Primitive Love and Love-Stories

by Henry T. Finck

This is true; but Anthon erred decidedly in saying that in the Greek story "vice is advocated by no sophistry." On the contrary, what makes this romance so peculiarly objectionable is that it is a master work of that kind of fiction which makes vice alluring under the sophistical veil of innocence. Longus knew very well that nothing is so tempting to libertines as purity and ignorant innocence; hence he made purity and ignorant innocence the pivot of his prurient story. Professor Rohde (516) has rudely torn the veil from his sly sophistry:

"The way in which Longus excites the sensual desires of the lovers by means of licentious experiments going always only to the verge of gratification, betrays an abominably hypocritical raffinement[331] which reveals in the most disagreeable manner that the naïveté of this idyllist is a premeditated artifice and he himself nothing but a sophist. It is difficult to understand how anyone could have ever been deceived so far as to overlook the sophistical character of this pastoral romance of Longus, or could have discovered genuine naïveté in this most artificial of all rhetorical productions. No attentive reader who has some acquaintance with the ways of the Sophistic writers will have any difficulty in apprehending the true inwardness of the story… As this sophist, in those offensively licentious love-scenes, suddenly shows the cloven foot under the cloak of innocence, so, on the other hand, his eager desire to appear as simple and childlike as possible often enough makes him cold, finical, trifling, or utterly silly in his affectation."[332]

HERO AND LEANDER

Our survey of Greek erotic literature may be brought to a close with two famous stories which are closely allied to the Greek romances, although one of them—Hero and Leander—was written in verse, and the other—Cupid and Psyche—in Latin prose. While Apuleius was an African and wrote his story in Latin, he evidently derived it from a Greek source.[333] He lived in the second century of our era, and Musaeus, the author of Hero and Leander, in the fifth. It is more than probable that Musaeus did not invent the story, but found it as a local legend and simply adorned it with his pen.

On the shores of the Hellespont, near the narrowest part of the strait, lay the cities of Sestos and Abydos. It was at Sestos that Xerxes undertook to cross with his vast armies, while Abydos claimed to be the true burial place of Osiris; yet these circumstance were considered insignificant in comparison with the fact that it was from Abydos to Sestos and back that Leander was fabled to have swum on his nightly visits to his beloved Hero; for the coins of both the cities were adorned with the solitary tower in which Hero was supposed to live at the time. Why she lived there is not stated by any of the poets who elaborated the legend, but it may be surmised that she did so in order to give them a chance to invent a romantic story. To the present day the Turks point out what they claim to be her tower, and it is well-known that in 1810, Lord Byron and Lieutenant Ekenhead, in order to test the possibility of Leander's feat, swam from Europe to Asia at this place; it took them an hour and five and an hour and ten minutes respectively, and on account of the strong current the distance actually traversed was estimated at more than four miles, while in a straight line it was only a mile from shore to shore.

I have already pointed out (202, 204) that the action of Leander in swimming across this strait for the sake of enjoying the favor of Hero, and her suicide when she finds him dead on the rocks, have nothing so do with the altruistic self-sacrifice that indicates soul-love. Here I merely wish to remark that apart from that there is not a line or word in the whole poem to prove that this story "completely upsets" my theory, as one critic wrote. The story is not merely frivolous and cold, as W. von Humboldt called it; it is as unmitigatedly sensual as Daphnis and Chloe, though less offensively so because it does not add the vice of hypocrisy to its immodesty. From beginning to end there is but one thought in Leanders mind, as there is in Hero's, whose words and actions are even more indelicate than those of Leander; they are the words and actions of a priestess of Venus true to her function—a girl to whom the higher feminine virtues, which alone can inspire romantic love, are unknown. On the impulse of the moment, in response to coarse flattery, she makes an assignation in a lonely tower with a perfect stranger, regardless of her parents, her honor, her future. Details need not be cited, as the poem is accessible to everybody. It is a romantic story, in Ovid's version even more so than in that of Musaeus; but of romantic love—soul-love—there is no trace in either version. There are touches of sentimentality in Ovid, but not of sentiment; a distinction on which I should have dwelt in my first book (91).

