Gyneolatry [Gr.  woman + -(o)latry.] refers to an excessive adoration or worship of women or femininity. Gyneolatry is sometimes referred to by alternative terms such as chivalry, romantic love, benevolent sexism, pussy worship, simping, gynocentrism, woman worship, autogynephilia or pro-feminism.

Earliest use of the term pairs it with chivalry/chivalrous behaviors by men, as in the following examples:

“The sentimental gyniolatry of chivalry, which was at best but skin-deep, is lifted in Beatrice to an ideal and universal plane.”

[1876 Lowell Among my Bks. Ser. ii. 36]

“Looked at with the scientific eye it is sheer gyneolatry – the chivalrous sentiment inflated with poetic wind, like a bubble, to the utmost possible degree of iridescent tenuity.” [The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller (H. Holt, 1901)]

Also: gynolatry, gyniolatry, gynaeolatry, gynecolatry, gynaecolatry

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The following are examples of gyneolatry from historical literature:

Gyneolatry:

Book Chat, Volumes 3-4 (Brentano Bros., 1888)

The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller (H. Holt, 1901)

The Athenæum, vol 2 (British Periodicals Limited, 1909)

Zones of the spirit: a book of thoughts (G.P. Putnam, 1913)

The Collected Works, Volume 1 (Oxford University Press, H. Milford, 1924)

Oxford Dictionary entry for Gyniolatry

The following are excerpts from Vilar’s Das Ende der Dressur: Modell für eine neue Männlichkeit (The End Of Manipulation: A Model for a New Masculinity). The book, the third in her trilogy on the manipulation of men, has not yet been translated to English and the following excerpts, translated via Google Translate, are rough and likely carry inaccurate translations in parts.  Many of her ideas below can be considered outlandish work of fiction today, however nobody can argue that Vilar wasn’t passionate about men’s welfare, and she took considerable risk to stand up in public and speak her mind.

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The man must become useless

As long as masculinity is equated with utility, “real” men will always be those that make themselves useful. The introduction of a new rating system for masculinity would therefore assume that men are not more useful to women than the reverse is the case.

Only when marriage means something other than the man doing almost everything for the woman, and the woman doing almost nothing for the man, could men become male in a new way – in a way that has to do with your gender and not with your usability as before. So, if men wanted a less embarrassing existence for themselves or other men, something would have to change the current social fabric.

As has already been said, such changes should not be enforced against the will of the powerful nor against the needs of the human psyche. In the search for a viable alternative, one would have to take into account, on the one hand, that our western industrial society is a matriarchy, and, on the other hand, that couples want to live in communities and raise children. Reform efforts that do not take into account female power or the human need for lasting ties – marriage, family – are condemned to failure from the outset.

A solution of the problem described so far would therefore assume the following advantages:

1. It would make the man uninteresting as an economic factor for the woman (without, however, jeopardizing the economic structure).
2. It should be a collective action. (Men who want to change their situation in one-on-one actions quickly become united and soon become useful again.)
3. It would have to defend not only the interests of men, but also those of children and the elderly against women. (You can not solve a weak person’s situation on the back of other weak people.)
4. It would have to guarantee the maintenance of gender-typical behaviors. (Without male and female role behavior, most people would be bored with the world.)
5. She would have to please the women. (The status envisaged for them would at least seem equivalent to them.)

One solution that would meet these requirements would be a general working time cut to five hours a day (introduction of the twenty-five-hour work week), accompanied by the following measures:

• a. Salary reduction, which corresponds to the reduction of working hours.
• b. Increase in social security contributions.
• c. Pupil salary, which, regardless of the income of the parents and relatives, covers all basic material needs of those preparing for a profession. (This would affect toddlers, students, apprentices, and anyone who wants to change jobs.)
• d. One-year leave for a mother or father after the birth of a child, Special leave for illness of a child.
• e. Abolition of nurseries, hoarding and all – day schools in favor of Five-hour kindergartens for children from one year and five-hour Teaching in all schools and universities.
• f. Abolition of the obligation to retire in favor of self-elected pension limits.
• G. Abolish the right to work of equal value in favour of a right to retraining.
• H. Prohibition of overtime.

Through this model the most important requirement for a new masculinity would be given, for as we shall see, women would work after such a reform. And as soon as she does that they would choose their partners in a different way than they do today. They would no longer judge men by their usefulness, but by their suitability for love.

But let’s first examine the economic viability of all these proposals, because everything else depends on that.

The workforce has doubled

The prerequisite for any reduction of working hours is the assurance of economic stability. All historical working time cuts were therefore always more the consequence of economic calculation than humanitarian considerations. One factor remained practically constant: the workforce potential. Because One could only count on one half of the adult population, the men. The Women were often pregnant, had to breastfeed for a long time, had many children and had to have one supply complicated household. Working time cuts were therefore either through the use of Machines or by improving the performance of the available Workers reachable. When you replace men with machines, wherever possible, and with them In addition, granted longer breaks, they consumed more slowly. Your overall performance but remained constant or even increased, the economic structure remained intact.

Since the invention of artificial breast milk, since the birth control by pill and Abortion and since the partial automation of housework, however, we are in A new era: There are twice as many workers as before, because women can now too work. This creates three new opportunities for the economy:

• a. You can let women work instead of men.
• b. You can let a part of the women work and thus the general one Shorten working hours.
• c. You can let both sexes work the same and thus the Shorten working hours significantly.

Why the first alternative is utopian has already been discussed. The second is already realized We owe her and the automation to the forty or forty-five-hour week and the extension of annual leave. The third and really sensational option, however – drastic reduction of working hours through equal participation of both sexes in the work process – is not even discussed seriously. It would be in highly industrialized countries since at least ten years. But apparently no one dares, from the duplication of the Workforce potential – probably the biggest social change in our history – the practical one To draw consequences.

The five-hour model is realistic

For simplicity’s sake, let’s assume that the western ones Industrialized countries are satisfied with their economic performance. Let us further assume that in full employment, ie. the total number of hours worked Need of the economy covers and that the number of the unemployed to the vacancies in the desired Relation stands. Of course that does not correspond to reality, because in every country there is recession and Boom, periods of unemployment and over-employment. But for our calculation At the moment, these economic aspects are of no concern.

The condition for the reform proposed here would be the preservation of the economic status quo Country in which it is performed. Because although it is a reduction in working hours from humanitarian considerations, the functioning of the economy should not be up for discussion. Reforms that the preservation or enhancement of the economic performance of a country not as one of its The most important basic conditions always end up at the expense of those whose position they are should improve originally. The question is therefore: how much could working time be spent in Industrialized countries reduce and / or how could the living conditions of their inhabitants be humanizing without such a measure endangering the economy?

Let’s base our calculations on data from those western industrial countries – USA, Canada, Australia, West Germany, France, Great Britain, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark Finland, Norway, Austria, Switzerland – where the forty-hour week more or less in which about every second working woman is already employed. If so Instead of every second, all employable women would work in these countries – and not just that one-third, but half of the female active population would be – so would the total number of active workers will increase by one third and, consequently, the total number of reduce the number of hours worked by each employee by one quarter. If you are in If these countries have to work eight hours a day today, then one would have to look for an optimal one Exhausting the female workforce only six hours a day.

This number is obviously inaccurate and also too optimistic: it does not take into account that in the of the working women about one-third only work by the hour they work does not take into account that in most of these countries women average two to five years earlier retired as men, they do not take into account the one to three years men because of their Military service as a workforce, it does not take into account the industries in which the Hour-week still belongs to the realm of Utopia (Freelance, Farmers), she takes into account not the overtime and the “moonlighting” of men, it does not take into account the unreported number of only for tax reasons in family businesses declared as gainfully employed women and not those of the for the same reasons in private households undeclared “Zugehfrauen”. If you have all these Data, as far as they appear in the statistics of the various countries in the calculation involves an average daily working time of more than six hours.

However, it is not the six or seven but the five-hour day that is up for debate here. This would be possible because a drastic reduction in daily workload impacts Quantity and quality of performance would certainly allow further reductions in working time would:

1. 1: Increase the quantity of work

• a. Less sick leave due to illness: Both the real and fake diseases would go back. By longer Rest breaks kept workers healthier, by shortening the working hours they would maybe even prefer to work and therefore less often report sick.
• b. Less work loss due to retirement: The Eight-hour day is for most older People too exhausting. At five hours Working hours would take many of them up practically want to end their lives, because they would become as a full member of society feel. The proposed reform would not be mobilize only the female workforce, but also the retirees. (What positive consequences an introduction of self-imposed pension limits for The care for the elderly would be in a later Chapter explains.)
• c. Loss of work due to premature death: By reducing the power pressure would come it leads to an increase in men Life expectancy, sooner or later the female would adapt, in turn, only would decrease slightly or not at all.

1. 2: Increase the quality of work performance

• a. Because the quality of work in rested people correspondingly larger, would become larger Rest breaks the effectiveness of the work, the Job offer (= offer of working hours per Time unit). That’s exactly what it was always the most important argument for the previous ones Working time reductions. The performance low after the Lunch break would be canceled as well as the last hours.
• b. The quality of female work would to adapt to the male, because women would become more ambitious and stronger than before Participate in the competition. Because they work all their lives would need a career advancement for Women are just as worthwhile as men. These Increase in female labor supply would come benefit the economy as a whole.

Only in cooperation with economists, rationalization technicians, sociologists and Behavioral researchers could calculate exactly how strong the factors mentioned on the Work and how much working time could be saved in addition. Already however, according to an initial preliminary calculation, it is fair to say that the five-hour working day in the Range of possibilities and that the conditions for the reform proposed here are are realistic.

Half a day of freedom

The situation looks even more favorable, if one does not calculate the working time, but the Time of absence of home based. Most professionals have a lunch break from one to two hours, so if you go out of an hour’s commute, average separated from their families for ten to eleven hours. The proposed model would eliminate the Lunch break. Rest breaks of fifteen to thirty minutes would take five hours. Working hours are sufficient, with lighter activities one could perhaps completely do without it.

The employee would therefore, with breaks and commute, on average, only six to six and a half instead of ten to eleven hours away from home. That is, he wins through the five-hour rhythm practically half a day. Other than the five-hour rhythm, z. B. a week, month or Annual rhythm (three days of work, four days of free time, seven months of work, five months of free time, etc.) would be – with the exception of those professions, which bring a greater distance from the place of residence (Aviation, shipping and railway personnel, truck drivers, agents) – not for the following reasons recommended.

1. All the benefits just mentioned, which work hours from six to five hours would have to be eliminated.
2. And because then no one alone would be responsible for a particular task, would create an economic chaos, because of a flourishing economy essential competition between workers would be disturbed.
3. Children would be in institutions for about three days, four days for their parents or seven months in institutions and five months in her parents However, it has been proven that children need a certain degree of regularity Continuity in the caregiver if they develop optimally should. In addition, hoards and schools would be for full-time child care would have to be set up, although they would only be needed on a temporary basis, economically not profitable.
4. Virtually all adult males are from their mothers and theirs Religion educated to masochists. You first have to do something before you become can have fun. They want to enjoy themselves, and they want to be allowed to pay.

You can not do reforms against the needs of the human psyche: men need the rhythm of performance and relaxation. Long rest breaks in one go with them to emotional disorders, as one can see in times of unemployment. Maybe that could someday overcome this educational damage. Until then, you would have to join them possible reforms.

You earn half and still live better

Work is a service that you pay for. Unpaid services are provided Coercion, masochism, the need for validity, stupidity, personal affection, or Pleasure seeking. In general, every person who does something that others may need, too and usually there is nobody who would make something useful for free. Also housewives receive salaries, but they are rather unbureaucratically handed over by their husbands. Which manipulations they owe their overpayment has already been described elsewhere.

The fact that you need money and that you usually only work for money, allows The wages and salaries of the company largely control the living conditions of the society Individual – it influences its safety, comfort and freedom. But there the Society consists of all individuals, this is harmless in democratically governed countries. If the majority were unpleasantly affected by a particular measure, they will not accept it from the outset. The general public can therefore by general measures – by Laws – improve the social situation of individuals, they can not worsen them.

One of the opportunities for social improvement is the diversity of wages and benefits Salaries. Because in general you will only quantity and quality of his work increase if a wage increase beckons, and only then the effort of a longer study if you get into a better salary level right from the start. Eulogies and other awards are an incentive for permanent performance increases without effect. There people, Those who try for nothing, who are considered stupid by most others, can be immaterial Rewards basically harm the reputation of a worker. To economic progress In a country, it only happens when every single person is fully committed to their work. One Such personal commitment can only be achieved through personal benefits.

So, even if all work were the same, it would be unequal in the interests of all the same work pay. But work is not the same, and they also require different levels of knowledge. The The general public therefore has a double interest in unequal pay. Only if you have difficult, Dangerous, exhausting, boring or repulsive works better rewarded than others, is always a sufficient number of services available, and only if you are manufacturers and Allow brand representatives to reward their efforts more than a platonic reward Enjoying the increase in sales, the supply of consumer and luxury goods is always slightly larger than demand.

Moreover, it is only by “unfair” pay that citizens have some freedom to guarantee. Since pleasant work is rare and, of course, all at the same price In this case, the majority would have to be compelled by a minority will take over the unpleasant duties also necessary. Apart from the loss of As a result of the dynamic economic potential that this would entail, it would de facto be abolished Mean freedom of expression. Because if you force the majority to do something they do not want, then sooner or later you have to prevent it from agitating against it.

In other words, unequal pay is unfair, because people have different talents and have different favorable starting positions for their lives, but equal pay would be even more. Because with unequal pay the economy works better, you can on this Gradually giving everyone at least some extra time, freedom and prosperity. at Equal pay would have no right to one’s own time or one’s own opinion – and money. You would have as much as everyone else, but less than that. If social, what is that Benefiting less privileged sections of the population, then it is social, workers different pay.

But let’s go back to the working time cut. Of course, such a reform would have to be through corresponding law to be secured. Only benefits that work within the five-hour work period should be rewarded by employers. Since one does not work without wages, would to stick to this rule and be free for the rest of the day.

New laws, as we said, are accepted in democracies only if they are majority guarantee the population an advantage. A reduction in working hours would not only bring the Advantage that the free time for everyone is almost twice as long, but they would also have the disadvantage that the Salaries are cut almost in half. So if, for example, someone turns eighty in eight hours If he earns a dollar, he could only spend fifty dollars after five hours of working hours otherwise, it would not be economically viable. And here is the biggest difficulty Reform: Without proper preparation, workers would be cut short Income disagree. You would like the reduction in working time proposed here Short-time working – a measure practiced by individual companies in times of crisis Wage savings – and reject the project.

The first step towards a new legal regulation would therefore be an awareness-raising campaign widest level. Working people would have to realize that they have more time through the reform, but despite the necessary pay cut would not have less money. Because in the current situation one may be his.

Do not keep the wage. In general, it not only finances your own life, but also finances it that of the so-called “dependent” persons. After the reform, everyone would be able to financially self-supply. Nobody would have to share their money with housewives, children and other needy, because such needy would no longer exist. Only if all this were clear, one could to the Dare to draft a law.

The moral principle of the wage reform proposed here would be the following: Human Communities are built to protect against a hostile environment and operate on the Basis of division of labor. Anyone who voluntarily lives in the company of others, therefore, does not just have one The right to protection by them, but also the duty to protect them – he is from social position not only legal entity, but also manpower. Who only of his Makes use of rights, but seeks to avoid the obligations, lives at the expense of others and is responsible for a community a parasite.

As already said, this parasitism is in Western societies most successful of women and most spectacularly practiced by criminals. Both express themselves before their obligations and indirectly impose them on others. By the reform one could make female parasitism largely impossible. And there work, as soon as women work so much like men, would lose much of their terror – because of the stamina and responsibility of the individual would be considerably smaller – there would also be a consequence of female equality less crime. Because in today’s situation remains for a man who is not on women Crimes often the only way to relinquish the depressing destiny of his sex to escape (and only because of this are offenders in western industrialized countries also to 80 percent male). After humanization of working hours and cancellation of price maintenance for use The risk of a criminal act would be too great for some of the female vagina. Right now It does not really matter if a man founds a family or if he leaves without this detour goes to his walls. But after the reform, there would be a bit of freedom outside, and the company of On the one hand women would be cheaper and on the other hand more interesting than now.

