The Romance of Biography (Vol 1 of 2)

The Romance of Biography (Vol 1 of 2)

Anna Jameson

5.0
Comment(s)
14
View
19
Chapters

The Romance of Biography (Vol 1 of 2) by Anna Jameson

The Romance of Biography (Vol 1 of 2) Chapter 1 A POET'S LOVE.

Io ti cinsi de gloria, e fatta ho dea!-guidi.

Of all the heaven-bestowed privileges of the poet, the highest, the dearest, the most enviable, is the power of immortalising the object of his love; of dividing with her his amaranthine wreath of glory, and repaying the inspiration caught from her eyes with a crown of everlasting fame. It is not enough that in his imagination he has deified her-that he has consecrated his faculties to her honour-that he has burned his heart in incense upon the altar of her perfections: the divinity thus decked out in richest and loveliest hues, he places on high, and calls upon all ages and all nations to bow down before her, and all ages and all nations obey! worshipping the beauty thus enshrined in imperishable verse, when others, perhaps as fair, and not less worthy, have gone down, unsung, "to dust and an endless darkness." How many women who would otherwise have stolen through the shades of domestic life, their charms, virtues, and affections buried with them, have become objects of eternal interest and admiration, because their memory is linked with the brightest monuments of human genius? While many a high-born dame, who once moved, goddess-like, upon the earth, and bestowed kingdoms with her hand, lives a mere name in some musty chronicle. Though her love was sought by princes, though with her dower she might have enriched an emperor,-what availed it?

"She had no poet-and she died!"

And how have women repaid this gift of immortality? O believe it, when the garland was such as woman is proud to wear, she amply and deeply rewarded him who placed it on her brow. If in return for being made illustrious, she made her lover happy,-if for glory she gave a heart, was it not a rich equivalent? and if not-if the lover was unsuccessful, still the poet had his reward. Whence came the generous feelings, the high imaginations, the glorious fancies, the heavenward inspirations, which raised him above the herd of vulgar men-but from the ennobling influence of her he loved? Through her, the world opened upon him with a diviner beauty, and all nature became in his sight but a transcript of the charms of his mistress. He saw her eyes in the stars of heaven, her lips in the half-blown rose. The perfume of the opening flowers was but her breath, that "wafted sweetness round about the world:" the lily was "a sweet thief" that had stolen its purity from her breast. The violet was dipped in the azure of her veins; the aurorean dews, "dropt from the opening eyelids of the morn," were not so pure as her tears; the last rose-tint of the dying day was not so bright or so delicate as her cheek. Her's was the freshness and the bloom of the Spring; she consumed him to languor as the Summer sun; she was kind as the bounteous Autumn, or she froze him with her wintry disdain. There was nothing in the wonders, the splendours, or the treasures of the created universe,-in heaven or in earth,-in the seasons or their change, that did not borrow from her some charm, some glory beyond its own. Was it not just that the beauty she dispensed should be consecrated to her adornment, and that the inspiration she bestowed should be repaid to her in fame?

For what of thee thy poet doth invent,

He robs thee of, and pays it thee again.

He lends thee virtue, and he stole that word

From thy behaviour; beauty doth he give,

But found it in thy cheek; he can afford

No praise to thee but what in thee doth live.

Then thank him not for that which he doth say,

Since what he owes thee, thou thyself dost pay!

shakspeare's sonnets.

The theory, then, which I wish to illustrate, as far as my limited powers permit, is this: that where a woman has been exalted above the rest of her sex by the talents of a lover, and consigned to enduring fame and perpetuity of praise, the passion was real, and was merited; that no deep or lasting interest was ever founded in fancy or in fiction; that truth, in short, is the basis of all excellence in amatory poetry, as in every thing else; for where truth is, there is good of some sort, and where there is truth and good, there must be beauty, there must be durability of fame. Truth is the golden chain which links the terrestrial with the celestial, which sets the seal of heaven on the things of this earth, and stamps them to immortality. Poets have risen up and been the mere fashion of a day, and have set up idols which have been the idols of a day: if the worship be out of date and the idols cast down, it is because these adorers wanted sincerity of purpose and feeling; their raptures were feigned; their incense was bought or adulterate. In the brain or in the fancy, one beauty may eclipse another-one coquette may drive out another, and tricked off in airy verse, they float away unregarded like morning vapours, which the beam of genius has tinged with a transient brightness: but let the heart once be touched, and it is not only wakened but inspired; the lover kindled into the poet, presents to her he loves, his cup of ambrosial praise: she tastes-and the woman is transmuted into a divinity. When the Grecian sculptor carved out his deities in marble, and left us wondrous and god-like shapes, impersonations of ideal grace unapproachable by modern skill, was it through mere mechanical superiority? No;-it was the spirit of faith within which shadowed to his imagination what he would represent. In the same manner, no woman has ever been truly, lastingly deified in poetry, but in the spirit of truth and of love!

