..." etc. There is a picture, drawn by this same Suso, representing
the journey of man through life, his departure from God and his return.
In this picture the path of humanity is renunciation and asceticism;
death flourishes his scythe above the heads of a dancing couple, and
underneath is written: "This is earthly love; its end is sorrow"; to
such an extent was this sincere and sensitive man under the influence of
the traditional hatred of the world which Eckhart, his great master, had
completely overcome.
Provencals and Italians sang the delight of spring, and the German
minnesingers greeted it as the deliverer from all the hardships of the
severe winter; with the latter it was more a childish delight in the
open-air life which had again become possible, after the long
imprisonment of winter, than pure joy in beauty. But some of the German
epic poems, "Tristan and Isolde," for instance, contain genuine, sincere
descriptions of sylvan beauty. The student of art, especially the German
art of the Renascence, cannot help being struck by the extraordinary
love with which quite insignificant objects of nature, such as a bird,
or a flower, are treated.
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