The Amorous Heart Page 16

  The novel is better known today in the form of Donizetti’s tragic opera Lucia di Lammermoor. Produced in 1835, Lucia catapulted Donizetti into the position of Italy’s foremost bel canto composer. Heart imagery is not as prominent in Lucia as it was in Bellini’s Norma, yet the moment the two lovers appear onstage, they inevitably invoke their hearts. Edgardo, after expressing his longtime fury at Lucia’s family, tells her, “But I saw you and another emotion / stirred in my heart, and anger fled.” And she responds, “Banish all other feelings / save love from your heart.” The heart remained the honored home of love, even if it could also become inflamed with rage.

  The counterpoise of the amorous heart with the enraged heart endows Lucia di Lammermoor with its basic tension, which snaps in the famous mad scene when Lucia comes onstage after she has murdered her husband. This scene, associated with several of opera’s greatest sopranos (including Joan Sutherland and Maria Callas), gives the expression “crazy with love” a literal meaning. In real life, mental breakdowns have many complex biological causes, and “crazy with love” won’t be found in a psychiatric diagnostic manual, but literature, opera, and the visual arts portray abstract phrases like “love crazed” and “brokenhearted” so that we see and feel them in the flesh.

  NOWHERE IN EARLY NINETEENTH-CENTURY EUROPE DID the heart have more prominent proponents than in France, where Romantic ideals were expressed in poetry, drama, fiction, and outlandish acts directed against bourgeois society. Victor Hugo rose to fame in the 1820s and 1830s with five volumes of poetry that announced a bold new voice in the annals of love. “To love is even more than to live” (Aimer, c’est plus que vivre), he wrote to Juliette Drouet, who would be his mistress for fifty years. Of course, that did not stop Hugo from continuing to live with his wife, Adèle, and their children. He loved them too in his own way, and being the most famous French writer of his century, he got away with it.

  Even the second-most-famous nineteenth-century French writer—a woman—was able to live unconventionally in matters of the heart. George Sand, the pen name for Aurore Dupin Dudevant, who became a successful author of Romantic fiction as of the 1830s, managed to follow her heart’s desires, especially after she separated from her husband. Her lovers included the French poet Alfred de Musset and the Polish composer Frédéric Chopin, both six years younger than she was, in keeping with a French tradition that often paired an older woman with a younger lover.

  In Sand’s fictive world there were two types of love, one sensual and earthy, the other spiritual and pure. In her early novel Indiana the hero Raymon loved one woman “with his senses” and another “with all his heart and soul.” This division between carnal and spiritual love, with roots going back to the Church Fathers, persisted into the nineteenth century and even beyond. It was understood in Indiana that loving with one’s “heart and soul” was superior to loving only with one’s senses.

  The situation in Sand’s fourth novel, Lélia, was more complicated. The titular character, Lélia, embodied the ascetic path but only because she had become disillusioned with the man she had originally worshiped. Her long-lost sister, Pulchérie (Pulchritude, or physical beauty) had taken a divergent route and lived the life of a courtesan. It becomes clear in the course of the novel that neither woman represents a satisfying solution to the conundrum of love. To satisfy the body without engaging the heart turns out to be a travesty of love; to love only from the “heart and soul” without engaging the body defies basic creaturely needs. In her fiction, as in her life, Sand sought a union of spirit and flesh that would rise to the level of her personal desires and fulfill the insistent claims of Romanticism.

  SAND WAS BORN THIRTY-NINE YEARS AFTER JANE AUSTEN and twelve years before Charlotte Brontë. All three wrote about love from a female perspective, yet major differences between Sand and her English counterparts are clearly visible. Whereas Austen remained unmarried and undoubtedly a virgin and Brontë married at the advanced age of thirty-eight only to die less than a year later, Sand was already wed at eighteen and then went on to have a series of flamboyant love affairs.

