VI. HYPERBOLE
As long as love was supposed to be an uncompounded emotion and no distinction was made between appetite and sentiment—that is between the selfish desire of eroticism and the self-sacrificing ardor of altruistic affection—it was natural enough that the opinion should have prevailed that love has been always and everywhere the same, inasmuch as several of the traits which characterize the modern passion—stubborn preference for an individual, a desire for exclusive possession, jealousy toward rivals, coy resistance and the resulting mixed moods of doubt and hope—were apparently in existence in earlier and lower stages of human development. We have now seen, however, that these indications are deceptive, for the reason that lust as well as love can be fastidious in choice, insistent on a monopoly, and jealous of rivals; that coyness may spring from purely mercenary motives, and that the mixed moods of hope and despair may disquiet or delight men and women who know love only as a carnal appetite. We now take up our sixth ingredient—Hyperbole—which has done more than any other to confuse the minds of scholars as regards the antiquity of romantic love, for the reason that it presents the passion of the ancients in its most poetic and romantic aspects.
GIRLS AND FLOWERS
Amorous hyperbole may be defined as obvious exaggeration in praising the charms of a beloved girl or youth; Shakspere speaks of "exclamations hyperbolical … praises sauced with lies." Such "praises sauced with lies" abound in the verse and prose of Greek and Roman as well as Sanscrit and other Oriental writers, and they assume as diverse forms as in modern erotic literature. The commonest is that in which a girl's complexion is compared to lilies and roses. The Cyclops in Theocritus tells Galatea she is "whiter than milk … brighter than a bunch of hard grapes." The mistress of Propertius has a complexion white as lilies; her cheeks remind him of "rose leaves swimming on milk."
Lilia non domina sunt magis alba mea;
Ut Moeotica nix minio si certet Eboro,
Utque rosae puro lacte natant folia.
(II., 2.)
Achilles Tatius wrote that the beauty of Leucippe's countenance
"might vie with the flowers of the meadow; the narcissus was resplendent in her general complexion, the rose blushed upon her cheek, the dark hue of the violet sparkled in her eyes, her ringlets curled more closely than do the clusters of the ivy—her face, therefore, was a reflex of the meadows."
The Persian Hafiz declares that "the rose lost its color at sight of her cheeks and the jasmines silver bud turned pale." A beauty in the Arabian Nights, however, turns the tables on the flowers. "Who dares to liken me to a rose?" she exclaims.
"Who is not ashamed to declare that my bosom is as lovely as the fruit of the pomegranate-tree? By my beauty and grace! by my eyes and black hair, I swear that any man who repeats such comparison shall be banished from my presence and killed by the separation; for if he finds my figure in the ban-tree and my cheeks in the rose, what then does he seek in me?"
This girl spoke more profoundly than she knew. Flowers are beautiful things, but a spot red as a rose on a cheek would suggest the hectic flush of fever, and if a girl's complexion were as white as a lily she would be shunned as a leper. In hyperbole the step between the sublime and the ridiculous is often a very short one; yet the rose and lily simile is perpetrated by erotic poets to this day.