Chapter 7 Chapter 2 The Aesthetics of the Sexes-5

heavy body Human beings have entered the Middle Ages, and their overall perception of the world has also entered a new stage.Christianity and its canons established a dominant position, and the entire way of life of Europeans underwent profound changes, which can be said to be a turning point in the development of human thought. First of all, in the eyes of people in ancient Greece and Rome, the world was a whole, accessible, recognizable, harmonious, complete, and full of the beauty of unity of body and spirit.Medieval Christianity split the world into two diametrically opposed parts: the world of God (soul) and the world of the devil (body).The ideal of religion is not the muscular body of a discus thrower, not Apollo, but the weary, emaciated, pallid, hypocritical ghost--saints and ascetics.

The morality of asceticism does have certain socio-psychological reasons.It requires introspection, requires stricter restrictions on the contact between men and women, and reflects the promiscuity of people's life in the late Greco-Roman world, which requires strong moral constraints to restrain.It is for this special reason that the Middle Ages created a new masterpiece of art with another view of love.Christianity eliminated the nude statues that disturbed reason, and created the virgin Mary, the virgin.The female image in art is shrouded in mysterious and inexplicable colors.Monkhood and knightly love appeared.In the atmosphere of the dark age of mysticism, literary images are like phantoms of dreams.

The famous German epic "Song of the Nibelungen", according to the value standard of the society at that time, describes the ideal male image and the ideal female image.Siegfried is the hero, he is a battle-hardened, strong and brave hero, a glorious knight.He attacked the arrogant kings, conquered them, seized the treasure, killed the dragon, bathed in the blood of the dragon, and became an invincible hero.Klimhilt is the heroine, a beautiful, gentle, noble, delicate and pure girl.Kriemhilt charms Siegfried and becomes his wife.When Siegfried was assassinated and killed, the distraught Klimhilt avenged her husband. After going through all kinds of hardships, she finally cut off the head of Hagen, the murderer who killed her husband mercilessly.She also sacrificed her precious life for revenge.

"Song of the Nibelungen" extols ideal male and female models.Siegfried's strength and bravery, and Krimhild's beauty and haughtiness, deepen the influence of reality on love both aesthetically and morally.This literature, typified by the Nibelungen Songs, cultivates deep, albeit religiously repressed, sincere feelings. In the Middle Ages, love was hit and destroyed by canons.This is also reflected in pre-Renaissance poetry and prose works.In Italy, Dante's previous New Poetry represented both the religious exaltation of mysticism and the platonic love fantasy of the Provencal singer.This is the emotional color of aesthetic thought peculiar to medieval consciousness.The poet Guido Guinizzelli described this ethereal love in his lyrical poem. 

As the sun makes the gem shine brightly, Woman makes man's noble heart produce love. If one day God questioned my soul, "How dare you? How dare you compare me with secular women,  Compare me with love?"  "Exalted Lord, - I will answer - she is like  like an angel, How could I not fall in love with her? This is by no means a sin! " Love at this time must still obey God's will.It is like the ladder leading to heaven, angels and God in fairy tales, and it is like the divine fire that clears away human sins.Against the constraints of the times, Sweet Sin still begs for God's mercy.Desire aroused by women takes the form of prayer and confession, religious excitement and narcissism.

The Italian poet Dante described his love for Beatrice in his first work "The New Life".In this work, the precepts of asceticism seem to tolerate the passions of the heart.Dante first met Beatrice when he was nine years old.He was totally caught in the vortex of chivalrous ecstasy.He hesitated, dared not approach his beloved, let alone recklessly tell her the love that illuminates his heart like a divine light.Dante made this description: "She appeared in front of me in an elegant bright red dress, so simple, so noble... Since then, love has dominated my heart... No matter where she appears from, I just hope to see her." Seeing her beautiful bow drove away all evil thoughts in my heart. It kindled the flame of charity in me and made me forgive everyone who hurt me. If anyone asked me what happened then, my answer would be There's only one: 'Love,' and my face will glow with forgiveness."

Although Dante's love is full of religious sincerity, it is fundamentally earthly.In the "Crystal Nine Heavens" of the kingdom of heaven in "Divine Comedy", it has been fully expressed.His soul found the happiness it dreamed of in heaven.His love affair ends with a tender lyrical ode to the "Holy Goddess".In "Purgatory", Dante met Beatrice, but he did not immediately recognize his sweetheart, her face was shining with the light of an angel.Beatrice severely condemned Dante's crimes after her death: "You say, you say, am I wrong? My evidence requires you to admit everything." Dante, who was infinitely ashamed, burst into tears and admitted meekly He confessed his sins and obtained her forgiveness.A moral prelude imbued with the innocence of the Christian consciousness, culminating in a final test.Dante is led briskly by Beatrice through the heavens of wonder and beauty, and with angels like images reflected in glass, he soars to the heaven of bliss.