Higher social contributions initially inevitable

However, since all these savings do not cover high social benefits (at least would be enough to cover the deficit in the first decades after the transition) Balancing tax increases. That means you would not only have salaries proportional to Reduce working time reduction, but also with higher social security contributions strain. So, if somebody earned eighty dollars in working hours before the reform, If he worked five hours a day, he would not be fifty, but forty-five or even forty Refer to dollars. Of course you could not cut all salaries so drastically. Because even if you only have to feed yourself with it, many workers would be already below the Subsistence level. It would therefore have minimum wages to be set, the amount of about the Full scholarship of a student would correspond.

The progression of salaries would still be left to the free play of the forces. Because it would be in the general interest to set salaries down – poverty leads to social unrest and therefore harms everyone – but upwards they should never, also in the general interest be limited. The maximum performance of the clever is vital to the welfare of the less Refined: Who brakes the élan of the top earners, acts anti-social, as much as he morally in the May be right. The difference to today’s situation would therefore lie in the fact that after the reform everyone would bring home just over half of their current net salary.

One engineer, for example, who now enters a company with an annual salary of twenty thousand dollars and that ten-year salary increases to forty thousand dollars, then ten thousand start and come to twenty thousand after ten years. But that would not hurt him, because if he had gotten married in the meantime – and according to statistics this would almost always be the case – then yes also earn his wife, and his children would be secured by their own income anyway. Of the Standard of living of the family would be – provided that the wife would be with her salary approximately in the same group – even slightly higher. Unlike today, however, this engineer could not do more be exploited to the limit of his physical and mental capacity by his company, while his wife was lamenting or bored in her suburban bungalow. And unlike Today, after the reform, there would be neither husband and wife nor children and parents material dependency relationships. A separation would not for any of the family members financial ruin mean: After a remarriage, the man would be neither with alimony for the First family charged, nor would his wife have to pursue him with payment claims. The kids could stay with the parent they felt most comfortable with – time for them both.

Similarly favorable it would look at the lowest level of the social ladder. Because the financial situation A helper would not be as brilliant as an engineer, but he too would become a life which he can not even dream of now. He would have twice as much time and his job It would not be a consequence of discrimination but your own decision – and there is a lot Respectable reasons for choosing a five-hour job without responsibility can. And suppose he only received the legally guaranteed minimum salary and would do so modest as today a state-subsidized student living in a furnished room, so could He still founds a family. Because his wife would have one in the worst case Minimum salary available – so you could join instead of two furnished rooms together One-room apartment afford. With the birth of the first child, the first day salary would increase the family budget again. You could already do that a modest two-room apartment, and for the minimum need for food and clothing would be also taken care of.

Still, this family life could never be for either the laborer or his wife to be a straitjacket. With a separation, the relationship could easily be unraveled. What Today, for a poor person who was wrong in choosing his life partner, in the realm of utopia – a new love and the founding of a second family – would be realizable for him as well. And for his children who are now after such a tragedy mostly in homes or with their grandparents land, the separation of the parents would have only emotional meaning.

Each for himself and everyone for everyone, would be the common denominator of the economic side of the reform. You might be as selfish as you wanted, and nobody could hurt you. It must be in one In any case, all citizens will be provided with care: why – as it is obviously possible – it is not set up so that no personal dependency relationships can arise from it? It is hard enough to maintain happy relationships with other people over a long period of time. If material interests are involved, as is the case today in almost every relationship between man and woman Woman or parents and child is the case, it becomes impossible. At least this one difficulty would be through The new wage policy has been eradicated once and for all.

Consequences of a new masculinity: Voluntary equal obligation

Salary reduction plus reduced working hours would be the ideal technique for infiltrating the female Supremacy, because after such a measure, the women would have to work and want.

It is obvious that women would be forced to work due to massive salary cuts. It is an economic law that automatically reduces the female wage level Workforce potential is mobilized: In the fewest families would be the merit of a Adults are enough to feed two, three or more people. But you can, like said, women in a democratic society do not force anything. Against the will of women could not enforce a general salary reduction. Indirectly exercising political power, would be a government that by such a measure the female part of the population too Wanted to force work in a few days. Of course, the men would for the To overthrow it. Women do not make revolutions, it is enough that they wish them. The women So you want to work. Since you can not force them to equal obligation, you have to do it allure. For a temptation, however, the five-hour model would offer the ideal conditions because it could thus both the disadvantages of housewife status as well as the all-day and Remedy part-time employment. Since a five-hour day does not represent unbearable stress and at the same time solve their other problems – boredom, loneliness, economic and social dependency, sexual and mental frustration – housewives would after here proposed reform is not reluctant to work. Those left over, because their established men too If you earned enough in less hours you would be amazed like fossils, that is, you would be pushed into outsider roles and would sooner or later want to adapt. Boy Girls would no longer opt for this “profession” from the outset.

In the real professions, however, there would be neither full-time nor part-time work with »female Discrimination “, but only five-hour work, in which no sex preferred or disadvantaged. Because when male and female workers by and large alike would be reliable, you would each prefer the applicant with the better qualifications – one could not afford another attitude in a free economy. The three disadvantages of Half-day work – hard to find, hard to maintain and difficult to build – would that there was only such work left in the world. What remained the generally accepted Benefits of part-time employment.

That women would really work under changed conditions is already possible to prove. In all Western industrialized countries, the vast majority of teachers are female Even up to ninety percent of elementary schools – though the teacher’s job is longer Training time and a certain intellectual inclination. But teachers have one Special status: Your free time – if you include school holidays – is at least twice as long as the the other professionals. Depending on the country and type of school, teachers from western industrialized countries complete weekly 18 to 32 lessons of 45 minutes, that is 13.5 to 24 hours. The time she otherwise invest in their profession depends largely on their goodwill and their routine. Most teachers are therefore neither by their children nor by their household of the To hold a professional practice, there is the lowest turnover of all women’s occupations. And since this is so, there is no “female discrimination” either at state or private schools male teachers are preferred. That then the school directors are usually male again, is due to the fact that a temporal commitment is required at this level, to which only a few Teachers are ready.

Men, “the legislators,” could therefore afford it without danger, a general, legal established working time reduction – the majority of women would not mind objection. After an appropriate education campaign, they could detail the reform to prepare.

Bad times for the trained

But maybe the resistance would come from another side? Maybe he came from the men?

After the reform, they would be as independent as possible in today’s circumstances, because outside their short working hours, they would be completely free and could do and say what they wanted.

Even at the workplace, they could risk more. Because of their servility no more The economic and social position of an entire family, they would have in professional life even less humble. That would make working men in this relationship finite working women and could be just as self-confident with their superiors to act like her colleagues.

But although this independence would clearly improve their situation, it would not be of in the beginning all men welcome. They are trained by their education, their whole time to hang the work and all her money to her family. Suddenly, one would ask them to that they should keep both and that they should live for themselves rather than for others. You can imagine that especially the particularly expertly manipulated men by the prospect of so much independence would panic. After being brainwashed from earliest childhood, they are only satisfied with themselves if they make themselves useful. To have time for yourself and being economically independent is the only thing they really fear.

The greater opposition to the proposals made here is therefore less appreciated by women expect as the product of their education, the trained man. The man who always pleads for that the woman absolutely has to “remain a wife” and wants to say that she absolutely must continue to do so He wants to play a child, because he wants to continue to play his father with her. Because for this Role he was trained, it is the meaning of his existence.

Well, there is probably no one who can exist without a program – any “sense” for that, what you do, you will always look for. Happy people are never free people. who is always bound to a fixed idea, that is, it is acting according to a political, moral, aesthetic, religious or other value scale or is at least by love depending on foreign standards. People who we call “free” differ of us others only by clinging to a contrary system. All ties we the free will systematically avoid. We therefore determine indirectly through our behavior also his. A “free” man is more likely to renounce his lover than to marry her, and even though he is doing exactly the opposite of what he wants right now, this is followed his religious principles – he believes in freedom – make him more contented than if he were his Longing gives way. He would be truly free if he did not find an ideology to which he voluntarily bowed would like to. If he could believe in anything, not even personal freedom.

It would therefore be unwise to promise men liberty. First, you could make that promise not redeem them, and secondly, they would just scare them with such a slogan. If in this The book is about liberty, therefore, is always meant only the possibility to tie oneself where one The biggest advantage of change would be that men become closer, More often and more permanently could compromise than before, because their involuntary and usually only material ties – for example to unloved wives, unprovided children, exploitative ones Employers – would be much rarer then today.

Of course, if men had more time and financial independence, men would become even more dependent. They would be even more convinced to pursue their political goals, still Dedicate dedicated life tasks, even more uncompromising against each other Compete and of course they fall in love more passionately than before. But unlike now, these dependencies would be freely chosen and terminable at any time. In difference for now they would only be prisoners of a “task” or of a human being for as long as they themselves were wanted. And in that difference – the freedom to give up one’s faith as soon as one does no longer believes in him – is the whole often cited human dignity. This is exactly where the border runs between happiness and misfortune.

In his present situation, the man can decide only once to whom to give his freedom wants, and even that is not really a “free” choice. The profession to which he is due due to his education and his milieu at fifteen decides, and the woman he decides to ten years later assigned – who then lets himself be “conquered” – determine his whole life. As very much he may change over the years – no matter what profession or woman she is at forty, fallen fifty or sixty – his fate is sealed. Only the most successful men can save themselves from this system and get at least in the choice of the partner a second chance. But usually they have already consumed in the fight for just this chance so that it is actually not worth it anymore. And also men who are always for the same woman In today’s situation the pleasure is denied. Since they would have to stay anyway, takes Give them every opportunity to make their stay a symbol of their affection. Outwardly they live like the others in a forced community. That they can stay voluntarily, can actually only wealthy men prove. The man with median income can be his Do not honor lover by his presence in the house, because he could not leave anyway.

And yet many men would resist the reform. The new independence would especially those anxious, who by their education particularly thoroughly on the role of the Command Recipients have been prepared or have been used to it for so long can not imagine anything else. They know that then there would be no one left for them day after day Day and hour after hour dictates what they should do with their lives. Not just for the small employees, but also and especially for the manager with the busy schedule the prospect of more time – time for yourself – a real specter. He can because of his Position over others, but about himself is always disposed. At least during In a transitional phase, such a man would feel “abandoned” and therefore completely lost.

It is therefore advisable to consider in what way the psychological trauma that the psychic trauma may cause should be mitigated Reform for better or worse for most men. The thing would be irreversible: if once the prison gates had opened, there would be no return to the security of today Lifestyle. Only the rich would have the privilege to try out the new freedom and possibly to to return to its old role: since the return is particularly high, there would always be a woman who admires his slavery and again plays the baby for him. The rest of the men would join willy-nilly have to set up in their independence. Her wives would not ask her how long they can cope with the new situation. When they do not need them anymore, they will give them all of them Freedoms that you have lost in the course of a lifetime with the most subtle methods return in a single day.

Because one thing is certain: if women no longer have any use for the trained man, you will stop the dressage immediately. And that would be today’s standards for Masculinity itself lapses: good-natured husbands would not tell how brutal theirs was Suppress partners. Desperate marriage candidates would no longer be certified as erotic they affect women. Well-meaning elderly gentlemen would not know how to salvage young girl feels in her arms. Average lovers would not do more above-average skills and above-average would no longer be sexual Accused of abuse. All this was necessary to help men become better and better Animate them to elicit more and more concessions from them and get as much out of themselves as possible To keep body. After the reform, not even the most tumultuous newspaper would write, that women live enslaved in a “men’s society” and that sex is the rape of one Be weaker. Because with the intimidation of the men from now on nobody would be served, and therefore it would not take place anymore.

The painful symptoms of dressage withdrawal – insecurity and fear of life – would therefore come yet another trauma, and this would probably be the hardest to bear for the man: the knowledge an infinite embarrassment. Because the whole extent of the manipulation that he is subjected to today, is He will probably only become aware of it when it fails. Only then will he really know how he acted in his parade role, with how much sovereignty one held the threads, on which he his With how much cynicism his partner applauded, he managed to do tricks with how much acting ability they played the role of the helpless. And he will know that he himself – similar to the bull you drive into the arena – never from the hour of his birth had the slightest chance. Even if it temporarily seemed as if he was the winner – even if sometimes a torero remained on the track – then appeared again and again on another, the red Tuch waving in front of him and at the end under the applause of the audience the coup de grace offset.

After the reform, the weaned would have to admit that all his previous ones Efforts were free. For example, he had thought he had a home with his diligence created, but if he finally had time to live there, he would have to realize that he was in this Home only disturbs – that actually no place is provided for him, there homes for their inhabitants but he himself is considered a visitor. He had believed that there were people who were too belong to him, but if he was finally with them, he would have to accept that at least his children have long grown together with their mother and their mothers shared friends for ages has been hit by others. Above all, he had believed he was at least a man through all his efforts, but that too would be an illusion prove, because everything that was once considered male, now no longer male, and because you are now completely obviously expect something different from him.

But what would you expect? At least on this point – in the search for a new role – would the women help the men.

The excerpt below is from The Manipulated Man  by Esther Vilar, available at Amazon.

American Man – the Most Successfully Manipulated Male on Earth

THE EXPLOITATION OF THE AMERICAN MALE by the American female would be a purely American affair were it not a model for women all over the world. Unfortunately, the economic hegemony of the U.S.A. influences not just the politics, science, research, and culture of all other capitalist countries but, to a great extent, the social behavior of their populations. Through the mass media, which have been relentlessly perfected, this influence spreads to all areas of life more and more rapidly.

The old maxim about American consciousness becoming the consciousness of the world after a five year lag no longer holds true. Modern techniques of communication have flooded over the boundaries separating place and time. If the United States develops a new treatment for heart attacks, hospitals in Latin America will be using that very treatment a few weeks later. If the performance of American schoolchildren is improved by teaching machines, these same machines will be hooked up within a short time in the classrooms of Japan. The moment a hit like Jesus Christ Superstar opens on Broadway, students in West Germany start praying. As soon as the American female compares her situation with that of American blacks, women in England, France, and Scandinavia scream, “We are the Niggers of the Nation.”

While American influence has its benefits in other spheres (for example, in research), in the social sphere, as far as the social position of men in these countries is concerned, surely there is none. There is no country in which men are worse off than they are in the United States. They are worse off by comparison with their female partners – and this is what we are dis- cussing here: the differing living conditions of man and woman within one and the same social class of a given country, within one and the same family.

Nobody will deny that the struggle of a poor white-collar worker to survive is more difficult in Portugal than in Sweden and that in the same country a factory worker’s wife has a harder life than the wife of an engineer. These injustices are the subject of many other books; here we can discard them entirely. By comparison with her husband – not by comparison with the engineer’s wife – the factory worker’s wife leads a luxurious life.

America’s high standard of living, combined with its permanent threat of unemployment, is enough to make any man’s life miserable. In no country with a comparable standard of living are jobs so tenuous; in no other country with a comparable rate of unemployment are the demands made by the standard of living as high. The difference between a “success” and a “failure” is nowhere so clearly defined as in the U.S.A. Added to these external difficulties is the fact that no other man is so thoroughly manipulated as the American male. The adult American male is manipulated so expertly that there appears to be nothing he would not willingly endure. And, indeed, he is exploited without scruple. In no other country do mothers so pitilessly train the male infant to perform. No other society exists where the male sexual drive is exploited for money so unscrupulously. Nobody except the American woman so shamelessly professes a creed of profit under the guise of love.

This does not mean that American women are cruel. Women are never cruel to their men; men are usually not important enough to be tortured. Only in movies do women ruin their men intentionally. This simply means that American women, more than other women, fail to consider men as fellow human beings. Perhaps the many dangers of pioneering days caused American men to be evaluated by their usefulness to women. After all, that period in history is not that far gone.

And American men prefer to see themselves in this role: a man’s salary is the yardstick of his worth. America is the only place where a badly paid professor is a bad professor, and an unsuccessful writer a bad writer. For the Latin American male, masculinity is still associated with sexual potency. For the American male, however, the association is directly with money. American literature, from Edward Albee to Jacqueline Susann, re- volves around this question: whether or not a male is a man if he cannot provide appropriately for the woman in his life. Of course he is not.

