Chapter 3

[1]M. Bernays:Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Schlegelschen Shakespeare.

[2]"In thy kingly flight, young eagle, thou wilt pierce the thickness of the clouds, and find the way to the temple of the sun-god—else his word, spoken through me, is false."

[3]"I held not my own wreath too precious to crown thee with it to the service of Apollo; but—a better is thy destiny."

An apprehensive disposition, predisposing to hallucinations, congenital melancholy, at times verging on insanity, a clear, sober judgment, ever inclined to uphold the claims of reason, and a very unusual capacity for living in and producing emotional moods—such were the principal characteristics of Ludwig Tieck. He was the most productive author of the Romantic School, and, after its disruption, he wrote a long series of excellent novels, depicting past and present more realistically than Romantic writers were in the habit of doing.

The son of a ropemaker, he was born in Berlin in 1773. Even as a school-boy he was profoundly influenced by classic writers like Goethe, Shakespeare, and Holberg. He early succeeded in imitating both Shakespeare's elfin songs and Ossian's melodious sadness; but during one period of his youth he weakly allowed himself to be exploited by elder men of letters, at whose instigation he produced quantities of carelessly written, unwholesome literature. Though the spirit and tendency of his writings were prescribed for him, his characteristic qualities are, nevertheless, discernible even in these valueless early works. Under the direction of his teacher, Rambach, he wrote, or re-modelled in the spirit of the "enlightenment" period, sentimental tales of noble brigands, and invented gruesome episodes in the style of the death-scene of Franz Moor. But now and again, in some ironical aside, we get a glimpse of his own more advanced ideas.

A little later we find the future Romanticist writing precocious stories for the almanacs published by Nicolai, that old firebrand of the "enlightenment" period—stories in which superstition is held up to ridicule, and in which we only very occasionally come upon a touch of irony, such as the selection of a particularly inane old man to express contempt for "the stupid Middle Ages" and "Shakespeare's ghosts." No doubt Tieck wrote these compositions principally because he had sold his pen; still they none the less betray the weariness of the desponder, who is so exhausted by his long struggle with questions and doubts of every kind, that he can, without any great reluctance, side with those who depreciate genius and sing the praises of the sensible, bourgeois golden mean. His unsettled mental condition is shown no less clearly in his rationalistic tales than in the supernaturalism, the voluptuous cruelty, and the cold cynicism of the novels and plays dating from the beginning of the Nineties, in which he seems to give us more of himself.

Tieck's first work of any importance isWilliam Lovell. The first part of this novel, which he wrote at the age of twenty, appeared in 1795. In it, when treating of art, he already occasionally touched the strings upon which the Romantic School subsequently played.

William Lovell goes to Paris (which Tieck at that time had not seen), and is, of course, disgusted with everything there. "The town is a hideous, irregular pile of stones. One has the feeling of being in a great prison.... People chatter and talk all day long without so much as once saying what they think.... I occasionally went to the theatre, simply because time hung so heavily on my hands. The tragedies consist of epigrams, without action or passion, and tirades which produce much the same effect as the words issuing from the mouths of the figures in old drawings.... The less natural an actor is, the more highly is he esteemed. In the great, world-renowned Paris Opera—I fell asleep." Such are the impressions made upon Lovell (an Englishman) by Paris at the time of the Revolution. It is nothing but an expression of the prevalent German contempt for the French character and French art, doubly unreasonable in this case because it has simply been learned by rote out of books. In the Théâtre Français, however, Lovell ejaculates: "O Sophocles! O divine Shakespeare!" and he characteristically observes: "I hate the men who, with their little imitation sun (namely, reason), light up all the pleasant twilight corners and chase away the fascinating shadow phantoms which dwelt so securely under the leafy canopies. There is, undoubtedly, a kind of daylight in our times, but the night and morning light of romance were more beautiful than this grey light from a cloudy sky."

LUDWIG TIECK

With the exception of a few such touches, this work seems at the first glance to be distinguished by none of the peculiarities one is accustomed to associate with a Romantic production; but, as a matter of fact, there is no book which reveals to us more distinctly the foundations on which the Romantic movement rests. The main idea and the form ofWilliam Lovell(it is written in letters) were both borrowed from a French novel,Le Paysan Perverti, by the materialistic writer, Rétif de la Bretonne. The fact that we are able to trace the origin of a Romantic work directly to French materialism is not without significance; it is in reality from this materialism that the Romanticists derive their gloomy fatalism.Lovellis an extremely tedious book to read nowadays; the style is tiresomely diffuse, the characters are as if lost in mist. Some of the subordinate figures, the devoted old man-servant, for instance, are weak imitations of Richardson—there is not a trenchant trait nor a dramatic situation in the whole book. Its merit, which is as German as are its defects, lies in its psychology. The hero is a youth who is led, slowly and surely, to do away, as far as he himself is concerned, with all authority, to disregard every one of the traditional, accepted rules of life, until at last he is leading the life, not only of a confirmed egotist, but of a criminal.

It is a mistake to feel surprised that so young a man as Tieck could depict such a being. Is it not precisely at this early age, when his spiritual eyesight does not yet enable him to look abroad, that the youth is constantly occupied with all the strange things he sees when he looks into his own heart? Is it not then that he is impelled to unravel himself, to examine his own condition, to look at himself perpetually in the mirror held out to him by his own consciousness? With men of a certain disposition there is no more self-critical age than twenty or thereabouts. There is still so much of life before one then, so much time to do one's work in; one spends the days in learning to know the instrument upon which one is to play for the rest of one's life, in tuning it, or finding out how it is already tuned. The time is still distant when the mature man will seize upon that instrument, which is himself, and use it—as a violin or as a sledge-hammer, according to the requirements of the situation. And if surrounding circumstances offer neither tasks nor sustenance, and the Ego is obliged to go on living upon its own substance, the result will inevitably be the exhaustion, the demolition of the personality.

