The latter approached the type of the seeker of
love, the Don Juan.
In a tenzone between Peirol and the Dauphin of Auvergne, the former
maintains that love must die at the moment of its consummation. "I
cannot believe," he says, "that a true lover can continue to love after
he has received the last favour." (Otto Weininger agrees with this.) But
Peirol winds up with the subtle suggestion that though love be dead, a
man should always continue to behave as if he were still in love.
The troubadours never weary of drawing a line between _drudaria_ and
_luxuria_, pure love and base desire. _Mezura_, seemliness, is
contrasted with _dezmezura_, licentiousness. Pure love is regarded as
the creator of all high values, luxuriousness as their destroyer. In the
same way the German minnesingers distinguished between "low" love and
"high" love.
As both cultured minds and the upper classes, contemning sexuality,
acknowledged spiritual love only, it follows as a matter of course that
the avowal of such sentiments became good form; the motif that the
honour of the beloved must be carefully shielded, and that no desire
must dim her purity, occurs again and again.
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