The American man knows: happiness comes only through women, and women are expensive. He is ready to pay that price. As a young adult he pays in advance, as a grownup he pays in installments, and as a corpse he is cashed in for a fortune. A man from another country realizes this as soon as he sees a flourishing divorce paradise like Reno, or the thousands of his fellow men sitting in jail for overdue alimony payments. On the other hand, the American man views this as confirmation of his superiority. Is he not the privileged one, as he has enough money to pay for it all? Is he not the competent one, since he goes to work? Would his wife have taken on his family and surname were he not the master? Only recently a poll showed that more American men than women believe that women are suppressed, and fifty-one percent of American men believe that the situation of the American white woman is as bad as that of the American black man.

The American man is grateful to his wife for letting him go to work, be- cause work to him is a male privilege. The woman for whom he provides has made sure that he never doubts it, and he feels sorry for her in spite of the unequivocal difference between his situation and hers. She has made sure that he sees a sacrifice in her waiver of work. He, more than any other man, mistakes his wife’s lack of intellectual ambition for modesty, her stupidity for exceptional femininity, her giving up responsibilities for love. More than any other man, he is able to close his eyes to the clear evidence of his own exploitation.

In this country man is manipulated with much less inhibition than in other countries: hence women should be even easier to unmask. But the American man does not want to see or know. It seems appropriate to him that in the TV show his children are watching, the father is portrayed as a fool, the mother as a star. Wasn’t his own mother superb? That a Mafia of women’s groups controls all cultural life seems unavoidable to him. Some- body has to take care of culture. That American women (and no other women in the rest of the world) run around in public with curlers in their hair is charming American folklore to him. The fact that a majority of psychiatric patients are women, while men have a higher rate of suicide, is his evidence for the value of psychoanalysis. He thinks it fair that for generations men have become crippled war veterans, while generations of women do not even know what a hand grenade looks like. Man is stronger and the stronger one goes to war.

Though the slavery of the American man is humiliating and nerve-racking, he does not want to see, of course, that his is the worst bargain: he has ended up with the most made-up, constantly recolored, the most conspicuously masked woman of all, in short, with the most unreal woman. But to this he closes his eyes.

Since the American woman is the highest paid wife, she, of course, wants something in return for her money. She is the leading consumer of cosmetics: she uses more lipstick, more cream, more powder, more color than a woman of any other nationality. Although she has a reputation for being especially dowdy, she needs more money for her clothes and other masquerades.

Of all women, she leads the most comfortable life. More often than her sisters of other nationalities, she lives in her own house, drives her own car, goes on vacation, does her work with the help of machines, and uses ready-to-cook food. She has a fully automated household, a bus takes her children to school, and they are gone almost all day, so that she has every opportunity to go to work; and yet the percentage of married women working in America is considerably lower than in other industrialized countries. Although the American woman has a better chance at a higher education than women of other countries, and although she is spared two years of military service, only thirteen percent of American coeds get their university degrees.

America has the highest divorce rate, and the chance that an infant will grow up with both a mother and a father is slimmer than in any other country. But that does not seem to disturb the American woman, for out of all women of highly industrialized nations, she has the highest birth rate. No wonder; children are a guarantee of income. American fathers pay the highest alimonies, and since non-payment can be punished by imprisonment, he pays promptly.

Even his old-age insurance rates are the highest. The average American husband is four years older than his wife, and his average life expectancy is seven years less than hers. The eleven years by which she will probably survive him do not represent a risk, and if she clings to her husband for life, she will be respected and well treated because of her money, so that the years will be even more comfortable without him. She plays bridge, is active in sports, has visits from her children and grandchildren, and works in her women’s groups for law and order. In flowery hats, her withered lips painted Stoplight Red (look, here comes an American woman!), she takes off once in a while for a tour around the world and makes sure that she is not forgotten abroad. And she is not; on the contrary – when an aging Rose Kennedy (having already sacrificed to her nation three male heirs while daughters and daughters-in-law are getting rich and old in the process) flirts in front of TV cameras, hoping to promote her last living son’s campaign for the presidency, she is celebrated as a heroine. What a brave mother!

One might assume that a prerequisite for the high profit achieved by American woman’s femininity would be top performance in other areas. But for the connoisseur, she is neither a good cook nor an experienced lover. Despite her good salary, the demands on her art of seduction are minimal. Her husband, trained by Hollywood to appreciate the coarsest of sex symbols (large breasts and big behinds), can no longer make fine dis- tinctions. All she really needs are a few good curves and the nerve to say no long enough. And she is a true master of that art. Necking and petting are an American invention. To lure men, like the women of other countries they wear false breasts, but only in America are false bottoms worn.

The logical result of such business tactics, steadily perfected through the generations, is frigidity, and the American woman has succeeded in persuading the nation that her frigidity is an illness to be taken seriously. After all, there is a difference: a prostitute would be willing to give up her orgasm, a wife would not. Instead of asking what a frigid woman is doing in the bed of a man, a man she does not even desire, an attempt is made to free her from her suffering through costly procedures and with ever-changing prescriptions (it goes without saying: only if she is properly married. Be- fore marriage, she would have had neither the money for therapy nor the interest in getting better).

The American woman is no worse than other women. She is only ahead of them all. Her unscrupulous tactics for exploitation would not be so dangerous if they were not constantly idealized by a powerful TV and film industry. As the latter creates the image of Western woman, her behavior is being copied, and as her standard of living is constantly raised, the fate of her husband automatically becomes the fate of men in other countries. Yet there is another reason to deal specifically with the American woman, and that is Women’s Liberation. American women are better off than other women around the world: but not all of the American women. The same system that brings so many advantages to most American women turns by necessity against a minority within their own ranks: the women who are unattractive by male standards.

Until recently, this condition went unnoticed by all save that minority. But one day this minority decided not to put up with that condition any longer and began to organize, like their predecessors, the suffragettes. Since the American public is accustomed to listening to women when they talk, their problems were soon much discussed. Not only in America but in the rest of the world, this new movement was taken up immediately. Why, one might ask, did this uprising of women start in America, of all places, where women are obviously better off? The explanation is simple: exactly for that reason. Because the American woman is better off, because social differences between married women and women who earn their own living are so enormous. Because in America more than any other country the working woman is treated as a traitor, an outcast, by the masses of female exploiters who see their own interests betrayed. This is why this movement had to start in the U.S.A. and no other place. Used to endless power over man and to the highest social prestige, American women will find the renunciation of power and prestige much more painful. And if the direct approach will not work, she will procure her insignia of feminine power in a roundabout way: Women’s Liberation.

Furthermore, a strained labor market has put this minority of women, forced or willing to work, into a somewhat more difficult position than their European sisters when they apply for higher positions. Many of them will see their difficulties from a particular perspective and interpret the unpleasantness of professional life as discrimination against their sex. But if an American employer were to fill an open position and to choose between an unattractive woman who did not appeal to his sexual instinct and a man, his choice would undoubtedly be the man. And he can even justify that decision: when a woman marries, she will give up her job as soon as she be- comes a mother. A man who marries and becomes a father turns into an even more reliable employee. If the applicant is already married, then the employer’s choice is even easier, since he knows that the man’s paycheck will almost certainly support more than one person, hence be twice as necessary. The single woman supports, at most, herself. From the employer’s

point of view, it is more humane to give the job to the man. The “woman with a family” – the woman who supports a healthy man and his children all her life – is practically unknown in the professional world. Who should be held responsible for this situation: employer or woman?

It is at once sad and comic to see how the women of the American Women’s Liberation movement, who indeed have reason to fight, direct all their time and energy against the wrong enemy. With constant defamations, they hold their only allies, men, at bay, while spoiling the really guilty party with immoderate compliments. Like all women’s liberating movements in history, Women’s Liberation started from the wrong premise and has missed its aim. But no force on earth will convince its members of that. The responsibility lies with the intellectuals. It is understandable and perhaps even forgivable that, as a result of all the manipulation from earliest childhood, men have come to the conclusion that (a) they have the power, and (b) they will use it to suppress women.

But it is inexcusable that intellectual women, who might have seen matters from a very different (female) angle, have uncritically adopted this line of thought. Instead of saying, “It is very nice of you to think so highly of us, but in reality we are quite different from the way you see us, we do not deserve your pity and your compliments at all,” they say, “With all due respect to your insight, we are much more pitiable, suppressed, and exploited than your male brains could ever imagine!” These intellectual women have claimed a rather dubious fame for their sex: instead of being unmasked as the most cunning slave traders in history, they have undersold women and made them the object of male charity: man the tyrant, woman the victim. Men are flattered, of course. Part of their manipulation has trained them to interpret the word “tyrant” as a compliment. And they accept this female definition of woman happily. It very closely matches their own.

Even Simone de Beauvoir let this opportunity pass when she wrote her book The Second Sex (1949), which could have been the first book on the subject of women. Instead she created a handbook of Freud’s, Marx’s, Kant’s, etc., ideas about women. Rather than looking for once at woman, she researched the books men had written and found, of course, signs of woman’s disadvantage everywhere. The novelty of her work lay in the fact that for the first time, men’s opinion of women carried the signature of a woman. But now the way was clear: Betty Friedan, Kate Millett, Germaine Greer … each a repetition of the last; they went head over heels in their effort to come up with evidence of male infamy. But they wrote nothing really worth mentioning on their subject: women. They copied the male idea about women, without being aware that this idea can only be the result of female manipulation, and thus they became, by imitating men, the victims of their own (female) system.

Nothing has changed since, although women today, more than ever be- fore, have every opportunity to make statements about themselves on their own radio or TV programs, in newspaper columns or magazines. But they do nothing except repeat and chew over the old mothballed ideas men have about women, adding new details here and there. Instead of pointing out to their following what a miserable lot they really are, the peak of female dignity is achieved by rejecting advertising for bras or vaginal sprays. The peak of female originality is reached the moment a women’s magazine carries a male nude centerfold à la Playboy.

These are the reasons why yet another Women’s Liberation movement has failed: the enemies they fought were really friends, and the real enemy remained undetected. Once again the fixed idea of sexual solidarity (under the circumstances a solidarity with a syndicate at best) misled women to the wrong strategy. And they were not aware of it. Their struggle was aided almost exclusively by men. But since they live under the delusion that they are persecuted by men, they mistook the flexibility of men for a sign of fe- male strength and screamed that much louder. And nobody got offended. From The New York Times to The Christian Science Monitor, from Playboy to Newsweek, from Kissinger to McGovern, everybody was for Women’s Liberation. No marches of men were organized against them, nobody prevented their demonstrations. And none of them were taken to task for their unending defamation of men, a Senator Joe McCarthy oppressing Women’s Liberation was missing, the F.B.I. did not lift a finger against them.

Just as their predecessors, the suffragettes, secured the right to vote for women within a short period (a right they left unused by not electing women to political power and by not stopping war), Women’s Liberation saw most of their demands fulfilled immediately. The outrageous inequities in the law had, after all, been established by men for women’s protection. But the ladies themselves did not see it that way, and, when they insisted on change, within months they succeeded. The right of a waitress to work night shifts, the right of a woman mechanic to carry heavy-duty equipment, the right to mount telephone poles, the right to pay alimony to men, the right to use her own surname and with that the right for a wife to act as a solely responsible legal person, the right to military service, the right to fight in war, etc. – they have them all. Infected by this wave of general generosity, even the government did not want to be left behind: In the future, it proclaimed, government contracts will be given out to only those companies who do not discriminate against women willing to work.

But the army of suppressed women eagerly awaiting that moment of liberation simply never materialized. As soon as the first American woman had climbed a telephone pole; the first female. plumber, construction worker, and furniture mover had been photographed and the photos printed in newspapers all over the world; the uproar died down. Why should it  have gone any further? After all, it is not much fun to repair water pipes, to lay bricks, or to lug furniture. Unlike men, women can choose whether they want to do drudgery or not. It is logical that most of them decide against it.

And given a choice, they will also avoid military service and going to war. Women think of themselves as pacifists: wars are started by men, despite women’s right to vote.

Left in the lurch by their own sex, the theorists among Women’s Liberationists further entangled themselves in details: can every sexual inter- course with a man be considered an assault? Should a vaginal orgasm be accepted at all? Is the lesbian the only truly emancipated woman? Is the woman question more urgent than the racial question? And so on. Enticed by the extensive publicity awaiting them, a number of attractive “emanci- pated” women joined the movement. (Where else does a pretty woman at- tract more attention than among ugly ones?) And although these attractive women could not possibly imagine themselves having the problems they were discussing (discrimination against an attractive woman does not exist, either in her profession or in her private life), they soon took on leading roles within the movement and turned it more and more into a branch of American show business, and – as defined in the previous chapter – into a “genuine” movement for emancipation.

Meanwhile, the exploiters living in the suburbs started to organize. The Liberationists’ loud demands for work, and the men who were willing to gratify these demands, unintentionally put the suburban ladies into a most embarrassing situation. In organizations such as Man Our Masters and Pussycat League, they assured the world how wrong the aims of Women’s Liberation really are and how much happiness a woman can find in the service of her husband and children.

The most curious of all countermovements came from a faction within Women’s Liberation itself: “We don’t want men’s jobs,” these women pro- tested. “If all women start to work now, we will soon have an economic crisis. What we want is not to be degraded as eunuchs any longer, we want to evolve freely, and we don’t want man to suppress our intellectual development and our sexual drive anymore.”

This argument is curious not only because woman now holds man responsible also for her crippled sexual drive (he who likes nothing better than a woman who thinks sex is fun). It also makes obvious for the first time how foreign it is to a woman to think that she could support her family. It would never occur to her that women do not necessarily cause an economic crisis when they enter a profession. Working women would not necessarily increase the absolute number of employed persons within their community. Whether women can work does not have to depend on the existence of day-care centers, since the quality of child care does not depend on the sex of the person administering it. Fathers could manage that work as well.

But for a woman work has to be fun, and to make sure it is, the employed wife needs a working husband. If she goes to work, she might as well make some demands, and one of these demands will be that she can choose her

work and quit any time she feels like it. So she brings her newborn child to a day-care center rather than lose her working partner, and before her profession can turn into an obligation and responsibility, she quits, rather than allow her husband to stay home in her place.

Women’s Liberation has failed. The story of the underprivileged woman was an invention – and against an invention one cannot stage a rebellion. Once again, men are the mourners. In a country where man is exploited as unscrupulously by women as in the U.S.A., a movement that fights for yet more of women’s rights is reactionary, and, as long as the screaming for female equality does not stop, man will never get the idea that he is actually the victim.

Even the emancipation of women has not been attained. “Liberation of women” would mean her abdication from the privileges she now has. It was Women’s Liberation that made sure that this would never happen.

“It’s better to let them think they are king of the castle,” a female reader of Psychology Today wrote, “lean and depend on them, and continue to control and manipulate them as we always have.”

____________________________________________________________________________________________

ABOUT THE AUTHOR (from the book)

ESTHER VILAR was born in 1935 of German parents in Buenos Ai- res, Argentina. She was trained as a physician and in 1960 went to West Germany to continue her Studies in psychology and sociology. She worked as a staff doctor in a Bavarian hospital for a year, and has also been a translator, a saleswoman, an assembly-line worker in a ther- mometer factory, a shoe model, and a secretary. She was married to German author Klaus Wagn for two years with whom she had a son.

SEE ALSO: USA, champion of extreme gynocentrism

By Robert Franklin

On reading my last post, I realized that I’d glossed over an issue that I should have addressed.  So, dear reader, mea culpa.

I too hastily said that feminism, from its origins in the mid-19^th century to today, has urged the abandonment of sex roles.  That’s not completely accurate.  Feminism has always urged society to grant women the freedom to step outside of their traditional role, but has been less enthusiastic about men’s doing so.  At least until recently.

Feminism has been astonishing successful; it’s achieved far, far beyond anything its intellectual underpinnings merited.  Feminist analysis of society, power and male/female relationships has always been at odds with basic facts and should long ago have been laughed out of serious public discourse.  But that hasn’t happened and, to the contrary, basic articles of feminist faith have been incorporated into everything from statute law to our “understanding” of sex, the workplace, much of history and more.

So how did something so intellectually bankrupt come to have such a powerful influence on our society?

