The Silent Isle. Benson Arthur Christopher

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СКАЧАТЬ a sort of predestined unity of spirit and body, an inner and instinctive congeniality, a sense of supreme need and nearness, which has no consciousness of raising or helping or forgiving about it, but is rather an imperative desire for surrender, for sharing, for serving. Thus, in love, faults and weaknesses are not things to be mended or overlooked, but opportunities of lavish generosity. Sacrifice is not only not a pain, but the deepest and acutest pleasure possible. Love of this kind has nothing of the tolerance of friendship about it, the process of addition and subtraction, the weighing of net results, though that can provide a sensible and happy partnership enough. And thus when an author has grace and power to perceive such a situation, no further motive or purpose is needed; indeed the addition of any such motive merely defames and tarnishes the quality of the divine gift.

      It is not to be pretended that all human beings have the gift of loving so. To love perfectly is a matter of genius; it may be worth while to depict other sorts of love, for it has infinite gradations and nuances. One of the grievous mistakes that the prophets and prophetesses of love make is that they tend to speak as if only some coldness and hardness of nature, which could be dispensed with at will or by effort, holds men and women back from the innermost relationship. It is the same mistake as that made by many preachers who speak as if the moral sense was equally developed in all, or required only a little effort of the will. But a man or a woman may be quite able to perceive the nobility, the solemn splendour of a perfect love, and yet be incapable of either feeling or inspiring it. The possession of such a gift is a thing to thank God for; the absence of it is not a thing to be shrewishly condemned. The power is not often to be found in combination with high intellectual or artistic gifts. There is a law of compensation in human nature, but there is also a law of limitations; and this it is both foolish and cowardly to ignore.

      When one comes to form such a list as I have tried to do of great lovers in literature and life, it is surprising and rather distressing to find, after all, how difficult it is to make such a list at all. It is easier to make a list of women who have loved perfectly than a list of men. Two rather painful considerations arise. Is it because, after all, it is so rare, so almost abnormal an experience for one to love purely, passionately, and permanently, that the difficulty of making such a list arises? There are plenty of books, both imaginative and biographical, to choose from, and yet the perfect companionship seems very rare. Or is it that we nowadays exaggerate the whole matter? That would be a conclusion to which I would not willingly come; but it is quite clear that we have transcendentalised the power of love very much of late. Is this due to the immense flood of romances that have overwhelmed our literature? Does love really play so large a part in people's lives as romances would have us think? Or do the immense number of romances rather show that love does really play a greater part than anything else in our lives? The transcendental conception of love has found a high and passionate expression in the sonnets of Rossetti, yet all that we know of Rossetti would seem to prove that in his case it was actual rather than transcendental; and he is to be classed in the matter of love rather among its voluptuaries and slaves than among its true and harmonious exponents. I am disposed to think that with men, at all events, or at least with Englishmen of the present day, love is rather a bewildering episode than a guiding principle; and that some of the happiest alliances have been those in which passion has tranquilly transformed itself into a true and gentle companionship. This would seem to prove that love was as a rule a physical rather than a spiritual passion, cutting across life rather than flowing in its channels.

      And then, too, the further consideration intervenes: Can any one, in reflecting upon the instances of great and loving relationships that have come within the range of his experience, name a single case in which a deep passion has ever been conceived and consummated, without the existence of physical charm of some kind in the woman who has been the object of the passion? I do not, of course, limit charm to regular and conventional beauty. But I cannot myself recall a single instance of such a passion being evoked by a woman destitute of physical attractiveness. The charm may be that of voice, of glance, of bearing, of gesture, but the desirable element is always there in some form or other.

      I have known women of wit, of intellect, of sympathy, of delicate perception, of loyalty, of passionate affectionateness, who yet have missed the joy of wedded love from the absence of physical charm. Indeed, to make love beautiful, one has to conceive of it as exhibited in creatures of youth and grace like Romeo and Juliet; and to connect the pretty endearments of love with awkward, ugly, ungainly persons has something grotesque and even profane about it. But if love were the transcendental thing that it is supposed to be, if it were within reach of every hand, physical characteristics would hardly affect the question. I wish that some of the passionate interpreters of love would make a work of imagination that should render with verisimilitude the love-affair of two absolutely grotesque and misshapen persons, without any sense of incongruity or absurdity. I should be loth to say that love depends upon physical characteristics; but I think it must be confessed that impassioned love does so depend. A woman without physical attractiveness, but with tenderness, loyalty, and devotion, may arrive at plenty of happy relationships; she may be trusted, confided in, adored by young and old; but of the redeeming and regenerating love that comes with marriage she may have no chance at all. It is a terrible question to ask, but what chance has love against eczema? And yet eczema may co-exist with every mental and spiritual grace in the world. In this case it is evident that the modern transcendental theory of love crumbles away altogether, if it is at the mercy of a physical condition.

      The truth is that, like all the joys of humanity, love is unequally distributed, and that it is a thing which no amount of desire or admiration or hope can bring about, unless it is bestowed. Even in the case of the faint-hearted lover, so mercilessly lashed in Prisoners, who will pay a call to see the beloved, but will not take a railway journey for the same object, is it not the physical vitality that is deficient? I do not quarrel with the transcendental treatment of love; I only say that if this is accompanied with a burning scorn and contempt for those who cannot pursue it, it becomes at once a pharisaical and bitter thing. No religion was ever propagated by scolding backsliders or contemning the weak; no chivalry was ever worth the name that did not stand for a desire to do battle only with the strong.

      The genius of Charlotte Brontë consists in the fact that she makes love so splendid and glorifying a thing, and that she does not waste her powder and shot upon the poor in spirit. The loveless man or woman, after reading her book, may say, "What is this great thing that I have somehow missed? Is it possible that it may be waiting somewhere even for me?" And then such as these may grow to scan the faces of their fellow-travellers in hope and wonder. In such a mood as this does love grow, not under a brisk battery of slaps for being what, after all, God seems to have meant us to be. There are many men and women nowadays who must face the fact that they are not likely to be brought into contact with transcendental passion. It is for them to decide whether they will or can accept some lower form of love, some congenial companionship, some sort of easy commercial union. If they cannot, the last thing that they should do is to repine; they ought rather to organise their lives upon the best basis possible. All is not lost if love be missed. They may prepare themselves to be worthy if the great experience comes; but the one thing in the world that cannot be done from a sense of duty is to fall in love; and if love be so mighty and transcendent a thing it cannot be captured like an insect with a butterfly-net. The more transcendental it is held to be, the greater should be the compassion of its interpreters for those who have not seen it. It is not those who fail to gain it that should be scorned, but only the strong man who deliberately, for prudence and comfort's sake, refuses it and puts it aside. It is our great moral failure nowadays that legislation, education, religion, social reform are all occupied in eradicating the faults of the weak rather than in attacking the faults of the strong; and the modern interpreters of love are following in the same poor groove.

      If love were so omnipotent, so divine a thing, we should have love stories proving the truth and worth of alliances between an Earl and a kitchen-maid, between a Duchess and a day-labourer; but no attempt is made to upset conventional traditions which are tamely regarded as insuperable. "Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment," said Shakespeare; but who experiments in such ways, who dares to write of them? We are still hopelessly feudal СКАЧАТЬ