Primitive Love and Love-Stories Part 81

Among the seven extant tragedies of Sophocles there are three which throw some light on the contemporary att.i.tude toward women and the different kinds of domestic attachment--the _Ajax_, the _Trachiniae_ and _Antigone_. When Ajax, having disgraced himself by slaughtering a flock of sheep and cattle in the mad delusion that they were his enemies, wishes he might die, Tecmessa, his concubine, declares, "Then pray for my death, too, for why should I live if you are dead?" She has, however, plenty of egotistic reasons for dreading his death, for she knows that her fate will be slavery. Moreover, instead of being edified by her expression of attachment, we are repelled when we bear in mind that Ajax slew her father when he made her his concubine. The Greeks were too indelicate in their ideas about concubines to be disturbed by such a reflection. Nor were they affected disagreeably by the utter indifference toward his concubine which Ajax displays. He tells her to attend to her own affairs and remember that silence is a woman's greatest charm, and before committing suicide he utters a monologue in which he says farewell to his parents and to his country, but has no last message for Tecmessa. She was only a woman, forsooth.

Only a woman, too, was Deianira, the heroine of the _Trachiniae_, and though of exalted rank she fully realized this fact. When Hercules first took her to Tiryns, he was still sufficiently interested in her to shoot a hydra-poisoned arrow into the centaur Nessus, who attempted to a.s.sault her while carrying her across the river Evenus. But after she had borne him several children he neglected her, going off on adventures to capture other women. She weeps because of his absence, complaining that for fifteen months she has had no message from him.

At last information is brought to her that Hercules, inflamed with violent love for the Princess Iole, had demanded her for a secret union, and when the king refused, had ravaged his city and carried off Iole, to be unto him more than a slave, as the messenger gives her to understand distinctly. On receiving this message; Deianira is at first greatly agitated, but soon remembers what the duty of a Greek wife is.

"I am well aware," she says in substance, "that we cannot expect a man to be always content with one woman. To antagonize the G.o.d of love, or to blame my husband for succ.u.mbing to him, would be foolish. After all, what does it amount to? Has not Hercules done this sort of thing many times before? Have I ever been angry with him for so often succ.u.mbing to this malady? His concubines, too, have never received an unkind word from me, nor shall Iole; for I freely confess, resentment does not become a woman. Yet I am distressed, for I am old and Iole is young, and she will hereafter be his actual wife in place of me." At this thought jealousy sharpens her wit and she remembers that the dying centaur had advised her to save some of his blood and, if ever occasion should come for her to wish to bring back her husband's love, to anoint his garment with it. She does so, and sends it to him, without knowing that its effect will be to slowly burn the flesh off his body. Hearing of the deadly effect of her gift, she commits suicide, while Hercules spends the few remaining hours of his life cursing her who murdered him, "the best of all men," and wishing she were suffering in his place or that he might mutilate her body. Nor was his latest and "violent love" for Iole more than a pa.s.sing appet.i.te quickly appeased; for at the end he asks his son to marry her!

This drama admirably ill.u.s.trates the selfish view of the marital relation entertained by Greek men. Its moral may be summed up in this advice to a wife:

"If your husband falls in love with a younger woman and brings her home, let him, for he is a victim of Cupid and cannot help it. Display no jealousy, and do not even try to win back his love, for that might annoy him or cause mischief."

In other words, _The Trachiniae_ is an object-lesson to Greek wives, telling us what the men thought they ought to be. Probably some of the wives tried to live up to that ideal; but that could hardly be accepted as genuine, spontaneous devotion deserving the name of affection. Most famous among all the tragedies of the Greeks, and deservedly so, is the _Antigone_. Its plot can be told in such a way as to make it seem a romantic love-story, if not a story of romantic love. Creon, King of Thebes, has ordered, under penalty of death, that no one shall bestow the rites of burial on Prince Polynices, who has fallen after bearing arms against his own country. Antigone, sister of Polynices, resolves to disobey this cruel order, and having failed to persuade her sister, Ismene, to aid her, carries out her plan alone.