The answer is traditional sex roles.  Metaphorically, when women screamed “Help!”, men came running to their rescue. Feminism has always relied on men, particularly members of dominant male hierarchies, a.k.a. power elites, to play the role of the knight on the white charger, St. George versus the dragon.  So feminists have always played the maiden in distress, the better to recruit male power to their cause.  That explains why feminists so often describe women as helpless victims of the most minor, everyday events and practices, a phenomenon remarked on by countless commentators.  Why appear strong, when the appearance of weakness works so well?

Why has it worked?

Females have always been the protected sex.  That was appropriate as long as human survival was in question, as it was for countless millennia.  So men took on that role and do so to this day; evolved biology powerfully shapes behavior, so the mere fact that we no longer live in a world fraught with the perils faced by hunter-gatherer societies doesn’t mean we’ve abandoned the behaviors on which we relied for so long to survive.  Remember the YouTube videos from several years ago showing a man in a public place loudly berating his female companion?  Complete strangers – all of them men – intervened to make sure the woman wasn’t hurt.  But when the same couple, both of them actors, switched roles and it was the woman not only shouting at the man, but hitting him, no one lifted a finger.  Passersby barely glanced at the scene.

The journalist Dorothy Dix understood the dynamic perfectly.  She agitated for women to be allowed to serve on juries.  Her reason?  Because all-male juries, when faced with a lachrymose female defendant accused of murdering her husband, too often voted to acquit.  Dix understood that female jurors wouldn’t be so easily manipulated, so justice for male victims demanded that women participate in judging female defendants.

Feminism’s dark genius was and is to harness that male protective instinct for its own goals.  So the Declaration of Sentiments in 1848 was, among other things, one long cry for help – help with rights, marriage, divorce, property, etc.  So was the demand for the vote and later the Tender Years Doctrine, obtaining credit in a woman’s name, and the like.

Needless to say, many of the goals of feminism were, certainly by the standards of today, perfectly legitimate.  Male-dominated power structures were right to accede to many of their demands.  But, whether the demands were legitimate (e.g. the vote) or not (exemption from military conscription, the Tender Years Doctrine), the dynamic was the same.  Women cried “Help!” and men “rode to their rescue.”

More recent events make that dynamic painfully clear.  Indeed, it’s informative to view today’s feminism as simply testing the limits of the male inclination to protect. Perhaps air-conditioning in office buildings constitutes patriarchal oppression that “the Patriarchy” needs to change.  That garnered ridicule, but little traction.  What about “free bleeding,” i.e. abandoning tampons as more masculine oppression?  A non-starter.

Those “issues” may seem trivial, but nevertheless illustrate that the dynamic, i.e. testing to see if male power will respond to a cry for help with corrective action, continues.  Non-trivial issues demonstrate the same.

For example, we’ve known for decades that women are at least as likely as men to commit domestic violence and, since the 1970s, the male powers that be have lavished attention and money on female victims.  But that same male power has always turned a blind eye to male suffering and female perpetration.

Likewise, due process of law has been gravely compromised in response to feminists’ demand that more men go to prison when women cry “Rape!”  Every acquittal of a man accused of sexual wrongdoing is greeted with feminist outrage, regardless of the weakness of the case against him (see, e.g. the case of Gian Ghomeshi).  And academic institutions and male-dominated businesses rush to fire powerful men on the mere accusation by a woman of even minor sexual impropriety.  When writer Stephen Galloway was hounded out of his tenured position at the University of British Columbia, women levelled the accusations and men in the university’s power structure kicked him off campus and shunned him socially long before it was revealed that he’d done nothing wrong.

In short, the helpless woman/knight on the white horse dynamic is alive and well and feminists know it.  Feminist success depends on it and always has.

Therefore, the fight to turn back the worst depredations of feminism is simultaneously a fight to turn men from their traditional ways of thinking about and acting toward women.  As long as men in power respond to feminist complaints like chivalrous knights, feminists will continue to push for more and more and more.  Why wouldn’t they?

Until then, intellectual distortions blight the landscape of public discourse. When feminists don the mask of the helpless, victimized woman in order to stimulate the savior response in men, while also arguing that gender is a societal construct that must be abolished, cognitive dissonance is born.  I strongly suspect that the former cannot beget the latter, that using sex roles to abolish sex roles will never succeed.  Perhaps it’s not intended to.   Perhaps Little Nell and her rescuer are perfectly happy with their roles.

After all, as I established several posts back, feminism has always been about “more for us,” i.e. more power, more money, more rights, more privileges for women.  If traditional sex roles provide that “more,” and they do, then feminists would be foolish to do anything but continue the drama that pays so well, until someone mercifully brings the curtain down.

In the meantime, the ironies pour on us like a biblical flood.

The following is an attractiveness rating scale based on the two factors of 1. sexual attractiveness and 2. pairbonding attractiveness, instead of the popular single rating factor of sexual attractiveness.

Preamble

Freud/psychoanalysis: “What decides the purpose of life is simply the programme of the pleasure principle.” (romantic & sexual gratification)

Object relations psychology: “The primary motivational factors in one’s life are based on human relationships, rather than sexual or aggressive triggers.” (pairbonding)

The above quotes imply two different kinds of male attractiveness, for women, and a need for two separate rating scales: 1. sexual attractiveness, and 2. pairbonding attractiveness. Sexual attractiveness is based purely on romantic attraction: a man’s status, power, looks, wealth, confidence, his overt sexual desirability & unpredictable excitement. Pairbonding attractiveness  implies the guy-next-door stereotype, more attractive for company, stability, ability to commit, pair bonding and if desired, his ability to invest in building a family.

Rating a man as  9/10 in sexual attractiveness is misleading as the only qualifier of a high quality partner, as he may score only 1/10 in the pairbonding attractiveness (or it may be the converse scores). Not that I’m into rating men, but for those who are I recommend using the dual scales mentioned here and adding the scores together to gain a more accurate, overall rating.

Two-Factor Attractiveness Scale

A two-factor attractiveness scale would work like this, and examples are arbitrary, e.g.

(Example male – who?):
5/10 for sexual attractiveness
0/10 for pairbonding attractiveness.
Score: 5|0 = total 5 

(Example male – who?):
5/10 for sexual attractiveness
1/10 for pairbonding attractiveness
Score: 5|1 = total 6

(Example male – who?):
5/10 for sexual attractiveness
7/10 for pairbonding attractiveness
Score: 5|7 = total 12

(Example male – who?):
7/10 for sexual attractiveness
5/10 for pairbonding attractiveness
Score: 7|5 = total 12

(Example male – who?):
7/10 for sexual attractiveness
6/10 for pairbonding attractiveness
Score: 7|6 = total 13

(Example male – who?):
9/10 for sexual attractiveness
-5/10 for pairbonding attractiveness
Score: 9|-5 = total 4

* Highest possible score is +20… Lowest possible score is -10.
 

 

SEE ALSO: TWO-FACTOR ATTRACTIVENESS SCALE FOR MEN

By Roger Boas

There is still a reluctance on the part of many medievalists to recognise that Arab culture had an impact on medieval Europe which went far beyond the acquisition of certain luxury goods. Of course Europe’s indebtedness to the Arabs as mediators in the transmission of Greek philosophy, medicine and mathematics is readily admitted, because such an admission does not undermine the conventional myth of European cultural identity, Graeco-Roman in its intellectual and artistic origins and imbued with Christian ethics. The transmission is presented as if it were a “a transaction similar to the purchase of some object in a store”. ¹

It is thus assumed that Arabs played a purely passive role in this process. The courtly love tradition would seem to be something quintessentially European because it is associated with the rules of polite society and Christian chivalric ideals—and is at the very root of the modern concept of romantic love. For this reason many people would consider it preposterous to claim that it might have developed as a result of cultural links with the Arab world.

A hundred years ago no scholar would have dared to make such a claim. In fact, after the colonial era, which from the Arab point of view can be dated from Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign (1798-1801), discussion of Europe’s cultural debt to the Arabs became virtually taboo until the 1930s, when, outside Spain, research was done by Lawrence Ecker, Henri Peres, Emile Dermenghem, Evariste Levi-Provengal and A. R. Nykl. Even in Spain, where pioneering work was done by Julian Ribera y Tarrago, Miguel Asm Palacios, Emilio Garcia Gomez, Ramon Menendez Pidal, Americo Castro and others, there were those, like Claudio Sanchez-Albornoz and Marcelino Menendez y Pelayo, who attributed most of Spain’s defects, in particular her “cultural belatedness”,² to the baneful de-Europeanising influence of Islam.

Denis de Rougemont, who is more famous for his rather eccentric theory that Courtly Love was the product of a heretical Cathar environment, declared in 1956, in the revised edition of Passion and Society, that it was no longer necessary to establish “Andalusian influence” on the troubadours, because to him it was self-evident:

And I could fill pages with passages from Arabs and Provengals about which our great specialists of “the abyss which separates” would possibly fail to guess whether they were penned north or south of the Pyrenees. The matter is settled .³

But, unfortunately, the matter is far from settled, and the relationship between Arabic and Provengal poetry is more complicated than de Rougemont would have us believe. The two specialists of the abyss whom he had in mind (and whom he mentions in the same paragraph) were the 19th-century scholars Ernest Renan and Reinhardt Dozy. Modern scholars, it would seem, still find it difficult to shrug off the negative judgements pronounced by these two orientalists.

After conceding that Castilian and Portuguese are not the only Romance languages which contain many Arabic loan words, Renan writes:

With regard to literary and moral influences, these have been greatly exaggerated; neither Provencal poetry, nor chivalry, owe anything to the Muslims. An abyss separates the form and the spirit of Romance poetry from the form and the spirit of Arabic poetry; there is no evidence that Christian poets knew of the existence of Arabic poetry, and one may assert that, even had they known about it, they would not have been able to understand its language and its spirit.⁴

Dozy’s view on this matter was even more uncompromising:

As regards the possibility of a direct influence of Arabic poetry on Provencal poetry, or on Romance poetry in general, it has not been established and it will not be established. We consider this question to be an entirely idle one; we would like never to see it discussed again, although we are convinced that it will be for a long time yet. Every man has his own hobby horse! ⁵

Dozy’s telling words “on ne l’a prouvee et on ne la prouvera pas” clearly betray his lack of critical impartiality. One would not expect such bias from one of the leading historians of Muslim Spain. The tone of these words reminds me of Alfred Jeanroy’s reaction to Julian Ribera’s proposal (made in 1928) that the word trobar might derive from the Arabic verb taraba, “to sing, to play music; to be moved by joy or grief; to fill with delight”: “The Arabic etymologies ascribed by Ribera to the words troubadour … will certainly convince nobody”.⁶

Samuel Stern quoted with approval the lines by Dozy which I have just cited, in a paper delivered in Spoleto in 1964. His own conclusion was very similar:

That the troubadours could not have been in direct contact with Arabic poetry is a direct consequence of the indisputable fact that they did not know, and could not have known, enough to understand it… To my way of thinking, and the opinion is worth no more than that of anyone else, there is reason to doubt whether even a single element of the poetry of the troubadours is due to the influence of Arabic poetry .⁷

How can we be so sure that the troubadours had no knowledge of Arabic? And how can we be so sure that they could not have obtained a rough translation of the words of a song if they found the music and the rhythm and the rhymes pleasing to the ear? Although Stem does not deny that there are “similarities between the troubadour concept of love and certain ideas expressed in Arabic literature”, he suggests that “these similarities will have to be explained as parallel developments not linked to any genetic relationship”.⁸

When, in 1976, I confided to an American academic whom I met at a conference that I was doing some research on what scholars had said about amour courtois and that I was inclined to favour the Arab theory of origins, he was very dismissive: “I thought that theory had been finally disproved by Samuel Stern.”

Fortunately, I was not deterred: having completed a chronological survey of what I called Courtly Love scholarship, I had learnt that in literary and cultural history there are no fixed absolutes; theories change with the mood of the times and the scholar who makes the greatest claims to impartiality is often the most prejudiced. Incidentally, this does not mean that I consider the whole enterprise to be doomed from the start. Maria Rosa Menocal is surely being excessively modest when she implies that her alternative vision of the mixed ancestry of European culture is merely a myth with which to modify prevailing myths.⁹

On the basis of my own findings and my assessment of the evidence, I still believe that Courtly Love may be defined as “a comprehensive cultural phenomenon … which arose in an aristocratic Christian environment exposed to Hispano-Arabic influences”.¹⁰

Although the troubadours themselves used other expressions such as fin amors, bon amors and verai’ amors (and similar terms are found in other Romance languages), Courtly Love is a convenient description of a conception of love which informed a tradition of European literature from the 12th century until the Renaissance, so that, by extension, the term is applicable to this literature.¹²

Whether it is treated seriously or satirically, this literary or poetic convention, which was propagated in Europe by the Provencal troubadours, is evident in the works of most of the major medieval poets and writers of fiction, including Bernart de Ventadom, Guillaume de Lorris, Chretien de Troyes, Heinrich von Morungen, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Gottfried von Strassburg, Cavalcanti, Dante, Petrarch, Ausias March, Chaucer, John Gower, Malory, Marie de France, Charles d’Orleans, Santillana, Diego de San Pedro and Fernando de Rojas. It is also of central importance in some Renaissance writers, such as Gil Vicente and Garcilaso.

The essential features of this conception of love are the beloved’s sovereignty, the lover’s fidelity and submission, secrecy, the interdependence of love and poetry, and the ennobling, yet potentially destructive power of love. The beloved was invested with the sovereignty of a feudal overlord or the perfection of a goddess. The lover humbly pledged to serve her, as if he were a vassal or a slave, demanding no more than a sign of recognition for deeds performed on her behalf. Since a public display of emotion might jeopardise the lady’s honour, particularly if she were married, discretion was a fundamental precept and a condition of any sexual favour which she might confer.

This explains why it was customary for the poet to conceal his beloved’s identity by giving her a fictitious name or senhal. By endeavouring to make himself worthy of his beloved, the lover acquired a number of moral, courtly and chivalrous qualities. If she were too easily accessible, love would cease to be arduous and ennobling; yet if, on the other hand, she epitomised the archetypal belle dame sans mercy, the traditional symptoms of love—insomnia, emaciation, trembling, fainting and pallor—could deteriorate into a species of melancholia, leading ultimately to death. Founded, as it was, on the precarious coexistence of erotic desire and spiritual aspiration, this conception of love was inherently paradoxical. It was, to quote F. X. Newman, “a love at once illicit and morally elevating, passionate and self-disciplined, humiliating and exalting, human and transcendent”.¹²

With the exception of the analogy of feudalism, all the main features which I have just mentioned are founded in the Arab poetic tradition of chaste love, al-hubb al-‘udhri, which can be traced back to the lst/7th century poetry of the Banu ‘Udhra (“the Sons of Chastity”), a tribe renowned as martyrs of unrequited love, and to Jamil b. Ma’mar al- c Udhri (d. 82/701)—a poet better known as Jamil Buthayna on account of his love for Buthayna—in particular. This tradition was discussed and more clearly formulated in many treatises, the most famous being Kitab al-zahra (“The Book of the Flower”)¹³ by
Muhammad b. Dawud al-Isfahani (255/868-297/910), composed in Baghdad in the late 2nd/9th century, and Tawq al-hamama (“The Dove’s Neck- Ring”)¹⁴ by Ahmad b. Sa‘Id b. Hazm (Ibn Hazm) (383/993-456/1064), composed in Cordoba ca. 412/1022.

From Muslim Spain we may infer that this paradoxical tradition of profane spiritualised love was imported into southern France by musicians, singing-girls, captives and slaves. Another channel of communication between east and west was, of course, the Norman Kingdom of Sicily. But it not only needs to be demonstrated that Arabic poetry and/or
treatises on love were accessible to the Provencal troubadours; it is also necessary to prove that the undoubted parallels which exist between these two conceptions of love cannot be explained by coincidence or polygenesis, and to do this one should be able to produce literary evidence of a cultural exchange or transmission. The serious objections which have been raised have never been countered in a systematic way.

Peter Dronke, one of the participants in the discussion following Stern’s paper at Spoleto, believes that the parallels between Provencal and Arabic love-poetry are coincidental. This is the assumption underlying his Medieval Latin and the Rise of European Love-Lyric.¹⁵ In this impressive work, which begins with the oldest of all collections of love-songs, composed in Egypt in the second millennium B.C., and includes examples of Icelandic, Byzantine, Georgian, Arabic and Mozarabic poetry, it is proposed that amour courtois, here apparently used as a synonym for the experience or sensibility which gave rise to the European love-lyric, is universally possible and might occur “at any time or place” (p. ix).