What is peculiarly characteristic of author, tendency, and period, is the sentimental extravagance to which this introspection leads. In all seriousness the individual dares to make his fortuitous Ego, which has disorganised everything that established custom requires men to respect, the standard of everything, the source of all laws. Here we have unmistakably a distortion of Fichte's fundamental idea. Read the following verses fromLovelland the succeeding reflection:—

"Willkommen, erhabenster Gedanke,Der hoch zum Gotte mich erhebt.Die Wesen sind, weil wir sie dachten,In trüber Ferne liegt die Welt,Es fällt in ihre dunkeln SchachtenEin Schimmer, den wir mit uns brachten.Warum sie nicht in wide Trümmer fällt?Wir sind das Schicksal, das sie aufrecht hält!Den bangen Ketten froh entronnenGeh' ich nun kühn durchs Leben him,Den harten Pflichten abgewonnen,Von feigen Thoren nur ersonnen.Die Tugend ist nur, weil ich selber bin,Ein Wiederschein in meinem innem Sinn.Was kümmern mich Gestalten, deren mattenLichtglanz ich selbst hervorgebracht?Mag Tugend sich und Laster gatten!Sie sind nur Dunst und Nebelschatten,Das Licht aus mir fällt in die finstre Nacht.Die Tugend ist nur, weil ich sie gedacht."[1]

"My outer self thus rules the material, my inner self the spiritual world. Everything is subject to my will; I can call every phenomenon, every action what I please; the animate and the inanimate world are in leading-strings which are controlled by my mind; my whole life is only a dream, the many forms in which I mould according to my will. I myself am the only law in all nature, and everything obeys this law."

When Friedrich Schlegel exclaims, "Fichte is not a sufficiently absolute idealist ... I and Hardenberg (Novalis) are more what idealists ought to be," we remember that ten years previously, and long before there was any talk of Romanticism and Romanticists, Tieck had perceived what were to be the characteristics of the new school, i.e. personal lawlessness, and the glorification of this lawlessness, under the name of imagination, as the source of life and art. Lovell is an extravagant personification of these characteristics. Kierkegaard's Johannes the Seducer, the most perfect and the last example of the type in Danish literature, always keeps within certain bounds; he evades ethical questions, looking upon morality as a tiresome, troublesome power, and never attacking it directly; but Lovell, the more many-sided, the more boldly planned, if less skilfully worked-out character, recoils neither from treachery, nor bloodshed, nor poison. He is one of this period's many variations of the Don Juan-Faust type, with a touch of Schiller's Franz Moor. Satiety of self-contemplation has, in his case, led to a boundless contempt for mankind, to a ruthless sweeping away of all illusions; the one and only consolation being that thus hypocrisy is unveiled and the ugly truth seen. There is a close analogy with much that the Romanticists subsequently wrote in such an utterance as this: "Voluptuousness is undoubtedly the great mystery of our being; even the purest and most fervent love dives into this pool.... Only ruthlessness, only a clear perception of the illusion can save us; Amalie is, therefore, nothing to me, now that I see that poetry, art, and even love, are only draped and veiled sensuality.... Sensuality is the driving-wheel of the whole machinery ... voluptuousness is the inspiration of music, of painting, of all the arts; all human desires flutter round this magnetic pole, like moths round a candle;... hence it is that Boccaccio and Ariosto are the greatest poets, and that Titian and the wanton Correggio stand high above Domenichino and pious Raphael. Even religious devotion I consider to be only a diverted course of that sensual instinct which is refracted in a thousand different colours." One would expect this Lovell, in whose meditations sensuality plays so great a part, to be represented as a man whose instincts lead him far astray. Not at all! He is as cold as ice, as cold as Kierkegaard's shadow of a seducer, whom he in this particular anticipates. He does not commit his excesses with his flesh and blood, but with his fantastically excited brain. He is a purely intellectual being, a North German of the purest water. And there is one particular in which he is, in anticipation, astonishingly Romantic. When he has, so to speak, burned himself out, when every spark of conviction is extinguished in his mind, and all his feelings lie "slain and dead" around him, he seeks refuge in the supernatural and places his trust in mystic revelations, of which an old impostor has held out the prospect. This trait, which, significantly enough, is not to be found in his French prototype, was necessary to complete the character.

The personality here is so hollow, weighs so light in its own estimation, that the impression it produces on itself is, that it is both real and unreal; it has become unfamiliar to itself, and has as little confidence in itself as in any exterior power. It stands outside its own experiences, and when it acts, feels as if it were playing a part. Lovell tells us how he seduced a young girl, Emily Burton: "I suddenly cast myself at her feet, and confessed that it was nothing but my passionate love for her which had brought me to the castle; I declared that this was to be my last attempt to learn if there were any human heart that would still come to my aid and reconcile me to life and fate. She was beautiful, and I acted my part with wonderful inspiration, exactly as if it were a congenial rôle in a play; every word I said told; I spoke with fire and yet without affectation." And later he remarks: "She has herself to reproach for any temporary loss of home happiness; I am not to blame because, in accordance with conventional ideas, she is at present disgraced in the eyes of many. I played one part, she answered with another; we acted the play of a very stupid writer with great seriousness, and now we regret having wasted our time." The whole was nothing but a scene from a play.

In this fictitious character there are already developed those qualities which we find later in real characters, such as Friedrich Schlegel and Gentz; and in this one man's habit of mind we have all that, which, transferred to art, became the notorious irony of Romanticism. Here, in the character, is the undisguised egotism which looks upon life as a rôle; there, in art, the misconception and exaggeration of Schiller's idea that artistic activity is "a game," a play, i.e. an activity without any outward aim—in short, the belief that true art is that which perpetually shatters its own edifice, renders illusion impossible, and ends, like Tieck's comedies, in self-parody. There is the very closest resemblance between the manner in which the hero acts and the manner in which the comedy is written. The irony is one and the same; it may all be traced back to the same egotism and unreality.[2]

In order really to understand the psychological condition depicted in Lovell, we must not only see its ultimate consequences, but must also, as in the case of René, see how it originates and what conditions it. It is conditioned by the ferment of lawlessness distinctive of the period. Hence the most diverse creative minds co-operate in the production of the type. As a Titan of satiety, oftædium vitæ, Lovell is only one of a race of Titans.

Two years beforeLovellwas planned, Jean Paul, who was ten years older than Tieck and four years younger than Schiller, began a description of this race in his so-called "Faustiade," the novelTitan. Jean Paul is in many ways the forerunner of Romanticism; in the Romantic School Hoffmann recalls him to us, as Tieck recalls Goethe. He is a thorough Romanticist in the absolute arbitrariness with which, as an artist, he sets to work. As Auerbach says, he has "in readiness studies of men, moods, traits of character, psychological complications, and miscellaneous imagery, which he introduces at random, adjusting them to given characters or situations." He thrusts all kinds of irrelevant matter into the elastic framework of his story. He is, further, a Romanticist in his absorption in self—for it is himself, always himself, who speaks by the mouth of his characters, whatever they may be; in the famous humour which with him lords it over all else, respecting none of the conventions of style; and, finally, in the fact that he is the antipodes of classical culture. But, whatever he may have been in art, in life he was not the defender of lawlessness, but the ardent champion of liberty, Fichte's equal in enthusiastic persistence. He was neither the foe of enlightenment, nor of reason, nor of the Reformation, nor of the Revolution; he was convinced of the historical value and the full validity of the ideas which it is the glory of the eighteenth century to have produced and championed. Therefore he uplifted a warning voice against the futile, demoralising fantasticality of the Romanticists.