  It has been said that nineteenth-century English novels end with a wedding and that nineteenth-century French novels begin after marriage. French stories of adultery have a very long history going back to the figures of Tristan and Isolde and Lancelot and Guinevere and to the medieval tales known as fabliaux, which satirized the triangle made up by a wife, her lover, and her cuckolded husband. Among Frenchmen extramarital affairs have often been condoned and even considered a badge of honor. Not so for the female, with the possible exception of fin’ amor romances in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (see Chapter 4). Thus Sand’s behavior as a married woman with lovers shocked her contemporaries and ultimately contributed to separation from her husband after thirteen years of marriage. From that point on, she was free to submit to the dictates of her amorous heart—and she did just that to the very end.

  When Sand died in 1876 at the age of seventy-two she had amassed thousands of admirers, including such eminent Victorians as William Thackeray, John Stuart Mill, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, Matthew Arnold, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning; an entire generation of Russian luminaries led by Dostoevsky and Turgenev; and the Americans Walt Whitman and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Like Victor Hugo, whose initial Romantic revolt had evolved into social and political concerns, Sand broadened her personal passions far beyond herself. Ultimately she voiced the hopes and aspirations of countless men and women responding to the cry for freedom in matters of the heart. Women in particular heard Sand and incorporated her message into their psyches, whether they acted upon it or not.

  An unlikely Sand admirer was Charlotte Brontë. Raised in the morally austere environment of her father’s parsonage, Brontë was uniquely gifted as a writer, as were her two sisters, Anne and Emily, each in their own way. Charlotte Brontë found unexpected fame in 1847 with her novel Jane Eyre. The story of a strong-willed young governess, small and plain like Charlotte herself, who falls in love with her demonic master and succeeds in taming his heart, startled the British public. Though Jane Eyre had been published under the male pseudonym of Currer Bell, some readers recognized its female point of view and raised questions about the author’s true gender. One of her first reviewers, the novelist and critic G. H. Lewes, noted its difference from all other British novels. He suggested that the author must have personally known the throbbing emotions experienced by its protagonist—and was therefore a woman. (Lewes had not yet met George Eliot, with whom he would live for over twenty years.) In a letter to Lewes dated November 6, 1847, and signed C. Bell, Charlotte Brontë acknowledged the importance of “real experience” in the creation of fiction but also insisted that “imagination is a strong, restless faculty, which claims to be heard and exercised.” Whether Brontë, in her life at the parsonage and elsewhere as a student and governess, had personally known the passions Jane Eyre experienced is a question that intrigues literary scholars to this day.

  But she had certainly read the sentimental novels written by other women, including Jane Austen and George Sand, which inspired her to examine the female heart. Surprisingly, it was not her compatriot Jane Austen whom she most admired but the outrageous George Sand. In a subsequent letter to Lewes dated January 12, 1848, she wrote, “she [Sand] is sagacious and profound;—Miss Austen is only shrewd and observant.” A few days later, in another letter to Lewes, she agreed with his statement that “Miss Austen is not a poetess, has no ‘sentiment’ but must be admired as a great painter of human character.” Brontë’s grudging acknowledgment of Austen was immediately followed by praise for Sand. “It is poetry, as I comprehend the word, which elevates that masculine George Sand, and makes out of something coarse, something Godlike.” By “something coarse” Brontë was probably referring to the sex act, which she had not yet known at this point in her life. By “something Godlike” she was undoubtedly referring to the ecstatic descriptions of love found in Sand’s novels, among them Brontë’s favor
ite, Consuelo.

  By preferring Sand to Austen, Brontë revealed her true colors as a Romantic. “Heart” mattered more than “hand,” though in the tradition of Jane Austen, Jane Eyre will not give her heart without the proper marital rites. Brontë may have been French in her imagination, but her moral realism was decidedly English.

  Though I consider myself a faithful “Sandiste,” I am obliged to admit that the author of Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion is the greater writer. And following close behind I would add the Brontë sisters, Charlotte with Jane Eyre and Emily with Wuthering Heights, to the list of authors who most brilliantly portrayed the human heart. They do so with passion, depth, and style so that their fictive heroines remain in the reader’s imaginative landscape long after their novels have been reshelved. The Brontë sisters spoke to me as a teenager, and they speak to me still. I learned from them that girls and women—as well as boys and men—were capable of fierce emotions and courageous acts. They did not have to be the prey of male seducers, as in the novels of Richardson, nor descend into the delusive Romanticism of a Madame Bovary. They, too, could possess “great hearts.”