There are three fundamental objections to this approach: first of all, it belittles the novelty of the poetry of the Provencal troubadours, both in style and content, and the extraordinary impact which this poetry had on European literature and social mores; secondly, it leaves the main literary tradition of the Middle Ages without a name: amour courtois is, after all, a critical concept, defining not simply an individual experience, but the content of a literary genre and a general cultural phenomenon; thirdly, before the 12th century, only Arabic poetry, or poetry influenced by the Arabic lyrical tradition, contains all of the essential features of Courtly Love which I listed earlier.

Of course it is an exaggeration to claim, as Curtius did, that “the passion and the sorrow of love were an emotional discovery of the French troubadours and their successors”, 16 or that, by comparison with this revolution, the Renaissance was, in the words of C. S. Lewis, “a mere ripple on the surface of literature”.¹⁷ However the manner in which the troubadours wrote about love, as well as their decision to do so in the vernacular, was revolutionary. As Mario Equicola wrote in the late 15th century, “the way in which they described their love was new, quite different from that of the ancient Latin authors; these wrote openly, without respect, without reverence, without fear of dishonouring their ladies”.¹⁸ Alan M. Boase made this point very well in the preface to the first volume of his anthology of French poetry:

In general, the Greeks and Romans, not unlike the Chinese, regarded love as a sickness, as soon as it overstepped the bounds of that sensual pleasure which was regarded as its natural expression. This attitude is still more inimical to passion than the almost pathological reprobation of sex which was that of patristic Christianity .¹⁹

He also wrote:

It is hardly in doubt… that the Arab forerunners of these poets [i.e., the troubadours] are to be found in ninth-century Andalusia and in the great Ibn Hazm of The Dove’s Necklace —who incidentally knew his Plato at a time when the philosopher was a mere name to the Christian West.²⁰

Whilst I would agree with Dronke that the European love-lyric is a garden in which the roots can seldom be disentangled and that “it is far more important to watch the growth of the flowers”,²¹ we cannot fully appreciate the flowers unless we make comparisons, and, to my knowledge, no scholar has hitherto made a satisfactory comparative study of European and Arabic love-poetry. I have already alluded to some of the reasons why such a study has not been undertaken. The first priority is to develop a suitable methodological framework, bearing in mind the theoretical work which has been done on cultural transmission, in particular by Norman Daniel.²²

In a study of this kind there could be five sections: the first dealing with the evidence of cultural links between Christian Europe and Arab-Islamic civilisation and possible avenues of transmission (i. e. Muslim Spain and Sicily); the second on musical theory and practice; the third on the question of formal and stylistic elements; the fourth on general themes and specific motifs; the fifth on the influence of philosophical ideas or theories, such as Platonism, Sufism or the medical description of love-melancholy. I am convinced that if this research were done properly, it would no longer be possible for a scholar like L. T. Topsfield to write a book entitled Troubadours and Love containing only one brief reference to Ibn Hazm and four cautious one-line references to hypothetical unnamed Hispano-Arabic sources.²³

In the space of this paper I can do no more than offer some material for sections one and four: I shall mention a few facts about potential avenues of transmission and illustrate, by means of quotations, certain parallel themes in Arabic and European love-poetry. Some of these parallels are of a general nature; others are very specific and seem to demonstrate that certain passages of Ibn Hazm’s Tawq al-hamama were familiar to poets in France and Spain. First, I shall speak about the changing balance of power at the end of the 11th century; secondly, I shall discuss diplomatic and marital links between Navarre and the Caliphate of Cordoba; thirdly, I shall emphasise the role played by Arab ambassador-poets; fourthly, I shall mention relations between Castile and the Kingdom of Seville; and finally I shall consider the significance of the capture of the Aragonese stronghold of Barbastro and the influence of Arab singing-girls on the courts of southern France.

In the Iberian Peninsula, from at least the 10th century onwards, there had been many points of contact between Arabs and Christians: war, trade, diplomacy, intermarriage and migration. However, as a result of important political and economic changes, new channels of communication between Christian Europe and the dar al-lslam opened up in the late 11th and early 12th centuries. Here are some of the key dates: 457/1064, the sack of Barbastro by French knights; 478/1085, the capture of Toledo by Alfonso VI; 484/1091, the defeat of the poet-king al-Mu’tamid of Seville by the pious Berber Yusuf b. Tashfin, marking the end of the period of the muluk al-tawa’if, or Party Kings, and the beginning of the Almoravid era; 484/1091, the completion of the Norman conquest of Sicily; 1096-99, the First Crusade; 1112, the unification of Provence and Catalonia under Ramon Berenguer IV; 512/1118, the conquest of Saragossa by Alfonso I of Aragon.

From one end of the Mediterranean to the other Christendom was expanding: in Palestine, Syria, Sicily and Spain. The independent petty kingdoms of al-Andalus were so weakened by internal conflicts that, in desperation, they appealed to the Berber Almoravids of Morocco to intervene; then, realising too late that Ibn Tashfin had other ambitions, they turned in vain to the Christians for assistance. Whereas in the 4th/10th century the Christian kingdoms of northern Spain had lived in the shadow of the Caliphate of Cordoba, now the situation was reversed: the Muslim states sought to secure their survival by offering tribute to the Christian kings. With this shift in the balance of power, there was more willingness (as well as more opportunity) to imitate aspects of Arab culture which previously were perceived as debilitating and effeminate.
It is understandable that southern France should have been more receptive to the refinements of Arab culture than Castile, which had to remain in a constant state of military alert.²⁴ The European sense of cultural inferiority, especially with regard to matters of love and marriage, is evident in Juan Manuel’s story about Saladin’s advice to the Count of Provence in El Conde Lucanor.²⁵

It is surprising to find that, from the end of the 3rd/9th century, a special relationship was formed between the Kingdom of Navarre and the Caliphate of Cordoba. The amir ‘Abd al-Rahman II (r. 206/822-238/852), who defeated King Enneco and his Banu QasI allies in 228/843, owned a Navarrese singing-girl named Qalam; she had been trained in Medina to sing, to dance and to memorise verses and was skilled in the art of calligraphy.²⁶ This caliph, who sought to make his court the rival of Baghdad under Harun al-Rashid and al-Ma’mun, was so infatuated by his love for Tarub, mother of his son ‘Abd Allah, that he was ready to submit to all her caprices, even though she once tried to poison him.²⁷ His father al-Hakam I, who was a better poet, wrote several poems in which he describes himself as a slave or prisoner of love. “Submission,” he wrote, “is beautiful in a freeborn man Qiurr) when he is a slave ( mamluk ) of love”.²⁸ The cruel ‘Abd Allah (r. 275/888-300/912), also a poet, married Onneca or Iniga, a Navarrese princess, whose father, Fortun Garces of Pamplona (r. ca. 882-905), had spent two decades as a hostage in Cordoba. Onneca’s son, Muhammad, married a Christian girl named Maria between 275/888 and 277/890, and she was the mother of the enlightened sovereign ‘Abd al-Rahman HI (r. 300/929-350/961).²⁹ This explains why, when Sancho Garces I (r. 905-925) died in 925, Toda or Theuda, the Queen-Regent of Navarre, placed her territory under the protection of ‘Abd al-Rahman HI.³⁰

Following the tradition of his forebears, his son, al-Hakam II (r. 350/961-366/976), whose library is recorded as containing four hundred thousand volumes, also married a Navarrese girl. Her name was Aurora, or Subh, the mother of Hisham II, and, according to Ibn Hazm, he loved her blindly.³¹ Ibn Hazm comments on this preference for pale blonde¬haired girls among the caliphs of Cordoba, especially since the reign of ‘Abd al-Rahman HI, as a consequence of which many of the caliphs had fair hair and blue eyes. During this period there were also close ties between Leon and Cordoba. Sancho I “the Fat” was restored to the throne of Leon in 353/964 by the forces of al-Hakam n, after receiving a slimming treatment from the Caliph’s doctor. It was then the turn of the usurper Ordono IV to prostrate himself before the Caliph and appeal for help.³² Another king of Navarre, Sancho Garces H (r. 971-994), offered his daughter in marriage to the self-appointed ruler al-Mansur (r. ca. 370/980-392/1002) and she subsequently became a fervent convert to Islam. In 383/993 Vermudo II of Leon (r. 982-999) sent his daughter Teresa to al-Mansur, who received her as a slave. He later released her in order to marry her, but she remained a Christian and retired to a monastery in Leon after her husband’s death in 392/1002.³³

It should be understood that these diplomatic and marital links with Christian states were arranged through the mediation of ambassadors, the majority of whom were poets, and one must assume that they had some knowledge of Romance languages. An early example of such a poet-diplomat was Yahya b. al-Hakam, known as al-Ghazal (“the gazelle”) because of his vigour and good looks (ca. 156/772-249/864). He owed his success as a diplomat to his skill in winning the favour of women. For example, in about 207/822, on a mission to Normandy, he improvised some verses for the Norman Queen Theuda:

My heart, thou hast undergone a painful love,
and struggled with it, the fiercest of all lions.
I fell in love with a Norman lady fair,
she keeps the sun of beauty from ever setting.

In this case these and the remaining lines were explained to the queen by an interpreter. Nykl, from whom I quote, also cites a poem of his and compares it to an early song of Guilhem IX (William IX of Aquitaine, regarded as the first troubadour).³⁴ Although this incident occurred more than two and a half centuries earlier than the troubadour period, this is how Arabic poetry could have been later communicated. A person more likely to have had some influence on the early troubadours was the poet and ambassador Ibn ‘Ammar, in the service of al-Mu’tamid. In 471/1078, after persuading Alfonso VI of Castile to withdraw his forces by defeating him at a game of chess, Ibn
‘Ammar urged his master to embark upon the conquest of Murcia. He pledged to give 10,000 dinars to Ramon Berenguer If of Barcelona, if the Count would collaborate in this enterprise.³⁵

Hostages were exchanged to guarantee the agreement: the Count’s nephew was sent to Cordoba, while al-Mu’tamid’s son, al-Rashld, who was a poet like his father and an excellent lute-player,³⁶ was sent to the Count. When the payment was not forthcoming by the date fixed, Ibn ‘Ammar and al-Rashid were both detained by the Count. Al-Rashld was not released until Ramon received 30,000 dinars, some of it in debased coin. It is quite possible that the courtiers of Ramon Berenguer II had the opportunity to study the poetry of these two Arab poets. Here is a sample of Ibn ‘Ammar’s poetry, in which the nature of love is defined:

That which confers upon love a high rank [jah ]— let them understand it well—is its shameful humility, and its delights—if you seek the pleasant taste—consist of burning torments. Do not seek power [‘izz] in love [hubb], since only the slaves of love’s law are free men.³⁷

It was not uncommon during this period for Christians and Muslims to be allies. The Cantar de Mio Cid is inspired by events in the life of Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, an ally of al-Mu’tamid, who became for a short time the virtually independent ruler of Valencia (r. 487/1094-493/1099). The Cid’s Muslim friend, Abengalbon, is depicted as a far nobler man than the evil heirs of Carrion who inhabit Alfonso Vi’s court. Alfonso himself had spent some of his youth in exile at the Muslim court of Toledo, and when his fifth wife failed to produce a male heir, he took al-Mu’tamid’s daughter-in-law, Sayyida, as his wife or mistress, and she took the name Maria or Isabel.³⁸ This was in the year 484/1091 or 485/1092. She died in childbirth a few years later, and her son Sancho would have succeeded his father if he had not been killed in the Battle of Ucles in 501/1108. In view of the fact that it is forbidden in Islam for a Muslim girl to marry a Christian, this event reflects the tragic downfall of the Sevillian kingdom. A romantic account of how this Moorish princess fell in love by hearsay is given in Alfonso X’s Estoria de Espana: “she fell in love with him; not by seeing him (for she never did), but on account of his good reputation and his high honour which grew day by day.”³⁹ Ibn Hazm devotes a short chapter to this topic in his Tawq al-hamama, observing that ladies of high birth, living in seclusion, often fall in love in this fashion,⁴⁰ and amor de lonh was, of course, the central theme of the poetry of the early Provencal troubadour Jaufre Rudel, addressed to the
Countess of Tripoli.⁴¹

Finally, we should consider the possible repercussions of a single military expedition against the Muslim stronghold of Barbastro in Aragon by an army of Normans and some knights from southern France, including Guilhem VII of Aquitaine, the father of the first troubadour. According to the Arab chronicler Ibn Hayyan, the campaign was led by “the commander of the cavalry of Rome”, therefore by Guillaume de Montreuil, who was in the service of Pope Alexander II⁴² According to Amatus de Monte Cassino, in his Historia Normannorum (written 1080-1083), the leader was Robert Crespin, a Norman lord and soldier of fortune.⁴³

What is certain is that the booty included a vast number of slave-girls—Amatus mentions one thousand five hundred—most of whom became lute-playing singers and concubines in the courts of southern France. Despite the pledge of an amnesty, six thousand fugitives from the town were slain. Then all householders were ordered to return to their homes with their wives and children. “Each knight who received a house for his share,” writes a contemporary Arab author, “received in addition all that it contained—women, children and money … the infidels, by a refinement of cruelty, took delight in violating the wives and daughters of the prisoners before the eyes of their husbands and fathers.”⁴⁴

After behaving like true barbarians, the Christians were apparently seduced by the Arab style of life. Ibn Hayyan recounts how a Jewish merchant, a friend of his, visited one of the Christian princes in Barbastro to discuss the ransom of the daughters of the former commander of the fortress. This prince, dressed in Arab robes, was installed in the alcaide’s harem. He asked the girl to take her lute and sing to him, and then made gestures of delight as if he understood the words. After hearing the song, the Christian prince dismissed the Jew, saying that the pleasure which he derived from his slave-girls was worth more than all the gold which he might receive as a ransom.⁴⁵ Whether or not this prince was Guilhem VIII of Aquitaine, we can be sure that Guilhem would have received his full share of captives. It is therefore probable that his son, Guilhem IX, inherited some Arab singing-girls when he succeeded his father in 1086 at the tender age of fifteen. Guilhem IX continued the family’s connections with Spain. When Sancho I of Aragon died at the Siege of Huesca in 1094, he married the king’s young widow Philippa, whose “retinue would almost certainly have included some jongleurs or female singers similar to those who had been captured at Barbastro”.⁴⁶

Furthermore, his sisters had respectively married Peter I of Aragon and Alfonso VI of Castile; and one of his daughters married Ramiro II of Aragon. His father was buried in Santiago de Compostela; and it was here that his son died as a pilgrim in 1137. When we bear in mind that his grand-daughter was Eleanor of Aquitaine, the great patroness of courtly poets, who after divorcing Louis VIII, became the wife of Henry Plantagenet and the mother of Richard the Lionheart, then we perceive how ideas borrowed from Muslim Spain could soon have reached England and Northern France. The frequent allusions to Spain in the poetry of all the early troubadours tell the same story.⁴⁷

The Arabic lyrical tradition was maintained by the social institution of singing-girls or qiyan, whose position in society was comparable to that of the geisha girls of Japan. The description of the beloved in Arabic love-poetry owes much to the ambivalent figure of the qayna, who was taught by her master to play the role of the courtly beloved: she was coquettish and modest, demanding and deceptive, raising hopes, but rarely fulfilling them, giving each man the illusion that her words were addressed to him alone. As al-Jahiz (d. 255/868) explains in his Risalat al-qiyan (“Epistle on Singing Girls”), she “is hardly ever sincere in her passion … for both by training and by innate instinct, her nature is to set up snares and traps for her victims”.⁴⁸ “When the girl raises her voice in song, the gaze is riveted on her, the hearing is directed attentively to her, and the heart surrenders itself to her sovereignty … From this there arises, together with the feeling of joyous abandon, [an indulgence in] the sense of touch.”⁴⁹ Thus the girl pleases all the senses, providing “a combination of pleasures such as nothing else on the face of the earth does”.⁵⁰

If singing-girls in the 5th/11th century were still expected to have “a repertoire of upwards of four thousand songs, each of them two or four verses long”,⁵¹ then one can imagine the influence which several hundred of these girls must have exerted on the society of the Languedoc. The talents of these girls were also much appreciated in the courts of Castile, Aragon and Navarre. We know, for example, that Sancho Garcia, Count of Castile (r. 995-1017), received a gift of singing-girls and dancers from the Caliph of Cordoba.⁵² Even in the 14th century such songs were still enjoyed in Christian Spain. Juan Ruiz, the Archpriest of Hita, informs us that he wrote many songs for Moorish singing-girls and he gives a list of instruments which he considers unsuitable for these songs.⁵³

Having proved that there is no problem with regard to the means of cultural transmission, let us turn to the question of parallel themes. It seems to me that the most important feature of Courtly Love is the lover’s attitude of sub¬ mission. One thinks, for example, of Bemart de Ventadorn:

Bona domna, re no.us deman
Mas que.m prendatz per servidor,
Qu’ie.us servirai com bo senhor,
Cossi que del gazardon m’an.⁵⁴

(“Good lady, I ask of you nothing more than that you take me as your servant.
I will serve you as I would a good lord, whatever I may receive as the reward.”)