Titancontains the most powerful of Jean Paul's ideal characters, Roquairol. His strength did not lie in the delineation of ideal characters; he was first and foremost the admirable, realistic idyll-writer.

Roquairol is a prototype of the form in which the age moulded its passion and its despair. He is burning, conscious desire, which develops into fantastic eccentricity, because circumstances have no use for it, and because it does not possess the power to take hold of reality, re-mould it and subject it to itself; it becomes a disease, which strikes inwards and leads to morbid self-contemplation and suicide. Roquairol describes himself in a letter (Titan, iii.Zykel, 88)

"Look at me when I take off my mask! My face twitches convulsively, like the face of a man who has taken poison. I have indeed taken poison; I have swallowed the great poison ball, the ball called Earth.... I am like a hollow tree, charred by afantastic fire. When the worms in the intestines of the Ego—anger, ecstasy, love, and the like—begin to crawl about in me and devour each other, I look down upon them from the height of my Ego, I cut them in pieces as if they were polypi and fasten them into each other. Then I look on at myself looking on. This repeats itselfad infinitum. What is the use of it all? Mine is not the usual idealism, the idealism of faith; mine isan idealism of the heart, peculiar to those who have often experienced all the emotions, on the stage, on paper, or in real life. But of what good is it?... I often look upon the mountains and the rivers and the ground round about me, and feel as if at any moment they might dissolve and disappear, and I with them.... There is in man a callous, bold spirit, which asserts its independence of everything, even of virtue. Man chooses virtue if he will; he is its creator, not its creature. I once experienced a storm at sea, when the raging, foaming waters lashed themselves into great crested billows, while from a calm sky the sun serenely looked on. So be it with you! The heart is the storm, the sky the Ego!... Do you believe that the authors of tragedies and novels, or at any rate the geniuses among them, who a thousand times over have aped everything human and divine, are different from me? What really sustains them and the others is their hunger for money and renown.... The apes are the geniuses amongst the beasts, and geniuses are apes in their æsthetic mimicry, in heartlessness, malignity, sensuality, and—gaiety."

He relates how an inclination which was simply the result of ennui had led him to seduce his friend's sister. "I lost nothing; in me there is no innocence. I gained nothing, for I hate sensual pleasure. The broad black shadow which some call remorse quickly blotted out the fleeting bright picture of the magic-lantern; but is the black worse for the eyes than the bright?"

He who reflects carefully upon even these short extracts from Jean Paul's huge four-volume novel will see how here again a connecting line is drawn between life and art. Without premeditation, but very significantly, Roquairol takes the nature of the productive artist as an image of his own, and the expressions "charred by fantastic fire" and "the idealism of the heart" are as accurate as scientific definitions. There was no doubt in the author's mind as to what it was he wished to delineate. Roquairol, after committing his last and most abominable crime, namely, visiting Linda by night, disguised as his friend and her lover, Albano, is made to die by his own hand on the stage. He is playing a part which ends in suicide, and he shoots himself dead. He lives to the last moment in a world of appearances and make-believe, confusing or blending the real with the imaginary. And this determination to make reality fantastic or poetical is the distinguishing feature of the succeeding generation, the task to which it set itself, the problem which all its productions were attempts to solve. To understand this is to understand and excuse the blunders it makes in its schemes for the remoulding of reality, such a scheme, for instance, as we find in Friedrich Schlegel'sLucinde.

The great question of the relation of poetry to life, despair over the deep, bitter discord between them, the unwearied struggle to bring about a reconciliation—this is what lies at the foundation of the whole of German literature from theSturm und Drangperiod to the death of Romanticism. In order, therefore, to understandLucinde, as well asLovell, it is necessary to look back. We understand both better by the help of Jean Paul'sTitan. Lovell's predecessor is the Titan Roquairol, Lucinde's the Titaness Linda.

[1]"Welcome, sublime thought, that makes of me a god! Things are, because we have thought them.—In the dim distance lies the world; into its dark caverns falls a ray of light, which we brought with us. Why does this world not fall into atoms? Because the power of our will holds it together!—Glad at heart because I have escaped from my chains, I now go boldly forward in the path of life, absolved from those irksome duties which were the invention of cowardly fools. Virtue is, because I am; it is but the reflection of my inner self.—What care I for forms which borrow their dim splendour from myself? Let virtue wed with vice! They are but shadows in the mist. The light that illumines the dark night comes from me. Virtue is, because I have thought it."

[2]Tieck:William Lovell, i. 49, 52, 172, 178, 212; ii. 110.

At the University of Jena, in June 1801, a young candidate for the degree of doctor stood on the rostrum delivering his thesis. Everything possible was done to put him out and annoy him; the unprecedented step was taken of providing opponents. One of these, a somewhat inept young man, desiring to distinguish himself, began: "In tractatu tuo erotico Lucinda dixisti," &c., &c. To this the candidate shortly responded by calling his opponent a fool. A regular uproar ensued, and one of the professors indignantly declared that it was thirty years since the platform of the school of philosophy had been profaned by such disgraceful behaviour. The candidate retorted that it was thirty years since any one had been so disgracefully treated. This candidate was Friedrich Schlegel, in those days so much dreaded on account of his terrible opinions that he was sometimes refused permission to spend a night in a town. In a rescript from theUniversitets-Kuratoriumof the Electorate of Hanover to the Pro-Rector of Göttingen, dated September 26, 1800, we read: "Should the Professor's brother, Friedrich Schlegel, notorious for the immoral tendency of his writings, come to Göttingen, purposing to stay there for any time, this is not to be permitted; you will be so good as to intimate to him that he must leave the town."

Somewhat harsh justice this—and all the to-do was on account ofLucinde!

