The Complete Essays (143 page)

All gross and dried up as I am, I can still feel some lukewarm remnants from that bygone ardour:

Qual l’alto Ægeo, per che Aquilone o Noto
Cessi, che tutto prima il vuolse et scosse,
Non s’accheta ei pero: ma’l sono e’l moto,
Ritien de l’onde anco agitate è grosse
.

[As the Aegean sea when the North Wind and the South have dropped, which first had whipped and churned it up, does not at once grow calm but retains the roar and surge of the waves, huge still and thrashing.]

To the best of my knowledge the powers and values of that god are found more alive and animated in poetry than in their proper essence:

          
Et versus digitos habet
.
[Poetry has playful fingers too.]

Poetry can show us love with an air more loving than Love itself. Venus is never as beautiful stark naked, quick and panting, as she is here in Virgil:

Dixerat, et niveis hinc atque hinc diva lacertis
Cunctantem amplexu molli fovet. Ille repente
Accepit solitam flammam, notusque medullas
Intravit calor, et labefacta per ossa cucurrit.
Non secus atque olim tonitru cum rupta corusco
Ignea rima micans percurrit lumine nimbos.
… Ea verba loquutus,
Optatos dedit amplexus, placidumque petivit
Conjugis infusus gremio per membra soporem
.

[Venus fell silent; and as he hesitates she encircles him in her snow-white arms and warms him in her soft embrace. Soon he was welcoming the accustomed flame; its well-known heat struck him to the marrow and coursed through the bones of his trembling limbs. It was like unto the brilliant lightning which, with a thunderclap, flashes through the clouds… He spoke to her, gave her the embraces that she yearned for, and then his limbs sought quiet repose as he lay flowing around his wife’s bosom.]
²⁶

What I find worth stressing is that Virgil in these lines portrays her as a little too passionate for a married Venus. Within that wise contract our
sexual desires are not so madcap; they are darkened and have lost their edge. Cupid hates that couples should be held together except by himself, and only slackly comes into partnerships such as marriage which are drawn up and sustained by different title-deeds. In marriage, alliances and money rightly weigh at least as much as attractiveness and beauty. No matter what people say, a man does not get married for his own sake: he does so at least as much (or more) for his descendants, for his family. The customary benefits of marriage go way beyond ourselves and concern our lineage. That is why I like the practice of having marriages arranged at the hands of a third party rather than our own, not by our own judgement but by someone else’s. How contrary all that is to amorous compacts. Moreover there is a kind of lewdness (as I think I have said already) in deploying the rapturous strivings of Love’s licentiousness within such a relationship, which is sacred and to be revered.
²⁷
Aristotle says that we should approach our wives wisely and gravely for fear lest we unhinge their reason by arousing them too lasciviously. What he says for our moral sense the doctors say for our health’s sake, namely that too hot, voluptuous and unremitting a pleasure is deleterious to the sperm and impedes conception.
²⁸
They go on to say that in the case of the kind of intercourse which is feeble by nature (as the married kind is) we should undertake it rarely, at stated intervals, so as to fill it with a just and fruitful heat,

quo rapiat sitiens venerem interiusque recondat
.
[by which the mare avidly seizes on Venus’ seed and buries it deep inside her.]
²⁹

I know no marriages which fail and come to grief more quickly than those which are set on foot by beauty and amorous desire. Marriage requires foundations which are solid and durable; and we must keep on the alert. That boiling rapture is no good at all.

Those who think to honour marriage by associating passion with it are like those (it seems to me) who to promote virtue hold rank to be none other than a virtue: there is some cousinship between rank and virtue but great differences as well; there is no gain in confusing their names and title-deeds: we wrong them both by confounding them that way. Noble rank is a beautiful quality and was rightly instituted; but, since it is a quality
dependent on others and can fall to a vicious man of naught, it is well below virtue in esteem. It is a ‘virtue’ – if indeed it be one – which is artificial and visible, dependent on time and fortune, differing in style in various countries; it lives, yet is mortal, having no more origin than the river Nile. Genealogical and not individual, it depends on succession; it is drawn from sequency – and a feeble sequency at that! Knowledge, fortitude, goodness, beauty, riches, indeed all other qualities, are subject to communication and sharing; rank is self-devouring and of no utility in the service of others. It was explained to one of our kings that a choice had to be made between two candidates for the same office: one of them was a nobleman, the other certainly not. He commanded that they should choose, irrespective of rank, the man with the greater merit; but should they prove to be of exactly equal worth, they should in that case take rank into account. That was to assign to it its just importance. When a young unproven man asked Antigonus for the position held by his father (a valiant man who had just died), he replied: ‘My friend, in such promotions I do not so much have regard for the rank of my soldiers as for their prowess.’
³⁰

[C] It really should not be done as it was for the office-holders of the kings of Sparta – trumpeters, minstrels and cooks – who were succeeded in their charges by their sons, no matter how ignorant they might be, taking precedence over men best skilled at the craft.
³¹
The people of Calicut make their nobility into a species higher than Man. Marriage is forbidden them, as is any profession but war. They can have their fill of concubines, and their women may have as many studs; jealousy is unknown between them; but it is an unforgivable crime punishable by death to lie with anyone of a different rank; they feel defiled if they are even touched by them as they go by; and since their noble state is marvellously polluted and tainted by it, they slaughter those who draw even a little too close to them; the untouchables are therefore forced to cry out at street corners as they walk along, like gondoliers in Venice, to avoid colliding. And persons of rank can order them to get out of their way whenever they want to. By such means the nobility avoid a disgrace which they consider indelible; the others avoid certain death. No stretch of time, no princely favour, no office, valour or wealth can entitle a commoner to become a nobleman. This is reinforced by their custom of forbidding marriages across trades: a woman descended from cobblers cannot marry a woodworker and parents
are under the obligation of training their sons for their father’s calling – exactly that one: no other will do. By such means they maintain permanent distinctions in their lot.
³²