Boldly visiting the place where the body is exposed to the dogs and vultures, she sprinkles dust on it and pours out libations, repeating the process the next day on finding that the guards had meanwhile undone her work. This time she is apprehended in the act and brought before the king, who condemns her to be immured alive in a tomb, though she is betrothed to his son Haemon. "Would you murder the bride of your own son?" asks Ismene; but the king replies that there are many other women in the world. Haemon now appears and tries to move his father to mercy, but in vain, though he threatens to slay himself if his bride is killed. Antigone is immured, but at last, moved by the advice of the Chorus and the dire predictions of the seer Tiresias, Creon changes his mind and hastens with men and tools to liberate the virgin. When he arrives at the tomb he sees his son in it, clinging to the corpse of Antigone, who had hanged herself. Horrified, the king begs his son to come out of the tomb, but Haemon seizes his sword and rushes forward to slay his father. The king escapes the danger by flight, whereupon Haemon thrusts the sword into his own body, and expires, clasping the corpse of his bride.

If we thus make Haemon practically the central figure of the tragedy, it resembles a romantic love-story; but in reality Haemon is little more than an episode. He has a quarrel with his father (who goes so far as to threaten to kill his bride in his presence), rushes off in a rage, and the tomb scene is not enacted, but merely related by a messenger, in forty lines out of a total of thirteen hundred and fifty. Much less still have we here a story of romantic love. Not one of the fourteen ingredients of love can be found in it except self-sacrifice, and that not of the right kind. I need not explain once more that suicide from grief over a lost bride does not benefit that bride; that it is not altruistic, but selfish, unmanly, and cowardly, and is therefore no test whatever of love. Moreover, if we examine the dialogue in detail we see that the motive of Haemon's suicide is not even grief over his lost bride, but rage at his father.

When on first confronting Creon, he is thus accosted: "Have you heard the sentence p.r.o.nounced on your bride?" He answers meekly: "I have, my father, and I yield to your superior wisdom, which no marriage can equal in excellence;" and it is only gradually that his ire is aroused by his father's abusive att.i.tude; while at the end his first intention was to slay his father, not himself. Had Sophocles understood love as we understand it, he would have represented Haemon as drawing his sword at once and moving heaven and earth to prevent his bride from being buried alive.

But it is in examining the att.i.tude of Antigone that we realize most vividly how short this drama falls of being a love-story. She never even mentions Haemon, has no thought of him, but is entirely absorbed in the idea of benefiting the spirit of her dead brother by performing the forbidden funeral rites. As if to remove all doubt on that point, she furthermore tells us explicitly (lines 904-912) that she would have never done such a deed, in defiance of the law, to save a husband or a child, but only for a brother; and why? because she might easily find another husband, and have new children by him, but another brother she could never have, as her parents were dead.[303]

WOMAN AND LOVE IN EURIPIDES

Of Euripides it cannot be said, as of his two great predecessors, that woman plays an insignificant role in his dramas. Most of the nineteen plays which have come down to us of the ninety-two he wrote are named after women; and Bulwer-Lytton was quite right when he declared that "he is the first of the h.e.l.lenic poets who interests us _intellectually_ in the antagonism and affinity between the s.e.xes."

But I cannot agree with him when he says that with Euripides commences "the distinction between love as a pa.s.sion and love as a sentiment."

There is true sentiment in Euripides, as there is in Sophocles, in the relations between parents and children, friends, brothers and sisters; but in the att.i.tude of lovers, or of husband and wife, there is only sensuality or at most sentimentality; and this sentimentality, or sham sentiment, does not begin with Euripides, for we have found instances of it in the fond words of Clytaemnestra regarding the husband she intended to murder, and did murder, and even in the Homeric Achilles, whose fine words regarding conjugal love contrast so ludicrously with his unloving actions. These, however, are mere episodes, while Euripides has written a whole play which from beginning to end is an exposition of sentimentality.

The Fates had granted that when the Thessalian King Admetus approached the ordained end of his life it should be prolonged if another person voluntarily consented to die in his place. His aged parents had no heart to "plunge into the darkness of the tomb" for his sake. "It is not the custom in Greece for fathers to die for children," his father informs him; while Adinetus indulges in coa.r.s.e abuse: "By heaven, thou art the very pattern of cowards, who at thy age, on the borderland of life, would'st not, nay, could'st not find the heart to die for thy own son; but ye, my parents, left to this stranger, whom henceforth I shall justly hold e'en as mother and as father too, and none but her."

This "stranger" is his wife Alcestis, who has volunteered to die for him, exclaiming:

"Thee I set before myself, and instead of living have ensured thy life, and so I die, though I need not have died for thee, but might have taken for my husband whom I would of the Thessalians, and have had a home blest with royal power; reft of thee, with my children orphans, I cared not to live."