CUPID AND PSYCHE

To a student of comparative literature the story of Cupid and Psyche[334] is one of those tales which are current in many countries (and of which Lohengrin is a familiar instance), that were originally intended as object lessons to enforce the moral that women must not be too inquisitive regarding their lovers or husbands, who may seem monsters, but in reality are gods and should be accepted as such. If most persons, nevertheless, fancy that Cupid and Psyche is a story of "modern" romantic love, that is presumably due to the fact that most persons have never read it. It is not too much to say that had Apuleius really known such a thing as modern romantic love—or conjugal affection either—it would have required great ingenuity on his part to invent a plot from which those qualities are so rigorously excluded. Romantic love means pre-matrimonial infatuation, based not only on physical charms but on soul-beauty. The time when alone it flourishes with its mental purity, its minute sympathies, its gallant attentions and sacrifices, its hyperbolic adorations, and mixed moods of agonies and ecstasies, is during the period of courtship. Now from the story of Cupid and Psyche this period is absolutely eliminated. Venus is jealous because divine honors are paid to the Princess Psyche on account of her beauty; so she sends her son Cupid to punish Psyche by making her fall in love violently (amore flagrantissimo) with the lowest, poorest, and most abject man on earth. Just at that time Psyche has been exposed by the king on a mountain top in obedience to an obscure oracle. Cupid sees her there, and, disobeying his mother's orders, has her brought while asleep, by his servant Zephir, to a beautiful palace, where all the luxuries of life are provided for her by unseen hands; and at night, after she has retired, an unknown lover visits her, disappearing again before dawn (jamque aderat ignobilis maritus et torem inscenderat et uxorem sibi Psychen fecerat et ante lucis exortum propere discesserat).

Now follow some months in which Psyche is neither maiden nor wife. Even if they had been properly married there would have been no opportunity for the development or manifestation of supersensual conjugal attachment, for all this time Psyche is never allowed even to see her lover; and when an opportunity arises for her to show her devotion to him she fails utterly to rise to the occasion. One night he informs her that her two sisters, who are unhappily married, are trying to find her, and he warns her seriously not to heed them in any way, should they succeed in their efforts. She promises, but spends the whole of the next day weeping and wailing because she is locked up in a beautiful prison, unable to see her sisters—very unlike a loving modern girl on her honeymoon, whose one desire is to be alone with her beloved, giving him a monopoly of her affection and enjoying a monopoly of his, with no distractions or jealousies to mar their happiness. Cupid chides her for being sad and dissatisfied even amid his caresses and he again warns her against her scheming sisters; whereat she goes so far as to threaten to kill herself unless he allows her to receive her sisters. He consents at last, after making her promise not to let them persuade her to try to find out anything about his personal appearance, lest such forbidden curiosity make her lose him forever. Nevertheless, when, on their second visit, the sisters, filled with envy, try to persuade her that her unseen lover is a monster who intends to eat her after she has grown fat, and that to save herself she must cut off his head while he is asleep, she resolves to follow their advice. But when she enters the room at night, with a knife in one hand and a lamp in the other, and sees the beautiful god Cupid in her bed, she is so agitated that a drop of hot oil falls from her lamp on his face and wakes him; whereupon, after reproaching her, he rises on his wings and forsakes her.

Overcome with grief, Psyche tries to end her life by jumping into a river, but Zephir saves her. Then she takes revenge on her sisters by calling on them separately and telling each one that Cupid had deserted her because he had seen her with lamp and knife, and that he was now going to marry one of them. The sisters hasten one after the other to the rock, but Zephir fails to catch them, and they are dashed to pieces. Venus meanwhile had discovered the escapade of her boy and locked him up till his wound from the hot oil was healed. Her anger now vents itself on Psyche. She sets her several impossible tasks, but Psyche, with supernatural aid, accomplishes all of them safely. At last Cupid manages to escape through a window. He finds Psyche lying on the road like a corpse, wakes her and Mercury brings her to heaven, where at last she is properly married to Cupid—sic rite Psyche convenit in manum Cupidinis et nascitur illis maturo partu filia, quam Voluptatem nominamus.