The clean radiance of Dante's psalms heralds the vigorous dawn of Renaissance literature. The bourgeoisie began to step onto the stage of history as a progressive class.Since then, the era of free thought, religious reform, and heresy has come. The Italian writer Boccaccio was one of the pioneers of the Renaissance.He is different from Dante.Dante foresaw the demands of a new joyful vitality, but he sought happiness in heaven and among radiant angels.There is no logic outside of Christianity.What Boccaccio seeks is complete earthly happiness.Boccaccio regards love above all other human natures, and he praises the great power of love, the beauty and variety of love, the madness and twists and turns of love, and the sacred right of love.Passy writes that this love is "fierce, southern, and irresistible," which occupies a man's being and "makes him restless and never rests until he achieves his goal."The collection of stories, humorously and satirically describing "festivals of the flesh as small as they are great," predated the paintings of strong men and sweet, amorous women by Titian and Veronese.Moreover, Boccaccio's description is more straightforward, more freely and vividly.Because words "have more room for free play than plastic arts."

There are many places where irrepressible lust is described, which is a serious blow to asceticism.Some exaggerated exaggerations illustrate the great suppression of human lust and the baseness of abstinence.The author expresses the needs of people in the Renaissance period for freedom and love. Love is a straightforward expression of feelings, a combination of joy and pain, self-sacrifice and nobility, tenderness and strength.In the Renaissance era, it was an aesthetic declaration about the freedom of love, which challenged the hypocrisy of Christian morality. From the Renaissance to the present, literature has increasingly penetrated into the field of human emotional life.It not only promotes the beautiful emotions of men and women and the right to freedom, but also enriches the cultural literacy of men and women's communication and promotes the aestheticization of love between men and women.

After Boccaccio, the concept of love in the Renaissance period has been brilliantly reflected in the works of a large number of writers.These works have extremely high artistic attainments in poetizing people's feelings and wishes.Marguerite de Navarre's imitation, fascinatingly depicts the colorful love scenes of that era.Men and women fall in love with each other, couples cheat and cheat each other, monks cannot withstand the temptation of lust, and girls are haggard because of love distress. The heroine of one story is a poor girl who falls in love with a nobleman who also falls in love with her.However, both of them ended up in a monastery.Their lofty hearts yearn for the perfection that only God can have, and they "would rather die than indulge their desires, because that would damage the honor and conscience of their loved ones."But, alongside stories of this kind of hypocrisy, there are also descriptions of bold, frank eroticism in the novel.Amadour, who is passionately in love, tells the beautiful Florida that her body should belong to him.The lusty Amadour said to Florida: "When a person's body and soul are full of love, there is no room for sin." , sincere and passionate love.Says one of her heroes: "There is nothing more virtuous than love, for that is what God commands us to love. I think it is better to love one woman with all my heart than to worship several women as Madonnas."

