
[270] _Journal of the National Indian Assoc._, 1881, 624-30.
[271] Ploss-Bartels, I., 385-87; Lamairesse, 18, 95, XX., etc.
[272] Here again we must guard against the naive error of benevolent
observers of confounding chastity with an assumption of modest
behavior. In describing the streets of Delhi Ida Pfeiffer says
(_L.V.R.W._, 148):
"The prettiest girlish faces peep modestly out of these
curtained bailis, and did one not know that in India an
unveiled face is never an innocent one, the fact
certainly could not be divined from their looks or
behavior." It happens to be the fashion even for
bayaderes to preserve an appearance of great propriety
in public.
[273] Pp. 143 and 160 of Kellner's edition of this drama (Reclam). The
extent to which indifference to chastity is sometimes carried in India
may be inferred from the facts that in the famous city of Vasali
"marriage was forbidden, and high rank attached to the lady who held
office as the chief of courtesans;" and that the same condition
prevails in British India to this day in a town in North Canara
(Balfour, _Cyclop. of India_, II., 873).
[274] Hala's date is somewhat uncertain, but he flourished between the
third and fourth centuries A.D. Professor Weber's translation of his
seven hundred poems, with the professor's comments, takes up no fewer
than 1,023 pages of the _Abhandlungen fuer die Kunde des Morgenlandes_,
Vols. V. and VII. I have selected all those which throw light on the
Hindoo conception of love, and translated them carefully from Weber's
version. Hala's anthology served as prototype, about the twelfth
century, to a similar collection of arya verses, the erotic Saptacati
of Govardhana, also seven hundred in number, but written in Sanskrit.
Of these I have not been able to find a version in a language that I
can read, but the other collection is copious and varied enough to
cover all the phases of Hindoo love. The verses were intended, as
already indicated, to be sung, for the Hindoos, too, knew the power of
music as a pastime and a feeder of the emotions. "If music be the food
of love, play on," says the English Shakespere, and the "Hindoo
Shakespere" wrote more than a thousand years before him:
"Oh, how beautifully our master Rebhila has sung! Yes,
indeed, the zither is a pearl, only it does not come
from the depths of the sea. How its tones accord with
the heart that longs for love, how it helps to while
away time at a rendezvous, how it assuages the grief of
separation, and augments the delights of the lovers!"
(_Vasantasena_, Act III., 2.)
[275] The disadvantage of arguing against the believers in primitive,
Oriental, and ancient amorous sentiment is that some of the strongest
evidence against them cannot be cited in a book intended for general
reading. Professor Weber declares in his introduction to Hala's
anthology that these poems take us through all phases of sentimental
love (_innigen Liebeslebens_) to the most licentious situations. He is
mistaken, as I have shown, in regard to the sentiment, but there can
be no doubt about the licentiousness. Numbers 5, 23, 62, 63, 65, 71,
72, 107, 115, 139, 161, 200, 223, 237, 241, 242, 300, 305, 336, 338,
356, 364, 369, 455, 483, 491, 628, 637, depict or suggest improper
scenes, while 61, 213, 215, 242, 278, 327, 476, 690 are frankly
obscene. Lower and higher things are mixed in these poems with a
naivete that shows the absence of any idea of refinement.
[276] I have here followed Kellner, though Boehtlingk's version is
more literal and Oriental: "Mir aber brennt Liebe, O Grausamer, Tag
und Nacht gewaltig die Glieder, deren Wuensche auf dich gerichtet
sind."
[277] _Anas Casarea_, a species of duck which, in Hindoo poetry, is
allowed to be with his mate only in the daytime and must leave her at
night, in consequence of a curse; thereupon begin mutual lamentations.
[278] For a Hindoo, unless he has a son to make offerings after his
death, is doomed to live over again his earthly life with all its
sorrows. A daughter will do, provided she has a son to attend to the
rites.
[279] The sequel of the story, relating to the misfortunes of Nala and
Damayanti after marriage, will be referred to presently. The famous
tale herewith briefly summarized occurs in the _Mahabharata_, the
great epic or mythological cyclopaedia of India, which embraces
220,000 metric lines, and antedates in the main the Christian era. The
story of Savitri also occurs in the _Mahabharata_; and these two
episodes have been pronounced by specialists the gems not only of that
great epic, but of all Hindoo literature. I have translated from the
edition of H.C. Kellner, which is based on the latest and most careful
revisions of the Sanscrit text. I have also followed Kellner's edition
of Kalidasa's _Sakuntala_ and Otto Fritze's equally critical versions
of the same poet's _Urvasi_ and _Malavika and Agnimitra_. Some of the
earlier translators, notably Rueckert, permitted themselves unwarranted
poetic licenses, modernizing and sentimentalizing the text, somewhat
as Professor Ebers did the thoughts and feelings of the ancient
Egyptians. I will add that while I have been obliged to greatly
condense the stories of the above dramas, I have taken great care to
retain all the speeches and details that throw light on the Hindoo
conception of love, reserving a few, however, for comment in the
following paragraphs.
