EROTICISM IN LIFE

I

Psychology has in recent years investigated the unconscious day dreams which are now recognised as part of our imaginative life. No matter how religious or moral we may be, erotic fancies are always with us. This mental life has often been described in mediÆval literature in the accounts of sensuous visions which tempted saints. The authors who aimed at inculcating moral and religious lessons thus gave vent to their own erotic fancies in the alluring and enticing verbal pictures they drew. Many instances thus appear in puritanical and ascetic literature, of immorality and exhibitionism.

We are learning to deal directly with a phase of our lives, whose influence upon our happiness can scarcely be overestimated. We must first admit the reality of the fantasies that occupy so much of our existence. Out of them bloom as a flower the emotions which are associated with the noblest sentiments in human nature—love. How these fancies may be sublimated into higher purposes, like beautiful deeds and works of art, how they may be directed into the channels of love, how they may be partly gratified without impairing the finer instincts of man, are problems which are being made the subject of serious study. It is also being realised that these fancies increase in vividness, number and variety where, for economic and conventional reasons, means of normal love life are cut off. It is also being admitted that much of the mental misery and physical debility of many people is due to the absurd asceticism forced upon us in sex matters by our modern civilisation.

We must learn to discuss, in a sincere manner, the nature and tendencies of the erotic in our lives. Scientists have the privilege of speaking openly on the subject; many literary men who have claimed the same freedom have used it, however, to evolve pornographic works for commercial purposes. Yet no literary man to-day would be permitted to discuss sexual questions with the frankness of Montaigne in his essay "Upon Some Verses of Virgil."

Let us examine the word "erotic" itself. Unfortunately it has assumed an unsavoury meaning, although it means "related to love" and is derived from the Greek word "eros"—love. It has been used to designate the perverse and the immoral in sex matters; it has been made synonymous with lust, abnormality, excess and every unpleasant feature in regard to sex matters. Pater once complained that he did not like the use of the word "hedonism" because of the misapprehension created in the minds of people who did not understand Greek. The same objection may be brought against the use of the word "eroticism." Properly speaking all love poetry is erotic poetry; in fact the greatness of poetry and literature is its eroticism, for they are most true then to life, which is largely erotic. To call a great poet like Paul Verlaine erotic is a compliment, not a disparagement. Nor is he nearly as erotic as the author of The Song of Songs. Since there is no word in English to specify love interest in its widest sense, we must cling to the use of the words "erotic" and "eroticism." We should restore to the word "eroticism" its original and nobler meaning.

Any literary work that lays an emphasis on the part played by love in our lives is erotic. Literature could not exist without dwelling on the love interest. The stories of Jacob and Rachel, of Ruth, and of David and Uriah's wife, are all beautiful examples of eroticism in the Bible.

Man is averse to admitting certain facts about his mental love life. People are often shocked by the immorality of the dreams which reveal their unconscious lives. A man, however, will often confess in intimate circles the existence of sensuous fancies within himself. People show indications in many ways of the parts played by the love and sex interests in their mental lives. Some witness suggestive plays; others indulge in telling and hearing lewd jests, indecent witticisms and improper stories. Any one who has listened to the conversation of men in the club or smoker, in the factory or office, in the bar-room or sitting room, cannot be blind to the fact that the erotic interests rule us far more than we wish to admit. He who thinks that the wealthy are too much absorbed in accumulating more riches and the poor too much worn out by the struggle for existence, to be occupied with erotic fancies, is mistaken. A day spent in a factory or an evening at a club will show one that the millionaire and the pauper are brothers under their skins.

Man's nature is erotic to its very foundations; he was erotic, in infancy, in his own way; he carries within him all the erotic instincts of millions of ancestors for thousands of years back. His eroticism extends to many sensitive areas of his body like his lips, the palms of his hands, his chest and back. Eroticism often is hidden in an interest in many subjects which are apparently unrelated to it, an interest which is a compensation to one for his lack of love. Man's first real combined physical and spiritual suffering commences at puberty when he hears new and strange voices in his soul calling for a reply to which there is no answer. He discovers that society is so constituted that he must spend his youth, when the passions are at their height, in unnaturally curbing or misdirecting them. He often discovers later that even marriage is not a full satisfaction for his love instincts.

Though man has refused to concede the importance that the erotic has played in his life, his fellow men who were poets spoke for him. They did not conceal the truth, for the words in which their emotions were couched betrayed them. Often the people persecuted their spokesman for uttering the truth, though they delighted in secretly reading his books.