The world has navely accepted this speech and the sacrifice of Alcestis as belonging to the region of sentiment; but in reality it is nothing more than one of those stories shrewdly invented by selfish men to teach women that the object of their existence is to sacrifice themselves for their husbands. The king's father tells us this in so many words: "By the generous deed she dared, hath she made her life _a n.o.ble example for all her s.e.x_;" adding that "such marriages I declare are gain to man, else to wed is not worth while." If these stories, like those manufactured by the Hindoos, were an indication of existing conjugal sentiment, would it be possible that the self-sacrifice was invariably on the woman's side? Adinetus would have never dreamt of sacrificing _his_ life for his wife. He is not even ashamed to have her die for him. It is true that he has one moment when he fancies his foe deriding him thus:

"Behold him living in his shame, a wretch who quailed at death himself, but of his coward heart gave up his wedded wife instead, and escaped from Hades; doth he deem himself a man after that?"

It is true also that his father taunts him contemptuously,

"Dost thou then speak of cowardice in me, thou craven heart!... A clever scheme hast thou devised to stave off death forever, if thou canst persuade each new wife to die instead of thee."

Yet Admetus is constantly a.s.suring everyone of his undying attachment to his wife. He holds her in his arms, imploring her not to leave him.

"If thou die," he exclaims,

"I can no longer live; my life, my death, are in thy hands; thy love is what I worship.... Not a year only, but all my life will I mourn for thee.... In my bed thy figure shall be laid full length, by cunning artists fashioned; thereon will I throw myself and, folding my arms about thee, call upon thy name, and think I hold my dear wife in my embrace.... Take me, O take me, I beseech, with thee 'neath the earth;"

and so on, _ad nauseam_--a sickening display of sentimentality, _i.e._, fond words belied by cowardly, selfish actions.

The father-in-law of Alcestis, in his indignation at his son's impertinence and lack of filial pity, exclaims that what made Alcestis sacrifice herself was "want of sense;" which is quite true. But in painting such a character, Euripides's chief motive appears to have been to please his audience by enforcing a maxim which the Greeks shared with the Hindoos and barbarians that "a woman, though bestowed upon a worthless husband, must be content with him." These words are actually put by him into the mouth of Andromache in the play of that name. Andromache, once the wife of the Trojan Hector, now the concubine of Achilles's son, is made to declare to the Chorus that "it is not beauty but virtuous acts that win a husband's heart;" whereupon she proceeds to spoil this fine maxim by explaining what the Greeks understood by "virtuous acts" in a wife--namely, subordinating herself even to a "worthless husband." "Suppose," she continues, "thou hadst wedded a prince of Thrace... where one lord shares his affections with a host of wives, would'st thou have slain them? If so, thou would'st have set a stigma of insatiate l.u.s.t on all our s.e.x." And she proceeds to relate how she herself paid no heed in Troy to Hector's amours with other women: "Oft in days gone by I held thy b.a.s.t.a.r.d babes to my own breast, to spare thee any cause for grief. By this course I bound my husband to me by virtue's chains." To spare _him_ annoyance, no matter how much his conduct might grieve _her_--that was the Greek idea of conjugal devotion--all on one side. And how like the Hindoos, and Orientals, and barbarians in general, is the Greek seen to be in the remarks made by Hermione, the legitimate wife, to Andromache, the concubine--accusing the latter of having by means of witchcraft made her barren and thus caused her husband to hate her.

With the subtle ingenuity of masculine selfishness the Greek dramatist doubles the force of all his fine talk about the "virtuous acts" of wives by representing the women themselves as uttering these maxims and admitting that their function is self-denial--that woman is altogether an inferior and contemptible being. "How strange it is,"

exclaims Andromache,

"that, though some G.o.d has devised cures for mortals against the venom of reptiles, no man ever yet hath discovered aught to cure a woman's venom, which is far worse than viper's sting or scorching flame; so terrible a curse are we to mankind."

Hermione declares:

"Oh! never, never--this truth will I repeat--should men of sense, who have wives, allow women-folks to visit them in their homes, for they teach them mischief; one, to gain some private end, helps to corrupt their honor; another having made a slip herself, wants a companion in misfortune, while many are wantons; and hence it is men's houses are tainted. Wherefore keep strict guard upon the portals of your houses with bolts and bars."

Bolts and bars were what the gallant Greek men kept their wives under, hence this custom too is here slyly justified out of a woman's mouth.

