“IMAGINARY” LOVE
My love
Is as the very centre of the earth
Drawing all things to it.
—Troilus and Cressida.
There is perhaps no emotion more elevating or more deceptive than that sudden uplifting of the heart and yearning of the senses which may be called “imaginary” Love. It resembles the stirring of the sap in the roots of flowers, thrilling the very ground with hints and promises of spring,—it is the unspeakable outcoming of human emotion and sympathy too great to be contained within itself,—the tremulous desire,—half vague and wholly innocent,—of the human soul for its mate. The lower grades of passion have not as yet ruffled the quivering white wings of this divinely sweet emotion, and the being who is happy enough to experience it in all its intensity, is, for the time, the most enviable on earth. Youth or maiden, whichever it be, the world is a fairyland for this chosen dreamer. Nothing appears base or mean,—God’s smile is reflected in every ray of sunshine, and Nature offers no prospect that is not pleasing. It is the season of glamour and grammarye,—a look over the distant hills is sufficient to engage the mind of the dreaming girl with brilliant fancies of gallant knights riding from far-off countries, with their lady’s colours pinned to their breasts “to do or die” for the sake of love and glory,—and the young boy, half in love with a pretty face he has seen on his way home from school or college, begins to think with all the poets, of eyes blue as skies, of loves and doves, and hearts and darts, in happy unconsciousness that his thoughts are not in the least original. Yet with all its ethereal beauty and gossamer-sense of pleasure, this “imaginary” love is often the most pathetic experience we have or ever shall have in life. It is answerable for numberless griefs,—for bitter disillusions,—occasionally, too, for broken hearts. It glitters before us, a brilliant chimera, during our very young days,—and on our entrance into society it vanishes, leaving us to pursue it through many phases of existence, and always in vain. The poet is perhaps the happiest of all who join in this persistent chase after the impossible,—for he frequently continues to imagine “imaginary” love with ecstasy and fervour to the very end of his days. Next in order comes the musician, who in the composition of a melancholy nocturne or tender ballad, or in the still greater work of a romantic opera, imagines “imaginary” love in strains of perfect sound, which waken in the hearts of his hearers all the old feverish longings, all the dear youthful dreams, all the delicious romances which accompanied the lovely white-winged Sentiment in days past and dead for ever. Strange to say, it often happens that the musician, while thus appeasing his own insatiable thirst for “imaginary” love, is frequently aware that he is arousing it in others; and could he probe to the very fibres of his thinking soul, he would confess to a certain keen satisfaction in the fact of his being able to revivify the old restless yearning of a pain which is sweeter to the lonely soul than pleasure.
Now this expression of the “lonely soul” is used advisedly, because, in sad truth, every human soul is lonely. Lonely at birth,—still more lonely at death. During its progress through life it gathers around it what it can in the way of crumbs of love, grains of affection, taking them tenderly and with tears of gratefulness. But it is always conscious of solitude,—an awful yet Divine solitude over which the Infinite broods, watchful yet silent. Why it is brought into conscious being, to live within a material frame and there perform certain duties and labours, and from thence depart again, it cannot tell. All is a mystery,—a strange Necessity, in which it cannot truly recognize its part or place. Yet it is,—and one of the strongest proofs of its separate identity from the body is this “imaginary” love for which it yearns, and which it never obtains. “Imaginary” love is not earthly,—neither is it heavenly,—it is something between both, a vague and inchoate feeling, which, though incapable of being reduced to any sort of reason or logic, is the foundation of perhaps all the greatest art, music and poetry in the world. If we had to do merely with men as they are, and women as they are, Art would perish utterly from the face of the earth. It is because we make for ourselves “ideal” men, “ideal” women, and endow these fair creations with the sentiment of “imaginary” love, that we still are able to communicate with the gods. Not yet have we lowered ourselves to the level of the beasts,—nor shall we do so, though things sometimes seem tending that way. Realism and Atheism have darkened the world, as they darken it now, long before the present time, and as defacements on the grandeur of the Universe they have not been permitted to remain. Nor will they be permitted now,—the reaction will, and must inevitably set in. The repulsive materialism of Zola, and others of his school,—the loose theories of the “smart” set, and the moral degradation of those who have no greater God than self,—these things are the merest ephemera, destined to leave no more mark on human history than the trail of a slug on one leaf of an oak. The Ideal must always be triumphant,—the soul can only hope to make way by climbing towards it. Thus it is with “imaginary” Love,—it must hold fast to its ideal, or be content to perish on the plane of sensual passion, which exhausts itself rapidly, and once dead, is dead for ever and aye.
With all its folly, sweetness, piteousness and pathos, “imaginary” love is the keynote of Art,—its fool-musings take shape in exquisite verse, in tales of romance and adventure, in pictures that bring the nations together to stand and marvel, in music that makes the strong man weep. It is the most supersensual of all delicate sensations,—as fine as a hair, as easily destroyed as a gnat’s wing!—a rough touch will wound it,—a coarse word will kill it,—the sneer of the Realist shuts it in a coffin of lead and sinks it fathoms deep in the waters of despair. Strange and cruel as the fact may seem, Marriage appears to put an end to it altogether.