Similarly, Guilhem IX, many of whose poems are scurrilous, asks his beloved to register his name in the charter of her slaves, saying that he will yield to her whatever case she may bring against him.⁵⁵ Among Arab poets the name of al- £ Abbas b. al-Ahnaf (d. 190/806) immediately springs to mind:

I am your slave, torment me if you will, or whatever you will of me, do it, whatever it is!⁵⁶

Accept my love, I give it as a gift!
Then reward me with rejection—that is love!
This soul of mine is given to you;
the best gift demands no return.⁵⁷

It has been said that al-‘Abbas is unique in “his consistent display of the courtly attitude to his Lady.”⁵⁸ However there were many Hispano-Arab poets, including several caliphs, who expressed the same sentiments. Referring to the example of al-Hakam n, Ibn Hazm wrote:

Submission in love is not odious,
For in love the proud one humbles himself;
Do not be surprised at my docility in my condition,
For before me al-Mustansir has suffered the same lot!⁵⁹

“Humiliation before the beloved,” said Ibn Dawud (d. 294/907), “is the natural characteristic of a courteous man”. 60 Al-Hakam I (d. 206/822), a contemporary of al-‘Abbas b. al-Ahnaf, wrote:

A king am I, subdued, his power humbled
To love, like a captive in fetters, forlorn!…
Excessive love has made him a slave.
Though before that he was a mighty king!
If he weeps, complains of love, more unjustly
They treat, eschew him, bring him near to death!⁶¹

Sulayman al-Mustafin (ruled 400/1009-10, 403/1013-407/1016) also seems
to allude to al- c Abbas in his use of the phrase sultan al-hawa, “the sovereign¬
ty of love”:

Concerning the three beauties [who have conquered my heart], I have men¬
tioned oblivion to love, and love has decreed that its sovereignty [ sultan ]
should be used against mine.

Do not blame a king for prostrating himself in this way before love [ hawa ],
for humiliation in love is a power and a second royalty.⁶²

‘Abd al-Rahman V (r. 414/1023-4), speaking of his marriage to his cousin Habiba, wrote:

I have stipulated as a condition [of marriage] that I shall serve her as a slave and that I have conveyed my soul to her as my dowry.

He also wrote:

I have given her my kingdom, my spirit, my blood and my soul, and there is nothing more precious than the soul.⁶³

Given the conventional image of the Muslim despot and the allegedly abject status of women in Islam, it is amazing that so many of the rulers of Muslim Spain subscribed to this concept of the beloved’s sovereignty, even within the state of marriage. I cannot think of a European king before Wenzel IV of Bohemia in the late 14th century who would speak in this fashion.⁶⁴

Chaucer was, I believe, the first European writer to attempt to reconcile the courtly idea of the beloved’s sovereignty with married love. In The Franklin’s Tale, Arveragus, a true courtly lover, is reluctant to be his wife’s lord in marriage after serving her with “meke obeysaunce” (1. 739). He therefore swore to do her will and obey her in all things:

And for to lede the moore in blisse hir lyves.
Of his free wyl he swoor hire as a knyght
That nevere in al his lyf he, day ne nyght,
Ne sholde upon hym take no maistrie
Again hir wyl, ne kithe hire jalousie,
But hire obeye, and folwe hir wyl in al,
As any lovere to his lady shal,
Save that the name of soveraynetee,
That wolde he have for shame of his degree. (11.744-752)

Thus Arveragus becomes simultaneously a servant and a lord, “Servant in love, and lord in marriage” (1. 793). The Franklin, who seems to be here expressing Chaucer’s opinion, approves of this solution because, as he says, “Love wol nat been constreyned by maistiye” (1.764). In these lines Chaucer’s direct source could have been Bernart de Ventadorn:

Mas en amor non a om senhoratge,
e qui l’i quer vilanamen domneya,
que re no vol amors qu’esser no deya.⁶⁵

(“But in love a man has no sovereignty, and if he seeks it there, he woos like a churl, for love desires nothing unseemly.”)

Although Bernart de Ventadom declares that he hopes, by his obedience, to arouse his beloved’s compassion, he stresses the need for mutual consent:

En agradar et en voler
Es F amors de dos fis amans.
Nula res no i pot pro tener
Si.lh voluntatz non es egaus.⁶⁶

(“In accord and in assent is the love of two noble lovers. Nothing can be of profit in it if the will thereto is not mutual.”)

Closely linked with the theme of submission is the precept of discretion. Just as Arab poets often used the masculine form sayyidi or mawlaya (my lord), corresponding to the Provencal midons, so it was also customary for both Arab and Provencal poets to conceal the beloved’s identity by employing a fictitious name (Arabic kunya, Provencal senhal). Failure to observe this convention could bring dishonour on the lady. Thus ‘Umar b. Abi Rabi’a (ca. 23/643-101/719) wrote:

Zaynab secredy sent a message to say:
you have brought dishonour upon me by uttering my name in the love-prelude [naslb\ instead of my ficdtious name [kunya].
Thus you have profaned our secret.⁶⁷

Ibn Hazm declares that he would become mad rather than betray the secret
of his beloved’s identity:

They say: “By God, name the one whose love has driven sweet sleep from
you!”
Yet I will never do so! Before they obtain what they seek,
I will lose all my wits and face all misfortunes.⁶⁸

These celebrated lines by Ibn Zaydun (394/1003-463/1071), addressed to the
princess Wallada, might well have been written by a troubadour:

If you wished it we could share something which does not die,
a secret that would remain when all secrets are divulged.
You have sold your share in me, but know that I
would not sell my share in you, even at the price of my life!
Know, may this suffice, that if you burdened my heart
with what other hearts cannot bear, mine would bear it
Be disdainful. I’ll endure it; postpone. I’ll be patient;
be haughty. I’ll be humble;
leave, I’ll follow; speak. I’ll listen; command, I’ll obey.⁶⁹

In another poem to Wallada, he speaks of his love as an open secret:

We do not name you by reason of our respect and honour [for you]; besides your elevated rank makes it unnecessary to do so.⁷⁰

Similarly, Muhammad b. al-Haddad (d. 480/1088) addressed some fine poems to a Christian girl, to whom he gave the kunya Nuwayra:

O how carefully do I hide the name of my beloved,
for it is my custom never to pronounce it,
and I never cease, by my enigmas, to make it more obscure.⁷¹

Both Arab and Provencal love-poets communicate by means of secret signs, demanding some gesture of recognition or bel accueil, and sometimes, as in Dante’s Vita nuova, using another lady as a screen. Advice of this kind may be found in Ibn Hazm’s treatise on love. Bernart de Ventadom writes:

Parlar degram ab cubertz entresens
E, pus no.ns val arditz, valgues nos gens! …
C’amor pot om e far semblans alhor
E gen mentir lai on non a autor.⁷²

(“We should speak in secret signs and, since boldness avails us not, may guile
avail us! … For one can love and make pretence elsewhere, and smoothly lie
there where there’s no sure proof.”)

In connection with the need for secrecy, one encounters the same dramatis personae in both Arabic and Provencal poetry: the spies or slanderers (Ar. wushat, pi. of washi; Prov. lauzengiers), the guard (Ar. raqib; Prov. gardador), and the jealous persons (Ar. hussad, pi. of hasid; Prov. envejos). But in Arabic poetry and in 15th-century Castilian poetry the chief threat to the lovers’ secret is the lover’s urge to express himself.

In Spanish cancionero poetry there are literally hundreds of poems on the conflict between secrecy and the need for self-expression. One of the best definitions of this secret love is given in Rust’haveli’s The Knight of the Leopard’s Skin (ca. 1196-1207), a Georgian prose adaption of a Persian romance, Wis and Ramin, composed by Gorganl in the middle of the 5th/11th century:

There is a noblest love; it does not show, but hides its woes; the lover thinks
of it when he is alone, and always seeks solitude; his fainting, dying, burning,
flaming, all are from afar; he must face the wrath of his beloved, and he must
be fearful of her.

He must betray his secret to none, he must not basely groan and put his belo¬
ved to shame; in nought should he manifest his love, nowhere must he reveal
it; for her sake he looks upon sorrow as joy, for her sake he would willingly
be burned.⁷³

The meaning of the Provencal concept of joy, which is obviously associated with the later expression gay saber, has been much debated.⁷⁴ But there could hardly be a better explanation than that which Ibn ‘Arab! gives in his vast mystical work Al-Futuhat al-makkiyya (“The Meccan Revelations”):

If union with the beloved is not personal union, and the beloved is a superior being who imposes obligations on the lover, then the fulfilment of these obligations sometimes takes the place of personal union, producing in him a joy which obliterates the awareness of sorrow from his soul.⁷⁵

This type of passionate love (‘ishq) is always potentially destructive, because it is a species of melancholy. For this reason we cannot fully understand medieval love-poetry without consulting medieval treatises on medicine, most of which contain a chapter based on Arabic sources, concerning “the malady of love.”⁷⁶ The paradoxical nature of love was emphasised by Ibn Hazm:

Love, my dear friend, is an incurable disease and in it there is remedy against it, according to the manner of dealing with it; it is a delightful condition and a disease yearned for he who is free from the disease does not like to stay immune, he who suffers from it does not find pleasure in being cured of it; it makes appear beautiful to a man what he has been abstaining from because of shame, and makes appear easy to him what was difficult for him, to the extent of changing inborn characteristics and innate natural traits …

All opposites, as thou dost see,
In him subsist combined;
Then how shall such variety
Of meanings be defined?⁷⁷

The ennobling influence of suffering and self-restraint was still understood by the Aragonese poet Pedro Manuel Ximenez de Urrea at the end of the 15th century, and it is significant that he uses the Provencal term fino amor:

El amor qu’es fino amor
ningun galarddn procura…
esto sdlo es remediar:
ver que la causa ennoblece
aquella pena que crece. 78

(“Love which is perfect love (fin’amors) does not seek any reward … this
alone is its remedy: to see that the cause [of love] ennobles that growing
affliction.”)

Vosotros por bien amar
entendeys la de alcangar
es yerro pensar quitar
los muy devidos dolores. 79

(“You mean, by loving well, attainment; but it is wrong to think of removing
the obligatory sorrows.”)

Of course, by this period, especially in Spain, the language of the court lyric had become more abstract and less explicitly sensual, yet, at the same time, more replete with doubles entendres. The Provengal troubadours dream of contemplating the lady’s naked body, or speak of this as a favour granted. They also speak of being revived by a kiss. But, as a rule, they do not celebrate sexual fulfilment. For example, the Provengal troubadour Guiraut Riquer writes: “I deem myself richly rewarded by the inspiration I owe to the
love I bear my lady, and I ask no love in return … Had she ever granted me her favours, both she and I would have been defiled by the act.”⁸⁰ In biblical terms the courtly lover is necessarily guilty of adultery on account of his immoderata cogitatione, to use a phrase employed by Andreas Capellanus in his De amore.⁸¹ However, his conduct is compatible with chastity ( c afaf) as understood by those Arab poets who regarded themselves as the spiritual successors of Jamil al-‘Udhri. Consider these lines by Ibn Faraj al-Jayyanl (d. 366/976), a confessed admirer of Ibn Dawud al-Isfahani:

Often, when she would submit, it was I who abstained,
and Satan, as a result, was not obeyed.
During the night she revealed her face
and thus the night unveiled its shade.
Not a glance did she cast but it contained
an urge to stir temptations in men’s hearts.
To the custody of my mind I entrusted my desires,
remaining, true to my nature, chaste.
And so I passed the night with her in thirst,
like a camel colt, muzzled, prevented from suckling the breast.
My beloved is a garden where, for the likes of me,
there are only fine sights and scents;
For I am not an abandoned beast, roaming free,
such as would take a garden as a grazing ground.⁸²

Similarly, Abu T-Fadl b. Sharaf wrote:

If I have obtained its fragrance, I have not coveted the favour of tasting it, since love’s garden is composed of flowers without fruit.⁸³

Ibn Sara, who lived in Santaren and died in 517/1123, says in one of his poems that he remained with his beloved until “a dawn like her face” and abstained from her “like a man who is noble, endowed with strength”, adding that “chastity is only a virtue when practised by a person in the fullness of health”.⁸⁴ For these poets, and also for Ibn Hazm, the union of hearts is considered a thousand times nobler than the mingling of bodies. It is assumed that there is a hierarchy of the senses, with the sense of sight associated with the spirit and the sense of touch associated with matter. Thus, in his treatise on passionate love (‘ishq), Ibn Sina wrote:

If a man loves a beautiful form with an animal desire, he deserves reproof, even
condemnation and the charge of sin, as, for instance, those who commit unnatural
adultery and in general people who go astray. But whenever he loves a pleasing
form with an intellectual consideration, in the manner we have explained, then
this is to be considered an approximation to nobility and an increase in
goodness.⁸⁵

This distinction between animal desire and ennobling passion, which seems to be based on scientific rather than religious grounds, is analogous to the distinction made by Andreas Capellanus between amor mixtus and amor purus:

This kind [of love, amor purus] consists in the contemplation of the mind and the
affection of the heart; it goes so far as the kiss and the embrace and the modest
contact with the nude lover, omitting the final solace, for that is not permitted to
those who wish to love purely.⁸⁶

Although, in the Renaissance, the Florentine neo-Platonists studied Plato in the original Greek, their views on this subject are strikingly similar. I am thinking, in particular, of Bembo’s speech in Castiglione’s Il libro del Cortegiano (“The Courtier”) and Ficino’s Commentary on Plato’s Symposium. One should remember, however, that Ficino was a physician familiar with Arab theories concerning the “malady of love”.

These parallels—and I could give countless further examples—should be sufficient to demonstrate that the Provencal troubadours and European poets in general were influenced by Arabic poetry and treatises on love, either directly or indirectly. And here I should emphasise again that, although no early translations of Arabic poetry into any Romance language are extant (except those cited in a commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics),⁸⁷ there were numerous opportunities for oral transmission. Anyone who still entertains doubts should consult my appendix, in which I quote passages on the affinity
between love and hate and love’s paradoxical effects. Although we do find passages in Ovid on the bitter-sweet nature of love, we do not find anything comparable to Ibn Hazm’s psychological insights.

Appendix on the influence of Ibn Hazm

I. Affinity between love and hate

Opposites are of course likes, in reality; when things reach the limit of contrariety… they come to resemble one another. This is decreed by God s omnipotent power, in a manner which baffles entirely the human imagination. Thus, when ice is pressed a long time in the hand, it finally produces the same effect as fire. We find that extreme joy and extreme sorrow kill equally … Similarly with lovers: when they love each other with an equal ardour … they will turn against one another without any valid reason, each purposely contradicting the other in whatever he may say; they quarrel violently over the smallest things, each picking up every word that the other lets fall and wilfully misinterpreting it All these devices are aimed at testing and proving what each is seeking in the other.

(Ibn Hazm, Tawq al-hamama , written ca. 412/1022, trans. A. J. Arberry, pp. 36-37)

Often bursts of anger arise between lovers in this state, often they start quarrels, and when true grounds of antagonism are not there they invent false ones, often not even
probable. In this condition love often turns to hate, since nothing can satisfy their longing for each other … and in a wondrous, or rather in a wretched way, out of desire springs hate, and out of hate desire … Yet beyond measure, beyond nature even, fire gathers strength in water, in that the flame of love bums more fiercely through their opposition than it could through their being at peace.