The "purist" to-day is often the one who revels (in private) most in obscene literature; while many people find in such literature the only means they have of indulging their ungratified love life. Many book-sellers make a specialty of furnishing pornographic books and pictures to many rouÉs and celibates.

The mere interest, however, in a virile and unhypocritical literary work like a novel by Fielding or Smollett, does not indicate abnormal eroticism in the reader. In fact, it is often a sign of some unhealthy tendency or starvation in human nature when a person shrinks from honest and frank literature. The school-boy or college student who reads in stealth De Foe's novel Roxana, instead of Robinson Crusoe, who turns from his Greek version of Aristophanes to the translation of Lysistrata, or who wearies of Chaucer's Prologue to the Canterbury Tales and tries to read in spite of the old English "The Miller's Tale" or "The Reeve's Tale," is not an immoral youngster. The reader who not having read these works may look them up (now that they have been mentioned) is not therefore an indecent or abnormal person. The school-boy's as well as the reader's interest is each additional proof of the erotic in us.

The real lover of literature who has read most of the Latin poets, English dramatists and French novels is soon in the position where the "erotic" portions do not assume for him the vast importance they have for the reader who merely hunts them out and takes no interest in any other passages but these.

Bayle, whose Dictionary abounds in many risquÉ stories, defended himself in an excellent essay called "Explanation Concerning Obscenities." He said there very aptly:

"If any one was so great a lover of purity, as to wish not only that no immodest desire should arise in his mind, but also that his imagination should be constantly free from every obscene idea, he could not attain his end without losing his eyes and his ears, and the remembrance of many things which he could not choose but see and hear. Such a perfection could not be hoped for, whilst we see men and beasts, and know the significance of certain words that make a necessary part of our language. It is not in our power to have, or not to have, certain ideas, when certain objects strike our senses; they are imprinted in our imagination whether we will or not. Chastity is not endangered by them, provided we don't grow fond of them."

II

Men may be engaged in philanthropic or political movements; they may love their work intensely; they may be consummating an ambition; they may make sacrifices in performing their duties; but withal their minds are pondering on some particular woman, or on women in general. We hold imaginary conversations with women we have known, whom we know, or whom we would like to know. We think about the feminine faces we meet in the streets, and experience a passing melancholy because we are unacquainted with some of the girls we see. Undue interest in the opposite sex is of course also characteristic of women. They adorn their persons and choose their styles in dress with the object of physically attracting the male.

Those who are unhappy in love or marriage do not find themselves compensated for their misfortune by the fact that they may possess great wealth, or have a name that is respected or crowned with glory. The careers of Lord Nelson and Parnell show that national saviours and leaders may be engulfed in a grand passion whose fortunate outcome may be to them possibly as momentous as the welfare of their country. The fact that Anthony was a general on whose move the saving of his country depended, did not make him the less interested in Cleopatra. The fact that Abelard was a philosopher did not make him hold his studies higher than he did Heloise. There was really nothing abnormal about these men. Modern writers have been attracted to them. Shakespeare chose Anthony as the hero of his play, and Pope's famous Epistle shows his interest in Abelard. The amorous adventures of great military leaders like CÆsar and Napoleon are well known.

The love affairs of many literary men make us almost conclude that they were more concerned about their loves than their art. Recall Stendhal's famous cry about his perishing for want of love or Balzac's eternal ambition to be famous and to be loved. Goethe once exclaimed that the only person who was happy was he who was fortunate in his domestic affairs. He made every one of his love affairs the basis of some poem, novel or play; and not to know anything about his love for Charlotte Buff, or Frederica or Lili, or Frau von Stein, is to limit oneself in being able to appreciate Goethe, in being able to understand Werther, Faust, Wilhelm Meister and other works by him.

And we love these poets and writers who naÏvely confessed that they did not care for aught in life but love, and who sang of their troubles frankly. Who does not find Catullus and Tibullus sweet? Who that has read them does not cherish the lyrical cries of the Troubadours or the poems of the Chinese poets of the T'ang period? Can any one help thinking of Burns or De Musset without affection and sympathy? And there are many who would not surrender the great body of sonnets and lyrics of England's poets for her colonies. And why is this? Because these poets are ourselves speaking for us and saying what we feel but are unable to express. The cry of the mediÆval Persian or Japanese poet is our own cry. His joy is ours and he is we and we are he. Once a poem has left its author's pen it is no longer a mere personal record, but becomes an enduring monument of art in which millions of men discern a grief or gladness that they too have known. In a measure, literature is more real and eternal than life itself. It makes the past live and it holds a soul that can sway millions of people for ever and ever. As Cicero said in his speech for Archias the poet: "If the Iliad had not existed, the same tomb which covered Achilles' body would also have buried his renown."