And thus it goes on throughout the pages of Euripides. Iphigenia, in one of the two plays devoted to her, declares: "Not that I shrink from death, if die I must,--when I have saved thee; no, indeed! for a man's loss from his family is felt, while a woman's is of little moment." In the other she declares that one man is worth a myriad of Women--[Greek: heis g' anaer kreisson gunaikon murion]--wherefore, as soon as she realizes the situation at Aulis, she expresses her willingness to be immolated on the altar in order that the war against Troy may no longer be delayed by adverse minds. She had, however, come for a very different purpose, having been, with her queen mother, inveigled from home under the pretext that Achilles was to make her his wife. Achilles, however, knew as little of the plot as she did, and he is much surprised when the queen refers to his impending marriage. A modern poet would have seen here a splendid, seemingly inevitable, opportunity for a story of romantic love. He would have made Achilles fall in love at sight of Iphigenia and resolve to save her life, if need be at the cost of his own. What use does Euripides make of this opportunity? In his play Achilles does not see the girl till toward the close of the tragedy. He promises her unhappy mother that "never shall thy daughter, after being once called my bride, die by her father's hand;" But his reason for this is not love for a girl or a chivalrous att.i.tude toward women in distress, but offended vanity. "It is not to secure a bride that I have spoken thus," he exclaims; "there be maids unnumbered, eager to have my love--no! but King Agamemnon has put an insult on me; he should have asked my leave to use my name as a means to catch the child." In that case he "would never have refused" to further his fellow-soldiers' common interest by allowing the maiden to be sacrificed.

It is true that after Iphigenia has made her brave speech declaring that a woman's life was of no account anyway, and that she had resolved to die voluntarily for the army's sake, Achilles a.s.sumes a different att.i.tude, declaring,

"Some G.o.d was bent on blessing me, could I but have won thee for my wife.... But now that I have looked into thy n.o.ble nature, I feel still more a fond desire to win thee for my bride,"

and promising to protect her against the whole army. But what was it in Iphigenia that thus aroused his admiration? A feminine trait, such as would impress a modern romantic lover? Not in the least. He admired her because, like a man, she offered to lay down her life in behalf of the manly virtue of patriotism. Greek men admired women only in so far as they resembled men; a truth to which I shall recur on another page.

It would be foolish to chide Euripides for not making of this tragedy a story of romantic love; he was a Greek and could not lift himself above his times by a miracle. To him, as to all his contemporaries, love was not a sentiment, "an illumination of the senses by the soul,"

an impulse to n.o.ble actions, but a common appet.i.te, apt to become a species of madness, a disease. His _Hippolytus_ is a study of this disease, unpleasant but striking; it has for its subject the lawless pathologic love of Phaedra for her step-son. She is "seized with wild desire;" she "pines away in silence, moaning beneath love's cruel scourge;" she "wastes away on a bed of sickness;" denies herself all food, eager to reach death's cheerless bourn; a canker wastes her fading charms; she is "stricken by some demon's curse;" from her eyes the tear-drops stream, and for very shame she turns them away; on her soul "there rests a stain;" she knows that to yield to her "sickly pa.s.sion" would be "infamous;" yet she cannot suppress her wanton thoughts. Following the topsy-turvy, unchivalrous custom of the Greek poets, Euripides makes a woman--"a thing the world detests"--the victim of this mad pa.s.sion, opposing to it the coy resistance of a man, a devotee of the chaste Diana. And at the end he makes Phaedra, before committing suicide, write an infamous letter which, to save her reputation, dooms to a cruel death the innocent victim of her infatuation.

To us, this last touch alone would demonstrate the worldwide difference between l.u.s.t and love. But Euripides knows no such difference. To him there is only one kind of love, and it varies only in being moderate in some cases, excessive in others. Love is "at once the sweetest and the bitterest thing," according as it is one or the other of the two. Phaedra's nurse deplores her pa.s.sion, chiefly because of its violence. The chorus in _Medea_ (627 _seqq_.) sings:

"When in excess and past all limits Love doth come, he brings not glory or repute to man; but if the Cyprian queen in moderate might approach, no G.o.ddess is so full of charm as she."

And in _Iphigenia at Aulis_ the chorus declares:

"Happy they who find the G.o.ddess come in moderate might, sharing with self-restraint in Aphrodite's gift of marriage and enjoying calm and rest from frenzied pa.s.sions.... Be mine delight in moderate and hallowed [Greek: hosioi]

desires, and may I have a share in love, but shun excess therein."

