Ballads, Spanish; Legends -- Spain; Spanish literature -- History and criticism
At this time the lady Corisanda, who loved Florestan, chanced to visit
the Poor Rock, and her damsels heard the story of Amadis, who told
them that his name was Beltenebros, but that the song had been made
by one Amadis, whom he had known. On her return to the British Court,
Corisanda's maidens sang the song to Oriana as the composition of
Amadis. And she knew that Amadis and Beltenebros were one and the same.
Now the Damsel of Denmark, who had been sent to search for Amadis,
was driven by tempest to the foot of the Poor Rock. [41] Landing with
Durin and an attendant, Enil, she found Amadis praying in the chapel,
and when he beheld the Damsel's face he fainted away.
This extreme sensitiveness to love is characteristic of the late
Middle Ages, however absurd and overdrawn it may appear to us. That
Amadis fainted at the mere sight of one who had served his lady seems
to us ridiculous, and that he should imprison himself upon a barren
rock for the remainder of his life because she had been unkind to
him is to the modern reader more than a little grotesque.
Shall I, wasting in despair,
Die because a woman's fair?
But we must deal gently with the ideas of the past, as with one
of those faded samplers of our great-grandmothers, which, if we
handle it carelessly, is apt to fall to pieces. When we think of
the manner in which Dante and Petrarch had established the worship
of woman, and how the Courts of Love had completed the work they
had begun, can we wonder that men bred in this creed, and regarding
the worship of womankind as second to that of God alone, were apt to
become disconsolate and despairing if the object of their devotion
condemned or deserted them? Again, exalted and sensitive minds in
all ages have been peculiarly amenable to feminine criticism, as we
can see in perusing the biographies of such men as Goethe. Genius,
too, which itself nearly always abundantly partakes of the nature
of the feminine, is prone to adopt this ultra-reverent attitude,
as the sonnets of Shakespeare and the poems of Lovelace and many
another singer show. The rough, manly common sense of the average
male is too often denied it, and, man and woman in itself, it must
suffer the emotions of both sexes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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