[B] A good marriage (if there be such a thing) rejects the company and conditions of Cupid: it strives to reproduce those of loving-friendship. It is a pleasant fellowship for life, full of constancy, trust and an infinity of solid useful services and mutual duties. No wife who has ever savoured its taste –

optato quant junxit lumine tæda
[whom the marriage-torch has joined with its long-desired light]
³³

–would ever wish to be the beloved mistress of her husband. If she is lodged in his affection as a wife then her lodging is far more honourable and secure. Even when he is swept off his feet with passion for another, just ask him whether he would prefer some disgrace to befall his wife or his mistress; whose misfortune would grieve him more? for which of them he desires the greater respect? In a healthy marriage such questions admit of no doubt. The fact that one sees so few good ones is a token of its value and price. Shape it and accept it rightly and there is no more beautiful element in our society. We cannot do without it yet we go and besmirch it, with the result that it is like birds and cages: the ones outside despair of getting in: the ones inside only care to get out. [C] When Socrates was asked whether it was more appropriate to take or not to take a wife, he, replied, ‘Whichever you do you will be sorry.’
³⁴
[B] It is a contractual engagement to which can be exactly applied the proverb: Man is god or wolf to Man. Many elements have to coincide to construct it. In our times it is considered to be more rewarding for those with uncomplicated everyday souls which are not so troubled by frivolity, curiosity and sloth. Roving humours such as mine which loathe all forms of tie or bond are not so proper for it:

Et mihi dulce magis resoluto vivere collo
.
[For me too it is sweeter far to live with no chain about my neck.]
³⁵

By my own design I would have fled from marrying Wisdom herself if she would have had me. But no matter what we may say, the customs and practices of life in society sweep us along. Most of my doings are governed by example not choice. Nevertheless I did not, strictly speaking, invite myself to the feast: I was led there, brought to it by external considerations.

There is nothing so awkward – in fact nothing at all, no matter how ugly, vitiated or repugnant – but can become bearable under certain conditions and in certain circumstances, so vain is our human situation. When I was borne into marriage I was less broken in and more recalcitrant than I am now that I have made an assay at it. And, womanizer though I am held to be, I have, in truth, more rigidly observed the laws of matrimony than I ever vowed or hoped. It is no longer the time for kicking over the traces once they have tied your legs together! We should tend our freedom wisely; but once we have submitted to the marriage-bond we must stay there under the laws of our common duty (or at least strive to). The actions of those husbands who accept the bargain and then show hatred and contempt are harsh and unjust. Equally unfair and intolerable is that fine counsel which I see passed from hand to hand among our women:

Sers ton mary comme ton maistre,
Et t’en guarde comme d’un traistre
.

[Serve him like a master: watch him like a traitor.]

That is a challenge and a call to battle, meaning, ‘Act towards him with a constrained respect, hostile and suspicious.’

I am too easy-going for such prickly designs. To tell the truth I have yet to attain to that perfect intellectual elegance and cunning which confound right and injustice and which ridicule any rule and order which may not accord with my desires. Just because I loathe superstition I do not go straightway mocking religion. Though we may not always do our duty we must always at least love and acknowledge it. [C] To take a wife without espousing her is treachery.

[B] Let us get on.

Our poet Virgil portrays a marriage full of concord and harmony, in which however there is not much fidelity. Did he mean to say that it is not impossible to surrender to the attacks of Cupid and yet nevertheless to keep a sense of duty towards one’s marriage; that one may injure marriage without tearing it totally apart? [C] A valet can diddle his master without hating him!

[B] A wife may be attracted to an unknown man by beauty, opportuneness and destiny – for destiny plays its role in it:

fatum est in partibus illis
Quas sinus abscondit: nam, si tibi sidera cessent,
Nil faciet longi mensura incognita nervi

[The privy parts hidden in your toga are fated: if the stars forsake you, it will do you no good to have a tool of unprecedented size]
³⁶

–yet she may not be so totally attracted that there remain no bonds still holding her to her husband. We are dealing with two projects which each go their own distinct separate ways. A wife may give herself to another man whom – not because of the state of his finances but because of his very personality – she would never wish to marry. Few men have married their mistresses without repenting of it. [C] That even applies to the other world! What a wretched household, that of Jupiter and a wife whom he had seduced and had enjoyed having little affairs with! That, as the saying goes, is shitting in the basket and then plonking it on your head.

[B] I have in my time seen a highly placed love-affair shamefully and dishonourably cured by a marriage. The motives of both are quite distinct. We can, without difficulty, love two very different and incompatible things.

Isocrates said that the City of Athens was pleasing in the same way as a mistress served for love: all men took pleasure in spending their time and walking with her, but no man loved her well enough to wed her (that is, to make his home and habitation there).
³⁷

It has angered me to see husbands hating their wives precisely because they are doing them wrong: at very least we should not love them less when the fault is ours; at very least they ought to be made dearer to us by our regrets and our sympathy.