  THAT ROMANTICS SAW THE HEART AS A METAPHOR FOR love and other passionate emotions is not surprising. What still surprises us is the extent to which some of them actually acted on their passions in defiance of conventional morality and common sense.

  The poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, dominated by a controlling father who forbade his children to marry, eloped with the poet Robert Browning, six years her junior and barely able to support a wife. A now-famous letter from Robert evokes his heart as he declares his love for her poetry and her person. The letter begins, “I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett” and ends “I do, as I say, love these books with all my heart—and I love you too.” Their subsequent marriage and life in Italy was the stuff of romance, both for themselves and for generations of readers, historians, novelists, and playwrights inspired by their story. Not incidentally, Elizabeth was a great admirer of George Sand; in one of her sonnets she called Sand a “large-brained woman and a large-hearted man,” thus inverting the stereotypical connection of the brain with men and the heart with women.

  Italy, like France, was seen as a haven for Romantically inclined Englishmen and Englishwomen. The poet Shelley and Mary Godwin decamped to Italy after his estranged first wife, Harriet, drowned in Hyde Park and thus made it possible for him to marry the woman he had already been living with. In 1818 he and Mary settled in Venice, where Byron was already living. The Shelleys’ four-year Italian idyll was fruitful for literature—Shelley wrote some of his most beloved poems, and Mary Godwin authored her famous Frankenstein.

  On July 8, 1822, Shelley drowned off the coast of La Spezia. His body washed ashore and was cremated on the beach in the presence of several notables, including Byron. His ashes were interred in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome, which quickly became a destination site for Shelley devotees. His tomb bears the Latin inscription, “Cor Cordium” (Heart of Hearts).

  Both Shelley and Byron are remembered as major poets who led unconventional lives. Shelley, an open atheist, was uncompromising in his revolt against religious beliefs and conventional mores, which he saw as stifling and inauthentic. During his adult life, cut short less than a month before his thirtieth birthday, he attempted to honor a radical code of ethics enshrined within his heart of hearts.

  Byron, more hedonistic than his younger friend, lived to the age of thirty-six—hardly old age, even for his time. His credo was passion, and he lived his credo fully to the very end. While in Genoa in 1823 he became involved in the Greek independence movement against the Ottoman Empire. He set sail to join up with Greek forces in Missolonghi, but illness laid him low, and he died there of a fever on April 19, 1824.

  Romantic men and women shared the view that the heart was a better guide to life than the brain. They believed that the amorous heart corresponded to one’s best self, a self invigorated by passion and compassion. Today when we use the word romantic it is almost always in association with love. A romantic story is usually one in which two people are drawn to each other by erotic magnetism and aspire to a lasting union. But the word can also be used derisively to suggest that a romantic person’s aspirations are impractical; we often add “hopeless” as a modifier. I wonder how many people today are likely to refer to themselves as “romantics”?

  I BEGAN THIS CHAPTER WITH DONIZETTI AND WILL END IT with Wagner (1813–1883) because opera is perhaps the Western genre most in thrall to the heart. Moreover, Wagner’s work often reflected a pervasive nineteenth-century nostalgia for the Middle Ages. Wagner’s fascination with medieval culture provided the context for some of his most successful operas: Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, Tristan and Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and Parsifal.

  Consider Tristan and Isolde, a legend that goes back almost a thousand years in both French and German versions, not to mention its earlier Celtic roots. In Wagner’s opera, when Isolde first encountered Tristan, love entered through their eyes and pierced her heart. Later, on the boat that carries her across the sea to marriage with King Mark in Cornwall, Isolde remembers Tristan and sings of the emotions seething in her “credulous heart,” her “oppressive heart,” and her “heart destined for death.” When she and Tristan unknowingly drink the love potion that seals their fate, they recognize each other as the irresistible fulfillment of love’s yearning. And they express their rapture in lofty romantic as well as boldly sensual terms:

  Wie sich die Herzen wogend erheben!

