Beatrice or Iseult? The debate about romantic love

Anglican Theological Review, Fall 1997 by Thomas, Owen C

OWEN C. THOMAS*

Several years ago my wife and I were on leave in Rome doing some writing and teaching. Through a friend we joined a group of four Roman Catholic priests who met weekly to study various historical texts. The first one was the Vita Nuova of Dante, a text which I had never read before. Its subject matter was entirely new to me, namely, the experience of romantic love as an experience of God. My neo-orthodox theological education in the late forties had not left me open to this possibility. The study of Denis de Rougemont's Love in the Western World had confirmed my uneasiness about such an idea. But since the meetings in Rome, I have often wondered about it. More recently some research on romanticism has led me to the writings of Charles Williams on the theology of romantic love which focuses on Dante's Vita Nouva as well as the Commedia. The contrast between Williams and de Rougemont intrigued me-thus this essay.

In the thirties and forties of this century there arose a largely silent debate about the meaning and significance for human life of romantic love. On the one hand, Charles Williams (1886-1945), the English poet, novelist, literary critic, and theologian, proposed an orthodox Christian theology of romantic love. Following Dante he saw it as an experience of grace and salvation.l On the other hand, Denis de Rougemont (1906-1985), the Swiss historian, literary critic, and theologian, proposed an interpretation of what he called the myth of romantic love which had its origin in heretical Catharist sources. This myth interpreted the experience of the passion of romantic love as one which promised the exaltation and destruction of the lovers.2 As far as I know, neither Williams nor de Rougemont knew of the work of the other, with a single exception to which I will refer later.

The theses of Williams and de Rougemont on romantic love appear to be quite contradictory. They refer to much of the same historical and literary material and come to what seem to be exactly opposite conclusions. Let us consider their theses.

According to de Rougemont, in the twelfth century a Christian heresy known as Catharism arose in southern France which involved a dualism of body and soul. The divine soul has been tempted by the Woman and is imprisoned in the body. It longs to be delivered from the body so that it can be reunited with the divine. This longing is directed at an ideal woman named Maria, the mother of a docetic Jesus who teaches an ascetic way of deliverance from the body. This deliverance occurs finally in death. So the passionate longing of the soul for deliverance is essentially a longing for death. Thus, Catharism transformed natural sexual desire into passion, limitless aspiration and longing.

Catharism was persecuted by the Inquisition, went underground, and appeared again in the guise of courtly love. This was expounded in the poems and songs of the troubadours who were its evangelists. The fundamental myth of courtly love is the story of Tristan and Iseult. This is the legend of the passionate adulterous love of these two which was inflamed by numerous obstacles, the main one being that Iseult was married to King Mark. The message of the myth is that passionate romantic love is the true human fulfillment which exalts and transforms the lovers through death. De Rougemont interprets this myth to be in direct contradiction to the Christian understanding of love as Agape.

According to Williams the modern view of romantic love had its source in Dante's experience of falling in love with Beatrice and his interpretation of this as an experience of grace and salvation. "He is the spring of all modern love literature."3 Williams claims that the common experience of falling in love can be an experience of the unfallen state of original perfection, of the kingdom of God, and especially an experience of the love and grace of God incarnate in Christ, an experience of salvation. It depends upon what is done with the experience. If it is not seen as an end in itself but rather a beginning, it can be a following of the Christian way, especially in marriage.

Williams gives the larger context for his theology of romantic love. "It has been part of the work of Christianity in the world to make men aware of the spiritual significance of certain natural experiences.... [But this] has been attempted very little with romantic love. Yet an human energy which can be so described is capable of being assumed into sacramental and transcendental heights-such is the teaching of the Incarnation."4 The lack of such an attempt in regard to romantic love in the past has been due to apocalypticism, the concentration upon another world, suspicion of any sacrament involving human delight, the haunting of Manicheanism, the asceticism necessary for the mystical life, and clerical celibacy.5

The beginning of romantic love was Beatrice's appearance to Dante and his response. "A flame of caritas possessed me, which made me pardon anyone who had offended me."6 Williams comments, "The experience . . arouses a sense of intense significance, a sense that an explanation of the whole universe is being offered."7 This requires a response of intellect, will, and emotions. "Is it serious? Is it capable of intellectual treatment? Is it capable of belief, labor, fruition? Is it (in some sense or other) true? . . . Can this state of things be treated as the first matter of a great experiment? . . . The end of course is known by definition of the kingdom: it is the establishment of a state of caritas, of pure love, the mode of expression of one moment into eternity."8 This is the Way of Romantic Love.