[280] Our poets speak of fright making the hair stand on end--but only
on the head. Can the alleged Hindoo phenomenon be identical with what
we call goose flesh--French frisson? That would make it none the less
artificial as a symptom of love. Hertel says, in his edition of the
_Hitopadesa_ (26):
"With the Hindoos it is a consequence of great
excitement, joy as well as fear, that the little hairs
on the body stand erect. The expression has become
conventional."
[281] _Hitopadesa_ (25). This gratification the Hindoos regard as one
of the four great objects of life, the other three being liberty
(emancipation of the soul), wealth, and the performance of religious
duties.
[282] Robert Brown has remarked that "moral and intellectual qualities
seem to be entirely omitted from the seven points which, according to
Manu, make a good wife." And Ward says (10) that no attention is paid
to a bride's mind or temper, the only points being the bride's person,
her family, and the prospect of male offspring.
[283] This is the list, as given by the eminent Sanscrit scholar,
Professor Albrecht Weber in the _Abhandlungen fuer die Kunde des
Abendlandes_, Vol. V., 135. Burton, in his original edition of the
_Arabian Nights_ (III., 36), gives the stages thus: love of the eyes;
attraction of the manos or mind; birth of desire; loss of sleep; loss
of flesh; indifference to objects of sense; loss of shame; distraction
of thought; loss of consciousness; death. _Cf_. Lamairesse, p. 179.
[284] Preferably in Boehtlingk's literal version, which I have
followed whenever Kellner idealizes. In this case Kellner speaks of
covering "den Umfang des Bruestepaars," while Boethlingk has "das
starke Bruestepaar," which especially arouse the king's "love."
[285] It would hardly be surprising if Kalidasa had had some
conception of true love sentiment, for not only did he possess a
delicate poetic fancy, but he lived at a time when tidings of the
chivalrous treatment and adoration of women might have come to him
from Arabia or from Europe. The tradition that he flourished as early
as the first century of our era was demolished by Professor Weber
(_Ind. Lit. Ges._, 217). Professor Max Mueller (91) found no reason to
place him earlier than our sixth century; and more recent evidence
indicates that he lived as late as the eleventh. Yet he had no
conception of supersensual love; marriage was to him, as to all
Hindoos, a union of bodies, not of souls. He had not learned from the
Arabs (like the Persian poet Saadi, of the thirteenth century, whom I
referred to on p. 199) that the only test of true love is
self-sacrifice. It is true that Bhavabhuti, the Hindoo poet, who is
believed to have lived at the end of our seventh century, makes one of
the lovers in _Malati and Madhava_ slay a tiger and save his beloved's
life; but that is also a case of self-defence. The other lover--the
"hero" of the drama--faints when he sees his friend in danger!
Generally speaking, there is a peculiar effeminacy, a lack of true
manliness, about Hindoo lovers They are always moping, whining,
fainting; the kings--the typical lovers--habitually neglect the
affairs of state to lead a life of voluptuous indulgence. Hindoo
sculpture emphasizes the same trait: "Even in the conception of male
figures," says Luebke (109), "there is a touch of this womanly
softness;" there is "a lack of an energetic life, of a firm contexture
of bone and muscle." It is not of such enervated stuff that true
lovers are made.
[286] An explanation of this discrepancy may be found in A.K. Fiske's
suggestion (191) that there is a double source for this story. The
reader will please bear in mind that all my quotations are from the
revised version of the Bible. I do not believe in retaining inaccurate
translations simply because they were made long ago.
[287] McClintock and Strong's _Encyclop. of Biblical Literature_ says:
"It must be borne in mind that Jacob himself had now reached the
mature age of seventy-seven years, as appears from a comparison of
Joseph's age... with Jacob's." That Rachel was not much over fifteen
may be assumed because among Oriental nomadic races shepherd girls are
very seldom unmarried after that age, or even an earlier age, for
obvious reasons.