III

A comprehension of the erotic in ourselves will help us discern many false ideals connected with the treatment of love in literature. I refer especially to the ideal of a first and only love (regarded by the lover usually as Platonic) which has been spread by deceptive authors and which has produced much affectation and insincerity in literature.

In real life people do not generally marry their first loves; they often cherish contempt for persons once loved; they do not as a rule go through life always claiming that they loved once and that they would never love again. On the contrary, they usually marry and settle down and forget about their early affairs, although in most cases these have lasting influence.

If poets, however, were to speak in a prosaic manner of their early loves, their works would be less admired. The public loves loyalty and hence it encourages love literature that is over-sentimental and false. No doubt when a man contracts an unhappy marriage or does not succeed in winning love later in life he looks back upon an early love affair with tenderness. And while it is true that the past always rules us we are often satisfied as to the manner in which it shaped our futures. Robert Browning had an early sad love affair which influenced his Pauline and indeed many of his later lyrics, but he was happy in the love of the poetess Elizabeth Barrett. Mark Twain's married life was ideal and happy, in spite of an early love affair of his which ended because of the accidental non-delivery of a letter. On the other hand Byron, who was unhappily married, cherished the love of his early sweetheart Mary Chaworth for over twenty years. Strangely and unjustly enough he has been accused of insincerity and posing, and most critics refuse to admit that many of his later love poems were written to her.

There are two conspicuous instances in literature where a poet's love was thought by himself to have lasted for life, the cases of Dante and Petrarch. If the loves of these Italians for their mistresses are strictly investigated, I think it will be discovered that they have hoodwinked the world about their loves. They wrote their best poems about their beloved ones, after these had died, and death often makes a man unwittingly write falsely about the past. Pfister tells us in his Psychoanalytic Method of a diseased man of fifty who lived apart from his wife in the same house, and who treated her brutally. After her death he always insisted that they were an ideal couple. Pfister relates another story of a widower who recalled only the happy part of his unhappy married life, and thought he never could marry again.

There has always been a suspicion among some people about the durability of the love felt by Dante and Petrarch, for Beatrice and Laura respectively. Symonds says of Laura: "Though we believe in the reality of Laura, we derive no clear conception either of her person or her character. She is not so much a woman as woman in the abstract.... The Canzoniere is therefore one long melodious monotony poured from the poet's soul, with the indefinite form of a beautiful woman seated in a lovely landscape." (EncyclopÆdia Britannica, Vol. XXI, P. 314.)

Petrarch was twenty-three years old in 1327 when he met Laura. She died twenty-one years later. Petrarch survived her twenty-six years, dying in 1374. Petrarch, it should be mentioned, had two illegitimate children born by a mistress before Laura's death; they were later legitimised. The poet probably at times felt the pangs of disprised love to the extent that he claims he did in his sonnets; he may have experienced the grief he describes he suffered in his sonnets. But that he was in the constant throes of love for her for forty-seven years is doubtful. He probably was projecting that ideal of faithful love to please the public; he offered himself as the type of hero the public likes; a faithful, steadfast lover. It was this kind of ideal that made so great a genius like Thomas Hardy gratify the public taste by portraying so unswerving a lover as Gabriel Oak in Far From the Madding Crowd.

The case of Dante is an even more noteworthy example of literary affectation and self-delusion. His love is the most astonishing in history. He and Beatrice were each only nine years old when he saw her. He probably saw her once after that. She died in 1290, when the poet was twenty-five years old. Great as Dante's sorrow was, it did not prevent him from marrying two years later. Dante makes Beatrice the heroine of his Divine Comedy, or at least of the Paradiso. His platonic affection for her is so unnatural that one feels he was doing what Petrarch did, unconsciously creating an ideal and depicting as permanent an emotion, that had really brief sway.

Although it is true that their past love affairs may have ruled them for life, neither Dante nor Petrarch were the faithful lovers they would have us believe they were.