Part 22 (1/2)
XII. AFFECTION
A German poem printed in the _Wunderhorn_ relates how a young man, after a long absence from home, returns and eagerly hastens to see his former sweetheart. He finds her standing in the doorway and informs her that her beauty pleases his heart as much as ever:
Gott gruss dich, du Hubsche, du Feine, Von Herzen gefallst du mir.
To which she retorts: ”What need is there of my pleasing you? I got a husband long ago--a handsome man, well able to take care of me.”
Whereupon the disappointed lover draws his knife and stabs her through the heart.
In his _History of German Song_ (chap, v.), Edward Schure comments on this poem in the following amazing fas.h.i.+on:
”How necessary yet how tragic is this answer with the knife to the heartless challenge of the former sweetheart! How fatal and terrible is this sudden change of a pa.s.sionate soul from ardent love to the wildest hatred! We see him taking one step back, we see how he trembles, how the flush of rage suffuses his face, and how his love, offended, injured, and dragged in the dust, slakes its thirst with the blood of the faithless woman.”
EROTIC a.s.sa.s.sINS
It seems almost incredible that such a villanous sentiment should have been allowed to appear in a book without sending its author to prison.
”Necessary” to _murder_ a sweetheart because she has changed her mind during a man's long absence! The wildest anarchist plot never included a more diabolical idea. Brainless, selfish, impulsive young idiots are only too apt to act on that principle if their proposals are not accepted; the papers contain cases nearly every week of poor girls murdered for refusing an unwelcome suitor; but the world is beginning to understand that it is illogical and monstrous to apply the sacred word of love to the feeling which animates these cowardly a.s.sa.s.sins, whose only motives are selfish l.u.s.t and a dog-in-the-manger jealousy.
_Love_ never ”slakes its thirst” with the blood of a woman. Had that man really loved that woman, he would have been no more capable of murdering her than of murdering his father for disinheriting him.
Schure is by no means the only author who has thus confounded love with murderous, jealous l.u.s.t. A most astounding instance occurs in Goethe's _Werther_--the story of a common servant who conceived a pa.s.sion for a well-to-do widow.
He lost his appet.i.te, his sleep, forgot his errands; an evil spirit pursued him. One day, finding her alone in the garret, he made an improper proposal to her, and on her refusing he attempted violence, from which she was saved only through the timely arrival of her brother. In defending his conduct the servant, in a most ungallant, unmanly, and cowardly way, tried to fasten the guilt on the widow by saying that she had previously allowed him to take some liberties with her. He was of course promptly ejected from the house, and when subsequently another man was engaged to take his place, and began to pay his addresses to the widow, the discharged servant fell upon him and a.s.sa.s.sinated him. And this disgusting exhibition of murderous l.u.s.t and jealousy leads Goethe to exclaim, rapturously:
”This love, this fidelity(!), this pa.s.sion, is thus seen to be no invention of the poets(!). It lives, it is to be found in its greatest purity(!) among that cla.s.s of people whom we call uneducated and coa.r.s.e.”
In view of the sensual and selfish att.i.tude which Goethe held toward women all his life, it is perhaps not strange that he should have written the silly words just quoted. It was probably a guilty conscience, a desire to extenuate selfish indulgence at the expense of a poor girl's virtue and happiness, that led him to represent his hero, Werther, as using every possible effort in court to secure the pardon of that erotomaniac who had first attempted rape and then finished up by a.s.sa.s.sinating his rival.
If Werther's friend had murdered the widow herself, Goethe would have been logically bound to see in his act still stronger evidence of the ”reality,” ”fidelity,” and ”purity” of love among ”people whom we call uneducated and coa.r.s.e.” And if Goethe had lived to read the Rev. W.W.
Gill's _Savage Life in Polynesia_, he might have found therein (118) a story of cannibal ”love” still more calculated to arouse his rapturous enthusiasm--
”An ill-looking but brave warrior of the cannibal tribe of Ruanae, named Vete, fell violently in love with a pretty girl named Tanuau, who repelled his advances and foolishly reviled him for his ugliness. His only thought now was how to be revenged for this unpardonable insult. He could not kill her, as she wisely kept to the encampment of Mantara. After some months Tanuau sickened and died. The corpse was conveyed across the island to be let down the chasm of Raupa, the usual burial-place of her tribe.”
Vete chose this as the time for revenge. Arrangements were made to intercept the corpse secretly, and he had it carried away. It was too decomposed to be eaten, so they cut it in pieces and burned it--burning anything belonging to a person being the greatest injury one can inflict on a native.
THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON
But what have all these disgusting stories to do with affection, the subject of this chapter? Nothing whatever--and that is why I have put them here--to show in a glaring light that what Goethe and Schure, and doubtless thousands of their readers accepted as love is not love, since there is no affection in it. A true patriot, a man who feels an affection for his country, lays down his life for it without a thought of personal advantage; and if his country treats him ungratefully he does not turn traitor and a.s.sa.s.sin--like the German and Polynesian ”lovers” we have just read about. A real lover is indeed overjoyed to have his affection returned; but if it is not reciprocated he is none the less affectionate, none the less ready to lay down his life for the other, and, above all, he is utterly incapable of taking hers.
What creates this difference between l.u.s.t and love is affection, and, so far at least as maternal love is concerned, the nature of affection was known thousands of years ago. When two mothers came before King Solomon, each claiming the same child as her own, the king sent for a sword and said, ”Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one and half to the other.” To this the false claimant agreed, but the real mother exclaimed, ”O my lord, give her the living child and in no wise slay it.” Then the king knew that she was the child's mother and gave him to her. ”And all Israel saw that the wisdom of G.o.d was in Solomon, to do judgment.”
If we ask why this infallible test of love was not applied to the s.e.xual pa.s.sion, the answer is that it would have failed, because ancient love between the s.e.xes was, as all the testimony collected in this book shows, too sensual and selfish to stand such a test. Yet it is obvious that if we to-day are to apply the word love to the s.e.xual relations, we must use the same test of disinterested affection that we use in the case of maternal love or love of country; and that love is not love before affection is added to all the other ingredients heretofore considered. In that servant's ”love” which so excited the wonder of Goethe, only three of the fourteen ingredients of love were present--individual preference, monopoly, and jealousy--and those three, as we have seen, occur also in plain l.u.s.t. Of the tender, altruistic, loving traits of love--sympathy, adoration, gallantry, self-sacrifice, affection--there is not a trace.
STUFF AND NONSENSE
When a great poet can blunder so flagrantly in his diagnosis of love, we cannot wonder that minor writers should often be erratic. For instance, in _The Snake Dance of the Moquis of Arizona_ (45-46), Captain J.D. Bourke exclaims:
”So much stuff and nonsense has been written about the entire absence of affection from the Indian character, especially in the relations between the s.e.xes, that it affords me great pleasure to note this little incident”
--namely, a scene between an Indian and a young squaw:
”They had evidently only lately had a quarrel, for which each was heartily sorry. He approached, and was received with a disdain tempered with so much sweetness and affection that he wilted at once, and, instead of boldly a.s.serting himself, dared do nothing but timidly touch her hand. The touch, I imagine, was not disagreeable, because the girl's hand was soon firmly held in his, and he, with earnest warmth, was pouring into her ear words whose purport it was not difficult to conjecture.”