[288] Gen. 19: 1-9; 19: 30-38; 34: 1-31; 38: 8-25; 39: 6-20; Judges
19: 22-30; II. Sam. 3: 6-9; 11: 2-27; 13: 1-22; 16: 22; etc.
[289] For whom the Hebrew poet has a special word _(dodi)_ different
from that used when Solomon is referred to.
[290] See Renan, Preface, p. iv. It is of all Biblical books, the one
"pour lequel les scribes qui ont decide du sort des ecrits hebreux ont
le plus elargi leurs regles d'admission."
[291] McClintock and Strong.
[292] In the seventh chapter there are lines where, as Renan points
out (50), the speaker, in describing the girl, "vante ses charmes les
plus intimes," and where the translator was "oblige a des
attenuations."
[293] Renan says justly that it is the most obscure of all Hebrew
poems. According to the old Hebrew exegesis, every passage in the
Bible has seventy different meanings, all of them equally true; but of
this Song a great many more than seventy interpretations have been
given: the titles of treatises on the Canticles fill four columns of
fine print in McClintock and Strong's Cyclopaedia. Griffis declares
that it is, "probably, the most perfect poem in any language," but in
my opinion it is far inferior to other books in the Bible. The
adjective perfect is not applicable to a poem so obscure that more
than half its meaning has to be read between the lines, while its
plan, if plan it has, is so mixed up and hindmost foremost that I
sometimes feel tempted to accept the view of Herder and others that
the _Song of Songs_ is not one drama, but a collection of unconnected
poems.
[294] Mr. Griffis' lucid, ingenious, and admirably written monograph
entitled, _The Lily among Thorns_, is unfortunately marred in many
parts by the author's attitude, which is not that of a critic or a
judge, but of a lawyer who has a case to prove, that black and gray
are really snow white. His sense of humor ought to have prevented him
from picturing an Eastern shepherd complimenting a girl of his class
on her "instinctive refinement". He carries this idealizing process so
far that he arbitrarily divides the line "I am black but comely,"
attributing the first three words to the Shulamite, the other two to a
chorus of her rivals in Solomon's harem! The latter supposition is
inconceivable; and why should not the Shulamite call herself comely? I
once looked admiringly at a Gypsy girl in Spain, who promptly opened
her lips, and said, with an arch smile, "soy muy bonita"--"I am very
pretty!"--which seemed the natural, naive attitude of an Oriental
girl. To argue away such a trifling spot on maiden modesty as the
Shulamite's calling herself comely, while seeing no breach of delicacy
in her inviting her lover to come into the garden and eat his precious
fruits, though admitting (214) that "the maiden yields thus her heart
and her all to her lover," is surely straining at a gnat and
swallowing a camel.
[295] Which, however, evidently was not saying much, as he immediately
added that he was ready to give her up provided they gave him another
girl, lest he be the only one of the Greeks without a "prize of
honor." Strong individual preference, as we shall see also in the case
of Achilles, was not a trait of "heroic" Greek love.
[296] I have already commented (115) on Nausicaea's lack of feminine
delicacy and coyness; yet Gladstone says (132) "it may almost be
questioned whether anywhere in literature there is to be found a
conception of the maiden so perfect as Nausicaea in grace, tenderness,
and delicacy"!
[297] How Gladstone reconciled his conscience with these lines when he
wrote (112) that "on one important and characteristic subject, the
exposure of the person to view, the men of that time had a peculiar
and fastidious delicacy," I cannot conceive.
[298] It will always remain one of the strangest riddles of the
nineteenth century why the statesman who so often expressed his
righteous indignation over the "Bulgarian atrocities" of his time
should not only have pardoned, but with insidious and glaring
sophistry apologized for the similar atrocities of the heroes whom
Homer fancies he is complimenting when he calls them professional
"spoilers of towns." I wish every reader of this volume who has any
doubts regarding the correctness of my views would first read
Gladstone's shorter work on Homer (a charmingly written book, with all
its faults), and then the epics themselves, which are now accessible
to all in the admirable prose versions of the _Iliad_ by Andrew Lang,
Walter Leaf and Ernest Myers, and of the _Odyssey_ by Professor George
H. Palmer of Harvard--versions which are far more poetic than any
translations in verse ever made and which make of these epics two of
the most entertaining novels ever written. It is from these versions
that I have cited, except in a few cases where I preferred a more
literal rendering of certain words.
[299] In all the extracts here made I follow the close literal prose
version made by H.T. Wharton, in his admirable book on Sappho, by far
the best in the English language.
