The Book of Love

by Paolo Mantegazza

These few expressions are but the thousandth reproduction of a psychical phenomenon which is reiterated in all men when they pass from the threshold of adolescence into the gardens of youth. An historical fact and a proverb embodied this truth in two great monuments: in the Council of Trent those who voted for celibacy were the youngest priests; and the French language has a proverb which says: "If youth but knew; could age but do!"—a vote and a proverb deserving a volume of meditations, and springing forth from the deepest roots of the human heart.

Exuberance of forces prepares us for the battle; but, at the same time, it leaves us calm and serene, because true force is always calm. Rarely a braggart is strong, and a frequent intimation of one's own energy is nearly always a symptom of decline and weakness. The invalid who fears death often says that he feels very well, even before being asked about his health, and endeavors to delude himself and others with respect to the danger that threatens him.

A young man is, in love, always more timid than an adult or an old man; and this fact originates from so many and mysterious causes as to occur in many animals as well. Birds, among others, the older they are, the quicker they go at their amorous undertaking. A young man, however deep his love may be, still trembles. He is a ripe and fragrant fruit, but the rude contacts of the gardener and the store have not deprived him yet of his untouched varnish. He has foregone the useless and too unequal struggles against love and flung himself into its arms; but he still trembles when the currents of the god pass through his body and cause his nerves to vibrate. He is a priest initiated into the mysteries of the temple, but still trembling when in the sanctum sanctorum, and a gentle and sublime timidity tempers in him the too virile expression of strength. Before our eyes we have one of the most sublime pictures of the moral world: the apex of beauty without the mannerism of pride, the maximum of strength without a shadow of convulsion; an ever lively force, a serene but definite energy, ready to spring, ready for action and reaction.

A young man with a good physical constitution belongs entirely to love, and love is the property of youth. All the energies of sentiment, all the powers of thought at that age are moulded by that sovereign affection, which absorbs and carries away everything into its hot and turbulent whirlpools. He is less than a eunuch who does not love at twenty, because even a eunuch can love, and there is an amorous sterility which has its seat in the brain and in the heart, and which is more humiliating than any mutilation of organs, than any lack of functions. If, at twenty, a man does not encounter a woman in the social world, he loves the picture or statue of a woman, he loves the heroine of a story or of a poem, and the young girl adores the angels whose wings flutter around her virginal bed.

At twenty, one should possess the physical energy to love a hundred women, and even the most modest maiden finds in the air, at every step, a spark darting from her contact with a man. Notwithstanding, however, a gigantic and fruitful possibility of polygamy, man and woman are, in their robust youth, essentially monogamous, and in their most senseless idolatries they are still monotheists. One god, one temple, one religion only. One must be born with singular perversity to be polygamous from the first steps in love, and the young girl who already loves more than one man at a time must have been conceived in a bawdy-house by the kneading of the blood and the flesh of a bacchante.

Yet against this virtuous, energetic, holy monogamy there rise on all sides enormous obstacles; formidable adversaries move against it from every quarter, opposing the first steps. Adam has found his Eve; Eve has seen her Adam; but in the embrace of those two lovers, how many enemies, how many barriers, how many abysses! Adam loves Eve; Eve loves Adam; what can be more simple, what affinity more intense, what affection more inevitable than their union? Still before they can embrace each other, these two unfortunate creatures must ask permission of prejudice, hypocrisy, conventionalities, hygiene, morality, religion, and above all, finance; and there is scarcely one chance out of a hundred that the answer will be a "yes" from all these superior authorities that have the right of vetoing their affection. The nightingale has seen and loved his modest companion; in the deep shadow of a mysterious alder he has sung to her his tenderest song and infused his love into her. Today they sleep, happy in their love, and tomorrow they will find flexuous branches and soft moss to weave their nest. No need of civil matrimony, of religious matrimony, of financial matrimony. But woe to the man who shall rely upon nature to have his nest prepared! The morrow of his loves would be cursed by hunger; and scrofula and rachitis would kill his children, born of a union which lacked the consent of finance.

From the clash of two contrary forces there arises a decomposition of movements, a transformation of energies; and this phenomenon occurs in love when, pure, virginal, powerful and hardly issued from the hot bosom of nature, it finds the sharp rocks of social obstacles, and, like a wave, breaks against them, raises a mass of foam and withdraws dragging away a congeries of stones, splinters and mud scattered by the turbulent clashing of so many forces and resistances. Would fortune that in that first shock love should suffer nothing but sorrow! Tears have blessed thousands of loves and bathed them in a sweet dew; very few have they killed. But in the dashing of the first love against the cruel rock of social resistances many new forces, all of them ruthless, spring from the decomposition of the two contrary motions, and a thousand compromises with conscience stain in its swaddling clothes the new-born love, humiliating it under the shame of an original sin.

The very first compromise with his own conscience on the part of a pure and enamored youth, when prevented by society from being monogamous, is that of decomposing love into sentiment and voluptuousness; thus he strives to preserve his heart pure and to erect one temple only, while sacrifices are offered to lust on the hundred altars of the wandering Venus.

And still this decomposition of love seems to the most refined and most virtuous lovers a very wise move, a miracle of art, the ideal of morality coupled with the most urgent needs of a heart and senses; and after a few skirmishes and lamentations every one adapts himself to this compromise and tries to make himself as comfortable as possible, as though in an uncomfortable carriage in which one must journey for a long time. The most considerate, the most virtuous lovers, however, are continually looking forward to the fortunate day when all hypocrisy will be eliminated and physical and moral loves united will give them the right to build a nest in which sentiment and voluptuousness will keep faithful company. And in the meantime we just go on between a reticence and a lie; the heart to the wife of another, the body to the courtesan.

Those young men who adapt themselves too easily to this ignominious and degrading compromise with their conscience are cruelly punished for their crime, since they will not know the richest and most splendid treasures of youthful love. Do not lie, do not betray; do not seek your love in the mire, but in the sky; and then abandon your heart and senses to the wave that carries you to paradise. Inhale all the perfumes, pick all the flowers of a garden over which no winter breeze ever blows, and where for every petal that falls a hundred new corollas blossom. Be rich, be recklessly rich; be gods at least once in your life: nature concedes a day of spring even to the most miserable creature and weaves a garland on the head of the lowliest of men. Remember, there is no coffer in which an hour of sunlight can be kept, no artifice of chemical science that can preserve a blooming rose.