IDEALISM OF LOVE.

Waikato Times, Volume 94, Issue 14601, 26 February 1921, Page 9 (Supplement)

IDEALISM OF LOVE.

A GALLERY OF WRITERS. (R. R. Macgregor, Ph. D.. F.RA.I.) The writer who discovered that love idealises the object might have pushed his discovery a little further, for it Is no less true that love idealises the subject. None knows.,better than the poets how to take advantage of this self-idealisation; one has only to read their love poems to find out how much more is said about the poet's beautiful feelings than about the object which presumably evoked them. Heine, particularly, is a shameless offender in this direction. A woman was to him simply an excuse for seeing himself in imagination In a romantic attitude Rut even with the others who appear less obtrusive and more disinterested, the implication is the same. How elevated and even divine we must be, they seem to say, when we can feel in this mannr; and how happy, when we are privileged to love an object of such loveliness! Yes, love has such power that it idealises everything—even the subject. Rut various writers have different opinions, especially the novelists. In these cases it is tot homines tot sententiae. Let us examine a few modern examplesMr Bernard Shaw.

Both the strength and weakness of Mr Shaw spring from a defect—his lack of Love- Freedom from illusion is his strength. He possesses common sense minus common sentiment, that, and probably nothing more; and that give to his thought an appearance of subtlety, though it is not really subtle, thus, his common sense tells him that Love is essentially creation. He sees through the illusions which Love spins round its purpose, because he does not see these illusions at all- Love, indeed, is known to him in all but its illusions, but who knows Love that knows not Love's illusions? He has never loved. And because he has never loved, he can never be called an artist. For how can one who has not loved idealise? And how can one who has not idealised be an artist? In Mr Shaw, Nature has gone out of her way to create the very antithesis of the artist. His reasons are stronger than his instincts. We know that Mr Shawregards the brain as an end—the purpose or Life being to perfect a finer and finer brain —and we know, too, that to Mr Shaw the highest Joy the brain can experience is nnt that of knowing, but of fighting. Knowledge to him is a weapon with which to wage war. Does he desire Life to continue? Well, let us look, then, for some other reason for his praise of Love- He himself lacks Love. Can it be that he praises it for the same reason for which the Christian praises, what he is not but fain would be? And his love of Love is then something pathetic, founded on "unselfishness?" And himself, a Romantic? Love and Mr Galsworthy.

The art of Mr John Galsworthy is such an ambiguous thing—half impersonal portrayal, half personal plea, the art pour L'art of a social reformer -—and the subjects he chooses are so controversial—the abuses of society—that it is hard to place him as an artist. When "The Dark Flower" appeared however, we thought we had him. Here was a great subject to his hand, an artist's question at last, Love- Alas I Even in writing about it, he could not altogether exclude the reformer. Well, that itself, perhaps told us something. However, we do get Mr Galsworthy's conception of Love. It is an inadequate conception, a realist's conception. Love, with the meaning left out. The ardours, the longing, the disappointment and anguish—all the symptoms—of Love are gi v en; but not a hint that Love has any significance beyond the emotions it brings; that which redeems love, creation, is ignored altogether. Mr Galsworthyhas seen that Love is cruel, but he has not seen beyond the cruelty; it is the ultimate thing to him. Well, that is perhaps the most that could be expected of a humanitarian trying to comprehend Love! In this book are all the symptoms of humanitariansm—pity for everyone, reform of institutions, suffering always considered the sufficient reason for abolishing or paiiating things; a creed thrice inadequate, thrice shallow, thrice blind. Love would find relief from suffering in creating something new. But one feels that Mr fialsworthy would abolish Life if he could, because he abolishes love. Humanitarianism unconsciously seeks the annihilation of Life, for in Life suffering is integral. Mr George Moore.

Mr Moore, in writing about Love falls into the same error as Mr Galsworthy. He writes about its manifestations without knowledge of that which gives them meaning and connection. Love to him is just certain sensations—and not only Love, but everything else. Art is a sensation, religion, a sensation; the soul, a sensation. Take out of his books sensation and there will he little of account left. He knows the religious feeling, but not religion: he. always confounds spirituality with refined sensualism. So he knows the sensation of Love, but not Love. But even sensuality is in his books corrupted. How true this is we realise when in "Evelyn Innes" he compares one of his characters to a fawn. We are almost distressed at this, for we feel that the word is not only coarsened hut used with a wrong meaning altogether. \\'c feel that Mr Moore is incapable of understanding what a fawn is! These sophisticated, scented and somewhat damaged voluptuaries of his, in whose conversation there is always an atmosphere of expensive feminine lingerie, and who "know" women so intimately: how perverted must he the taste which can compare them with the hardy, nimble, unconscious creatures of ancient Greece! But Mr Moore is much nearer in, temper to Oscar Wilde than to the realists. He is an aesthete essentially, and a realist only in the second place, and only because he is an aesthete. The province of selected exquisite beauty had'been exhausted by Wilde and his school; so Mr Moore turned to the squalid, the commonplace, and the diseased in Life, there to find his "aesthetic emotion." This explains the curious effect at once of colour and of drabness in his books. He is a perverted Wilde, doubly decadent. Mr Thomas Hardy.

This writer is also decadent, as far as Love is concerned. But ho is a great decadent. 11 is great not by his theories, but by his art- He sets out to prove that Life is a mean blunder; and in spite- of himself, the tragedy of this blunder becomes in his hanVls splendid and impressive, so that Life is enriched even while it is defamed. Art, which is necessarily idealisation and glorflcation, triumphs in him over even his most deeply founded conscious ideas.