Soft luxury does there the body grace,
And there does love his sacred temple place.
I not in the lean nor slender found delight;
Flesh satiates best the fleshy appetite.

Where body is by body, softly pressed,
The height of pleasure then must be confessed,
When the kind touch no meager bones molest.

The pale and clear complexion I adored
If with nature's roses richly stored;
For Venus claims that flower as her own,
And always in her votaries 'tis shown.

The untried virgin, shame for loving shows,
And modestly she blushes forth a rose,
Experienced lovers too this flower bear,
And in their cheeks after joys tasted wear.

The golden hair and neck, milk-white and pure
With guileless look, attentive and demure,
Dark eyebrows and the pride of forehead high;
Often observed, the sparkling, ardent eyes
Would oft my heart with love, and awe surprise.
I loved the moist, the ruby swelling lip,
Where kisses I could taste, and nectar sip.
A long round neck made gold appear more fine,
And jewels with a double lustre shine.

* * *

Regular readers of this forum will immediately recognize the feminine attributes that Maximian celebrates: the "golden hair," the "milk-white" neck, the "pale and clear complexion" adorned with the delicate blush of "nature's roses" (which, he observes, provides the best setting for "gold" and "jewels," which shine shine with superior lustre against fair skin), and, of course, a preference for the "softly" curvaceous "flesh" of the fuller female figure, which, he affirms, constitutes "the height of pleasure."

Maximian even specifies his distaste for "lean" and "slender" bodies, and--as if he were anticipating today's skeletal celebrities, 1500 years before they existed--he particularly reviles "meagre bones," which "molest" the "kind touch." Ashton-Gwatkin's more modern translation of those lines reads: "When flesh to flesh adheres, / It's painful if an odious bone appears / And prods the lover."

(Ah, the wisdom of the ancients!)

In short, the epitome of femininity that Maximian describes is the same ideal of beauty that (as we have seen in our recent discussions) originated in Classical Antiquity, carried through to the Middle Ages, remained dominant in the Renaissance, in the Romantic and Victorian ages, all the way up until the 20th century, when political forces undermined Western values (aesthetic and otherwise), and when the mass media was taken over by alien elements, which steadily gained ascendency over Western culture.

As D.S. Brewer notes in his study of the timeless ideal, Maximian's lines "establish the type to which every lady conforms in all the medieval Latin and vernacular literature of Europe. This conformity is a remarkable illustration of the cultural unity of medieval Europe" (258). And in fact, that "cultural unity" remained unbroken from the dawn of Western civilization until the cataclysm of the last war, despite all of the intervening centuries of conflict, because it was in harmony with the essential yearnings of the human heart.

And what has the displacement of this ideal of beauty by today's androgynous, unaesthetic standard accomplished, but inflicted misery and unhappiness on women everywhere, and left our culture fragmented and marginalized?

It is high time for our culture to slough off its ideological captivity, and restore the essential ideal of beauty that gave it form and purpose throughout its glorious history.

.................

References:

Brewer, D.S. "The Ideal of Feminine Beauty in Medieval Literature." Modern Language Review 50:3 (1955): 257-69.

Maximianus. Elegies of Old Age. Trans. Sir Horvenden Walker. London: B. Crayle, 1688.

Maximianus. Six Elegies on Old Age. London: J. Sackfield and T. Warner, 1718.

Maximianus Etruscus. Max: Poet of the Final Hour. Trans. Frank Ashton-Gwatkin. London: Paul Norbury, 1975.