As
late as in the nineteenth century, a romantic poet, Zacharias Werner,
said:
Oh, sov'reign lady, mistress of my fortune,
And thou, the Queen and ruler of the heavens,
(I cannot keep you sundered and apart.)
I shall endeavour to keep them sundered and apart as far as possible,
for I am only concerned with man's metaphysical emotion of love and its
creation, womanhood deified, and not with Catholic dogmas. With this
object in view, I will return to the poets previously quoted, and
continue the unfolding of the process of deification. As a rule the
metaphysical lovers were content with immortalising their feelings in,
very often, excellent verses, raising the beloved mistress above the
earth and worshipping her as the culmination of beauty and perfection.
The quite unusual craving to give her a place in the eternal structure
of the cosmos animated only one poet, Dante, who, combining the Catholic
striving for unity with spontaneous, magnificent woman-worship, created
a masterpiece which is unique in literature.
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