The Development Of The Feeling For Nature In The Middle Ages And Modern Times Part 13

Now in the mild springtime Flora opens the lap which the cold frost had locked in cruel time of winter; the zephyr with gentle murmur cometh with the spring; the grove is clad in leaves. The nightingale is singing, the fields are gay with divers hues. It is sweet to walk in the wooded glens, it is sweeter to pluck the lily with the rose, it is sweetest of all to sport with a lovely maiden.

Another makes a similar confession, for Nature and amorous pa.s.sion are the two strings of these lyres:

Beneath the pleasant foliage of a tree 'tis sweet to rest, while the nightingale sings her plaintive song; sweeter still, to sport in the gra.s.s with a fair maiden.... O, to what changeful moods is the heart of the lover p.r.o.ne! As the vessel that wanders o'er the waves without an anchor, so doth Love's uncertain warfare toss 'twixt fear and hope.

The beauties of Nature are drawn upon to describe the fair maiden; her eyes are compared to stars, her colour to lilies and snow, her mouth to a rose, her kiss 'doth rend in sunder all the clouds of care.'

In the flowery season I sat beneath a shady tree while the birds sang in the groves ... and listened to my Thisbe's talk, the talk I love and long for; and we spoke of the sweet interchange of love, and in the doubtful balance of the mind wanton love and chast.i.ty were wavering.

I have seen the bright green of flowers, I have seen the flower of flowers, I have seen the rose of May; I have seen the star that is brighter than all other, that is glorious and fair above all other, through whom may I ever spend my life in love.

On such a theme the poet rings endless changes. The most charming is the poem _Phyllis and Flora_. Actual landscape is not given, but details are treated with freshness and care:

In the flowery season of the year, under a sky serene, while the earth's lap was painted with many colours, when the messenger of Aurora had put to flight the stars, sleep left the eyes of Phyllis and of Flora, two maidens whose beauty answered to the morning light. The breeze of spring was gently whispering, the place was green and gay with gra.s.s, and in the gra.s.s itself there flowed a living brook that played and babbled as it went. And that the sun's heat might not harm the maidens, near the stream there was a spreading pine, decked with leaves and spreading far its interweaving branches, nor could the heat penetrate from without. The maidens sat, the gra.s.s supplied the seat.... They intend to go to Love's Paradise: at the entrance of the grove a rivulet murmurs; the breeze is fragrant with myrrh and balsam; they hear the music of a hundred timbrels and lutes. All the notes of the birds resound in all their fulness; they hear the sweet and pleasant song of the blackbird, the garrulous lark, the turtle and the nightingale, etc.... He who stayed there would become immortal; every tree there rejoices in its own fruit; the ways are scented with myrrh and cinnamon and amomum; the master could be forced out of his house.

The first to shew proof of a deepening effect of Nature on the human spirit was Dante.

Dante and Petrarch elaborated the h.e.l.lenistic feeling for Nature; hence the further course of the Renaissance displayed all its elements, but with increased subjectivity and individuality.

No one, since the days of h.e.l.lenism, had climbed mountains for the sake of the view--Dante was the first to do it. And although, in ranging heaven, earth, h.e.l.l, and paradise in the _Divina Commedia_, he rarely described real Nature, and then mostly in comparisons; yet, as Humboldt pointed out, how incomparably in a few vigorous lines he wakens the sense of the morning airs and the light on the distant sea in the first canto of Purgatorio:

The dawn was vanquishing the matin hour, Which fled before it,-so that from afar I recognized the trembling of the sea.

And how vivid this is:

The air Impregnate changed to water. Fell the rain: And to the fosses came all that the land Contain'd not, and, as mightiest streams are wont, To the great river with such headlong sweep Rush'd, that naught stayed its course.

Through that celestial forest, whose thick shade With lively greenness the new-springing day Attempered, eager now to roam and search Its limits round, forthwith I left the bank; Along the champaign leisurely my way Pursuing, o'er the ground that on all sides Delicious odour breathed. A pleasant air, That intermitted never, never veered, Smote on my temples gently, as a wind Of softest influence, at which the sprays, Obedient all, lean'd trembling to that part Where first the holy mountain casts his shade; Yet were not so disordered; but that still Upon their top the feather'd quiristers Applied their wonted art, and with full joy Welcomed those hours of prime, and warbled shrill Amid the leaves, that to their jocund lays Kept tenour; even as from branch to branch Along the piny forests on the sh.o.r.e Of Chia.s.si rolls the gathering melody, When Eolus hath from his cavern loosed The dripping south. Already had my steps, Tho' slow, so far into that ancient wood Transported me, I could not ken the place Where I had enter'd; when behold! my path Was bounded by a rill, which to the left With little rippling waters bent the gra.s.s That issued from its brink.

and this of the heavenly Paradise:

I looked, And, in the likeness of a river, saw Light flowing, from whose amber-seeming waves Flash'd up effulgence, as they glided on 'Twixt banks, on either side, painted with spring, Incredible how fair; and, from the tide, There, ever and anon outstarting, flew Sparkles instinct with life; and in the flowers Did set them, like to rubies chased in gold; Then, as if drunk with odours, plunged again Into the wondrous flood, from which, as one Re-entered, still another rose.

His numerous comparisons conjure up whole scenes, perfect in truth to Nature, and shewing a keen and widely ranging eye. For example:

Bellowing, there groaned A noise, as of a sea in tempest torn By warring winds.