[300] P.B. Jevons refers to some of these as "mephitic exhalations
from the bogs of perverted imaginings!" Welcker's defence of Sappho is
a masterpiece of naivete written in ignorance of mental pathology.
[301] The most elaborate discussion of this subject is to be found in
Moll's _Untersuchungen_, 314-440, where also copious bibliographic
references are given. The most striking impression left by the reading
of this book is that the differentiation of the sexes is by no means
as complete yet as it ought to be. All the more need is there of
romantic love, whose function it is to assist and accelerate this
differentiation.
[302] As long ago as 1836-38 a Swiss author, Heinrich Hoessli, wrote a
remarkable book with the title _The Unreliability of External Signs as
Indications of Sex in Body and Mind_. I may add here that if it were
known how many of the "shrieking sisterhood" who are clamoring for
masculine "rights" for women, are among the unfortunates who were born
with male brains in female bodies, the movement would collapse as if
struck by a ton of dynamite. These amazons often wonder why the great
mass of women are so hard to stir up in this matter. The reason is
that the great mass of women--heaven be thanked!--have feminine minds
as well as feminine bodies.
[303] Probably no passage in any drama has ever been more widely
discussed than the nine lines I have just summarized. As long ago as
the sixteenth century the astronomer Petrus Codicillus pronounced them
spurious. Goethe once remarked to Eckermann; (III., March 28, 1827)
that he considered them a blemish in the tragedy and would give a good
deal if some philologist would prove that Sophocles had not written
them. A number of eminent philologists--Jacob, Lehrs, Hauck, Dindorf,
Wecklein, Jebb, Christ, and others--have actually bracketed them as
not genuine; but if they are interpolations, they must have been added
within a century after the play was written, for Aristotle refers to
them (_Rhet. III_., 16,9) in these words: "And should any circumstance
be incredible, you must subjoin the reason; as Sophocles does. He
furnishes an example in the _Antigone_, that she mourned more for her
brother than for a husband and children; for these, if lost, might
again be hers.
"'But father now and mother both being lost,
A brother's name can ne'er be hailed again.'"
It is noticeable that Aristotle should pronounce Antigone's preference
strange or incredible from a Greek point of view; that point of view
being, as we have seen, that a woman's first duties are toward her
husband, for whom she should ever sacrifice herself. It has been
plausibly suggested that Sophocles borrowed the idea of those nine
lines from his friend Herodotus, who (III., 118) relates the story of
Darius permitting the wife of Intophernes to save one of her relatives
from death and who chooses her brother, for reasons like those
advanced by Antigone. It has been shown (_Zeitschrift f. d.
Oesterreich Gymn_., 1898; see also _Frankfurter Zeitung_, July 22, 24,
27, 1899; _Hermes_, XXVIII.) that this idea occurs in old tales and
poems of India, Persia, China, as well as among the Slavs,
Scandinavians, etc. If Sophocles did introduce this notion into his
tragedy (and there is no reason for doubting it except the unwarranted
assumption that he was too great a genius to make such a blunder), he
did it in a bungling way, for inasmuch as Antigone's brother is dead
she cannot benefit her family by favoring him at the expense of her
betrothed; and moreover, her act of sacrificing herself in order to
secure the rest of a dear one's soul--which alone might have partly
excused her heartless and unromantic ignoring and desertion of her
lover--is bereft of all its nobility by her equally heartless
declaration that she would not have thus given her life for a husband
or a child. These Greek poets knew so little of true femininity that
they could not draw a female character without spoiling it.
[304] The unduly extolled [Greek: Epos] chorus in the _Antigone_
expresses nothing more than the universal power of love in the Greek
conception of the term.
[305] In Mueller's book on the Doric race we read (310) that the love
of the Corinthian Philolaus and Diocles "lasted until death," and even
their graves were turned toward one another, in token of their
affection. Lovers in Athens carved the beloved's names on walls, and
innumerable poems were addressed by the leading bards to their
favorites.
[306] Compare Ramdohr, III., 191 and 124.
[307] I have before me a dictonary which defines Platonic love as it
is now universally, and incorrectly, understood, as "a pure spiritual
affection subsisting between the sexes, unmixed with carnal desires, a
species of love for which Plato was a warm advocate." In reality
Platonic (i.e. Socratic) love has nothing whatever to do with women,
but is a fantastic and probably hypocritical idealization of a species
of infatuation which in our day is treated neither in poems nor in
dialogues, nor discussed in text-books of psychology or physiology,
but relegated to treatises on mental diseases and abnormalities. In
fact, the whole philosophy of Greek love may be summed up in the
assertion that "Platonic love," as understood by us, was by Plato and
the Greeks in general considered an impossibility.