It is not the creative power displayed in it which makesLucindeone of the most important works of the Romantic School, for, in spite of all the "fleshly" talk in the book, there is no flesh and blood in it, no real body. Neither is it depth of thought. There is more philosophy in the few paradoxical pages written by Schopenhauer under the titleMetaphysik der Liebethan in pretentiousLucindefrom beginning to end. It is not even a bacchantic joy in nature, in life. If we compare it with Heine'sArdinghello, a book glowing with genuine Southern joy of life, we see clearly how anæmic and theoreticLucindeis. It is as a manifesto and programme that the book is valuable. Its main idea is to proclaim the unity and harmony of life as revealed to us most clearly and most comprehensibly in the passion of love, which gives a sensual expression to the spiritual emotion, and spiritualises the sensual pleasure. What it aims at depicting is the transformation of real life into poetry, into art, into Schiller's "play" of powers, into a dreamy, imaginative existence, with every longing satisfied, a life in which man, acting with no aim, living for no purpose, is initiated into the mysteries of nature, "understands the plaint of the nightingale, the smile of the new-born babe, and all that is mysteriously revealed in the hieroglyphics of flowers and stars."

This book is totally misunderstood by those who, like Kierkegaard, arm themselves with a whole set of dogmatic principles, and fall upon it, exclaiming: "What it aims at is the unmitigated sensuality which excludes the element of spirituality; what it combats is the spirituality which includes an element of sensuality." One can scarcely realise the blindness implied by such an utterance—but there are no better blinders than those provided by orthodoxy. Nor is it possible really to understandLucindeso long as, like Gutzkow, we only see in it a vindication of the doctrine of free love, or, like Schleiermacher, a protest against incorporeal spirituality, a denunciation of the affected foolishness that denies and explains away flesh and blood. The fundamental idea of the book is the Romantic doctrine of theidentity of life and poetry. This serious thought, however, is presented in a form expressly calculated to win the laurels of notoriety. Our admiration is aroused by the bold, defiant tone of the author's challenge, by the courage, born of conviction, with which he exposes himself to personal insult, and to public, ill-natured discussion of his private life.

F. SCHLEGEL.

Worthy of admiration, too, is the skill with which the different views and watchwords of Romanticism are collected and presented to us in small compass; for all the various tendencies of the movement, developed by so many different individuals, are to be seen in this one book, spreading fan-wise from a centre. But we are disgusted by the artistic impotence to which the so-called novel, in reality a mere sketch, bears witness, by its many beginnings that end in nothing, and by all the feeble self-worship which seeks to disguise barrenness by producing an artificial and unhealthy heat in which to hatch its unfertile eggs. Caroline Schlegel has preserved for us the following biting epigram, written soon after the book came out—

"Der Pedantismus bat die PhantasieUm einen Kuss, sie wies ihn an die Sünde;Frech, ohne Kraft, umarmt er die,Und sie genas mit einem todten Kinde,Genannt Lucinde."[1]

Beyond considering the word "sin" inappropriate—forLucindeonly sins against good taste and true poetry—I have no fault to find with this cruel satire.

At the very core ofLucindewe have once again subjectivity, self-absorption, in the form of an arbitrariness which may develop into anything—revolution, effrontery, bigotry, reaction—because it is not from the beginning associated with anything that is a power, because the Ego does not act in the service of an idea which could give to its endeavour stability and value; it acts neither in the service of civil nor of intellectual liberty. This arbitrariness or lawlessness, which, in the domain of art, becomes the Friedrich Schlegelian "irony," the artist's attitude of aloofness from his subject, his free play with it (resulting, as far as poetry is concerned, in the dictatorship of pure form, which mocks at its own substance and destroys its own illusions), becomes in the domain of real life an irony which is the dominant feature in the characters and lives of the gifted few, the aristocracy of intellect. This irony is a riddle to the profane, who "lack the sense of it." It is "the freest of all licences," because by its means a man sets himself outside of and above himself; yet it is also the most subject to law, being, we are told, unqualified and inevitable. It is a perpetual self-parody, incomprehensible to "the harmonious vulgar" (harmonisch Platten—the name bestowed by the Romanticists on those who live contentedly in a trivial, common-place harmony), who mistake its earnest for jest and its jest for earnest.

It is not merely in name that this irony bears a fundamental resemblance to Kierkegaard's, which also aristocratically "chooses to be misunderstood." The Ego of genius is the truth, if not in the sense in which Kierkegaard would have us understand his proposition, "Subjectivity is the truth," still in the sense that the Ego has every externally valid commandment and prohibition in its power; and, to the astonishment and scandal of the world, invariably expresses itself in paradoxes. Irony is "divine audacity." In audacity thus comprehended there are endless possibilities. It is freedom from prejudice, yet it suggests the possibility of the most audacious defence of all possible kinds of prejudices. It is more easily attainable, we are told, by woman than by man. "Like the feminine garb, the feminine intellect has this advantage over the masculine, that its possessor by a single daring movement can rise above all the prejudices of civilisation and bourgeois conventionality, at once transporting herself into the state of innocence and the lap of Nature." The lap of Nature! There is an echo of Rousseau's voice even in this wanton tirade. We seem to hear the trumpet-call of revolution; what we really hear is only the proclamation of reaction. Rousseau desired to return to the state of nature, when men roamed naked through the pathless forests and lived upon acorns. Schelling wished to turn the course of evolution back to the primeval ages, to the days before man had fallen. Schlegel blows revolutionary melodies on the great romantic "wonder-horn." But, as we read inDes Knaben Wunderhorn: "Es blies ein Jäger wohl in sein Horn—Und Alles was er blies, das war verlorn."[2]The result is not intellectual emancipation, but simply a refinement of pleasure. The whole wide domain of love is transformed into the domain of art. As Romantic poetry is poetry to the second power, poetry about poetry, refined and chastened poetry, so the love of the Romanticists is refined and chastened love, "the art of love." The different degrees of the higher sensuality are described and classified. I refer the reader toLucinde, which does not, likeArdinghello, present us with voluptuous descriptions, but merely with dry, pedantic theory, the empty framework of which it is left to the reader's experience and imagination to fill. Romantic audacity is, in one of its aspects, idleness, the indolence of genius. Idleness is described as "the life-atmosphere of innocence and inspiration." In its highest expression it is pure passivity, the life of the plant. "The highest, most perfect life is a life of pure vegetation." The Romanticists return to nature to such good purpose that they revert to the plant. Passive enjoyment of the eternally enduring moment would be their idea of perfection. "I meditated seriously," says Julius to Lucinde, "upon the possibility of an eternal embrace." As genius, which is independent of toil and trouble, and voluptuous enjoyment, which in itself is passive bliss, have nothing to do with aim, action, or utility, so idleness,dolce far niente, comes to be regarded as the best that life can offer, and purpose, which leads to systematic action, is denounced as ridiculous and philistine. The principal utterance to this effect inLucindeis the following: "Industry and utilityare the angels of death with the flaming swords, who stand in the way of man's return to Paradise." Yes, that is exactly what they are! Industry and utility bar the way back to all the Paradises which lie behind us. Therefore we hold them sacred! Utility is one of the main forms of good; and what is industry but the renunciation of distracting pleasures, the enthusiasm, the power, whereby this good is attained!

