The following point, which will be disputed, I offer only to
those--shall I say unhappy enough?--to have loved with passion during
long years, and loved in the face of invincible obstacles:--
The sight of all that is extremely beautiful in nature and in art
recalls, with the swiftness of lightning, the memory of that which
we love. It is by the process of the jewelled branch in the mines of
Salzburg, that everything in the world which is beautiful and lofty
contributes to the beauty of that which we love, and that forthwith a
sudden glimpse of delight fills the eyes with tears. In this way, love
and the love of beauty give life mutually to one another.
One of life's miseries is that the happiness of seeing and talking to
the object of our love leaves no distinct memories behind. The soul,
it seems, is too troubled by its emotions for that which causes or
accompanies them to impress it. The soul and its sensations are one
and the same. It is perhaps because these pleasures cannot be used up
by voluntary recollection, that they return again and again with such
force, as soon as ever some object comes to drag us from day-dreams
devoted to the woman we love, and by some new connexion[1] to bring her
still more vividly to our memory.
A dry old architect used to meet her in society every evening.
Following a natural impulse, and without paying attention to what I
was saying to her,[2] I one day sang his praises in a sentimental and
pompous strain,
[Pg 50]
which made her laugh at me. I had not the strength to say to her: "He
sees you every evening."
So powerful is this sensation that it extends even to the person of my
enemy, who is always at her side. When I see her, she reminds me of
Léonore so much, that at the time I cannot hate her, however much I try.
It looks as if, by a curious whim of the heart, the charm, which
the woman we love can communicate, were greater than that which she
herself possesses. The vision of that distant city, where we saw her a
moment,[3] throws us into dreams sweeter and more profound than would
her very presence. It is the effect of harsh treatment.
The day-dreams of love cannot be scrutinised. I have observed that I
can re-read a good novel every three years with the same pleasure. It
gives me feelings akin to the kind of emotional taste, which dominates
me at the moment, or if my feelings are nil, makes for variety in my
ideas. Also, I can listen with pleasure to the same music, but, in
this, memory must not intrude. The imagination should be affected and
nothing else; if, at the twentieth representation, an opera gives more
pleasure, it is either because the music is better understood, or
because it also brings back the feeling it gave at the first.
As to new lights, which a novel may throw upon our knowledge of the
human heart, I still remember clearly the old ones, and am pleased even
to find them noted in the margin. But this kind of pleasure pertains
to the novels, in so far as they advance me in the knowledge of man,
and not in the least to day-dreaming--the veritable pleasure of novels.
Such day-dreaming is inscrutable. To watch it is for the present to
kill it, for you fall into a philosophical analysis of pleasure; and it
[Pg 51]
is killing it still more certainly for the future, for nothing is surer
to paralyse the imagination than the appeal to memory(9). If I find in
the margin a note, depicting my feelings on reading _Old Mortality_
three years ago in Florence, I am plunged immediately into the history
of my life, into an estimate of the degree of happiness at the two
epochs, in short, into the deepest problems of philosophy--and then
good-bye for a long season to the unchecked play of tender feelings.
Every great poet with a lively imagination is timid, he is afraid of
men, that is to say, for the interruptions and troubles with which they
can invade the delight of his dreams. He fears for his concentration.
Men come along with their gross interests to drag him from the gardens
of Armida, and force him into a fetid slough: only by irritating him
can they fix his attention on themselves. It is this habit of feeding
his soul upon touching dreams and this horror of the vulgar which draws
a great artist so near to love.
The more of the great artist a man has in him, the more must he wish
for titles and honours as a bulwark.
[1] Scents.
[2] See note 2, p. 28.
[3]
Nessun maggior dolore
Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Nella miseria.--Dante, _Inf._, V (Francesca).
[No greater sorrow than to remember happy times in misery.--Tr.]
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