(Inferno.)

O'er better waves to steer her rapid course The light bark of my genius lifts the sail, Well pleased to leave so cruel sea behind.

(Purgatorio.)

All ye, who in small bark have following sail'd, Eager to listen on the adventurous track Of my proud keel, that singing cuts her way.

(Paradiso.)

As sails full spread and bellying with the wind Drop suddenly collapsed, if the mast split, So to the ground down dropp'd the cruel fiend.

(Inferno.)

As, near upon the hour of dawn, Through the thick vapours Mars with fiery beam Glares down in west, over the ocean floor.

(Purgatorio.)

As 'fore the sun That weighs our vision down, and veils his form In light transcendent, thus my virtue fail'd Unequal. (Purgatorio.)

As sunshine cheers Limbs numb'd by nightly cold, e'en thus my look Unloosed her tongue.

And now there came o'er the perturbed waves, Loud crashing, terrible, a sound that made Either sh.o.r.e tremble, as if of a wind Impetuous, from conflicting vapours sprung, That, 'gainst some forest driving all his might, Plucks off the branches, beats them down, and hurls Afar; then, onward pressing, proudly sweeps His whirlwind rage, while beasts and shepherds fly.

(Inferno.)

As florets, by the frosty air of night Bent down and closed, when day has blanch'd their leaves Rise all unfolded on their spiry stems, So was my fainting vigour new restored.

(Inferno.)

As fall off the light autumnal leaves, One still another following, till the bough Strews all its honours on the earth beneath.

(Inferno.)

Bees, dolphins, rays of sunlight, snow, starlings, doves, frogs, a bull, falcons, fishes, larks, and rooks are all used, generally with characteristic touches of detail.

Specially tender is this:

E'en as the bird, who 'mid the leafy bower Has, in her nest, sat darkling through the night With her sweet brood; impatient to descry Their wished looks, and to bring home their food, In the fond quest, unconscious of her toil;

She, of the time prevenient, on the spray That overhangs their couch, with wakeful gaze Expects the sun, nor, ever, till the dawn Removeth from the east her eager ken, So stood the dame erect.

The most important forward step was made by Petrarch, and it is strange that this escaped Humboldt in his famous sketch in the second volume of _Cosmos_, as well as his commentator Schaller, and Friedlander.

For when we turn from h.e.l.lenism to Petrarch, it does not seem as if many centuries lay between; but rather as if notes first struck in the one had just blended into distinct harmony in the other.

The modern spirit arose from a union of the genius of the Italian people of the thirteenth century with antiquity, and the feeling for Nature had a share in the wider culture, both as to sentimentality and grasp of scenery. Cla.s.sic and modern joined hands in Petrarch.

Many h.e.l.lenic motives handed on by Roman poets reappear in his poetry, but always with that something in addition of which antiquity shewed but a trace--the modern subjectivity and individuality. It was the change from early bud to full blossom. He was one of the first to deserve the name of modern--modern, that is, in his whole feeling and mode of thought, in his sentimentality and his melancholy, and in the fact that 'more than most before and after him, he tried to know himself and to hand on to others what he knew.' (Geiger.) It is an appropriate remark of Hettner's, that the phrase, 'he has discovered his heart,' might serve as a motto for Petrarch's songs and sonnets.

He knew that he had that sentimental disorder which he called 'acedia,' and wished to be rid of it. This word has a history of its own. To the Greeks, to Apollonius, for instance,[4] it meant carelessness, indifference; and, joined with the genitive [Greek: nooio]--that is, of the mind--it meant, according to the scholiasts, as much as [Greek: lype] (Betrubnis)--that is, distress or grief. In the Middle Ages it became 'dislike of intellect so far as that is a divine gift'--that disease of the cloister which a monkish chronicler defined as 'a sadness or loathing and an immoderate distress of mind, caused by mental confusion, through which happiness of mind was destroyed, and the mind thrown back upon itself as from an abyss of despair.'

To Dante it meant the state--

Sad In the sweet air, made gladsome by the sun,

distaste for the good and beautiful.

The modern meaning which it took with Petrarch is well defined by Geiger as being neither ecclesiastic nor secular sin,[5] but

Entirely human and peculiar to the cleverest--the battle between reality and seeming, the attempt to people the arid wastes of the commonplace with philosophic thought--the unhappiness and despair that arise from comparing the unconcern of the majority with one's own painful unrest, from the knowledge that the results of striving do not express the effort made--that human life is but a ceaseless and unworthy rotation, in which the bad are always to the fore, and the good fall behind ... as pessimism, melancholy, world pain (Weltschmerz)--that tormenting feeling which mocks all attempt at definition, and is too vitally connected with erring and striving human nature to be curable--that longing at once for human fellowship and solitude, for active work and a life of contemplation.

Petrarch knew too the pleasure of sadness, what Goethe called 'Wonne der Wehmuth,' the _dolendi voluptas._

Lo, what new pleasure human wits devise!

For oftentimes one loves Whatever new thing moves The sighs, that will in closest order go; And I'm of those whom sorrowing behoves; And that with some success I labour, you may guess, When eyes with tears, and heart is brimmed with woe.

In Sonnet 190:

My chiefest pleasure now is making moan.

Oh world, oh fruitless thought, Oh luck, my luck, who'st led me thus for spite!...