Historia Amoris: A History of Love, Ancient and Modern

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Saltus Edgar. Historia Amoris: A History of Love, Ancient and Modern

PART I

I. SUPER FLUMINA BABYLONIS

II. THE CURTAINS OF SOLOMON

III. APHRODITE URANIA

IV. SAPPHO

V. THE AGE OF ASPASIA

VI. THE BANQUET

VII. ROMA-AMOR

VIII. ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA

IX. THE IMPERIAL ORGY

X. FINIS AMORIS

PART II

I. THE CLOISTER AND THE HEART

II. THE PURSUIVANTS OF LOVE

III. THE PARLIAMENTS OF JOY

IV. THE DOCTORS OF THE GAY SCIENCE

V. THE APOTHEOSIS

VI. BLUEBEARD

VII. THE RENAISSANCE

VIII. LOVE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

IX. LOVE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

X. THE LAW OF ATTRACTION

Отрывок из книги

The first created thing was light. Then life came, then death. In between was fear. But not love. Love was absent. In Eden there was none. Adam and Eve emerged there adult. The phases of the delicate fever which others in paradise since have experienced, left them unaffected. Instead of the reluctances and attractions, the hesitancies and aspirations, the preliminary and common conflagrations which are the beginnings, as they are also the sacraments, of love, abruptly they were one. They were married before they were mated.

The union, entirely allegoric – a Persian conceit – differed, otherwise, only in the poetry of the accessories from that which elsewhere actually occurred.

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Meanwhile on the banks of the Indus the stone reappeared. Posterior to the Vedic hymns, it is not mentioned in them. Instead is the revelation of a being purer than purity, excelling excellence, dwelling apart from life, apart from death, ineffably in the solitudes of space. He alone was. The gods were not yet. They, the earth, the sky, the forms of matter and of man, slept in the depths of the ideal, from which at his will they arose. That will was love. The Mahabhârata is its history.

There, succeeding the clamor of primal life, come the songs of shepherds, the footfall of apsaras, the murmur of rhapsodies, of kisses and harps. The pages turn to them. Then follow eremites in their hermitages, rajahs in their palaces, chiefs in their chariots, armies of elephants and men, seas of blood, gorgeous pomps, gigantic flowers, marvels and enchantments. Above, on thrones of lotos and gold, are the serene and apathetic gods, limitless in power, complete in perfection, unalterable in felicity, needing nothing, having all. Evil may not approach them. Nonexistent in infinity, evil is circumscribed within the halls of time. The appanage of the gods was love, its revelation light.

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