I
The repression of the libido includes the damming and clogging up of all the emotional concomitants that go with sexual attraction and make up the feeling called love. Whenever then sex or libido is referred to in psychoanalysis the word has the widest meaning. The man who loves a woman with the greatest affection and passion, without gratifying these, suffers a repression of the libido, as well as the man who satisfies certain proclivities without feeling any tenderness or love for the woman. In the emotion felt towards the other sex called love, in which admiration, respect, self-sacrifice, tenderness and other finer feelings play a great part, there is consciously or unconsciously, however, the physical attraction. If this is totally absent the emotion cannot be called "love." What differentiates our feelings towards one of the opposite sex from those felt for one of the same sex (assuming there are no homosexual leanings) is the presence of this sexual interest. Love then must satisfy a man physically as well as psychically. It is a concentration of the libido upon a person of the opposite sex, accompanied by tender feelings.
Hence when we read the most chaste love poem, we see what is the underlying motive in the poet's unconscious. He may write with utter devotion to the loved one and express a wish to die for her, and though he says nothing about physical attraction, we all know that it is there in his unconscious. It is taken for granted that a man who writes a real love poem to a girl wants to enjoy her love. And when the poet complains because he is rejected or deceived, or of something interfering with the course of his love, we are aware also that his unconscious is grieved because his union is impeded or entirely precluded. The suffering is greater the more he loves, for his finer instincts, as well as his passion, are prevented from being fulfilled.
Let us take at random a few innocent poems and test the theory. There is Ben Jonson's well known toast, "Drink to me only with thine eyes." He tells how he sent Celia a rose wreath, that she breathed on it and sent it back to him.
"Since when it grows, and smells, I swear,
Not of itself but thee."
Odour is an important feature, it is well known, in sexual attraction. In this poem the poet, after having received the returned rose breathed upon by Celia, smells her perfume, which now submerges the natural fragrance of the rose. In other words the poet's unconscious says that he wishes to possess Celia physically. He is talking symbolically in the poem.
There is the song in Tennyson's "The Miller's Daughter," beginning "It is the miller's daughter." The poet says naïvely enough that he would like to be the jewel in her ear in order to touch her neck, the girdle about her waist ("I'd clasp it round so close and tight"), and the necklace upon her balmy bosom to fall and rise; "I would lie so light, so light." The unconscious sexual feelings here are only too apparent. The symbols of the earring, girdle and necklace are unmistakable. The poet is saying in a symbolical manner that he would possess the miller's daughter.
Moreover one may see the sex motive in poems where it does not seem to appear. If certain facts in an author's life are known, we may discern the unconscious love sentiments in poems where no mention seems to be made of them. Let me illustrate with a fine poem by Longfellow, the familiar "The Bridge." Take the lines
"How often, O how often,
I had wished that the ebbing tide
Would bear me away in its bosom
O'er the ocean wild and wide!
"For my heart was hot and restless,
And my life was full of care,
And the burden laid upon me
Seemed greater than I could bear.
"But now it has fallen from me, etc."
To the student of Longfellow, this poem speaks of the time he found it difficult to win the love of his second wife, Frances Appleton, love for whom he confessed in his novel Hyperion, where he drew her and himself. This story was published before she had as yet reciprocated his love. He married her July 13, 1843. He finished the poem October 9, 1845. At the end of this year he wrote in his diary that now he had love fulfilled and his soul was enriched with affection. He is therefore thinking of the time when he had no love and longed for it, and now that he has it, he is thinking of the love troubles of others. In the olden days he wanted to be carried away by the river Charles, for his long courtship, seemingly hopeless, made his heart hot and restless and his life full of care. So we see that in this poem the poet was thinking of something definite, relating to love (and hence also sex), though there is no mention of either in the poem.
It is well known that all love complaints are the cries of the Jack who cannot get his Jill; or who has lost the possibility of love happiness by desertion, deception or death.
Read that fine and pathetic Scotch ballad, beginning "O waly, waly up the bank." The girl (or woman) has been forsaken by her lover and expects to become a mother. She longs for death. She complains about the cruelty of love grown cold; she recalls the happy days. Her unconscious sentiment is that her lover will never give her spiritual happiness or satisfy her craving. Her life is empty. The poem was based on an actual occurrence. It contains all the despair of love that was once given and then withdrawn.
"O wherefore should I busk my head,
Or wherefore should I kame my hair?
"When we came in by Glasgow town
We were a comely sight to see;
My love was clad in the black velvet
And I myself in cramasie."
She does not want to dress herself gorgeously now as she has no lover. Among other great love wails by a woman are the old Saxon elegy "A Woman's Complaint" and the second Idyl of Theocritus.
All the pain of frustrated love is due to the repressing of the tender as well as of the physical emotions, to the damming up of the libido, which is love in its broadest sense.
Sometimes the poets tell us almost plainly their real loss, or suggest it in such a manner that we feel the thought has become conscious in the poem. Read in Tennyson's "Locksley Hall" the fifteen lines beginning, "Is it well to wish thee happy," and one can see that the victim is suffering because Amy is in another's embrace rather than in that of the singer's. He thinks with maddening thoughts of the clown she married.
"He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel forces,
Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse."
He calls sarcastically upon Amy to kiss her husband and take his hand. "He will answer to the purpose." The singer clearly shows his pain because he has been cheated out of physical pleasure.
When we come to the decadent poets, the loss is sung plainly. One of the most beautiful poems of this kind is Dowson's Cynara. The poem is frankly sexual. The poet, who was rejected by a restaurant keeper's daughter, tries to console himself with another woman for his loss. The words "I have been faithful to thee, Cynara, in my fashion" mean he loves her in others. He tries to satisfy himself partly by thinking he is with her while he is with another. It is a poem showing how a sexual repression seeks an outlet with some one who did not arouse it and how the poet forces himself to imagine that he is with the one who created it. The poem makes this clear, that a love poem is always a complaint that the libido is being dammed.
It is therefore true to say that even in the tenderest and sweetest love lyrics, like those of Burns and Shelley for instance, one sees the play of unconscious sexual forces. This fact does not make the poem any the less moral or the poet any the less pure.