Returnto perfection is, in art, a return to the lawlessness of genius, to the stage at which the artist may do one thing, or may do another which is exactly the opposite. In life it is the retrogression of idleness, for he who is idle goes back, back to passive pleasure. In philosophy it is the return to intuitive beliefs, beliefs to which Schlegel applies the name of religion; which religion in its turn leads back to Catholicism. As far as nature and history are concerned, it is retrogression towards the conditions of the primeval Paradise.[3]Thus it is the central idea of Romanticism itself—retrogression—which explains how it was that even the heaven-stormingLucinde, like all the other heaven-stormers of the Romanticists, had not the slightest practical outcome.

[1]"Pedantry asked Fancy for a kiss; she sent him to Sin; audaciously but impotently he embraces Sin; she bears him a dead child, by name Lucinde."

[2]"A hunter blew into his horn, and all that he blew the wind carried away."

[3]A. Ruge:Gesammelte Schriften, i. 328, &c.

InLucinde, then, as in a nutshell, are to be found all the theories which, later in the history of Romanticism, are developed and illustrated by examples. In such an essay as that on the Instinct of Change by the Æsthete in Kierkegaard'sEnten-Eller("Either-Or") idleness is systematised. "Never adopt any calling or profession. By so doing a man becomes simply one of the mob, a tiny bolt in the great machinery of the state; he ceases to be master.... But though we hold aloof from all regular callings, we ought not to be inactive, but to attach great importance to occupation which is identical with idleness.... The whole secret lies in the independence, the absence of restraint. We are apt to believe that there is no art in acting unrestrained by any law; in reality the most careful calculation is required, if we are not to go astray, but to obtain enjoyment from it...."

Idleness, lawlessness, enjoyment! This is the threeleaved clover which grows all over the Romanticist's field. In such a book as Eichendorff'sDas Leben eines Taugenichts("Life of a Ne'er-do-Well") idleness is idealised and exalted in the person of the hero. And purposelessness is another important item, which must on no account be overlooked. It is another designation for the genius of Romanticism. "To have a purpose, to act according to that purpose, artificially to combine purpose with purpose, and thereby create new purposes, is a bad habit, which has become so deeply rooted in the foolish nature of godlike man, that he is obliged, when for once it is his desire to float aimlessly upon the stream of constantly changing images and emotions, to do even this of settled purpose.... It is very certain, my friend, that man is by nature a serious animal." (Julius to Lucinde.)

On the subject of this utterance, even that orthodox Christian, Kierkegaard, says: "In order not to misjudge Schlegel, we must bear in mind the perverted ideas which had insinuated themselves into men's minds in regard to many of the relations of life, and which had specially and indefatigably striven to make love as tame, well broken-in, heavy, sluggish, useful, and obedient, as any other domestic animal—in short, as unerotic as possible.... There is a very narrow-minded morality, a policy of expediency, a futile teleology, which many men worship as an idol, an idol that claims every infinite aspiration as its legitimate offering. Love is considered nothing in itself; it only acquires importance from the purpose it is made to serve in the paltry play which holds the stage of family life." It is perhaps admissible to conclude that what Kierkegaard says about "the tame, well broken-in, sluggish, and useful domestic animal, love," found its most apt application in Germany, which at that time was undoubtedly the home of the old-fashioned womanliness. The satirical sallies in Tieck's comedies occasionally point in the same direction. In hisDäumling("Hop-o'-my-thumb") a husband complains of his wife's craze for knitting, which gives him no peace; a complaint which, perhaps, can only be understood in Germany, where to this day ladies are to be seen knitting even in places of public entertainment—at the concerts on the Brühlsche Terrasse in Dresden, for example. Herr Semmelziege says:—

"Des Hauses Sorge nahm zu sehr den Sinn ihr ein,Die Sauberkeit, das Porzellan, die Wäsche gar:Wenn ich ihr wohl von meiner ew'gen Liebe sprach,Nahm sie der Bürste vielbehaartes Brett zur Hand,Um meinem Rock die Fäden abzukehren still.* * * * * * * * * *Doch hätt' ich gern geduldet Alles, ausser Eins:Dass, we sie stand, und we sie ging, auswärts, im Haus,Auch im Concert, wenn Tongewirr die Schöpfung schuf,* * * * * * * * * *Da zaspelnd, haspelnd, heftig rauschend, nimmer still,Ellnbogen fliegend, schlagend Seiten und Geripp,Sie immerdar den Strickstrumpf eifrig handgehabt."[1]

The most comical part of this satire is the passage which, whether intentionally or unintentionally on the author's part, reads like a parody of the well-known Roman Elegy in which Goethe drums the hexameter measure, "leise mit fingernder Hand," upon his mistress's back:—

"Einst als des Thorns heilig Lager uns umfing,Am Himmel glanzvoll prangte Lunas keuscher Schein,Der goldnen Aphrodite Gab' erwünschend mir,Von silberweissen Armen ich umflochten lag.Schon denkend, welch ein Wunderkind so holder Nacht,Welch Vaterlandserretter, kraftgepanzert, sollDem zarten Leib entspriessen nach der Horen Tanz,Fühl' ich am Rücken hinter mir gar sanften Schlag:Da wähn ich, Liebsgekose neckt die Schulter mir,Und lächle fromm die süsse Braut und sinnig an:Bald naht mir der Enttäuschung grauser HöllenschmerzDas Strickzeug tanzt auf meinem Rücken thätig fort;Ja, stand das Werk just in der Ferse Beugung, woDer Kundigste, ob vielem Zählen, selber pfuscht."[2]

When the cult of the useful is carried as far as this, we can understand advocacy of purposelessness.

But purposelessness and idleness are inseparable. "Only Italians," we are told, "know how to walk, and only Orientals how to lie; and where has the mind developed with more refinement and sweetness than in India? And in every clime it is idleness which distinguishes the noble from the simple, and which is, therefore, the essence of nobility."