[308] In the _Deipnosophists_ of Athenaeus (III., Bk. XII.) we find
some other information of anthropological significance: "Hermippus
stated in his book about lawgivers that at Lacedaemon all the damsels
used to be shut up in a dark room, while a number of unmarried young
men were shut up with them; and whichever girl each of the young men
caught hold of he led away as his wife, without a dowry." "But
Clearches the Solensian, in his treatise on Proverbs, says: 'In
Lacedaemon the women, on a certain festival, drag the unmarried men to
an altar and then buffet them; in order that, for the purpose of
avoiding the insults of such treatment, they may become more
affectionate and in due season may turn their thoughts to marriage.
But at Athens Cecrops was the first person who married a man to one
woman only, when before his time connections had taken place at random
and men had their wives in common.'"
[309] My critics might have convicted me of a genuine blunder inasmuch
as in my first book (78) I assumed that Plato "foresaw the importance
of pre-matrimonial acquaintance as the basis of a rational and happy
marriage choice." This was an unwarranted concession, because all that
Plato recommended was that "the youths and maidens shall dance
together, seeing and being seen naked," after the Spartan manner. This
might lead to a rational choice of sound bodies, but romantic love
implies an acquaintance of minds, and is altogether a more complicated
process than the dog and cattle breeder's procedure commended by Plato
and Lycurgus. I may add that in view of Lycurgus's systematic
encouragement of promiscuity, the boast of the Spartan Geradas
(recorded by Plutarch) that there were no cases of adultery in Sparta,
must be accepted either as broad sarcasm, or in the manner of
Limburg-Brouwer, who declares (IV., 165) that the boast is "like
saying that in a band of brigands there is not a single thief." Even
from the cattle-breeding point of view Lycurgus proved a failure, for
according to Aristotle (_Pol._ II., 9) the Spartans grew too lazy to
bring up children, and rewards had to be offered for large families.
[310] See the evidence cited in Becker (III., 315) regarding
Aristotle's views as to the inferiority of women. After comparing it
with the remarks of other writers Becker sums up the matter by saying
that "the virtue of which a woman was in those days considered capable
did not differ very much from that of a faithful slave."
[311] In the _Odyssey_ (XV., 418) Homer speaks of "a Phoenician woman,
handsome and tall." He makes Odysseus compare Nausicaea to Diana "in
beauty, height, and bearing," and in another place he declares that,
like Diana among her nymphs, she o'ertops her companions by head and
brow (VI., 152, 102). However, this manner of measuring beauty with a
yard-stick; indicates _some_ progress over the savage and Oriental
custom of making rotundity the criterion of beauty.
[312] Compare Menander, _Frag. Incert._, 154: [Greek: gunaich ho
didaskon gpammat ou kalos poiei].
[313] A homely but striking illustration may here be added. In Africa
the negroes are proud of their complexion and look with aversion on a
white skin. In the United States, knowing that a black skin is looked
down on as a symbol of slavery or inferiority, they are ashamed of it.
The wife of an eminent Southern judge informed me that Georgia negroes
believe that in heaven they will be white; and I have heard of one
negro woman who declared that if she could become white by being
flayed she would gladly submit to the torture. Thus have _ideas_
regarding the complexion changed the _emotion_ of pride to the emotion
of shame.
[314] Professor Rohde appears to follow the old metaphysical maxim "If
facts do not agree with my theory, so much the worse for the facts."
