sex and marriage

Chapter 9 Romantic Love (2)
It is a historical exception that the intellectual and moral views of the upper classes are contained in the art of love.Never in any other age have the ideals of culture and love been united to such a degree.The main task of the tedious philosophy of the Middle Ages was to concentrate all philosophical thought on one center, just as the theory of aristocratic love included in a small area all things about the noble life. "Rose romance" does not destroy the institution, it merely corrects its tendencies and enriches the institution.

That era was an extremely vulgar era. Although it was immoral in the eyes of those priests, the kind of love advocated by "rose romance" was very elegant, very romantic, and very gentle.Of course, this kind of thinking can only be owned by nobles, because the prerequisite for this kind of thinking is not only a leisurely life.And get rid of the tyranny of the church.In jousting, the motive of love is evident.The Church loathes the game, but can no more abolish it than it can abolish the institution of warrior love.In our democratic age we are apt to forget that the aristocracy had at different ages their contribution.As far as the revival of love is concerned, the Renaissance would certainly not have been so successful if the romance of chivalry had not opened the way for it.

During the Renaissance, as a result of people's opposition to paganism, love was no longer platonic.As for the Renaissance view on medieval customs, we can get a glimpse of it in the description of Don Quixote and his Dacinia.Medieval traditions were not without influence, however.Sidney's "Asterofer and Stala" is full of the influence of this tradition, and Shakespeare's sonnets are also deeply influenced by it.But, taken as a whole, the love poems of the Renaissance are characterized by joy and frankness.

Please don't laugh at me lying on your bed,
For the cold night nearly froze me.

Here are the lines of an Elizabethan poet.There is no denying that the sensibilities are blunt, candid, and never platonic.However, Renaissance man was also heavily educated in medieval platonic love, from which he learned to use poetry as a means of courtship. Clodin in "Simbelin" was ridiculed because he couldn't write love poems, a poor literati, so he had to hire a poor literati.Yet he can only write "Listen, Listen, This Lark"—a commendable effort, one might say.Oddly enough, before the Middle Ages, there was plenty of poetry about love, but very little was devoted directly to courtship.There is a Chinese poem about a woman grieving over the loss of her husband.Another mystical Hindu poem describes a bride who prays for the spirit of God, who represents a bridegroom.It is generally believed that men can easily get the women they want, so they don't have to woo them with music or poetry.From an artistic point of view, it would indeed be a pity if women were easily available.Ideally, women are hard to get, but not completely unattainable.This has happened more or less since the Renaissance.The so-called difficulties are partly external and partly internal, and the internal difficulties probably arise from the hesitation of customary moral teaching.

Romantic love reached its apogee in the Romantic Movement, thanks to Shelley's vigorous advocacy.Shelley's love is full of refined emotions and illusory thoughts, which are expressed in poetry.He considers the affections from which these results are wholly beautiful, and therefore he does not care at all for the reasons why love should be restricted.His arguments, however, are framed in bad psychology.He wrote poetry simply because his desires could not be fulfilled.If that noble and unfortunate young woman Emilia Viviane had not entered a convent.Then he would not have written "Epis to Ting Weng"; and if Jane Williams had not been a very virtuous wife, he would never have written "Memoirs".The social resistance he denounced was a major driving force for his cause.Shelley's romantic love is based on a situation of firm equilibrium, notwithstanding the obstacles of custom, which are not insurmountable; Love is less likely to flourish.

Take the extreme Chinese system as an example: in this system, it is difficult for a man to meet a woman he loves except his own wife.Therefore, when he felt that his wife could not satisfy his desires, he would visit brothels.His wife had been chosen for him by someone else, perhaps a stranger to him until marriage.Therefore, all his sexual relations were not related to romantic love, and he never made an effort to win his love, from which love poetry was born.

On the other hand, if a man is able to write great love poetry in a state of complete love freedom, he must have achieved it through his charms and without the poetic effort of his great imagination. creation.Love poetry, therefore, rests on a certain delicate balance between convention and liberty, and when one is out of balance, love poetry is less likely to emerge in its best form.

However, love is not the only purpose of love poetry, even if there is no artistic expression of romantic love, it can exist.Romantic love, I believe, is the source of the greatest joy life has to offer.If love between a man and a woman is intense, full of fantasy and tenderness, then there is something of inestimable value in this relationship.It is great misfortune for anyone not to know this.It is important that social institutions allow for such joy, although it can only be a part of life and not its main purpose.

After the French Revolution, arose the idea that marriage should spring from romantic love.Most people in modern times, at least in English-speaking countries, take this for granted, but they don't realize that not so long ago this romantic love movement was a revolution. Most of the novels and plays written 100 years ago were about the young generation struggling to establish this new marriage system, against the traditional marriage arranged by their parents.It is difficult to say whether the results were as good as those innovators hoped.Mrs. Malaprop's creed is that in marriage both love and shyness disappear, so that there is far less beauty in being somewhat shy at first.There is no doubt that when people get married, if both parties do not have sexual knowledge, but only based on the influence of romantic love, then either party will think that the other party has many perfections than ordinary people, and even think that marriage is a marriage. A dream of eternal paradise.This is all the more likely if the woman is pure and ignorant and cannot tell the difference between sexual hunger and sexual gratification.

In the United States, the romantic view of marriage is given greater weight than elsewhere.The laws and customs there were based on spinster ideas, with the result that divorce was common and truly happy marriages rare.Marriage is something more important than the joy of two partners. Marriage is an institution which, through the fact of having children, becomes an important part of the internal structure of society, and its social value far exceeds that of the relationship between husband and wife. personal feelings between.It may be true that romantic love should be the motive for marriage, and it seems to me that it is true.But we should understand the kind of love that can make a marriage happy and meet its social requirements.It's not romantic, but it's more intimate, passionate, and realistic.

In romantic love, the lovers often can't see very well, it's like watching in a fog.It is even possible that some women may remain in this fog after marriage, if she has a husband she loves.But she can do this only if she really avoids intimacy with her husband and keeps her frenzied thoughts and feelings, as well as certain parts of her body, secret.Such a practice, however, would prevent marriage from realizing its noblest possibilities, which depend on passionate intimacy completely devoid of illusions.Also, the idea that romantic love is necessary for marriage, although diametrically opposed to St. Paul's, is as terribly irrelevant because it forgets that marriage is all about procreation.If marriage existed solely for the purpose of procreation, then there would be no need for any regulation of sex.Once a conscientious and child-loving couple has a child, they are bound to believe that their mutual affection is no longer dominant.

(End of this chapter)