The Drama of Love and Death: A Study of Human Evolution and Transfiguration. Edward Carpenter

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      They are worth while, all these labors and troubles, and delays and sacrifices, if only out of them can be forged a fair and infrangible union. As in all the arts, so in the greatest of the arts, no lasting result can be attained, without such labor. Nor indeed without some degree of pain and suffering. Young folk and inexperienced may think it is not so. They may think that by a lucky stroke and practically without effort a man may write a “Blessed Damozel” or carve in marble a “Greek Slave”; but all experience points differently, and shows that directly or indirectly to such works have gone infinite labor and patience. And so to the conceiving and shaping of a perfect alliance between a man and a woman must always go much of suffering—for it is by suffering that the souls of human beings are brought into form and carved to fitness for each other.

      Is it seriously—when one comes to think of it—possible to imagine love without pain? Figure to yourself, O man, a courtship absolutely undenied, from the first accepted, even encouraged, with complaisantly unresisting bride, smiling parents, fair-weather prospects, and cash unlimited! How awfully dull! Does not the stoutest heart quail at the suggestion? Or if such a mating might be deemed pleasant as far as its accessories and conditions were concerned, could it yet be termed Love?

      For Love, if worth anything, seems to demand pain and strain in order to prove itself, and is not satisfied with an easy attainment. How indeed should one know the great heights except by the rocks and escarpments? And pain often in some strange way seems to be the measure of love—the measure by which we are assured that love is true and real; and so (which is one of the mysteries) it becomes transformed into a great joy. Yes, if men could only understand, here is one of the most precious of the mysteries, and the solving of a great riddle.

      But that the course of true love does generally not run smooth is understood, more or less, by every one. And it is woman’s strange and imperious instinct—even though at considerable suffering to herself—to see that it doesn’t run smooth. Ellis practically bases^[24] the whole of the evolution of modesty on this instinct—reaching far down in the animal kingdom—by which the female constantly throws difficulties and obstacles in the way of courtship (by her coynesses, contrarieties, changeable moods, and so forth); thus calling out in the male all his ingenuity, his impetuosity, his energy, in overcoming them; rousing dormant elements of his nature; delaying consummation and giving time for his character and all his qualities to concentrate; and indirectly having a like effect upon herself. So that ultimately by this method a maximum of passion and agitation is produced, and in the case of the human being love penetrates to the very deeps and hidden caverns of the soul. Such is the genesis of Modesty—not by any means Nature’s denial of love, but rather the crafty old dame’s method of rendering love, by temporary obstacles, all the more insurgent and irresistible—her method of making it less superficial, of deepening the channels and rendering them more profound.

      Practically, and as a matter of policy, a too easy consent to another’s love is a mistake. The barb only sticks when the bait is withdrawn. Ovid, it will be remembered, advises that “the lover should be admitted by the window, even when the door is quite accessible, and really more convenient”;^[25] and most girls (though they have not read Ovid) know instinctively that this is the right policy! Nothing is so hateful to a real lover as an easy, accommodating, altruistic affection—thoroughly Christian in sentiment, and with no more shape of its own than a pillow! Romance flies at the mere mention of Christian altruism; and the essence of love is romance.

      Hence not only technical obstacles, but essential differences are necessary to the growth of the passion. Differences of age, differences of sex, differences of class, temperament, hereditary strain, learning, accomplishment, and so forth—if not too great—are all necessary and valuable. They all mean romance, and contribute to that exchange of essences which we saw was the primitive protozoic law. It is quite probable that the abiding romance between the sexes—so much greater as a rule than that between two of like sex—is due to the fact that the man and the woman never really understand each other; each to the other is a figure in cloudland, sometimes truly divine, sometimes alas! quite the reverse; but never clear and obvious in outline, as a simple mortal may be expected to be.

      But to return to the subject of pain and suffering. There is something more in their work than merely to reveal to the lover the extent or the depth of his own love. They have something surely to do with the inner realities of the affair, with the moulding or hammering or welding process whereby union is effected and, in some sense, a new being created. It seems as if when two naked souls approach, or come anywhere near contact with each other, the one inevitably burns or scorches the other. The intense chemistry of the psychic elements produces something like an actual flame. A fresh combination is entered into, profound transformations are effected, strange forces liberated, and a new personality perhaps created; and the accomplishment and evidence of the whole process is by no means only joy, but agony also, even as childbirth is.

      All one can reasonably do is to endure. It is no good making a fuss. In affairs of the heart what we call suffering corresponds to what we call labor or effort in affairs of the body. When you put your shoulder to the cart-wheel you feel the pain and pressure of the effort, but that assures you that you are exercising a force, that something is being done; so suffering of the heart assures you that something is being done in that other and less tangible world. To scold and scowl and blame your loved one is the stupidest thing you can do. And worse than stupid, it is useless. For it can only alienate. Probably that other one is suffering as well as you—possibly more than you, possibly a good deal less. What does it matter? The suffering is there and must be borne; the work, whatever it is, is being done; the transformation is being effected. Do you want your beloved to suffer instead of you, or simply because you are suffering? Or is it Pity you desire rather than Love.

      On the other hand, these things borne in silence have, I believe, an extraordinary effect. They pull people to you by quite invisible cords. As I have said, the fact of heart-strain and tension shows that there is a pressure or pull being exerted somewhere. Though the cord be invisible, there is someone at the other end (though not perhaps quite the one you supposed) who responds.

      Words anyhow, in matters of love, are rather foolish; they are worse than foolish, they are useless; and again they are worse than useless, for they are misleading. Love is an art. “It must be revealed by acts,” says a Swiss writer, “and not betrayed by words.” And Havelock Ellis, speaking further of the mistake of relying on declarations and asservations, says:^[26] “This is scarcely realized by those ill-advised lovers who consider that the first step in courtship—and perhaps even the whole of courtship—is for a man to ask a woman to be his wife. That is so far from being the case that it constantly happens that the premature exhibition of so large a demand at once and forever damns all the wooer’s chances.” And in another passage he says:^[27] “Love’s requests cannot be made in words, nor truthfully answered in words: a fine divination is still needed as long as love lasts.”

      Love is an art. As no mere talk can convey the meaning of a piece of music or a beautiful poem, so no verbal declaration can come anywhere near expressing what the lover wants to say. And for one very good and sufficient reason (among others)—namely, that he does not know himself! Under these circumstances to say anything is almost certainly to say something misleading or false. And the decent lover knows this and holds his tongue. To talk about your devotion is to kill it—moreover, it is to render it banal and suspect in the eyes of your beloved.

      Nevertheless though he cannot describe or explain what he wants to say, the lover can feel it—is feeling it all the time; and this feeling, like other feelings, he can express by indirections—by symbols, by actions, by the alphabet of deed and gesture, and all the hieroglyphics of Life and Art. Like the animals and the angels and all the blessed creatures who don’t talk, he can communicate in the ancient, primeval, universal language of all creation, in the language which is itself creation.

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