This last assertion is outrageous, but its very audacity is significant. It shows the attitude of Romanticism towards the masses. To have the means to do nothing is, in its estimation, the true patent of nobility. Its heroes are those who cultivate the unremunerative arts, and are supported by others—kings and knights like those in Fouqué's and Ingemann's books, artists and poets like those in Tieck's and Novalis's. It separates itself from humanity, will do nothing for it, but only for the favoured few. The hero and heroine inLucindeare the gifted artist and the woman of genius; it is not the ordinary union, but the "nature-marriage" or the "art-marriage" (Naturehe, Kunstehe) for which our interest is claimed. Observe how Julius at once asks Lucinde whether her child, if a girl, shall be trained as a portrait or as a landscape painter. Only as a member of the fraternity of artists do her parents take any interest in her. Only authors and artists have part and lot in the poetry of life.

It is not difficult to understand how it was thatLucindewas barren of any social results. But though the book had no practical outcome, though it was too feeble to effect any kind of reform, there was, nevertheless, something practical underlying it.

Let us cast a glance at the principal characters. They stand out in strong relief upon a background of the profoundest scorn for all the prose of real life and all the conventions of society. The book is in no wise ashamed of its erotic theories; in its conscious purity it feels itself elevated above the judgment of the vulgar: "It is not only the kingly eagle which dares to scorn the screaming of the ravens; the swan, too, is proud, and pays as little heed. Its only care is that its white wings shall not lose their brightness; its only desire, to cling, unruffled, to Leda's breast, and breathe forth all that is mortal in it in song."

The image is pretty and daring, but is it true? The story of Leda and the swan has been treated in so many ways.

Julius is a pessimistic (zerrissener) young man, an artist, of course. We are told in theLehrjahre der Männlichkeit, the chapter containing what Flaubert has calledl'éducation sentimentale, that it was strikingly characteristic of him that he could play faro with apparently passionate eagerness, and yet in reality be absent-minded and careless; he would dare everything in the heat of the moment, and as soon as he had lost would turn indifferently away. Such a trait may not excite our admiration, but it at all events produces a pretty distinct impression of a pleasure-loving,blaséyoung man, who, feeling no powerful impulse towards action, seeks for excitement while leading a life of careless, coldly despairing idleness. The history of his development is indicated, as is often the case with quite young men, simply by a succession of female names.

Of the women in question we have only very slight sketches, like the pencil-drawings in an album. One of these introductory portraits is rather more elaborated than the rest, that of adame aux caméliassunk in Oriental indolence, who, like the originaldame aux camélias, is raised above her position by a true passion, and dies when she is neither understood nor believed. She dies by her own hand, makes a brilliant exit from life, and seems to us, as she is described sitting in her boudoir with her hands in her lap, surrounded by great mirrors and inhaling perfumes, like a living image of the æsthetic stupor of self-contemplation and self-absorption, which was the final development of Romanticism. After passing through numbers of erotic experiences, all equally and exceedingly repulsive, Julius finally makes the acquaintance of his feminine counterpart, Lucinde, whose impression is never effaced. "In her he met a youthful artist" (Of course!), "who, like himself, passionately worshipped beauty and loved nature and solitude. In her landscapes one felt a fresh breath of real air. She painted not to gain a living or to perfect herself in an art" (On no account any purpose or utility!) "but simply for pleasure" (Dilettantism and irony!). "Her productions were slight water-colour sketches. She had lacked the patience and industry required to learn oil-painting." (No industry!) ... "Lucinde had a decided leaning towards the romantic" (Of course she had; she is romance incarnate!). "She was one of those who do not live in the ordinary world, but in one created by themselves.... With courageous determination she had broken with all conventions, cast off all bonds, and lived in perfect freedom and independence." From the time when Julius meets her, his art too becomes more fervid and inspired. He paints the nude "in a flood of vitalising light;" his figures "were like animated plants in human shapes."

With Julius and Lucinde life flows on smoothly and melodiously, "like a beautiful song," in perpetually aroused and satisfied longing. The action passes, as it were, in a studio where the easel stands close to the alcove. Lucinde becomes a mother, and their union is now the "marriage of nature" (die Naturehe). "What united us before was love and passion. Now nature has united us more closely." The birth of the child gives the parents "civic rights in the state of nature" (probably Rousseau's), the only civic rights they seem to have valued. The Romanticists were as indifferent to social and political rights as Kierkegaard's hero, who was of opinion that we ought to be glad that there are some who care to rule, thereby freeing the rest of us from the task.

[1]"Her mind was occupied with household cares—The washing, and the china, and the cook:Did I begin to speak of endless love,She took the bristled clothes-brush in her hand,And calmly turned me round and brushed my coat.All this I bore quite placidly, but notThat, sitting, standing, everywhere we went,Yes, even at concerts, when sweet strains beguiled,Entwining, clicking, rustling, never still,Her elbows flying, thumping on her side,Her knitting-needles vigorously she plied.""The sacred hymeneal couch had received us; Luna's chaste beams illumined our chamber. Encircled by white arms I lay, praying for Aphrodite's favour, dreaming of the marvellous child that needs must be the offspring of a night like this, the mighty hero who in fulness of time shall see the light. Soft taps upon my shoulder rouse me from my dream; 'tis my sweet bride caressing me; I thank her silently, with tender, meaning smile. One moment later, and my heart is torn by hellish pangs of disillusionment; it is her knitting that is dancing on my back; worse still—she is at the turning of the heel, that point when the most skilful, despite their counting, often blunder."

"The sacred hymeneal couch had received us; Luna's chaste beams illumined our chamber. Encircled by white arms I lay, praying for Aphrodite's favour, dreaming of the marvellous child that needs must be the offspring of a night like this, the mighty hero who in fulness of time shall see the light. Soft taps upon my shoulder rouse me from my dream; 'tis my sweet bride caressing me; I thank her silently, with tender, meaning smile. One moment later, and my heart is torn by hellish pangs of disillusionment; it is her knitting that is dancing on my back; worse still—she is at the turning of the heel, that point when the most skilful, despite their counting, often blunder."

Behind this indistinct picture lay a far more definitely outlined reality. The youthful life of the hero corresponded pretty accurately, as Friedrich Schlegel's letters show, with that of the author. In those days Berlin had not yet become pious, but was, according to the evidence of contemporaries, a species of Venusberg, which none approached with impunity. The example of the throne sanctioned every species of moral licence. Enthusiasm for art and literature superseded the official morality which a short time before had been so powerful, but from which men were rapidly emancipating themselves.

