II. MONOPOLISM Whenever she speaks, my ravished ear No other voice but hers can hear, No other wit but hers approve: Tell me, my heart, if this be love? -Lyttleton. Every lover of nature must have noticed how the sun monopolizes the attention of flowers and leaves. Twist and turn them whichever way you please, on returning afterward you will find them all facing the beloved sun again with their bright corolles and glossy surface. Romantic love exacts a similar monopoly of its devotees. Be their feelings as various, their thoughts as numerous, as the flowers in a garden, the leaves in a forest, they will always be turned toward the beloved one. JULIET AND NOTHING BUT JULIET A man may have several intimate friends, and a mother may dote on a dozen or more children with equal affection; but romantic love is a monopolist, absolutely exclusive of all participation and rivalry. A genuine Romeo wants Juliet, the whole of Juliet, and nothing but Juliet. She monopolizes his thoughts by day, his dreams at night; her image blends with everything he sees, her voice with everything he hears. His imagination is a lens which gathers together all the light and heat of a giant world and focuses them on one brunette or blonde. He is a miser, who begrudges every smile, every look she bestows on others, and if he had his own way he would sail with her to-day to a desert island and change their names to Mr. and Mrs. Robinson Crusoe. This is not fanciful hyperbole, but a plain statement in prose of a psychological truth. The poets did not exaggerate when they penned such sentiments as these: She was his life, The ocean to the river of his thoughts, Thou art my life, my love, my heart, The very eyes of me, And hast command of every part, To live and die for thee.-Herrick. Give me but what that ribband bound, Take all the rest the world goes round.- Waller. But I am tied to very thee By every thought I have; Thy heart I only crave.-Sedley. I see her in the dewy flowers, There's not a bonnie flower that springs But minds me o' my Jean.- Burns. For nothing this wide universe I call Save thou, my rose: in it thou art my all.--Shakspere. Like Alexander I will reign, And I will reign alone, My thoughts shall evermore disdain A rival on my throne.-James Graham. Love, well thou know'st no partnerships allows. O that the desert were my dwelling-place, That I might all forget the human race And, hating no one, love but only her.-Byron. BUTTERFLY LOVE The imperative desire for an absolute monopoly of one chosen girl, body and soul-and one only-is an essential, invariable ingredient of romantic love. Sensual love, on the contrary, aims rather at a monopoly of all attractive women —or at least as many as possible. Sensual love is not an exclusive passion for one; it is a fickle feeling which, like a giddy butterfly, flits from flower to flower, forgetting the fragrance of the lily it left a moment ago in the sweet honey of the clover it enjoys at this moment. The Persian poet Sadi, says (Bustan, 12), "Choose a fresh wife every spring or New Year's Day; for the almanack of last year is good for nothing." Anacreon interprets Greek love for us when he sings: "Can'st count the leaves in a forest, the waves in the sea? Then tell me how oft I have loved. Twenty girls in Athens, and fifteen more besides; add to these whole bevies in Corinth, and from Lesbos to Ionia, from Caria and from Rhodos, two thousand sweethearts more. Two thousand did I say? That includes not those from Syros, from Kanobus, from Creta's cities, where Eros rules alone, nor those from Gadeira, from Bactria, from India-girls for whom I burn.” Lucian vies with Anacreon when he makes Theomestus (Dial. Amor.) exclaim: "Sooner can'st thou number the waves of the sea and the snowflakes falling from the sky than my loves. One succeeds another, and the new one comes on before the old is off." We call such a thing libertinism, not love. The Greeks had not the name of Don Juan, yet Don Juan was their ideal both for men and for the gods they made in the image of man. Homer makes the king of gods tell his own. spouse (who listens without offence) of his diverse love-affairs (Iliad, xiv., 317-327). Thirteen centuries after Homer the Greek poet Nonnus gives (Atovvσtaká, vii.) a catalogue of twelve of Zeus's amours; and we know from other sources (e.g., Hygin, fab., 155) that these accounts are far from exhaustive. A complete list would match that yard-long document made for Don Juan by Leporello in Mozart's opera. A French writer has aptly called Jupiter the "Olympian Don Juan;" yet Apollo and most of