(Richard of St Victor, d. 1173, Tractatus de quatuor gradibus violentae charitatis,
quoted from P. Dronke, Medieval Latin, 1,65 n.)

It is well if lovers pretend from time to time to be angry at each other, for if one lets the other see that he is angry and that something has made him indignant with his loved one, he can find out clearly how faithful she is. For a true lover is always in fear and trembling lest the anger of his beloved last for ever, and so, even if one lover does show at times that he is angry at the other without cause, this disturbance will last but a little while if they find that their feeling for each other is really love. You must not think that by quarrels of this kind the bonds of affection and love are weakened; it is only clearing away the rust.

(Andreas Capellanus, writing ca. 1185, De amore, trans. J. J. Parry, pp. 158-59.)

“Before the face of God rapt silence shouts.” Look at other stations, and you will see the same [concord through opposition] there: when lovers fight in quarrels with each other, their peace of spirit grows through that war of words; love is spiced with hate. So too in metaphors: inwardly the words love each other, though on the outside there are enmities. Among the words themselves there is conflict, but the meaning calms all conflict in the words.

(Geoffrey de Vinsauf, writing 1208-1213, Poetria nova , quoted by P. Dronke, “Medi¬
eval rhetoric”, in The Mediaeval World, ed. D. Daiches and A. Thorlby, London,
1973, pp. 334-35.)

“Pero donde yo me llego
todo mal y pena quito;
delos yelos saco fuego …

Assi yo con galardon
muchas vezes mezclo pena,
que en la paz de dissension
entre amantes la quistion
reyntegra la cadena.”

(Rodrigo Cota, writing ca. 1490, “Love’s words”, Dialogo entre el Amory un viejo, in
Cancionero general, ed. Antonio Rodriguez-Monino, Madrid, 1958, fols. 73v-74v.)

2. Love’s paradoxical effects

How often has the miser opened his purse-strings, the scowler relaxed his frown, the coward leapt heroically into the fray, the clod suddenly become sharp-witted, the boor turned into the perfect gentleman, the stinker transformed himself into an elegant dandy, the sloucher smartened up, the decrepit recaptured his lost youth, the godly gone wild, the self-respecting kicked over the traces—all because of love!

(Ibn Hazm, Tawq al-hamama, pp. 34-35.)

Per son joy pot malautz sanar,

E per sa ira sas morir,

E savis horn enfolezir,

E belhs horn sa beutat mudar,

E. 1 plus cortes vilaneiar,

E totz vilas encortezir.

(Guilhem IX, 1071-1127, The Poetry of William VII, Count of Poitiers, IX Duke of Aquitaine, ed. and trans. Gerald A. Bond, New York: Garland 1982, no. 9,11. 25-30,
p. 33.)

Love causes a rough and uncouth man to be distinguished for his handsomeness; it
can endow a man even of the humblest birth with nobility of character; it blesses the
proud with humility; and the man in love becomes accustomed to performing many
services gracefully for everyone. O what a wonderful thing is love, which makes a
man shine with so many virtues and teaches everyone, no matter who he is, so many
good traits of character!

(Andreas Capellanus, De amore, written ca. 1185, trans. J. J. Parry, p. 31)

Ancaras trob mais de ben en Amor,

Que.l vil fai car e.l nesci gen de parlan,

E 1’escars larc, e leial lo truan,

E.l fol savi, e.l. pec conoissedor;

E. l’orgoillos domesga et homelia;

E fai de dos cors un, tan ferm los lia.

Per c’om non deu ad Amor contradir,

Pois tant gen sap esmendar e fenir.

(Aimeric de Peguilhan, d. 1230, The Poems, ed. William P. Shepard and Frank M.
Chambers, Evanston, Illonois.: Northwestern University Press, 1950, no. 15,11. 17-
24, pp. 101-03.)

Muchas noblezas ha en el que a dueiias sirve:
lo?ano, fablador, en ser franco se abive;
en servir a las duenas el bueno non se esquive,
que si much trabaja, en mucho plazer bive.

El amor faz ’sotil al omne que es rudo;
fazele fablar fermoso al que antes es mudo;
al omne que es covarde fazelo muy atrevudo;
al perezoso faze ser presto e agudo.

Al mancebo mantiene mucho en mancebez,
e al viejo faz ’perder mucho la vejez;
faze bianco e fermoso del negro como pez:
lo que non vale una nuez amor le da gran prez.

(Juan Ruiz, Archpriest of Hita, writing ca. 1330, Libro de Buen Amor, ed. and trans.
Raymond S. Willis, Princeton: University Press, 1972, sts 155-57, pp. 50-51.)

And considering the effect and essence of the said science, which is known by one of
love’s terms as the Joyous or Gay Science and by another as the Science of
Invention; that science which, shining with the most pure, honourable and courtly
eloquence, civilises the learned, trims the hirsute, discloses hidden things, sheds light
and purges the senses … nurturing the old men, … it sustains them as though in the
freshness of their youth.

(Document issued by Joan I of Aragon, 20 February 1393, establishing the Festival
of the Gay Science; see Roger Boase, The Troubadour Revival, London: RKP, 1979,
p. 130.)

“Al rudo hago discrete,
al grossero muy polido,
desembuelto al encogido,
y al invirtuoso neto;
al covarde, esforgado,

escasso, al liberal,
bien regido, al destemplado,
muy cortes y mesurado
al que no suele ser tal.”

(Rodrigo Cota, writing ca. 1490, Dialogo entre el Amor y un viejo, in Cancionero
general , fol. 73v.)

Aun podemos en otra manera dezir que las saetas que fazen amar sean de oro, por
quanto, segun los vulgares piensan, el amor mueve alos mancebos a alguna claridad
de nobleza y de virtud humanal, aunque no divinal, ca son algunos mancebos, torpes,
perezosos, no despiertos para actos de proeza, tristes en si mismos, o no alegres, pes-
ados, no curantes de si mismos, agora sean apuestos, agora incompuestos, callados,
no gastadores o destribuydores segun alguna liberalidad; al amor les haze tomar
todas las contrarias condiciones … todos los amadores curan andar alegres, y limpios,
y apuestos, y conversan con las gentes, y distribuyen, y donan algo, como todo esto
requiera el amor. Esto fara todo hombre que amare, aun que su natural condition sea
melancolica, triste, pensosa y apartada, sin fabla, sin compostura, sin conversation, y
escassa o avarienta, porque no es possible en otra manera amar y mostrarse amador.

(Alfonso de Madrigal, El Tostado, d. 1455, Libro de las diez questiones vulgares,
fol. 35v.)

Clau. Que tan bien os parecen las mugeres?

Amin. Nasci d’ellas, y que donde ellas no andan ni hay alegria ni descanso ni perfeto
gozo ni contentamiento, y por el contrario, el favor de la hembra da esfuerjo al
cobarde, y haze al [perezoso] despierto, y al tartamudo elocuente, y al nescio discre¬
te, y al parlero templado. Y al grosero haze polido, y al bovo prudente, y del rudo
avisado, y del descuidado toma diligente, y del liberal prodigo y del avaro liberal. Y
al desabrido toma de dulce conversation, y del mudo toma parlero, y del cobarde
haze esforpado, y del mal christiano toma y haze religioso, compeliendo all hombre a
que ni pierda missa ni biesperas ni cumpletas.

(Anon., La comedia Thebaida, Valencia, 1521, ed. G.D. Trotter and K. Whinnom,
London: Tamesis, 1969, p. 180).

1 Maria Rosa Menocal, “Close Encounters in Medieval Provence: Spain’s Role in the Birth
of Troubadour Poetry”, Hispanic Review, 49,1981, p. 51.

2 The phrase was coined by Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard R. Trask, London, 1953, pp. 541-43.

3 L’Amour et l’Occident, trans. Montgomery Belgion, London, 1956, pp. 106-07.

4 Histoire generate et systeme compare des langues semitiques, 4th rev. ed., Paris, 1863, p. 397. Here and elsewhere, my translation unless otherwise indicated.

5 Recherches sur l’histoire et la litterature des musulmans d’Espagne au moyen age, Leiden, 1849, p.611.

6 La Poesie des troubadours, 1934, I, 75, n. 2., cited by Maria Rosa Menocal, “The Ety¬
mology of Old Provenjal trobar, trobador: A Return to the ‘Third Solution’”, Romance Philology, 36, 1982-83, pp. 137-53.

7 Hispano-Arabic Strophic Poetry, ed. L.P. Harvey, Oxford, 1974, pp. 216-17,220.

8 Ibid., p. 216.

9 The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History: A Forgotten Heritage, Philadelphia, 1987,

p. 16.

10 The Origin and Meaning of Courtly Love: A Critical Study of European Scholarship,
Manchester, 1977, pp. 129-30.

11 The adjective “courtly” was rarely applied to love in this way by medieval poets, but the expression is appropriate because it indicates both the ethic of courtliness and the milieu in which the convention flourished; see Boase, Origin and Meaning, p. 4, n. 1.

12 The Meaning of Courtly Love, ed. Newman, Albany, 1968, p. vii.

13 It was partially edited by A. R. Nykl, Chicago, 1932. For this and many similar works, see Lois Anita Giffen, Theory of Profane Love Among the Arabs: The Development of the Genre, New York, 1971, and Joseph Normant Bell, Love Theory in Later Hanbalite Islam, Albany, 1979.

14 Trans. A. R. Nykl, A Book Containing the Risala Known as the Dove’s Neck-Ring about
Love and Lovers, Paris, 1931.

15 Dronke, Oxford, 1965,1966,2 vols.

16 Op. cit., p. 588.

17 pile Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition, Oxford, 1936, p. 4.

18 “H modo de descrivere loro amore fu novo, diverso de quel de antichi Latini; questi senza respecto, senza reverentia, senza timore de infamare sua donna apertamente scrivevano”, Libro de natura de amore, Venice, 1525, fol. 194r.

19 Alan M. Boase, The Poetry of France, I, London, 1964, p. xx.

20 Ibid., p. 22.

21 Op. cit., 1,56.

22 The Cultural Barrier: Problems in the Exchange of Ideas, Edinburgh, 1975. He remarks
that “what was taken was always either culturally common or culturally neutral” (p. 177); “The exact part played by Arab literary practice in Provencal poetry and in the conventions of courtly love is still controversial; but it seems that much original stimulus came from the Moors; macaronic Arab and Romance love songs unequivocally indicate a common world of singing girls” (p. 176).

23 Published Cambridge (England), 1975.

24 For example, in the eyes of the Castilian epic hero, El Cid, the troops of Ramon Berenguer were over-effete in their dress and riding equipment; The Poem of the Cid, ed. Ian Michael, Manchester, 1975,11. 992-95.

23 Ed. and trans. John England, Warminster, 1987, No. 25, pp. 156-67. The moral of the story is that virtue is more important than either lineage or wealth, a question much discussed by the Provensal troubadours; see Erich Kohler, “Observations historiques et sociologiques sur la poesie des troubadours”, Cahiers de Civilisation Medievale, 7,1964, pp. 27-51.

26 Henri Peres, La Poesie andalouse en arabe classique au XIe siicle, trans. Mercedes Garcia Arenal, Esplendor de al-Andalus, Madrid, 1983, p. 385, n. 128.

27 A. R. Nykl, Hispano-Arabic Poetry and its Relations with the Old Provengal Troubadours, Baltimore, 1946, p. 21.

28 Pdr&s, op. cit., p. 413.

29 Roger Collins, Early Medieval Spain: Unity in Diversity, 400-1000, London, 1983, pp.
174, 251; cf. Bernhard and Ellen M. Whishaw, Arabic Spain: Sidelights on her History and Art, London, 1912, p. 79.

30 Collins, op. cit., p. 266.

31 See Ibn Hazm’s list of the Cordoban caliphs renowned as lovers: ‘Abd al-Rahman I, al-
Hakam I, ‘Abd al-Rahman n, Muhammad I and al-Hakam II, Tawq, trans. Emilio Garcia
Gomez, El collar de la paloma: tratado sobre el amor y los amantes, Madrid, 1952, p. 74. Al-Mansur also seems to have been infatuated by Subh. This would explain why he ordered a slave-girl to be killed for singing a song about her by one of her admirers (ibid., p. 125).

32 Collins, op. cit., pp. 199-200.

33 Ramdn Menendez Pidal, Historia y epopeya, Madrid, 1934, pp. 18-21.

34 Hispano-Arabic Poetry, pp. 24-26.

35 Reinhardt Dozy, Spanish Islam: A History of the Moslems in Spain, trans. Francis Griffin Stokes, London, 1988, pp. 677-81.

36 Peres, op. cit., p. 382.

37 Ibid., p. 428.

38 Colin Smith, Christians and Moors in Spain. I: 711-1150, Warminster, 1988, chap. 883 of Alfonso X’s Estoria de Espaha, pp. 104-07. The epitaph on her tombstone states that she was Alfonso’s wife and al-Mu’tamid’s daughter: “H.R. Regina Elisabet uxor Regis Alfonsi; filia Benavet Regis Sibiliae; quae prius Zayda fait vocata”; see Whishaw, Arabic Spain, p. 255.

39 “Se enamord dell; et non de uista ca nunqual uiera, mas de la su buena fama et del su buen prez que cresjie cada dfa”. Smith, Christians and Moors, I, 104. She owned the castles of Cuenca, Ocafia, Uclds and Consuegra, but was obviously in need of a protector.

40 Trans. Garci’a-Gomez, p. 98.

41 See Leo Spitzer, L’Amour lointain de Jaufre Rudel et le sens de la poesie des troubadours. Chapel Hill, 1944. This theme is also found in early Sicilian poetry by Iacopo da Lentini and others.

42 R. Dozy, Spanish Islam: A History of the Muslims in Spain, trans. Francis Griffin Stokes, London, 1988, p. 657.

43 Smith, op. cit., I, 84.

44 Dozy, Spanish Islam, p. 658.

45 Reinhardt Dozy, Recherches sur I’histoire et la litterature de I’Espagne pendant le moyen age , 3rd rev. ed., Amsterdam, 1965, n, 345-48. According to Yaqut’s Geographical Dictionary the booty included 7000 young girls, later offered to the ruler of Constantinople.

46 Angus MacKay, Spain in the Middle Ages: From Frontier to Empire, 1000-1500, London,
1977, p. 93.

47 See Carlos Alvar, La poesia trovadoresca en Espaha y Portugal, Madrid-Barcelona, 1977.

48 Ed. and trans. A.F.L. Beeston, Warminster, 1980, pp. 31-32.

49 Ibid., p. 31.

50 Ibid., pp. 30-31

51 Ibid., p. 35

52 Ramdn Menendez Pidal, Poesia arabe y poesia europea, Madrid, 1941, p. 33.

53 Libro de Buen Amor, ed. Raymond S. Willis, Princeton, 1972, sts. 1513-17, p. 406; Juan
Ruiz also uses many Arabic words, as in sts. 1509-12.

54 Chansons d’amour, ed. Moshd Lazar, Paris, 1966, No. 1,11.49-52.

55 Martin de Riquer, Los trovadores: Historia literaria y textos, Barcelona, 1975,1,125.

56 Dronke, Medieval Latin, I, 21, from J. Hell, ‘“Al-‘Abbas ibn al-Ahnaf’, Islamica, 2, 1926,
pp. 271-307.

57 Ibid., p. 21.

58 Hilary Kilpatrick, “Selection and Presentation as Distinctive Characteristics of Mediaeval Arabic Courtly Prose Literature”, Courtly Literature: Culture and Context, ed. Keith Busby and Erik Kooper, Amsterdam, 1990, p. 338.

59 Tawq, trans. Nykl, p. 62.

60 Ibid., p. cv.

61 Nykl, Hispanic-Arabic Poetry, p. 20.

62 Pdres, op. cit., p. 422.

63 Ibid., p. 413.

64 King Wenceslaus celebrated his love for Sophia Euphemia, his own wife, in a most extraordinary way—by having himself depicted as a wild man enthralled by a glamorous damsel from the bath house with a bucket and broom: see Josef Krfca, Die Handschriften Konig Wenzels, Prague, 1971, plate 13 opposite p. 40, p. 88, and elsewhere.

