Читать книгу On Love - Stendhal - Страница 17

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This was her favoured fairy realm, and here she erected her aerial palaces.—Bride of Lammermoor, Chap. III.

A girl of eighteen has not enough crystallisation in her power, forms desires too limited by her narrow experiences of the things of life, to be in a position to love with as much passion as a woman of twenty-eight(4).

This evening I was exposing this doctrine to a clever woman, who maintains the contrary. "A girl's imagination being chilled by no disagreeable experience, and the prime of youth burning with all its force, any man can be the motive upon which she creates a ravishing image. Every time that she meets her lover, she will enjoy, not what he is in reality, but that image of delight which she has created for herself.

"Later, she is by this lover and by all men disillusioned, experience of the dark reality has lessened in her the power of crystallisation, mistrust has clipped the wings of imagination. At the instance of no man on earth, were he a very prodigy, could she form so irresistible an image: she could love no more with the same fire of her first youth. And as in love it is only the illusion formed by ourselves which we enjoy, never can the image, which she may create herself at twenty-eight, have the brilliance and the loftiness on which first love was built at sixteen: the second will always seem of a degenerate species."

"No, madam. Evidently it is the presence of mistrust, absent at sixteen, which must give to this second love a different colour. In early youth love is like an immense stream, which sweeps all before it in its course, and we feel that we cannot resist it. Now at twenty-eight a gentle heart knows itself: it knows that, if it is still to find some happiness in life, from love it must be claimed; and this poor, torn heart becomes the seat of a fearful struggle between love and mistrust. Crystallisation proceeds gradually; but the crystallisation, which emerges triumphant from this terrible proof, in which the soul in all its movements never loses sight of the most awful danger, is a thousand times more brilliant and more solid than crystallisation at sixteen, in which everything, by right of age, is gaiety and happiness."

"In this way love should be less gay and more passionate."[1]

This conversation (Bologna, 9 March, 1820), bringing into doubt a point which seemed to me so clear, makes me believe more and more, that a man can say practically nothing with any sense on that which happens in the inmost heart of a woman of feeling: as to a coquet it is different—we also have senses and vanity.

The disparity between the birth of love in the two sexes would seem to come from the nature of their hopes, which are different. One attacks, the other defends; one asks, the other refuses; one is daring, the other timid.

The man reflects: "Can I please her? Will she love me?"

The woman: "When he says he loves me, isn't it for sport? Is his a solid character? Can he answer to himself for the length of his attachments?" Thus it is that many women regard and treat a young man of twenty-three as a child. If he has gone through six campaigns, he finds everything different—he is a young hero.

On the man's side, hope depends simply on the actions of that which he loves—nothing easier to interpret. On the side of woman, hope must rest on moral considerations—very difficult rightly to appreciate.

Most men demand such a proof of love, as to their mind dissipates all doubts; women are not so fortunate as to be able to find such a proof. And there is in life this trouble for lovers—that what makes the security and happiness of one, makes the danger and almost the humiliation of the other.

In love, men run the risk of the secret torture of the soul—women expose themselves to the scoffs of the public; they are more timid, and, besides, for them public opinion means much more.—"Sois considérée, il le faut."[2]

They have not that sure means of ours of mastering public opinion by risking for an instant their life.

Women, then, must naturally be far more mistrustful. In virtue of their habits, all the mental movements, which form periods in the birth of love, are in their case more mild, more timid, more gradual and less decided. There is therefore a greater disposition to constancy; they will less easily withdraw from a crystallisation once begun.

A woman, seeing her lover, reflects with rapidity, or yields to the happiness of loving—happiness from which she is recalled in a disagreeable manner, if he make the least attack; for at the call to arms all pleasures must be abandoned.

The lover's part is simpler—he looks in the eyes of the woman he loves; a single smile can raise him to the zenith of happiness, and he looks continually for it.[3] The length of the siege humiliates a man; on the contrary it makes a woman's glory.

A woman is capable of loving and, for an entire year, not saying more than ten or twelve words to the man whom she loves. At the bottom of her heart she keeps note how often she has seen him—twice she went with him to the theatre, twice she sat near him at dinner, three times he bowed to her out walking.

One evening during some game he kissed her hand: it is to be noticed that she allows no one since to kiss it under any pretext, at the risk even of seeming peculiar.

In a man, Léonore(6) remarked to me, such conduct would be called a feminine way of love.

[1] Epicurus said that discrimination is necessary to participation in pleasure.

[2] Remember the maxim of Beaumarchais: "Nature has said to woman: 'Be fair if you can, wise if you wish, but be estimed—you must.' No admiration in France without estime—equally no love."

[3]

Quando leggemmo il disiato riso

Esser baciato da cotanto amante,

Costui che mai da me non fia diviso,

La bocca mi bacciò tutto tremante.

Dante, Inf., Cant. V.

["When we read how the desired smile was kissed by such a lover, he, who never from me shall be divided, on my mouth kissed me all trembling."—Tr.]