Marguerite Navarre resolutely defended the sham, ethereal love of knights and singers.But she is also tolerant of indulgences of the flesh, willing to read between the lines to forgive such sins if the indulgences are motivated by spiritual intimacy.Although this French-style novel is dressed in the cloak of Jesus Christ and Platonism, it is full of the vigorous vitality of the beautiful love in the Renaissance.However, the contradictory attitude swinging left and right shows that his opposition to asceticism is not thorough. Cervantes, who followed closely behind, defended man's natural right to love more boldly and firmly.On the one hand, he mocked the outdated holy and chivalrous spiritual love.On the other hand, Cervantes created a vivid image of men and women in love.They yearn for the full reward of affection, the integration of body and spirit, romantic adventure and real happiness in the world. Cervantes exposed all the prejudices that imprisoned people's hearts.He proclaimed the inalienable right of men and women to freely express their affections and to be loved.He broke down all the barriers in love and believed that the value of mutual admiration was above all else. Mafritanca Solita is in love with captured Spaniard Rui Devitem.She fled to distant Europe with her lover, where she found happiness.Don Ruiz, a sixteen-year-old boy in Aragon, the only son of a famous rich man who owns two manors, would rather run away from home and become a mule driver in order to track down his sweetheart Mrs. Clara. The love described by Cervantes is a powerful, tireless, proud feeling without the slightest falsehood and evil thoughts. Don Ruiz, who was in love with Mrs. Clara, sang of "unfulfilled" hopes and "tenacious love"; In "Numancia", Marando said to his beloved:  Oh, Rilla, don't you run away,  Please stop. Let us both say goodbye before we say goodbye Enjoy the sweetness of life... The love depicted by Cervantes is full of profound fascination and a particularly cheerful atmosphere.Robe de Vega's plays, on the other hand, are odes to the surging vitality of lovers.In "Yangquan Town", an ordinary farmer said: "You should learn to love more passionately." And in "The stupid woman is for others, the smart woman is mine", Xiyana commented : I know that love is The first Ning Xiner created, I know that love creates everything past and present;  But I do not believe that love will  bestowed on a lowly man,  will occupy a dirty heart. Shakespeare's works are at the height of the high Renaissance.His poems are full of sunshine and the breath of spring flowers, surrounded by the long-sought love. Shakespeare's comedies and plays express the spiritual depth and moral maturity of human beings created by thousands of years of history.Shakespeare preserves, develops and harmoniously synthesizes all excellent traditions in his creations, and he heralds the spirit of the Enlightenment, rationalism and romanticism in the future.This master of words has created infinitely rich treasures, which, with their extraordinary wisdom, immortal feelings, brilliance of human thought and aesthetic insight, profound power of moral purification, high cultivation of emotional life and various artistic appeal, Educated and inspired generations of people. In the literature before Shakespeare, no one reflects the diversity of love feelings and the personality characteristics of characters according to the aesthetic law like him.The flaming southern enthusiasm of Antony and Cleopatra, the hopeless pure and tender love of Romeo and Juliet, the fierce and fiery lust of Proteus and Julia ("Two Gentlemen of Verona"), Falstaff "The Merry Wives of Windsor," Ferdinand and Miranda's fabulously romantic relationship ("The Tempest"), Jessica and Lorenzo's daring friendship ("The Merry Wives of Windsor"), Orser The jealousy of Law and Posthumus ("Othello"), etc. - a love story with colorful and twists and turns has aroused a very wide resonance among readers. In Shakespeare, and especially in his tragedies, passion seeths like fire.Love is often "love at first sight" like lightning.It shakes people's consciousness and changes their character.Shakespeare's artistically reproduced love has a very wide range of colors: coquettish, shy, tender, admirable, trustful, loyal, chivalrous, self-sacrificing, fearless, delicate, sensitive, etc. Warm feelings in Shakespeare's works still have to abide by the norms of moral responsibility and the norms of beauty to varying degrees.Shakespeare found the most appropriate relationship between people with perfect aesthetic images. The reason why the love described in his dramas and comedies is beautiful and moving is because they have reached the extreme of emotional cultivation. Men and women who experience this emotion are filled with special attraction and inner beauty.Even the alcoholic Falstaff in "Henry IV" is no exception.The fat, sinful libertine is also full of life, forthright and naturally "unashamed," so that in our eyes he is, as Dana puts it, "no longer immoral." Shakespeare maintains human dignity in the expression of human emotion.His script "Please Enter the Urn" is particularly outstanding in this regard. Isabella really wanted to become a nun, but she did so because there was no other way to refuse Angelo's offer to save her brother in prison on her own honor.What the script puts forward is a more vigorous and noble idea-maintaining the beauty of relationships, maximizing people's right to freely control their emotions, even if it is to save someone's life, this freedom will never be sacrificed.Therefore, Isabella, who is by no means hard-hearted, has the courage to make the following decision: Die, my brother! My sister lives innocent; Our shame is more important than the lives of our brothers! Shakespeare's artistic representation of love has reached the point of proficiency, and he has brilliantly idealized the love where the body and spirit are in perfect harmony.The tragedy Romeo and Juliet is the crowning achievement of this aesthetic miracle.The love in this tragedy is the purest poetry, the bath of emotion, and the wonderful music of the soul.The tragic martyrdom of Romeo and Juliet purifies the aesthetic and moral value of love in the palace of art.This hymn of love will be recited from generation to generation. Not only Shakespeare, but even today, literary works are still increasingly reflecting the continuous improvement of people's emotional life.Literary works are conducive to the continuous deepening and development of love, and to enriching the spiritual environment of human beings.