He piles up pages of evidence which show conclusively that these
Greeks knew nothing of the higher traits and symptoms of love, and
then he adds: "but they _must_ have known them all the same." To give
one instance of his contradictory procedure. On page 70 he admits
that, as women were situated, the tender and passionate courtship of
the youths as described in poems and romances of the period "could
hardly have been copied from life," because the Greek custom of
allowing the fathers to dispose of their daughters without consulting
their wishes was incompatible with the poetry of such courting. "It is
very significant," he adds, "that among the numerous references to the
ways of obtaining brides made by poets and moral philosophers,
including those of the Hellenistic [Alexandrian] period, and collected
by Stobaeus in chapters 70, 71, and 72 of his _Florilegium_, love is
never mentioned among the motives of marriage choice." In the next
sentence he declares nevertheless that "no one would be so foolish as
to deny the existence of pure, strong love in the Greek life of this
period;" and ten lines farther on he backs down again, admitting that
though there may be indications of supersensual, sentimental love in
the literature of this period these traits _had not yet taken hold of
the life of these men_, though there were _longings_ for them. And at
the end of the paragraph he emphasizes his back-down by declaring that
"the very essence of sentimental poetry is the _longing for what does
not exist_." (_Ist doch das rechte Element gerade der sentimentalen
Poesie die Sehnsucht nach dem nicht Vorhandenen_.) What makes this
admission the more significant is that Professor Rohde, in speaking of
"sentimental" elements, does not even use that word as the adjective
of sentiment but of sentimentality. He defines this _Sentimentalitaet_
to which he refers as a "_ Sehnen, Sinnen und Hoffen_," a
"_Selbstgenuss der Leidenschaft_"--a "longing, dreaming, and hoping,"
a "revelling in (literally, self-enjoying of) passion." In other
words, an enjoyment of emotion for emotion's sake, a gloating over
one's selfish joys and sorrows. Now in this respect I actually go
beyond Rohde as a champion of Greek love! Such _Sentimentalitaet_
existed, I am convinced, in Alexandrian life as well as in Alexandrian
literature; but of the existence of true supersensual altruistic
_sentiment_ I can find no evidence. The trouble with Rohde, as with so
many who have written on this subject, is that he has no clear idea of
the distinction between sensual love, which is selfish
(_Selbstgenuss_) and romantic love, which is altruistic; hence he
flounders in hopeless contradictions.
[315] See Anthon, 258, and the authors there referred to.
[316] See Theocritus, Idyll XVII. Regarding the silly and degrading
adulation which the Alexandrian court-poets were called upon to bestow
on the kings and queens, and its demoralizing effect on literature,
see also Christ's _Griechische Litteraturgeschichte_, 493-494 and 507.
[317] I have given Professor Rohde's testimony on this point not only
because he is a famous specialist in the literature of this period,
but because his peculiar bias makes his negative attitude in regard to
the question of Alexandrian gallantry the more convincing. A reader of
his book would naturally expect him to take the opposite view, since
he himself fancied he had discovered traces of gallantry in an author
who preceded the Alexandrians. The _Andromeda_ of Euripides, he
declares (23), "became in his hands one of the most brilliant examples
of chivalrous love." This, however, is a pure assumption on his part,
not warranted by the few fragments of this play that have been
preserved. Benecke has devoted a special "Excursus" to this play
(203-205), in which he justly remarks that readers of Greek literature
"need hardly be reminded of how utterly foreign to the Greek of
Euripides's day is the conception of the '_galante Ritter_' setting
out in search of ladies that want rescuing." He might have brought out
the humor of the matter by quoting the characteristically Greek
version of the Perseus story given by Apollodorus, who relates dryly
(II., chap. 4) that Cepheus, in obedience to an oracle, bound his
daughter to a rock to be devoured by a sea monster. "Perseus saw her,
fell in love with her, and promised Cepheus to slaughter the monster
_if he would promise to give him the rescued daughter to marry_. The
contract was made and Perseus undertook the adventure, killed the
monster and rescued Andromeda." Nothing could more strikingly reveal
the difference between Hellenic and modern ideas regarding lovers than
the fact that to the Greek mind there was nothing disgraceful in this
selfish, ungallant bargain made by Perseus as a condition of his
rescuing the poor girl from a horrible death. A mediaeval knight, or a
modern gentleman, not to speak of a modern lover, would have saved her
at the risk of his own life, reward or no reward. The difference is
further emphasized by the attitude of the girl, who exclaims to her
deliverer, "Take me, O stranger, for thine handmaiden, or wife, or
slave." Professor Murray, who cites this line in his _History of Greek
Literature_, remarks with comic naivete: "The love-note in this pure
and happy sense Euripides had never struck before." But what is there
so remarkably "pure and happy" in a girl's offering herself as a slave
to a man who has saved her life? Were not Greek women always expected
to assume that attitude of inferiority, submission, and
self-sacrifice? Was not _Alcestis_ written to enforce that principle
of conduct? And does not that very exclamation of Andromeda show how
utterly antipodal the situation and the whole drama of Euripides were
to modern ideas of chivalrous love?
