Platonism in English poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
Plato · en
After an exhortation to the “faire Dames” to keep their souls unspotted
(ll. 165–200), Spenser outlines the true manner of love and in the
course of his poem he accounts for that manifestation of power which the
beloved’s beauty has over the mind of the lover. According to Ficino,
true lovers are those whose souls have departed from heaven under the
same astral influences and who, accordingly, are informed with the same
idea in imitation of which they frame their earthly bodies. (VI. 6.)
Thus Spenser writes that love is not a matter of chance, but a union of
souls ordained by heaven.
“For Love is a celestiall harmonie,
Of likely harts composd of starres concent,
Which joyne together in sweet sympathie,
To work ech others joy and true content,
Which they have harbourd since their first descent
Out of their heavenly bowres, where they did see
And know ech other here belov’d to bee.
“Then wrong it were that any other twaine
Should in loves gentle band combyned bee,
But those whom heaven did at first ordaine,
And made out of one mould the more t’ agree:
For all that like the beautie which they see,
Streight do not love: for love is not so light,
As straight to burne at first beholders sight.”
(ll. 200–213.)
He then explains the Platonist’s views of love as a passion. Ficino had
stated that the lover is not satisfied with the mere visual image of the
beloved, but refashions it in accordance with the idea of the beloved
which he has; for the two souls departing from heaven at the same time
were informed with the same idea. The lover, then, when he beholds the
person of the beloved, sees a form which has been made more in
conformity with the idea than his own body has; consequently he loves
it, and by refining the visual image of the beloved from all the
grossness of sense, he beholds in it the idea of his own soul and that
of the beloved; and in the light of this idea he praises the beloved’s
beauty. (VI. 6.) So Spenser:
“But they which love indeede, looke otherwise,
With pure regard and spotlesse true intent,
Drawing out of the object of their eyes,
A more refyned forme, which they present
Unto their mind, voide of all blemishment;
Which it reducing to her first perfection,
Beholdeth free from fleshes frayle infection.”
(ll. 214–220.)
Here there is no distinction of lover and beloved; but soon Spenser
passes on to consider the subject from the lover’s standpoint: