loved in secret by some humble heart that I have neglected or broken; perhaps I have myself been the ideal of another, the pole-star of a suffering heart—the dream of a night and the thought of a day.—If I had looked at my feet, perhaps I should have seen there some fair Magdalene with her box of ointment and her dishevelled hair. I walked along with my arms raised to heaven, longing to pluck the stars that fled from me, and scorning to pick the little daisy that opened its golden heart in the dewy grass. I have made a great mistake: I have asked love for something other than love, something that it could not give. I forgot that love was naked, I failed to grasp the meaning of that magnificent symbol.—I asked him for brocade dresses, feathers, diamonds, sublime intellect, learning, poesy, beauty, youth, supreme power—everything that is not love;—love can offer naught but love, and he who seeks to extort anything else from him is unworthy to be loved.
I have been in too much of a hurry, of course: my hour has not yet come; God who lent me my life will not take it back without letting me live. What's the use of giving a poet a lyre without strings, or man a life without love? God cannot be guilty of such inconsistency; and I have no doubt that when the allotted moment comes, He will place in my path the woman I am to love and by whom I am to be loved.—But why has love come to me before a mistress? Why am I thirsty when I have no fountain at which to quench my thirst? or why can I not fly, like the birds of the desert, to the spot where water is to be found? The world to me is a Sahara without wells or date-trees. I have not in my whole life a single shady nook to give me shelter from the sun: I suffer all the ardors of passion without its ineffable ecstasy and delight; I know its torments and have not its pleasures. I am jealous of something that does not exist; I am ill at ease for the shadow of a shade; I heave sighs that mean nothing; I have sleepless nights embellished by no adored vision; I shed tears that flow to the ground without being wiped away; I give the wind kisses that are not returned to me; I wear out my eyes trying to distinguish a vague, deceitful shape in the distance; I await what cannot come, and I count the hours with feverish anxiety as if I had an appointment.
Whoever you be, angel or demon, virgin or courtesan, shepherdess or princess, whether you come from north or south, you whom I do not know but whom I love! oh! do not force me to wait longer, or the flame will consume the altar, and you will find only a heap of cold ashes in place of my heart. Descend from the sphere where you now are; leave the crystal sky, O comforting spirit, and cast upon my heart the shadow of your great wings. Come, woman that I love, come, and let me clasp about you the arms that have been open so long. Ye golden doors of the palace where she dwells, turn on your hinges; raise yourself, latch of her humble cottage; untwine yourselves, ye branches of trees and thorns by the road-side; be broken, ye enchantments of the turret, ye spells of magicians; open, ranks of the common herd, and let her pass.
If you come too late, O my ideal! I shall not have the strength to love you:—my heart is like a dovecote full of doves. Every hour of the day some desire takes flight. The doves return to the dovecote, but my desires do not return to my heart.—The azure sky is whitened by their countless swarms; they wing their way through space, from world to world, from sky to sky, seeking some love to light upon and pass the night: haste, O my dream! or you will find naught in the empty nest save the shells of the birds that have flown.
My friend, ray childhood's companion, you are the only one to whom I can say such things. Write me that you pity me and that you don't look upon me as a hypochondriac; comfort me, I never was in greater need of it; how greatly to be envied are they who have a passion they can satisfy! The drunkard finds no cruelty in any sort of a bottle; he falls from the wine-shop to the gutter and is happier on his dung-heap than a king on his throne. The sensual man resorts to courtesans in search of ready loves or shameless refinements of indecency: a painted cheek, a short skirt, an exposed bosom, an obscene jest, he is happy; his eye turns white, his lip is moist; he attains the height of his happiness, he enjoys the ecstasy of his vulgar lust. The gambler needs only a green cloth and a worn and greasy pack of cards to procure the poignant excitement, the nervous spasms and the diabolical joy of his ghastly passion. Such people can satisfy their cravings or find distraction;—to me it is impossible.
This idea has taken such thorough possession of me that I no longer care for the arts, and poetry has now no charm for me; the things that used to be my delight do not make the least impression on me. I begin to believe that I am wrong, I demand more of nature and society than they can give. What I seek does not exist and I ought not to complain because I cannot find it. However, if the woman we dream of does not come within the conditions of human nature, how is it that we love only her and not others, since we are men and our instinct should draw us irresistibly toward them? What puts this imaginary woman into our head? with what clay do we mould this invisible statue? where do we get the feathers we fasten to the back of this chimera? what mystic bird laid in a dark corner of our soul the unseen egg from which our dream was hatched? what is this abstract beauty that we feel but cannot define? why, before a woman who may be charming, do we sometimes say that she is beautiful—whereas we find her very ugly? Where is the model, the type, the interior pattern that serves us as a point of comparison? for beauty is always comparative and can be appreciated only by contrast.—Was it in the sky that we saw her—in a star—at a ball in the shadow of a mother, fresh bud of a leafless rose?—was it in Italy or in Spain? was it here or there, yesterday or long ago? was it the admired courtesan, the popular cantatrice, the prince's daughter? a proud and noble head bending under a heavy diadem of pearls and rubies? a young and childish face stooping over the nasturtiums and volubilis in the window?—Of what school was the picture from which that beauty looked forth, fair and beaming amid dark shadows? Was it Raphael who caressed the contour that has caught your fancy? Was it Cleomenes who polished the marble that you adore?—are you in love with a Madonna or a Diana?—is your ideal an angel, a sylph, or a woman?
Alas! it is a little of all of these and it is none of them.
That transparent tint, that charming, blooming freshness, that flesh wherein the blood and the life flow in abundance, that lovely fair hair falling over the shoulders like a cloak of gold, that sparkling laughter, those amorous dimples, that figure undulating like a flame, that strength, that suppleness, that glistening satin, those rounded outlines, those plump arms, that full, smooth back, that whole appearance of blooming health belongs to Rubens.—Raphael alone could have given that pale tinge of amber to such pure features. What other than he drew the curves of those long, fine black eyebrows, and spread out the lashes of those modestly lowered lids?—Do you think that Allegri had no part in your ideal? From him the lady of your thoughts stole the warm, ivory whiteness of complexion that fascinates you. She stood long before his canvas to catch the secret of the angelic smile that is always on her lips; she modelled her oval features upon those of a nymph or a saint. That line of the hip that undulates so voluptuously is taken from the sleeping Antiope.—Those plump, well-shaped hands might be claimed by Danaë or Magdalen. Dusty antiquity itself supplied much material for the composition of your young chimera; those strong and supple loins, about which you twine your arms so passionately, were carved by Praxiteles. The divinity left everything for the express purpose of putting the toes of her charming foot outside the ruins of Herculaneum, so that your idol should not be lame. Nature also has contributed its share. You have seen here and there, in the prismatic rays of desire, a beautiful eye behind a blind, an ivory forehead pressed against a window, a mouth smiling behind a fan.—You have divined the quality of the arm from the hand, of the knee from the ankle. What you saw was perfect; you assumed that the rest was like what you saw and you finished it out with bits of other beauties gathered elsewhere.—Not even ideal beauty, as realized by painters, is sufficient for you, and you must go and ask the poets for outlines even more gracefully rounded, shapes more ethereal, charms more divine, refinement more exquisite; you begged them to give breath and speech to your phantom, all their love, all their musings, all their joy and their sadness, their melancholy and their morbid fancies, all their memories and all their hopes, their knowledge and their passion, their mind and their heart; you took all these from them and you added, to cap the climax of the impossible, your own passion, your own mind, your dreams and your thoughts. The star lent its beams, the flower its perfume, the palette its colors, the poet his harmony, the marble its shape, and you, your longing.—How could a
