Long before the day of Spenser there lived, however, in Florence, a poet
whose transcendent genius enabled him to feel and describe for the first
time the real romantic sentiment of Love. It is true that some of the
poets of Chivalry had before him attempted to depict the supersensual,
æthereal side of the passion. But their portraits lacked the touch of
realism: they described what they imagined; Dante what he felt.
Dante was born in 1265: Modern Love was born nine years later—613 years
ago. “Nine times already since my birth,” says Dante, “had the heaven of
light returned to the self-same point almost, as concerns its own
revolution, when first the glorious lady of my mind was made manifest to
mine eyes; even she who was called Beatrice (she who confers blessing)
by many who knew not wherefore.... From that time onward, Love quite
governed my soul.... But seeing that were I to dwell overmuch on the
passions and doings of such early youth, my words might be counted
something fabulous, I will therefore put them aside,” etc.
These are the opening lines of the _Vita Nuova_, in which Modern Love is
for the first time portrayed with an air of sincerity, and concerning
which Professor C. E. Norton justly remarks that “so long as there are
lovers in the world, and so long as lovers are poets, will this first
and tenderest love-story of modern literature be read with appreciation
and responsive sympathy.”
What a privilege to describe First Love not only in an individual but a
_historic_ sense, as Dante did in this poem, which Rossetti calls “the
auto-biography or auto-psychology of Dante’s youth, till his
twenty-seventh year.”
After that first sight of Beatrice one of her sweet smiles was the
highest goal of his desires; but so powerful was the spell of her
presence that he was obliged to avoid her. “From that night forth the
natural functions of my body began to be vexed and impeded, for I was
given up wholly to thinking of this most gracious creature; whereby in
short space I became so weak and so reduced that it was irksome to many
of my friends to look upon me ... the thing was so plainly to be
discerned in my countenance that there was no longer any means of
concealing it.” Such words as “trembling,” “confusion,” “weeping,”
constantly occur as the narrative proceeds. Love, he says, “bred in me
such overpowering sweetness that my body, being all subjected thereto,
remained many times helpless and passive.” When for the first time
Beatrice denied him her smile, “I became possessed with such grief that,
parting myself from others, _I went into a lonely place_ to bathe the
ground with most bitter tears.” And in one of the sonnets interspersed
he says—
“My face shows my heart’s colour,
No sooner do I lift mine eyes to look
Than the blood seems as shaken from my heart,
And all my pulses beat at once and stop.”
But by far the most remarkable thing in the _Vita Nuova_, is Dante’s own
indirect testimony that such Love as he felt, such supersensual,
æsthetic Love, _was a novelty and a puzzle to his contemporaries_. For
he tells how he met some ladies who gazed at him and laughed till one of
them asked: “To what end lovest thou this lady, seeing that thou canst
not support her presence? Now tell us this thing that we may know it:
for certainly the end of such a love must be worthy of knowledge.”
No doubt it was worth knowing; for, as the author of the admirable
article on “Poetry,” in the eighth edition of the _Encyclopædia
Britannica_ (1859), remarks: “When in modern times the attempt was made
to revive tragedy, it proved totally unsuccessful until this principle
(of romantic love) was admitted into the drama to give it warmth and
life. Of that species of composition which in its proper sense is
peculiar to the moderns, viz. the novel and romance, it forms, as we all
know, the moving power. In short, it influences, more or less, every
department in which the imagination has exerted itself with success
since the revival of literature.”
Once more it is well to state that there are geniuses in the emotional
as in the intellectual world. Dante was both; and the realistic
descriptions he has given of the effects of Romantic Love have helped to
sustain the notion that Love is immutable, and has existed at all times.
But the indirect testimony to the contrary just quoted, and the whole
argument of this chapter on Mediæval Love, make it apparent that Dante’s
Love was the exception which proves that among the others Love did not
exist. And even Dante was not entirely modern in his Love. A modern
lover would not have attempted to conceal the object of his Love, but
would have made it apparent to all by his foolish actions that he was in
Love with this particular girl and no other; he would perhaps have wooed
more persistently, and his feelings would not have remained unchanged
after her marriage to another. Like Petrarch, moreover, Dante cannot be
quite acquitted of the suspicion that, after the first flush of
excitement, the excessive and persistent purification and idealisation
of his passion was based not so much on real amorous feelings and
motives, as on an author’s craving for an object on which to lavish his
literary art of embellishment.
Dante, in a word, hyper-idealised his passion. He became quite deaf to
the fundamental tone of Love, and heard only its overtones. And herein
lies his inferiority to Shakspere. It is in the works of Shakspere that
the various motives and emotions which constitute Love—sensuous,
æsthetic, intellectual—are for the first time mingled in proper
proportions. Shakspere’s Love is Modern Love, full-fledged, and
therefore calls for no separate analysis. It is a primitive passion,
purified and refined by intellectual, moral, and æsthetic culture. And
though by no means universal, or even common, at the present day, it is
yet of frequent occurrence, and will become more and more prevalent as
time rolls on. To facilitate its progress by pointing out its
characteristics, its evolution, and the measures that must be taken to
foster it, is one of the principal objects of this monograph.