A BOOK OF THE MOMENT
IMMORTAL LOVERS WHETHER and how far these letters are authentic is probably impossible to decide. We cannot trace a manuscript earlier
than the fourteenth century, and this has now disappeared.
Mr. Moncrieff does not say from what text he made his transla- tion. Was it from the seventeenth-century edition ? Nor
does he hazard a strong opinion concerning the corruptions of whatever text he followed, although the repetition in the last letter of several pages from a former must suggest to most critics, not that Abelard was bored by Heloise—for even a bored man does not reply with a transcript of his correspon- dent's phrases—but that an unscrupulous editor, at a time when few editors were scrupulous, indifferently assigned some loose material to either of the famous writers. In fact, the letters seem still to require the scrutiny of a scholar.
Meanwhile their authenticity may be defended, and has been defended, on the grounds that (a) no forger would be intelligent enough to forge such excellent stuff, and (b) that no forger would be stupid enough to make such obvious blunders. Also, their authenticity may be attacked on the grounds that (a) a forger may be as imaginative as an honest man, and (b) that Abelard and Heloise, if they did write those letters, were unlike any other sincere lovers known to history in that they consistently address the audience and not each other. But; then, Abelard and Heloise, in fate and temper, were unique. So, there is no settling the question. The best thing is to do as Mr. George Moore does, and to accept as authentic the parts you like and to discredit as interpolations the tedious, com- monplace or melodramatic passages. The course here sug- gested is the more admissable because Abelard, the distin- guished theologian, and Heloise, the excellent recluse, have these several centuries been merged in a romance. The real King Macbeth, defeated by the Earl of Northumbria at the battle of Luraphanan, is remembered by historians as a savage chief of some efficiency, as Mangwa of Uganda is remembered. The Shakespearian Macbeth is infinitely more interesting. So may it be with Abelard and Heloise.
Mr. Moncrieff calls Abelard a prig, on whom the passionate and loyal Heloise was wasted. Mr. George Moore rebukes him. " We owe our Protestant consciences to Abelard ; he is in you and in me when we are truly ourselves ; and my thoughts, passing from Abelard to his first English translator, ask why you write so lightly about one who is still ourselves, and why in your lightness you ever cast any opprobrious epithet that your pen suggests, and most of all why you write that his whole affection for Heloise deserves no politer name than lust." It is not even necessary to invoke Abelard as a Protestant pioneer, though his radical inquiries and dislike of ecclesiastical disci- pline entitled him to be so called. An ageing philosopher, enjoying an unequalled reputation for exegesis, is shamed, mutilated, unmanned because of his guilty affection for one of his female students. He might be forgiven if he had fallen into violent hatred of the accomplice of his sin, but he never did hate her. He was glad that she had been the occasion of removing one temptation from him. You may call him a prig. He was no more than tactless. He did believe that his intellectual labours were more important than the physical companionship of Heloise, and he hoped that Heloise would understand and would accept the position of Abbess as he accepted that of Abbot.
Nevertheless, Heldise's first letter is both beautiful and strong. Its author—its supposed author—so abounds in love for her master-lover, her monk-husband, that she will accept anything from him, so long as she has something to accept; will have relations of any kind, so long as there are to be relations. " For who among kings or philosophers could equal thee in fame ? What kingdom or city or village did not yearn to see thee ? . . . There were two things, I confess, in thee especially, wherewith thou couldst at once captivate the heart of any woman ; namely, the arts of making songs and of singing them, which we know that other philo- sophers have seldom followed." Whiclx other philosophers
have seldom followed ! Alas for Abelard, alas for Heloise, but this philosopher commanded an amorous rhythm. And
then comes the tremendous injunction : " Write to me, if you will not visit me. I became a nun because I loved you. God will not reward me, for I did this for love of you, not of Him." Consider, I beseech thee, what thou owest me, pay heed to what I demand ; and my long letter with a brief ending I conclude. Farewell, my all."
My all ! You have only to contrast the addresses of these letters to understand the whole tragedy. Heloise writes : " To her master, my father, to her husband, my brother ; his handmaid, my daughter, his spouse, my sister ; to Abelard, Heloise." And again she writes : " To her all, after Christ, his all in Christ." And Abelard replies to his wife ; " Dearest sister." He beats her down to decorum. He de-personalizes their relations. Finally, if the last letter is his, indeed (I can no more believe it Abelard's than Abra- ham's), he reduces their correspondence to a discussion of conventual discipline, in which particular attention is paid to body-clothes and the use of wine. A pedant and a prig, you suggest ? A saint and a martyr, answers another. The remains of the two lovers lie in a single tomb, much, one fancies, to Abilard's annoyance. The best epitaph would be borrowed from Milton, He for God only, she for God in him."
As Mr. Moncrieff wittily points out, the popularity of these lovers, at least in England, is due to ignorance of the facts that they were actually, though belatedly, married, and that Abelard, though a clerk, was not a priest. Mr. Moncrieff, while removing these illusions, ensures the lovers a more brilliant immortality. His translation, which, curiously enough is the first yet made into English, is suave, delicate and delightful, and Messrs. Chapman have given it a worthy expression.
H. C. HARWOOD.
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