Having just mentioned Benecke, I may as well add here that his own
theory regarding the first appearance of the romantic elements in
Greek love-poetry rests on an equally flimsy basis. He held that
Antimachus, who flourished before Euripides and Plato had passed away,
was the first poet who applied to women the idea of a pure, chivalrous
love, which up to his time had been attributed only to the romantic
friendships with boys. The "romantic idea," according to Benecke, is
"the idea that a woman is a worthy object for a man's love and that
such love may well be the chief, if not the only, aim of a man's
life." But that Antimachus knew anything of such love is a pure
figment of Benecke's imagination. The works of Antimachus are lost,
and all that we know about them or him is that he lamented the loss of
his wife--a feeling very much older than the poet of Colophon--and
consoled himself by writing an elegy named [Greek: Ludae], in which he
brought together from mythical and traditional sources a number of sad
tales. Conjugal grief does not take us very far toward so complicated
an altruistic state of mind as I have shown romantic love to be.
[318] Theocritus makes this point clear in line 5 of Idyl 12:
[Greek: hosson parthenikae propherei trigamoio gunaikos].
[319] See Helbig, 246, and Rohde, 36, for details. Helbig remarks that
the Alexandrians, following the procedure of Euripides, chose by
preference incestuous passions, "and it appears that such passions
were not rare in actual life too in those times."
[320] He refers as instances to Plaut., _Asin._, III., 3, particularly
v. 608 ff. and 615; adding that "a very sentimental character is
Charinus in the _Mercator_;" and he also points to Ter., _Eun._, 193
ff.
[321] What makes this evidence the more conclusive is that Rohde's use
of the word "sentimental" refers, according to his own definition, to
egoistic sentimentality, not to altruistic sentiment. Of
sentimentality--altiloquent, fabricated feeling and cajolery--there is
enough in Greek and Latin literature, doubtless as a reflection of
life. But when, in the third act of the _Asinaria_, the lover says to
his girl, "If I were to hear that you were in want of life, at once
would I present you my own life and from my own would add to yours,"
we promptly ask, "_Would he have done it_?" And the answer, from all
we know of these men and their attitude toward women, would have been
the same as that of the maiden to the enamoured Daphnis, in the
twenty-seventh Idyl of Theocritus: "_Now_ you promise me everything,
but afterward you will not give me a pinch of salt." As for the purity
of the characters in the play, its quality may be inferred from the
fact that the girl is not only a hetaira, but the daughter of a
procuress. From the point of view of purity the _Captivi_ is
particularly instructive. Riley calls it "the most pure and innocent
of all the plays of Plautus;" and when we examine why this is so we
find that it is because there is no woman in it! In the epilogue
Plautus himself--who made his living by translating Athenian comedies
into Latin--makes the significant confession that there were but few
Greek plays from which he might have copied so chaste a plot, in which
"there is no wenching, no intriguing, no exposure of a child" to be
found by a procuress and brought up as a hetaira--which are the staple
features of these later Greek plays.
[322] Those who cannot read Greek will derive much pleasure from the
admirable prose version of Andrew Lang, which in charm of style
sometimes excels the original, while it veils those features that too
much offend modern taste.
[323] Couat, 142. There are reasons to believe that the epistles
referred to are not by Ovid. Aristaenetus lived about the fifth
century. It is odd that the poem of Callimachus should have been lost
after surviving eight centuries.
[324] See also Helbig's Chap. XXII. on the increasing lubricity of
Greek art.
[325] Space permitting, it would be interesting to examine these poets
in detail, as well as the other Romans--Virgil, Horace, Lucretius,
etc., who came less under Greek influence. But in truth such
examination would be superfluous. Any one may pursue the investigation
by himself, and if he will bear in mind and apply as tests, the last
seven of my ingredients of love--the altruistic-supersensual group--he
cannot fail to become convinced that there are no instances of what I
have described as romantic love in Latin literature any more than in
Greek. And since it is the province of poets to idealize, we may feel
doubly sure that the emotions which they did not even imagine cannot
have existed in the actual life of their more prosaic contemporaries.
It would, indeed, be strange if a people so much more coarse-fibred
and practical, and so much less emotional and esthetic, than the
Greeks, should have excelled them in the capacity for what is one of
the most esthetic and the most imaginative of all sentiments.
Before leaving the poets, I may add that the Greek _Anthology_, the
basis of which was laid by Meleager, a contemporary of the Roman poets
just referred to, contains a collection of short poems by many Greek
writers, in which, of course, some of my critics have discovered
romantic love. One of them wrote that "the poems of Meleager alone in
the Greek _Anthology_ would suffice to refute the notion that Greece
ignored romantic passion." If this critic will take the trouble to
read these poems of Meleager in the original he will find that a
disgustingly large number relate to [Greek: paiderastia], which in
No. III. is expressly declared to be superior to the love for women;
that most of the others relate to hetairai; and that not one of
them--or one in the whole _Anthology_--comes up to my standard of
romantic love.