  [How our hearts are borne aloft!]

  Wie all Sinne wonnig erbeben!

  [How all our senses pulsate with bliss!]

  Act II includes the garden scene, already famous from Gottfried von Strassburg’s medieval narrative, in which Tristan and Isolde consummate their love.

  Tristan: Seh’ ich dich selber?

  [Is it you I see?]

  Isolde: Dies deine Augen?

  [These your eyes?]

  Tristan: Dies dein Mund?

  [This your mouth?]

  Isolde: Hier deine Hand?

  [Here your hand?]

  Tristan: Hier dein Herz?

  [Here your heart?]

  They sing together of bodily delight, through their eyes, their mouths, their hands, and, of course, their unseen but ever-present hearts. Their duet ends with Tristan’s rapturous words, which foresee their eventual liebestod (love-in-death).

  So starben wir,

  um ungetrennt,

  ewig einig

  ohne End’,

  ohn’ Erwachen,

  ohn’ Erbangen,

  namenlos

  in Lieb’ umfangen,

  ganz uns selbst gegeben,

  der Liebe nur zu leben!

  [Thus might we die,

  that together,

  ever one,

  without end,

  never waking,

  never fearing,

  namelessly

  enveloped in love,

  given up to each other,

  to live only for love!]

  To live only for love—that is the Romantic credo par excellence. Wagner aficionados are aware that his belief in redemption through love took on more complex dimensions in his later works, but many agree that he never again reached the amorous heights achieved in Tristan and Isolde. This opera is the ultimate expression of erotic desire, the total intermingling of heart and mind, the complete merging of body and soul. Listen to Isolde’s Liebestod at the end of Act III and see for yourself if such passion has a place within your heart.

  Chapter 19

  Valentines

  FIGURE 30. Artist unknown, Pensez à moi, ca. 1900. Paper valentine, image courtesy of the author.

  ON FEBRUARY 14, VALENTINE’S DAY, THE HEART ICON COMES out in full force. Tens of millions of valentines travel through the mail to our loved ones—not only to sweethearts and spouses but also to children,
grandchildren, mothers, fathers, other relatives, and friends. And most of these cards, whether physical or digital, carry bright red hearts as symbols of everlasting love.

  It would not be far-fetched to rename Valentine’s Day as the Day of the Heart, for on that day hearts are everywhere in view. Stores feature an ingenious variety of heart-shaped items: red-satin candy boxes, floral bouquets, candies, cookies, cakes, paper weights, jewelry and jewelry boxes—all tempting gifts for our loved ones. No other holiday is so closely associated with the heart. World Heart Day, started in 2009 to promote an awareness of cardiac diseases, has a long way to go before acquiring a similar level of popularity.

  Though we might assume that Valentine’s Day is the creation of the modern card-making industry, its history is much older—indeed, so old that that its origins are clouded with uncertainty. Yes, there is a Saint Valentine on the Catholic roster. In fact, there are two third-century men named Valentine listed in the annals of Roman martyrology, and the two men may very well have been the same person. In any event, Saint Valentine of Rome was added to the Catholic calendar by Pope Gelasius in 496, to be commemorated on February 14, the same day it still occupies.

  There have been various theories of why Saint Valentine became associated with love. For many centuries one of the most pervasive explanations was that Valentine’s Day was linked to a pre-Christian Roman feast called Lupercalia celebrated on February 15. On that day Roman boys supposedly drew the name of girls from a love urn and the two “coupled” during the duration of the festival. But the association between Lupercalia and Valentine’s Day has no firm foundation in historical fact.

  More reliable sources indicate that Valentine’s Day developed during the late Middle Ages in the context of Anglo-French courtly love. Ironically, it was during the Hundred Years’ War between England and France (1337–1453) that the first Saint Valentine’s Day texts were composed by both English and French poets. The French claim Oton de Grandson’s “Songe de la Saint-Valentin” (“Saint Valentine’s Dream”) and the English claim Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Parliament of Fowls” as the very first Valentine poems. Chaucer and Grandson—not only poets but also diplomats and friends—were undoubtedly familiar with each other’s work.