In the autumn of 1799, the year in whichLucindewas published, Friedrich Schlegel wrote to Schleiermacher: "People here have been behaving so outrageously that Schelling has had a fresh attack of his old enthusiasm for irreligion, in which I support him with all my might. He has composed an epicurean confession of faith in the Hans Sachs-Goethe style." This wasDer Widerporst.

"Kann es fürwahr nicht länger ertragen,Muss wieder einmal um mich schlagen,Wieder mich rühren mit allen Sinnen,So mir dachten zu entrinnenVon den hohen, überirdischen Lehren,Dazu sie mich wollten mit Gewalt bekehrenDarum, so will auch ich bekennenWie ich in mir es fühle brennen,Wie mir's in allen Adern schwillt,Mein Wort so viel wie anderes gilt,Da ich in bös' und guten StundenMich habe gar trefflich befunden,Seit ich gekommen in's Klare,Die Materie sei das einzig Wahre.Halte nichts vom Unsichtbaren,Halt' mich allein am Offenbaren,Was ich kann riechen, schmecken, fühlen,Mit allen Sinnen drinnen wühlen.Mein einzig' Religion ist die,Dass ich liebe ein schönes Knie,Volle Brust und schlanke Hüften,Dazu Blumen mit süssen Düften,Aller Lust volle Nährung,Aller Liebe süsse Gewährung.D'rum, sollt's eine Religion noch geben(Ob ich gleich kann ohne solche leben),Könnte mir vor den andern allenNur die katholische gefallen,Wie sie war in den alten Zeiten,Da es gab weder Zanken noch Streiten,Waren alle ein Mus und Kuchen,Thäten's nicht in der Ferne suchen,Thäten nicht nach dem Himmel gaffen,Hatten von Gott'nen lebend'gen Affen,Hielten die Erde für's Centrum der Welt,Zum Centrum der Erde Rom bestellt,Darin der Statthalter residirtUnd der Welttheile Scepter führt,Und lebten die Laien und die PfaffenZusammen wie im Land der Schlaraffen,Dazu sie im hohen HimmelhausSelber lebten in Saus und Braus,War ein täglich HochzeithaltenZwischen der Jungfrau und dem Alten."[1]

Such a poem from such a hand is a genuine proof of the spirit of the times; and it is instructive to observe that when Wilhelm Schlegel (acting upon Goethe's advice) refuses to publish the poem in theAthenæum, Novalis, against whom it was especially directed, writes: "I cannot understand whyDer Widerporstshould not be printed. Is it on account of its atheism? Just think ofDie Götter Griechenlands!"

The fashions were revolutionary—uncovered bosoms, orientally flowing garments. The tone of the most notable young women of the day was excessively free. No one was more talked of for her beauty at this time than Pauline Wiesel. She was the wife of a highly intellectual man, whose scepticism and satirical, cynical wit made a deep and disturbing impression upon young Tieck (he was the model for Abdallah and William Lovell); and she was one of Prince Louis Ferdinand's many mistresses. The attachment of the dashing young prince, in this case a real passion, still glows in his letters. A contemporary wrote of her: "I look upon her in the light of a phenomenon of Greek mythology." Alexander von Humboldt walked more than thirty miles to see her. It is characteristic of the times that the connection by which Pauline Wiesel compromised herself roused no disapprobation among her more advanced women friends. The irreproachable Rahel, for example, has not a word of blame for it; one might almost imagine that she envied Pauline. As a young girl she writes despondently: "Every means, every possible preparation for living, and yet one must never live; I never shall, and those who dare to do so have the wretched world, the whole world, against them."

The original of Lucinde, however, was certainly superior to her portrait, a woman of an altogether nobler type. She belonged to Rahel's circle, that group of clever young Jewesses who then represented the noblest, freest intellectual life of Berlin—a circle historically important from the fact that it was the only one in which as yet Goethe's fame was really established and true homage paid him.[2]The lady in question was Moses Mendelssohn's clever, self-reliant daughter, Dorothea, who, to please her parents, had bestowed her hand upon the well-known banker, Veit. It was not by beauty but by her wit and her keen intellectuality that she captivated Friedrich Schlegel. He was at the time twenty-five years of age, she thirty-two. There was nothing sensuous or frivolous in either her appearance or manner; she had large piercing eyes and a masculine severity of expression. In his letters to his brother Wilhelm, Friedrich Schlegel praises "her sterling worth." "She is," he says, "very straightforward, and cares for nothing but love, music, wit, and philosophy." In 1789 Dorothea was divorced from her husband and followed Schlegel to Jena. The latter writes at this time: "It has never been our intention to bind ourselves to each other by any marriage contract, though I have long considered it impossible that anything but death should part us. The calculation and adjustment of present and future is antipathetic to me, yet if the detested ceremony were the necessary condition of inseparableness, I should act according to the requirement of the moment and sacrifice my most cherished opinions."

In the arranging of their relations, none of their intimates helped Friedrich and Dorothea more than their clerical friend, Schleiermacher. On none of Schlegel's friends hadLucindehad such a powerful effect. Schleiermacher was at this time chaplain of the Charité Church in Berlin. He had long followed Friedrich's emancipatory endeavours with warm sympathy, and even admiration. In his essayOn Diotima, as well as in his harsh criticism of Schiller'sWürde der Frauen, Friedrich had attacked the traditional conception of woman's position in society. He had held up to contempt the ordinary marriage, in which the wedded pair "live together with a feeling of mutual contempt, he seeing in her only her sex, she in him his social position, and both in their children their own production and property." What he desired was the moral and intellectual emancipation of women. Intellect and culture, combined with enthusiasm, were the qualities which in his eyes made a woman lovable. The ordinary ideal of womanliness he scorned. He writes with bitterness of the stupidity and criminality of the men who demand ignorance and innocence in women, thereby compelling them to be prudish. Prudery is false pretence of innocence. True innocence in woman he maintains to be perfectly compatible with intellectual culture. It exists wherever there is religion, i.e. capacity for enthusiasm. The idea that noble, enlightened free-thought is less becoming in the case of women than of men is only one of the many generally accepted platitudes set in circulation by Rousseau. "The thraldom of woman" is one of the curses of humanity. His highest desire as an author was, as he naively puts it, "to found a system of morality" (eine Moral zu stiften). He calls opposition to positive law and conventional ideas of right, "the first moral impulse" felt by man.

