It admits of the fusion of the
subjective with the universal and eternal, with the religious and
artistic, the moral and scientific values of civilisation. "Personality
is the blending of the universal and the individual," said Kierkegaard,
expressing, if not exactly my meaning, something very near it.
I shall endeavour to depict the spiritual love of man for woman--the
position cannot be reversed--from its inception to its climax. I shall
submit abundant evidence to make the great unbroken stream of emotion
clearly apparent, and indicate all its tributaries. I do not pretend
that I have exhausted the subject--that would be impossible. The works
from which I have drawn may be safely regarded as the direct outpouring
of emotion; those purely lyric poets were entirely subjective and ever
intent upon their own feelings; there hardly exists one Provencal,
old-Italian, or mediaeval love-song without the "I."
Spiritual love first appeared as a naive sentiment--unconscious of its
own peculiar characteristics--in the poems of the earlier troubadours of
Provence.
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