Celestial Love Poetry
By Doug Talley
Last
month’s column cited poetry in which love is described as poison
or illness or death. How curious it is that poets and artists
have so frequently depicted the knife edge of love, and not
the aspect which brings peace and transforms the sword into
a ploughshare. Undoubtedly, pain is easier to write about than
joy, and in this world especially, where pain is so prevalent,
we have developed a macabre fascination with sorrow and despair.
Readers of Dante seem to prefer the punishments of the Inferno
and the Purgatorio to the rewards of the Paradiso.
The first two books of his Divine Comedy are more frequently
translated in this age than the third, suggesting again that
pain more readily lends itself to words than does joy.
Even
when the poet treats love as a positive force, it is remarkable
how rare the setting for such love is a solid marriage. For
its relative rarity in classical literature, the idea of a rich
and satisfying marriage must prove a boring subject. More poets
have written about their mistresses than their wives. The ancients,
at least, would have occasion to write an epithalamium, but
there are very few poems in the classical canon about the steady
love of a seasoned marriage. A few exceptions follow.
Love as
Friendship
Ausonius
was a native of Bordeaux born sometime around 310 A.D. He was
a country gentleman, a scholar, and a tutor of Gratian, the
son of an emperor, who in gratitude later made him consul of
Rome. When the emperor was assassinated in 383 A.D. Ausonius
returned to the calm and peace of his vineyard in Bordeaux.
He wrote letters to his friends, and poetry, praising his apples
and lamenting his verses with light-hearted gentleness. The
wife of his youth died after a few years of marriage, but not
before leaving him the comfort of children. He had written
her a tender lyric in life, and thirty-six years later was still
writing of her. Her early demise made the first lyric all the
more poignant and ironic:
Uxor, vivamusque ut viximus et teneamus
Nomina,
quae primo sumpsimus in thalamo:
Nec ferat ulla dies, ut commutemur in aevo,
Quin tibi sim juvenis tuque puella mihi.
Nestore sim quamvis provectior aemulaque annis
Vincas Cumanam tu quoque Deiphoben,
Nos ignoramus quid sit matura senectus.
Scire aevi meritum, non numerare decet.
My wife, let us live as in the past and keep
The names we first took in marriage.
Neither let time transform us in old age,
But rather make me always your young lover
And
you always my sweetheart. Though I grow
More advanced in years than Nestor
And
you rival and surpass the Cumaean Sybil,
Let us forget what it is to be ripe and old.
Age
should tally, not years, but their bounty alone.
Love as
an Anchor
William
Shakespeare wrote repeatedly about the ill effects of love and
in Othello authored probably the greatest tragedy ever
known of marriage destroyed by jealousy. Shakespeare was never
converted to the simplicity of ideals; his genius instead ranged
over every conceivable human complexity. And yet on one occasion
at least he wrote convincingly of the ideal of constancy, of
the purity and virtue of love anchored in some form of marriage:
116
Let
me not to the marriage of true mind
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
Oh no! It is an ever-fixèd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken.
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool,
though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come.
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
This
is good doctrine, a statement of belief as salutary as fresh
air, and all the more compelling coming from the same wise heart
that articulated the sorrows of Romeo and Juliet and Othello
and Desdemona.
Love as
Gentle Excitement
Elizabeth
Barrett, who married the poet Robert Browning, has fallen out
of modern favor, although by earlier judgments she wrote a sonnet
sequence second only to Shakespeare’s. The literary critic
Harold Bloom deemed her too transparent, a poet gushing with
sincerity merely. Browning is sincere, to be sure, but that
does not render her poetry necessarily naïve or shallow. At
her best, she opens windows to an intriguing metaphysical world,
searching what can be known beyond sight. These are among her
most compelling sonnets:
XXIV
Let the world’s sharpness like a clasping knife
Shut in upon itself and do no harm
In this close hand of Love, now soft and warm,
And let us hear no sound of human strife
After the click of the shutting. Life to life –
I lean upon thee, Dear, without alarm,
And feel as safe as guarded by a charm
Against the stab of worldlings, who if rife
Are weak to injure. Very whitely still
The lilies of our lives may reassure
Their blossoms from their roots, accessible
Alone to heavenly dews that drop not fewer;
Growing straight, out of man’s reach, on the hill.
God only, who made us rich, can make us poor.
XLIII
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, – I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! – and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
To
Browning love is a sanctuary worth seeking – it rescued her
from a difficult childhood – but there are riches there – “blossoms
out of man’s reach” – to be found only by revelation when the
soul is reaching beyond the “ends of being” and “feeling out
of sight”. This suggests a type of love, which is not an accident
(and certainly not a fever), but rather a labor consistent with,
and in harmony with, the effort for virtue when we “strive for
Right and “turn from praise”. If her work is somewhat uneven,
for every sonnet given over to the ecstasy of “swooning”, she
offers another sonnet tempered with that illumination given
only in “quiet need”. These are the poems that save her work
from being merely sincere, or overly sentimental. They speak
of a gentle spiritual excitement known primarily to those who
persist in married love and who expect a greater consummation
for their labor after death. They are worth preserving for
these reasons alone.
Love as
Sublime Venture
Perhaps
there are so few poems addressing the exalting nature of married
love, because there are so few poets who have experienced it,
or who believe in it. With the stunning revelation of the Restoration,
that marriage is, in fact, designed to be eternal, a new world
of poetic possibility has opened to the poet. It remains to
be seen whether anyone will venture to explore it. The poets
of the early Italian Renaissance offered a foundation to build
upon. They continued the courtly tradition of troubadours whose
songs extolled the dignity and spirituality of passionate love.
The following poem by Giacomo da Lentini, who lived during the
13th century and is considered the inventor of the
Italian sonnet, suggests more of the glory of eternal marriage
than perhaps any other sonnet:
Io m’aggio posto in core a Dio servire,
com’io potesse gire in paradiso,
lo santo loco, ch’aggio audito dire
si mantiene sollazo, gioco, e riso.
Sanza
mia donna non vi vorria gire,
quella c’à blonda testa e clara viso,
chè sanza lei non poteria gaudire,
estando de la mia donna diviso.
Ma no lo dico a tale intendimento
perch’io peccato ci volesse fare,
se non veder lo suo bel portamento,
lo bel viso e lo morbido sguardare:
chè lo mi terria in gran consolamento,
veggendo la mia donna in gloria stare.
I have set my heart to serve God
that I might go to Paradise, the holy land,
where, I have heard tell, life is full
of pleasure and amusement and laughter.
But
I do not wish to go without my lady
and her radiant features and fair hair,
for without her I could not rejoice,
being from my lady separated.
This I do not declare, however, with intent
that I would desire therefore to commit a sin,
if I did not see her beautiful demeanor,
her lovely countenance and soft gaze,
but rather that I might have the consolation
of witnessing my lady in glory raised.
There
is transcendent subject matter here, folded within the concept
of eternal marriage, which poets have barely scratched. The
work of a lasting, celestial literature has only just begun,
as Thoreau once intimated:
[S]uch is the character of that morrow which mere lapse of time
can never make to dawn. The light which puts out our eyes is
darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake.
There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.
