We Women and Our Authors

by Laura Marholm

Generally speaking the best people are excessively reserved in their relations to one another, even when they are living under favourable conditions and are themselves highly cultured. Our likes and dislikes, our finest, most private and tender emotions are suppressed beneath the threshold of consciousness, while the greater part of what we do, feel, and think is not in the least natural, and is not at all the true expression of our nature. What I mean is that up till now there has only been a single point where we are able to break through that which we call our life, because it is only on this one central point that our real nature bursts through the numbness and coolness of the outer world. That is the apocalypse of love. But it is not at all to be despaired of, that with a more universal refining of mankind, this possibility may also be realised on other and more prominent points.

I think that Heyse’s way of expressing it is not at all idealistic or unreal. How many of love’s suicides has he not verified! How many of love’s suicides, of whom we read in the papers, have not afforded ample proof to the psychologists of that which Heyse’s more sceptical critics have accused as being a trick of the imagination. We read in hundreds of clever and stupid books of how Hans and Grete fight each other, but we never read of how Hans and Grete live the secrets of a happy love; we never read of life’s happy ones.

Why? Because it requires a far subtler and more delicate psychological touch to describe it. Even Heyse has not described it; even he has not given us a modern picture filled with the rich tones of life’s fleeting moments, with the magic of the varying lights upon it, such as an artist catches when he paints a landscape. He has always been content to make quite a plain little pencil drawing, in which the distinguishing features are only faintly outlined. The great service which he rendered was that he called attention to their existence.

In these little drawings we discern the psychological, fundamental law which has been almost forgotten amid the little world that surrounds us with its secondary laws; it is namely this: That in every particular individual there is a central point which, when set in motion, towers high above its surroundings, while as a natural consequence everything assumes a new aspect. The result of this aspect is that everything becomes of secondary importance if it has no connection with the one central point. This central point is the finer need of love, which no longer knows anything but itself when once a sympathetic presence has awakened it to its full strength.

We have now reached the second psychological consideration. Does a like sympathetic effect proceed from the one influenced? We are not asking whether the influence is more or less intense, but whether the effect is sufficiently powerful to raise the other tower-high above everything in view of new aspects? Because a refined instinct of natural selection must be able to alight on an equally high temperature, must be as unconditionally selected as it itself selects. Everything depends on this—the affirmation or negation of life—a compromise is impossible! How often, as in Memorable Words, Paul Heyse has underlined those seemingly insignificant details like a tone of the voice, a smile, a difference of opinion or a trivial expression which suddenly, no one knows how, acts as a stop to the current of sympathy which had just begun. The one frees himself, but the other is no longer able to do so, and the impulse of his heart overflows into chaos. Therefore love is the Incommensurable. Love cannot be acquired, cannot be earned, cannot be obtained by artifice, and it cannot be dispensed with. Paul Heyse describes how some noble-minded men and women remain alone, not from obtuseness of the instinct of natural selection, but from refinement, because they could not find all they wanted.

The third psychological consideration, and the sum of his entire philosophy of life, is his fatalism. That of itself would be sufficient to place Heyse apart, in these times when the ruling standard is that of the multitude. He has the proud submission of a profound insight which knows that, in the final instance and in the highest matters, we have nothing in our own power. That which we most earnestly desire comes, or it comes not, but we cannot do anything one way or the other. It is true that there is in us a mysterious impulse, as dark and unknown to ourselves as life itself, which drives us on to where our personal happiness is to be found, draws us into the Unknown and entices us until we are led towards that which is ours in life. But we know nothing of it at the time, and not in every one does it attain to development.

IV

These three fundamental principles form the standpoint from whence Heyse regarded humanity. Humanity, did I say? I mean women, for he is essentially their author. He has been accused of writing for women only and not for men, and it is said that he cannot describe the latter. But with regard to that I should like to point out that he has been the teacher and model of some of the best Scandinavian writers, and the only model which they found in Germany. The construction of his novels and the grace of his diction won him several followers in young Denmark, where his influence is clearly discernible, but in Germany he had no followers, for he is altogether inimitable; thus he remained alone in his home on the mountain of culture where, although he was much admired and much enjoyed, he was as a tower without access to the critical understanding and to the authors who succeeded him. As for the accusation of his being unable to describe men, the reason is probably this, that in comparison with the depth and directness of his comprehension of women, his men appear commonplace and uninteresting.

They nearly all seem a mere secondary consideration, and to exist only as the indispensable background and emotional force for woman. This gives one the impression that Heyse is not interested in man as a whole, but only in that side of him whereby his peculiar sensibility is brought into contact with woman, and through which his entire nervous system is set in motion. Paul Heyse’s man is seldom the one who makes the choice; it is nearly always the woman who gives the first impulse. The man usually remains long in a state of stupid wonderment, understanding nothing, while the woman who loves him has great difficulty in making herself understood.

This is an extremely delicate psychological feature. For man the choice is not the matter of chief importance, but for woman it is. A man, however refined and cultured, could be quite happy with twenty or thirty women who were entirely different from one another, and he could feel himself warmly attracted by any one of them without his strongest emotions being stirred or his whole existence responding; but for a woman the absolute in love is the greatest, the only great event in her life. For this reason the superior woman will always be the chooser, she will always realise what the man is to her long before he knows it; her silent love will always be the first attraction and will bind him as it were with a thousand invisible cords, while the strange atmosphere which proceeds from her will wrap him round like the tremulous mist on a hot summer’s noon. Yet at first he does not, except under the most propitious circumstances, understand that this woman is sympathetic to him, but when the secret workings of organic attraction have completed themselves, he suddenly awakes to find that he is surrounded by a great and ardent love. In those rare cases when a man loves with the whole passion of his nature, and when his love is not, as it is oftenest described, and in our time of cultured barbarism too often is, a perverseness—i.e. love for a woman who has frequently experienced love already—in those rare cases it is always the woman who gives the first impulse, and in Heyse’s writings it is invariably the woman. In order to awake a deep, lasting and spiritual emotion in man, a woman needs more than mere physical attraction, she needs a spiritualised womanliness with all the enduring charm of its indestructible intensity. The Incommensurable in love is not a primeval quality in man as it is in woman; a man may have great nobility of soul and yet be able to exist without it, whereas a woman cannot. For her it is the primal condition of her being; for him it is an unexpected, charmed light, illumining his whole existence.