the other gods might lay claim to the same title, for they are represented as equally amorous, sensual, and fickle; seeing no more wrong in deserting a woman they have made love to, than a bee sees in leaving a flower whose honey it has stolen. Temporarily, of course, both men and gods focus their interest on one woman-maybe quite ardently-and fiercely resent interference, as an angry bee is apt to sting when kept from the flower it has accidentally chosen; but that is a different thing from the monopolism of true love. ROMANTIC STORIES OF NON-ROMANTIC LOVE The romantic lover's dream is to marry one particular woman and her alone; the sensual lover's dream embraces several women, or many. The unromantic ideal of the ancient Hindoo is romantically illustrated in a story told in the Hitopadesa of a Brahman named Wedasarman. One evening someone made him a present of a dish of barley-meal. He carried it to the market hall and lay down in a corner near where a potter had stored his wares. Before going to sleep, the Brahman indulged in these pleasant reveries: "If I sell this dish of meal I shall probably get ten farthings for it. For that I can buy some of these pots, which I can sell again at a profit; thus my money will increase. Then I shall begin to trade in betel-nuts, dress-goods and other things, and thus I may bring my wealth up to a hundred thousand. With that I shall be able to marry four wives, and to the youngest and prettiest of them I shall give my tenderest love. How the others will be tortured by jealousy! But just let them dare to quarrel. They shall know my wrath and feel my club!" With these words he laid about him with his club, and of course broke his own dish besides many of the potter's wares. The potter hearing the crash, ran to see what was the matter, and the Brahman was ignominiously thrown out of the hall. The polygamous imagination of the Hindoos runs riot in many of their stories. To give another instance: The Kathakoça, or Treasury of Stories (translated by C. H. Tawney, 34), includes an account of the adventures of King Kanchanapura, who had five hundred wives; and of Sanatkumara who beheld eight daughters of Mánavega and married them. Shortly afterward he married a beautiful lady and her sister. Then he conquered Vajravega and married one hundred maidens. Hindoo books assure us that women, unless restrained, are no better than men. We read in the same Hitopadesa that they are like cows-always searching for new herbs in the meadows to graze on. In polyandrous communities the women make good use of their opportunities. Dalton, in his book on the wild tribes of Bengal, tells this quaint story (36) : "A very pretty Dophla girl once came into the station of Luckimpur, threw herself at my feet and in most poetical language asked me to give her protection. She was the daughter of a chief and was sought in marriage and promised to a peer of her father who had many other wives. She would not submit to be one of many, and besides she loved and she eloped with her beloved. This was interesting and romantic. She was at the time in a very coarse travelling dress, but assured of protection she took fresh apparel and ornament from her basket and proceeded to array herself, and very pretty she looked as she combed and plaited her long hair and completed her toilette. In the meantime I had sent for the 'beloved,' who had kept in the background, and alas! how the romance was dispelled when a dual appeared! She had eloped with two men!" Every reader will laugh at this denouement, and that laugh is eloquent proof that in saying there can be no real love without absolute monopolism of one heart by another I simply formulated and emphasized a truth which we all feel instinctively. Dalton's tale also brings out very clearly the world-wide difference between a romantic love-story and a story of romantic love. Turning from the Old World to the New we find stories illustrating the same amusing disregard of amorous monopolism. Rink, in his book of Eskimo tales and traditions, cites a song which voices the reveries of a Greenland bachelor: "I am going to leave the country-in a large ship-for that sweet little woman. I'll try to get some beads-of those that look like boiled ones. Then when I've gone abroad-I shall return again. My nasty little relatives-I'll call them all to me and give them a good thrashing-with a big rope's end. Then I'll go to marry-taking two at once. That darling little creature shall only wear clothes of the spotted seal-skins, and the other little pet shall have clothes of the young hooded seals." |