[326] The best-known ancient story of "love-suicide" is that of
Pyramus and Thisbe. Pyramus, having reason to think that Thisbe, with
whom he had arranged a secret interview at the tomb of Ninus, has been
devoured by a lion, stabs himself in despair, and Thisbe, on finding
his body, plunges on to the same sword, still warm with his blood.
This tale, which is probably of Babylonian origin, is related by Ovid
(_Metamorph._, IV., 55-166), and was much admired and imitated in the
Middle Ages. Comment on it would be superfluous after what I have
written on pages 605-610.
[327] See Rohde, 130; Christ, 349.
[328] No more like stories of romantic love than these are the five
"love-stories" written in the second century after Christ by Plutarch.
This is the more remarkable as Plutarch was one of the few ancient
writers to whom at any rate the _idea_ occurred that women _might be_
able to feel and inspire a love rising above the senses. This
suggestion is what distinguishes his _Dialogue on Love_ most favorably
from Plato's _Symposium_, which it otherwise, however, resembles
strikingly in the peculiar notions regarding the relation of the
sexes; showing how tenacious the unnatural Greek ideas were in Greek
life. Plutarch's various writings show that though he had advanced
notions compared with other Greeks, he was nearly as far from
appreciating true femininity, chivalry, and romantic love as Lucian,
who also wrote a dialogue on love in the old-fashioned manner.
[329] Hirschig's _Scriptores Erotici_ begins with Parthenius and
includes Achilles Tatius, Longus, Xenophon, Heliodorus, Chariton, etc.
The right-hand column gives a literal translation into Latin.
[330] _Der Griechische Roman_, 432-67. An excrescence of this theory
is the foolish story that "Bishop" Heliodorus, being called upon by a
provincial synod either to destroy his erotic books or to abdicate his
position, preferred the latter alternative. The date of the real
Heliodorus is perhaps the end of the third or the first half of the
fourth century after Christ.
[331] He refers in a footnote to such scenes as are painted in I., 32,
4; II., 9, 11; III., 14, 24, 3; IV., 6, 3--scones and hypocritically
naive experiments which he justly considers much more offensive than
the notorious scene between Daphnis and Lykainion (III., 18).
[332] Rohde (516) tries to excuse Goethe for his ridiculous praise of
this romance (Eckermann, II., 305, 318-321, 322) because he knew the
story only in the French version of Amyot-Courier. But I find that
this version retains most of the coarseness of the original, and I see
no reason for seeking any other explanation of Goethe's attitude than
his own indelicacy and obtuseness which, as I noted on page 208, made
him go into ecstacies of admiration over a servant whom lust prompted
to attempt rape and commit murder. As for Professor Murray, his
remarks are explicable only on the assumption that he has never read
this story in the original. This is not a violent assumption. Some
years ago a prominent professor of literature, ancient and modern, in
a leading American university, hearing me say one day that _Daphnis
and Chloe_ was one of the most immoral stories ever written, asked in
a tone of surprise: "Have you read it in the original?" Evidently _he_
never had! It is needless to add that translations never exceed the
originals in impropriety and usually improve on them. The Rev. Rowland
Smith, who prepared the English version for Bohn's Library, found
himself obliged repeatedly to resort to Latin.
Apart from his coarseness, there is nothing in Longus's conception of
love that goes beyond the ideas of the Alexandrians. Of the symptoms
of true love--mental or sentimental, esthetic and sympathetic,
altruistic and supersensual, he knows no more than Sappho did a
thousand years before him. Indeed, in making lovers become indolent,
cry out as if they had been beaten, and jump into rivers as if they
were afire, he is even cruder and more absurd than Sappho was in her
painting of sensual passion. His whole idea of love is summed up in
what the old shepherd Philetas says to Daphnis and Chloe (II., 7):
[Greek: _Egvov d' ego kai tauron erasthenta kai hos oistro plaegeis
emukato, kai tragon philaesanta aiga kai aekolouthei pantachou. Autos
men gar aemaen neos kai aerasthen Amarullidos_].
[333] See Rehde, 345; on Musaeus, 472, 133.
[334] Lucii Apulei _Metamorphoseon_, Libri XI., Ed. van der Vliet
(_Teubner_), IV., 89-135.
[335] See the remarks on _Tristan and Isolde_ in my _Wagner and his
Works_, II., 138.
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