* * *

Continue Reading

Other books by Anna Jameson

More

You'll also like

Reborn Heiress: The Wolf's Vengeance Deal

Reborn Heiress: The Wolf's Vengeance Deal

Sibeal Sallese
5.0

I lay paralyzed on stiff white sheets, a prisoner in my own skin, listening to the rain lash against the window like nails on a coffin. My father, Elmore Franco, didn't even look at my face as he checked his clipboard. He just listened to the steady, monotonous beep of the heart monitor-the only thing proving I was still alive. Without a hint of remorse, he pulled a pen from his pocket and signed the Do Not Resuscitate order. My stepmother, Ophelia, stepped out from behind him, wearing my favorite pearl necklace and smelling of cloying perfume. She leaned close to my ear to whisper the truth that turned my blood to ice. "It was the tea, darling. Just like your mother. A slow, tasteless poison." She chuckled as she revealed that my fiancé, Bryce, had a two-year-old son with my sister, Daniela. My inheritance had been funding their secret life for years, and now that the money was secure, I was an inconvenience they were finally scrubbing away. As my father yanked the power cord from the wall, the beeping died, and the darkness swallowed me whole. I was being murdered by my own flesh and blood, used as a bank account until I was no longer needed. I died in that sterile room, drowning in the realization that every person I ever loved was a monster who had been waiting for me to take my last breath. Then, I gasped. I woke up in a luxury hotel suite surrounded by silk sheets, five years in the past-the very morning of my wedding. Next to me lay Basile Delgado, the "Wolf of Wall Street" and my family's most dangerous enemy. In my first life, I ran from this room in a panic and lost everything. This time, I looked at the man who would eventually destroy my father's empire and decided to join him. "I'm not leaving, Basile. Marry me. Right now. Today."

Phoenix Rising: The Scarred Heiress's Revenge

Phoenix Rising: The Scarred Heiress's Revenge

Xiao Hong Mao
4.5

I lived as the "scarred ghost" of the Stephens penthouse, a wife kept in the shadows because my facial burns offended my billionaire husband’s aesthetic. For years, I endured Kason’s coldness and my family's abuse, a submissive puppet who believed she had nowhere else to go. The end came with a blue folder tossed onto my silk sheets. Kason’s mistress was back, and he wanted me out by sunset, offering a five-million-dollar "silence fee" to go hide my face in the countryside. The betrayal cut deep when I discovered my father had already traded my divorce for a corporate bailout. My step-sister mocked my "trashy" appearance at a high-end boutique, while the sales staff treated me like a common thief. At home, my father threatened to cut off my mother's life-saving medicine unless I crawled back to Kason to beg for a better deal. I was the girl who took the blame for a fire she didn't start, the wife who worshipped a man who never looked her in the eye, and the daughter used as a human bargaining chip. I was supposed to be broken, penniless, and desperate. But the woman who stood up wasn't the weak Elease Finch anymore; she was Phoenix, a tactical predator with a $500 million secret. I signed the divorce papers without a single tear, walked past my stunned husband, and wiped the Finch family's bank accounts clean with a few taps on my phone. "Your money is dirty," I told Kason with a cold smile. "I prefer clean hands." The cage is open, the hunt has begun, and I’m starting with the people who thought a scar made me weak.

The Convict Heiress: Marrying The Billionaire

The Convict Heiress: Marrying The Billionaire

Rollins Laman
5.0

The heavy thud of the release stamp was the only goodbye I got from the warden after five years in federal prison. I stepped out into the blinding sun, expecting the same flash of paparazzi bulbs that had seen me dragged away in handcuffs, but there was only a single black limousine idling on the shoulder of the road. Inside sat my mother and sister, clutching champagne and looking at my frayed coat with pure disgust. They didn't offer a welcome home; instead, they tossed a thick legal document onto the table and told me I was dead to the city. "Gavin and I are getting engaged," my sister Mia sneered, flicking a credit card at me like I was a stray dog. "He doesn't need a convict ex-fiancée hanging around." Even after I saved their lives from an armed kidnapping attempt by ramming the attackers off the road, they rewarded me by leaving me stranded in the dirt. When I finally ran into Gavin, the man who had framed me, he pinned me against a wall and threatened to send me back to a cell if I ever dared to show my face at their wedding. They had stolen my biotech research, ruined my name, and let me rot for half a decade while they lived off my brilliance. They thought they had broken me, leaving me with nothing but an expired chapstick and a few old photos in a plastic bag. What they didn't know was that I had spent those five years becoming "Dr. X," a shadow consultant with five hundred million dollars in crypto and a secret that would bring the city to its knees. I wasn't just a victim anymore; I was a weapon, and I was pregnant with the heir they thought they had erased. I walked into the Melton estate and made an offer to the most powerful man in New York. "I'll save your grandfather's life," I told Horatio Melton, staring him down. "But the price is your last name. I'm taking back what's mine, and I'm starting with the man who thinks he's marrying my sister."

Chapters
Read Now
Download Book