The Book of Love

by Paolo Mantegazza

dies consumed by his own fire, and, what is worse, before dying, beholds love dead at his feet. We cannot rebel against the laws of nature, nor can we subjugate them; but it is conceded to us to direct them to our advantage. And thus it is in our case. Between ecstasy and ecstasy we can sow joy and suppress tediousness; between voluptuousness and voluptuousness we can suppress weariness and pick the flowers of sentiment, and from too ardent and sensual contemplations we can repair to the cool temple of thought to meditate and remember together. This is perfect love, this is ideal love, which keeps pure, unaltered, brilliant as a diamond in the tormented sand of a river. A few reach it; many, however, can approach it, and for human happiness and human greatness it is enough to see it even from afar, like the promised land, which, as the poet says, "is always beyond the mountain."

The man who brutally opposes the holy and noble aspirations of woman for a higher participation in mental work signs his own sentence; and when he cynically sends her back to the bed or to nursing cares, he resigns himself to knowing only the coarsest and most brutish part of the joys of love. You may be the strongest male and the wisest libertine; but Venus herself, descended from the heaven of the ideal, would tire you, and for you, too, would arrive the hour of dislike; then you would curse the vanity of love and execrate life, reciting the litany of lamentations and disappointments which, from Adam down, has been repeated by all those who know not how to love and are bestially ignorant of the laws of the economy of strength. We must elevate woman more and more in order not only to fulfil an act of justice but also to enlarge the field of our joys and increase the value of our voluptuousness. A great step has been made in this direction, by transforming the female of the polygamous gyneceum into the mother of a family; but this new "freedman" of modern civilization is merely tolerated, not considered equal to us, like an orphan taken from the street and living with the members of a family but not forming an integral part of it. If the concubine has become a mother, a great step still remains to be made in order that she may become a woman, or, to put it in a better way, become a female-man, a most noble and delicate creature, who shall think and feel as we do and think and feel in a feminine way, thus completing in us the aspect of things, of which we see only a part, and bringing to us, in the meditations and struggles of life, that precious element which only the daughter of Eve can give us. If from woman you want nothing but the joys of love, then sow sentiments and ideas in her. She is like the bee that changes sugar and nectar and the fluid of every flower into honey: make her wise, and wisdom will be transformed into caresses; make her strong, and she will use her strength to enrich you; make her great, and she will place her greatness at your feet for a kiss. Fear not; she will never place her foot upon the neck of man, because she loves him too much, and because, to become a tyrant, she would be compelled to amputate the better part of herself, abdicating her omnipotence.

Where man and woman are bound together by the three natures of sense, sentiment and thought, love is easily preserved by its own nature and without any need of artifice. Some fortunate individuals ask with astonishment why their love should ever cease; and love lives in them, warm, tenacious, invincible, and only with death is extinguished, instantaneously, like the porcelain bowl, very old but always new, which falls from the hands of the inexperienced servant and perishes as it was created, beautiful and brilliant.

It is not so when voluptuousness is all, or nearly all, of love; then the easiest way to preserve it is to keep always some drops of desire in the cup of love, so that, between embrace and embrace, voluptuousness is never quite extinguished, giving a deeply sexual character to the common relations of habits, conversations and family intercourses. This is an indirect but sure advantage, ever produced by chastity between two creatures that love each other without having the fortune to participate in any treasures beyond those of the senses. It is opportune to remember that every virtue is the fruitful mother of other virtues.

The preservation of love is one of the most sacred rights or duties incumbent upon woman, although we cannot refuse with impunity to take an active part in this mission. We, however, are too light-minded, too polygamous, too exacting in our sudden desires to find prudence and economy of love easy virtues for us. To see all, to touch all, to want all and at once: such is the childish appearance of many virile loves. Woman loves more than we, but she foresees, presurmises, fears. In love, too, she is a good provider, and, while she picks the flower for the joy of today, knows how to preserve the fruit for the dreary winter. Woe to her, if she joins in the thoughtlessness of her prodigal companion! They will make together a splendid bonfire of their affections, of their voluptuousness, renewing, alas! too soon, the thousandth edition of the story of the grasshopper and the ant.

If the women who will read my book should learn nothing but this one thing, I would believe that they have had a just compensation for the tediousness which they may have experienced; and I shall be happy for not having written in vain to promote the welfare of the dearer part of the human family. With the right given to me by a long and troublesome experience, by a deep, untired study of the human heart, I pray and entreat and conjure them to close with their white little hands and their rosy lips the lips of the man who too ardently begs their love. Let them say "no" and "no" again, and bury the "yes" of the friend under a shower of flowers, reserving the desire for other supplications and other battles. Every sacrifice will be compensated a hundredfold, and for a caress denied today, they will receive ten tomorrow. Woman is an old teacher of sacrifice, and let her use this practical wisdom in preserving love, which is the air she breathes, the blood which gives life to her, love which is her dearest treasure. Never should she say "yes" before having said "no" at least once; if she truly loves the prodigal friend, she should save for the days of famine the crumbs which now fall from his hands and which today he despises; let her be the stewardess of love as she already is that of the household; let man fecundate and woman preserve; let him conquer and let her keep the booty.

If genital chastity is the virtue which, better than any other, preserves vulgar loves, a certain chastity of sentiment and thought, a certain reserve of manner and forms are also indispensable if sublime loves are to last. The man must never see his wife nude, nor should the woman ever behold her companion nude before her; veils and mists, leaves and flowers must shade the man and woman in sense, sentiment and intellect. The infinite is the only thing that man never tires of loving, contemplating, studying, just because it is neither weighed nor measured. And so it is in love: the beautiful, the true, the good of the creature whom we love must be infinite, because they must not be seen, weighed or measured by us. A sun that passes from the crepuscule of the morning to the evening twilight and never entirely reveals itself: such is eternal and immutable love, that fears no frost of winter or hurricanes of summer; that dies standing like the ancient heroes.

Study the fortunate men who are not only capable of arousing, but also of preserving great passions, and you will behold in them all those exalted virtues which may be grouped under the name of crepuscular politics. A beauty that has more grace than splendor, more seduction than heat; a flexibility that retains strength; an authority that can be made to smile, and a nature that is smiling rather than laughing; a deep and tender kindness, and a genius that has more spirit than grandeur: such are the great preservative powers of love. Grace more than beauty preserves love, because it has more crepuscular hues; sympathetic natures more than beautiful ones preserve love, kind natures more than grand ones, wit more than genius. There are men and women who at first sight do not make any great impression, but on every hair of their head they seem to have a hook and in every pore of the skin a leech, so that no sooner have you come into intimate contact with them than you find yourself seized by a thousand grapnels and absorbed by a thousand cupping-glasses, as though a gigantic polyp had seized you in the absorbing coils of its manifold tentacles.