To Euripides, as to all the Greeks, there is no difference in the loves of G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses or kings and queens on the one hand, and the lowest animals on the other. As the chorus sings in _Hippolytus_:

"O'er the land and booming deep, on golden pinion borne, flits the G.o.d of love, maddening the heart and beguiling the senses of all whom he attacks, savage whelps on mountains bred, ocean's monsters, creatures of this sun-warmed earth, and man; thine, O Cypris, thine alone, the sovereign power to rule them all."[304]

ROMANTIC LOVE, GREEK STYLE

The Greeks, instead of confuting my theory that romantic love is the last product of civilization, afford the most striking confirmation of it. While considering the love-affairs of Africans, Australians, and other uncivilized peoples, we were dealing with races whose lack of intelligence and delicacy in general made it natural to expect that their love, too, must be wanting in psychic qualities and refinement.

But the Greeks were of a different calibre. Not only their men of affairs--generals and statesmen--but their men of thought and feeling--philosophers and poets--were among the greatest the world has ever seen; yet these philosophers and poets--who, as everywhere, _must have been far above the emotional level of their countrymen in general_--knew nothing of romantic love. What makes this the more remarkable is that, so far as their minds were concerned, they were quite capable of experiencing such a feeling. Indeed, they were actually familiar with the psychic and altruistic ingredients of love; sympathy, devotion, self-sacrifice, affection, are sometimes manifested in their dramas and stories when dealing with the love between parents and children, brothers and sisters, or pairs of friends like Orestes and Pylades. And strangest of all, they actually had a kind of romantic love, which, except for one circ.u.mstance, is much like modern romantic love.

Euripides knew this kind of romantic love. Among the fragments that remain to us of his lost tragedies is one from _Dictys_, in which occurs this sentiment:

"He was my friend, and never did love lead me to folly or to Cypris. Yes, there is another kind of love, love for the soul, honorable, continent, and good. Surely men should have pa.s.sed a law that only the chaste and self-contained should love, and Cypris [Venus] should have been banished."

Now it is very interesting to note that Euripides was a friend of Socrates, who often declared that his philosophy was the science of love, and whose two pupils, Xenophon and Plato, elucidated this science in several of their works. In Xenophon's _Symposium_ Critobulus declares that he would rather be blind to everything else in the world than not to see his beloved; that he would rather _give_ all he had to the beloved than _receive_ twice the amount from another; rather be the beloved's slave than free alone; rather work and dare for the beloved than live alone in ease and security. For, he continues, the enthusiasm which beauty inspires in lovers

"makes them more generous, more eager to exert themselves, and more ambitious to overcome dangers, nay, it makes them purer and more continent, causing them to avoid even that to which the strongest appet.i.te urges them."

Several of Plato's dialogues, especially the _Symposium_ and _Phaedrus_, also bear witness to the fact that the Socratic conception of love resembled modern romantic love in its ideal of purity and its altruistic impulses. Especially notable in this respect are the speeches of Phaedrus and Pausanius in the _Symposium_ (175-78), in which love is declared to be the source of the greatest benefits to us. There can be no greater blessing to a young person, we read, than a virtuous lover. Such a lover would rather die a thousand deaths than do a cowardly or dishonorable deed; and love would make an inspired hero out of the veriest coward. "Love will make men dare to die for the beloved--love alone." "The actions of a lover have a grace which enn.o.bles them." "From this point of view a man fairly argues that in Athens to love and be loved is a very honorable thing." "There is a dishonor in being overcome by the love of money, or of wealth, or of political power." "For when the lover and beloved come together ...

the lover thinks that he is right in doing any service which he can to his gracious loving one." And in the _Republic_ (VI., 485): "He whose nature is amorous of anything cannot help loving all that belongs or is akin to the object of his affections."[305]

All this, as I have said, suggests romantic love, except for one circ.u.mstance--a fatal one, however. Modern romantic love is an ecstatic adoration of a woman by a man or of a man by a woman, whereas the romantic love described by Xenophon and Plato--so-called "Platonic love"--has nothing whatever to do with women. It is a pa.s.sionate, romantic friendship between men and boys, which (whether it really existed or not) the pupils of Socrates dilate upon as the only n.o.ble, exalted form of the pa.s.sion that is presided over by Eros. On this point they are absolutely explicit. Of course it would not do for a Greek philosopher to deny that a woman may perform the n.o.ble act of sacrificing her life for her husband--_that_ is her ideal function, as we have seen--so Alcestis is praised and rewarded for giving up her life; yet Plato tells us distinctly (_Symp_., 180) that this phase of feminine love is, after all, inferior to that which led Achilles to give his life for the purpose of avenging the death of his friend Patroclus.[306] What chiefly distinguishes the higher love from the lower is, in the opinion of the pupils of Socrates, purity; and this kind of love does not exist, in their opinion, between men and women.