65 Ed. Lazar, No. 7,11.15-17.

66 Ibid., No. 2,11.29-32.

67 See Jean Claude Vadet, L’Esprit courtois en Orient dans les cinq premiers sticles de
THegire, Paris, 1968, p. 126.

68 Tawq, trans. Arberry, The Ring of the Dove: A Treatise on the Art and Practice of Arab
Love, London, 1953, p. 174.

69 Pdres, op. cit., p. 413.

70 Nuniyya, I, 33, in ibid., p. 418.

71 Ibid.

72 Ed. Lazar, No. 20,11.47-48,53-54.

73 Bernard O’Donoghue, The Courtly Love Tradition, Manchester, 1982, p. 80. This work is obviously influenced by Arabic models, such as the story of Qays Majniin (the “Mad One”) or that of Jamil and Buthaynah. Note: “In the Arabic tongue they call the lover ‘madman’, because by non-fruition he loses his wits.” (Ibid., p. 79).

74 See Charles Camproux, Joy d’amor des troubadours (Jeu et joie d’amour), Montpellier,
1965, and A.J. Denomy, “Jois among the early Troubadours. Its meaning and possible source”.

Mediaeval Studies, 13, 1951, pp. 177-217. Since tarab is the special Arabic word used to describe the rapture produced by music and passionate love-service, it is not surprising to find the same association of ideas among poets known as “troubadours”, a word derived from the same Arabic root

75 Miguel Asm Palacios, El Islam cristianizado, Madrid, 1931, p. 501. Sufis such as Ibn
‘Arab! drew upon the psychology of ‘ishq and the tradition of c uuhri love to explain their spiritual states, a procedure adopted by Ramon LIull in his Llibre d’Antic e Amat : see Brian Dutton, “Hurt y Midons: el amor cortes y el paraiso musulm&n”, Filologla, 13,1968-69, pp. 151-64.

76 The contradictory and erotic effects of an excess of black bile were described by Aristotle in his Problemata physica , but the theory of melancholy was greatly expanded by Arab physicians who often rejected Aristotle’s materialism, stressing the influence of mind over matter.
Ishaq b. ‘Amran (executed in the early 4th/10th century) seems to have been one of the first to mention the contradictory symptoms of melancholy repeated by Ibn Hazm (see Appendix), and his words were cited by Constantinus Africanus, Opera, Bale, 1536,1, 288: see Boase, Origin and Meaning, pp. 67-68.

77 Tawq, trans. Arberry, p. 30.

78 Cancionero, Logrono, 1513, fol. 40r.

77 Ibid., fol. 38v.

80 Robert S. Briffault, The Troubadours, Bloomington, 1965, pp. 151-52.

81 Henri Davenson, Les Troubadours, Paris, 1961, p. 151.

82 Ibn Sa’id al-Maghribi, El libro de las banderas de los campeones, ed. and trans. Emilio
Garcia G6mez, Madrid, 1942, No. 91, pp. 72-73. Cf. The Bannners of the Champions: An
Anthology of Medieval Arabic Poetry from Andalusia and Beyond, trans. James A. Bellamy and Patricia Owen Steiner, Madison, 1989, p. 187, and my foreword, pp. v-viii.

83 Peres, op. cit., p. 425.

84 Ibid., p. 426.

85 “A Treatise on Love, by Ibn Sina” [Risala fi ’l-‘inhq], trans. Emil L. Fackenheim,
Mediaeval Studies, 7,1945, p. 221.

86 The Art of Courtly Love (De amore), trans. John Jay Parry, New York, 1941, p. 122. Of
course it is now generally agreed that Andreas is basically misogynistic and his work can by no means be taken as “the bible of courtly love”. Nonetheless it contains ideas disseminated from Muslim Spain.

87 Ibn Rushd completed his commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics about the year 575/1180. It
was translated into Latin in Toledo in 1256 by Hermannus Alemmanus and this text was probably the source of Petrarch’s unflattering remarks about Arabic poetry; see C. H. G. Bodenham, ‘Tetrarch and the Poetry of the Arabs”, Romanische Forschungen, 94,1982, pp. 167-78.

The above essay by Roger Boas from the Public Domain work The Legacy Of Muslim Spain, by Salma Khadra Jayyusi.

Some readers will have read or viewed the piece on superstimuli titled Chasing The Dragon, co-authored by myself and Paul Elam. The following piece written in 1959 by Joseph Campbell, scholar of religion and mythology, proposes Supernormal Stimuli as the functional purpose mythological imagery as it plays out in the lives of individuals and civilizations. – PW

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The Supernormal Sign Stimulus

by Joseph Campbell

One further lesson may be taken from animals. There is a phenomenon known to the students of animal behavior as the “supernormal sign stimulus,” which has never been considered, as far as I know, in relation either to art and poetry or to myth; yet which, in the end, may be our surest guide to the seat of their force, and to an appreciation of their function in the quickening of the human dream of life.

“The Innate Releasing Mechanism (IRM),” Tinbergen declares, “usually seems to correspond more or less with the properties of the environmental object or situation at which the reaction is aimed. . . . However, close study of IRMs reveals the remarkable fact that it is sometimes possible to offer stimulus situations that are even more effective than the natural situation. In other words, the natural situation is not always optimal.” ¹¹

It was found, for instance, that the male of a certain butterfly known as the grayling (Eumenis semele), which assumes the initiative in mating by pursuing a passing female in flight, generally prefers females of darker hue to those of lighter—and to such a degree that if a model of even darker hue than anything known in nature is presented, the sexually motivated male will pursue it in preference even to the darkest female of the species.

“Here we find,” writes Professor Portmann, in comment, “an ‘inclination’ that is not satisfied in nature, but which perhaps, one day, if inheritable darker mutations should appear, would play a role in the selection of mating partners. Who knows whether such anticipations of particular sign stimuli may not play their part in the support and furthering of new variants, inasmuch as they may represent one of the factors in the process of selection that determines the direction of evolution?” ¹²

Obviously the human female, with her talent for play, recognized many millenniums ago the power of the supernormal sign stimulus: cosmetics for the heightening of the lines of her eyes have been found among the earliest remains of the Neolithic Age. And from there to an appreciation of the force of ritualization, hieratic art, masks, gladiatorial vestments, kingly robes, and every other humanly conceived and realized improvement of nature, is but a step—or a natural series of steps.

Evidence will appear, in the course of our natural history of the gods, of the gods themselves as supernormal sign stimuli; of the ritual forms deriving from their supernatural inspiration acting as catalysts to convert men into gods; and of civilization—this new environment of man that has grown from his own interior and has pressed back the bounds of nature as far as the moon—as a distillate of ritual, and consequently of the gods: that is to say, as an organization of supernormal sign stimuli playing on a set of IRMs never met by nature and yet most properly nature’s own, inasmuch as man is her son.

But for the present, it suffices to remark that one cannot assume out of hand that simply because a certain culturally developed sign stimulus appeared late in the course of history, man’s response to it must represent a learned reaction. The reaction may be, in fact, spontaneous, though never shown before. For the creative imagination may have released precisely here one of those innate “inclinations” of the human organism that have nowhere been fully matched by nature. Hence, not only the ritual arts and the development from them of the archaic civilizations, but also—and even more richly—the later shattering of those arts by the modern arrows of man’s flight beyond his own highest dream, would perhaps best be interpreted psychologically, as a history of the supernormal sign stimuli that have released—to our own fright, joy, and amazement—the deepest secrets of our being. Indeed, the depths of the mystery of our subject—which are the depths not only of man but of the living world—have not been plumbed.

In sum, then: Within the field of the study of animal behavior— which is the only area in which controlled experiments have made it possible to arrive at dependable conclusions in the observation of instinct—two orders of innate releasing mechanisms have been identified, namely, the stereotyped, and the open, subject to imprint. In the case of the first, a precise lock-key relationship exists between the inner readiness of the nervous system and the external sign stimulus triggering response; so that, if there exist in the human inheritance many—or even any—IRMs of this order, we may justly speak of “inherited images” in the psyche. The mere fact that no one can yet explain how such lock-key relationships are established does not invalidate the observation of their existence: no one knows how the hawk got into the nervous system of our barnyard fowl, yet numerous tests have shown it to be, de facto, there. However, the human psyche has not yet been, to any great extent, satisfactorily tested for such stereotypes, and so, I am afraid, pending further study, we must simply admit that we do not know how far the principle of the inherited image can be carried when interpreting mythological universals. It is no less premature to deny its possibility than to announce it as anything more than a considered opinion.

Nor are we ready, yet, to say whether the obvious, and sometimes very striking, physical differences of the human races represent significant variations of their innate releasing mechanisms. Among the animals such differences do exist—in fact, changes in the IRMs of the major instincts appear to be among the first things affected by mutation.

For example, as Tinbergen observes:

The herring gull (Larus argentatus) and the lesser black-backed gull (L. fuscus) in north-western Europe are considered to be extremely diverged geographical races of one species, which, having developed by geographical isolation, have come into contact again by expansion of their ranges. The two forms show many differences in behavior; L. fuscus is a definite migrant, traveling to south-westem Europe in autumn, whereas L. argentatus is of a much more resident habit. L. fuscus is much more a bird of the open sea than L. argentatus. The breeding-seasons are different. One behavior difference is specially interesting. Both forms have two alarm calls, one expressing alarm of relatively low intensity, the other indicative of extreme alarm. L. argentatus gives the high-intensity alarm call much more rarely than L. fuscus. The result is that most disturbances are reacted to differently by the two forms. When a human intruder enters a mixed colony, the herring gulls will almost always utter the low-intensity call, while L. fuscus utters the high-intensity call. This difference, based upon a shift of degree in the threshold of alarm calls, gives the impression of a qualitative difference in the alarm calls of the two forms, such as might well lead to the total disappearance of one call in one species, of the other in the second species, and thus result in a qualitative difference in the motor-equipment. Apart from this difference in threshold, there is a difference in the pitch of each call.¹³

Between the various human races differences have been noted that suggest psychological as well as merely physiological variation; differences, for example, in their rates of maturing, as Géza Róheim has indicated in his vigorous work on Psychoanalysis and Anthropology.¹* However, it is still far from legitimate, on the

basis of the mere scraps of controlled observation that have been recorded, to make any such broad generalizations about intellectual ability and moral character as are common in discussions of this subject. Furthermore, within the human species there is such broad variation of innate capacity from individual to individual that generalizations on a racial basis lose much of their point.

In other words, the whole question of the innate stereotypes of the species Homo sapiens is still wide open. Objective and promising studies have been commenced, but they have not yet progressed very far. An interesting series of experiments by E. Kaila,¹⁵ and R. A. Spitz and K. M. Wolf,¹⁶ has shown that between the ages of three and six months the infant reacts with a smile to the appearance of a human face; and by fashioning masks omitting certain of the details of the normal human countenance, the observers were able to establish the fact that in order to evoke response the face had to have two eyes (one-eyed, asymmetrical masks did not work), a smooth forehead (wrinkled foreheads produced no smile), and a nose. Curiously, the mouth could be omitted; the smile, therefore, was not an imitation. The face had to be in some movement and seen from the front. Moreover, nothing else—not even a toy—would evoke this early infant smile. Following the sixth month, a distinction began to be made between familiar and unfamiliar, friendly and unfriendly faces. The richness of the child’s experience of its social environment having already increased, the innate releasing mechanism had been altered by impressions from the outer world, and the situation had changed.

It has been remarked that in certain primitive Australian rock paintings of ancestral figures the mouths are omitted, and that a significant number of very early, paleolithic female figurines also lack the mouth. How far one can presume to carry these suggestions toward the conclusion that there is a “parental image” in the central nervous structure of the human infant, however, we cannot say. As Professor Portmann has pointed out: “Since the effect of this form on the infant can be demonstrated with certainty only from the third month, the question remains open as to whether the central nervous structure that makes possible the recognition of the human countenance and the social response of the smile is of the open, i.e. imprinted, type, or entirely innate. All of the indices available to us speak for a largely inherited configuration; and yet, the question remains open.”¹⁷

How much more open, then, the question broached by Professor Lorenz in his paper on “The Innate Forms of Human Experience”: ¹⁸ the question of the parental response evoked in the adult by the sign stimuli provided by the human baby! The figure tells the story—as far as it goes.

And finally, it must be noted that there is no consensus among students of the subject even as to what categories of appetite may be regarded as instinctive in the human species. Professor Tinbergen, speaking for the animal world, has named sleep and food-seeking; so also, in many species, flight from danger, fighting in self-defense, and a number of activities functionally related to the reproductive urge, as, for example, sexual fighting and rivalry, courtship, mating, and parental behavior (nest-building, protection of the young, etc.). The list greatly varies, however, from species to species; and how much of it can be carried over into the human sphere is not yet known. Tentatively, it might reasonably be supposed that food-seeking, sleep, self-protection, courtship and mating, and some of the activities of parenthood should be instinctive. But the question—as we have seen—remains open as to what precisely are the sign stimuli that generally trigger these activities in man, or whether any of the stimuli can be said to be as immediately known to the human interior as the hawk to the chick. We do not, therefore, speak of inherited images in the following pages.

The concept of the sign stimulus as an energy-releasing and -directing image clarifies, however, the difference between literary metaphor, which is addressed to the intellect, and mythology, which is aimed primarily at the central excitatory mechanisms (CEMs) and innate releasing mechanisms (IRMs) of the whole person. According to this view, a functioning mythology can be defined as a corpus of culturally maintained sign stimuli fostering the development and activation of a specific type, or constellation of types, of human life. Furthermore, since we now know that no images have been established unquestionably as innate and that our IRMs are not stereotyped but open, whatever “universals” we may find in our comparative study must be assigned rather to common experience than to endowment; while, on the other hand, even where sign stimuli may differ, it need not follow that the responding IRMs differ too. Our science is to be simultaneously biological and historical throughout, with no distinction between “culturally conditioned” and “instinctive” behavior, since all instinctive human behavior is culturally conditioned, and what is culturally conditioned in us all is instinct: specifically, the CEMs and IRMs of this single species.

Therefore, though respecting the possibility—perhaps the probability—of such a psychologically inspired parallel development of mythological imagery as that suggested by Adolf Bastian’s theory of elementary ideas and C. G. Jung’s of the collective unconscious, we cannot attempt to interpret in such terms any of the remarkable correspondences that will everywhere confront us. On the other hand, however, we must ignore as biologically untenable such sociological theorizing as that represented, for example, by the anthropologist Ralph Linton when he wrote that “a society is a group of biologically distinct and self-contained individuals,” ¹⁹ since, indeed, we are a species and not biologically distinct. Our approach is to be, as far as possible, skeptical, historical, and descriptive—and where history fails and something else appears, as in a mirror, darkly, we indicate the considered guesses of the chief authorities in the field and leave the rest to silence, recognizing that in that silence there may be sleeping not only the jungle cry of Dryopithecus, but also a supernormal melody not to be heard for perhaps another million years.

11. Tinbergen, op. cit., p. 44.
12. Adolf Portmann, “Die Bedeutung der Bilder in der lebendigen Energiewandlung,” Eranos-Jahrbuch 1952 (Zurich: Rhein-Verlag, 1953), pp. 333-34.
13. Tinbergen, op. cit., p. 197.
14. Gaza Róheim, Psychoanalysis and Anthropology (New York: International Universities Press, 1950), pp. 403-404.
15. E. Kaila, “Die Reaktionen des Säuglings auf das menschliche Gesicht,” Annales Universitatis Aboensis, Turku, Vol. 17 (1932).
16. R. A. Spitz and K. M. Wolf, “The Smiling Response,” Genetic Psychology Monographs, Vol. 34 (1946).
17. Adolf Portmann, “Das Problem der Urbilder in biologischer Sicht,” Eranos-Jahrbuch 1949 (Zurich: Rhein-Verlag, 1950), p. 426.
18. Konrad Lorenz, “Die angeborenen Formen möglicher Erfahrung,” Zeitschrift der Tierpsychologie, Bd. 5 (1943), pp. 235-409.
19. Ralph Linton, The Study of Man (New York and London: D. Appleton-Century
Company, 1936), p. 108.

[Excerpt from ‘Masks Of God: Volume 4,’ by Joseph Campbell]