In hisVernunftkatechismus für edle Frauen("Catechism of Reason for Noble-minded Women"), a fragment which appeared in theAthenæum, Schleiermacher writes in exactly the same strain, calling upon women to free themselves from the bonds of their sex. Nay, incredible as it may sound, it is quite possible (as Haym has proved) that the frequently quoted saying of Friedrich Schlegel, that there is nothing of serious importance to be urged against amarriage à quatre, really emanated from Schleiermacher. It is levelled at the many degrading and unreal marriages, at the "unsuccessful attempts at marriage," which the State in its foolishness makes binding, and which prevent the possibility of a true marriage. The writer of the fragment in which the saying occurs observes that most marriages are only preparatory and distant approximations to the true marriage; and Schleiermacher, in his Letters, writes that many attempts are necessary, and that "if four or five couples were taken together, really good marriages might result, provided they were allowed to exchange."

The underlying reason for the warm personal interest taken by Schleiermacher in Friedrich and Dorothea is, no doubt, to be found in his own position and circumstances at that time. A devoted attachment existed between him and Eleonore Grunow, the childless and most unhappy wife of a Berlin clergyman.

It seemed to Schleiermacher that the popular indignation roused byLucindewas largely compounded of philistine and Pharisaical ignorance. The very people who abused it were revelling in Wieland's and Crébillon's immoral tales. "It reminds me," he says, "of the trials for witchcraft, where malice formulated the charge, and pious stupidity carried out the sentence." But what especially led to his ardent championship of the persecuted pair was, he tells us himself, the fact that most of those who complained loudly of offended morality were simply seeking a pretext for a private personal attack on Schlegel.

An invincible spirit dwelt in Dorothea's frail body. She bore unfalteringly all that her violation of conventional morality brought upon her—private condemnation and public defamation in the shape of innuendoes in the attacks onLucinde. She displayed the most enduring devotion and the most self-sacrificing faithfulness to the man she had chosen. She not only shares his interests and aims, but bears with his unreasonableness and resigns herself uncomplainingly to the caprices of the most capricious of lovers. Nay, more than this, her good sense and cheerfulness scatter all the clouds of despondency that gather round herself and others. Her merry laughter brings relief from Schleiermacher's subtle argumentativeness and Friedrich's transcendental irony. Free in every other respect from feminine sentimentality, she is completely engrossed in admiration of the man she loves, and, with touching modesty, centres all her pride in him. When her novelFlorentinis published, a book in which, in spite of its many weaknesses, there is more creative power than in any of Friedrich Schlegel's productions, what makes her happiest and proudest is that his name (as editor) stands on the title-page. She jests merrily on the subject of her literary activity. Blushing and with a beating heart, she sends the first volume of her book to Schleiermacher, and she smiles at the numerous red strokes which adorn the returned manuscript. "There is always the deuce in it where the dative and accusative ought to be." The fact that she too felt impelled to write at the time (about the year 1800) when all the Romanticists, even Schleiermacher and Schelling, were committing literary sins, marks her as one of the German Romantic literary circle; and, moreover, her novel is, in reality, an expression of all the prevailing ideas, an imitation ofWilhelm MeisterandFranz Sternbald, an exaltation of the harmoniously cultivated few at the expense of the vulgar crowd, a glorification of the free Bohemian life, of idleness and admirable frivolity, of purposelessness in the midst of the prose of reality.

Dorothea has endowed her hero with characteristics which obviously correspond to Friedrich's as they appeared to her admiring woman's eyes. "In spite of a peculiar and often repellent manner, he has the gift of making himself popular, and wins all hearts without caring whether he does or not. It is of no avail to arm one's self against him with all one's pride; somehow or other he gains entire possession of one. It is often most exasperating not to be able to withstand him, as he himself is not to be won. At times it seems as if he attached another meaning to his words than their obvious one; sometimes when the most flattering things are said to him, he looks utterly indifferent, as if it were a matter of course; at other times, quite unexpectedly, some chance word, let fall without any special intention, affords him the greatest pleasure; he either finds in it or puts into it some peculiar meaning.... But you can imagine how often he gives offence in society."

Florentin's confessions, too, especially those relating to his wild life as a youth in Venice, remind us of Friedrich's youthful experiences in Leipzig. Although Florentin is an Italian, he feels himself strongly attracted by German art and German artists. He teaches himself to draw and paint, and makes his living, now as the gifted Romantic dilettante artist, now as the no less Romantic musician, roaming from village to village. His birth is wrapt in mystery. He is, as he himself says, "the solitary, the outcast, the child of chance. Something indescribable, which I can only call my destiny, drives me on." He avoids all ties of affection: "Alone will I bear the curse which has been laid upon me."[3]

It is unnecessary to criticise this characterisation in detail and point out how naïve and excessively Romantic it is. None the less, its writer is in many ways superior to her surroundings. Not for nothing was she the daughter of the sober, sagacious Moses Mendelssohn.

She would like, she says, to see Friedrich the literary artist, but she would love him better still if she could see in him the worthy citizen of a well-ordered state; it seems to her, indeed, that the character and desires of all her revolutionary friends make literary occupations, reviewing and such-like, as unsuitable for them as a child's cradle for a giant: her ideal is Götz von Berlichingen, who only took up the pen as a rest from the sword.[4]

Here again we are impressed by what strikes us in reading of Frau von Kalb, namely, that the women of this period display more virile and more concentrated power than the men, and that they persist in treating from the social standpoint questions which the men desire to treat only from the literary. They feel the oppression of existing circumstances more strongly, are less enervated by overmuch book-learning, and look at things more practically than the men.

The first important event in the life of the young couple was Fichte's coming to live with them. Fichte had been accused of teaching atheism, and his position as a professor was in jeopardy. Caroline Schlegel writes to a friend: "I must answer your questions about the Fichte affair, though it is a very painful one to me and to all admirers of honourable, frank behaviour. You know pretty well yourself what to think of the first accusation, made by a bigoted sovereign and his counsellors, half of them Catholics, the rest Moravian Brethren.... But Fichte is so exasperated by all sorts of reports from Weimar, about things looking bad for him there, &c. &c., that he declares he will resign if they reprimand him, or put any restriction on his teaching.... All who would stand well at court, and the professors whom Fichte has outshone, denounce his boldness and precipitancy. He is abandoned, actually avoided."

In a letter written jointly by Friedrich, Schleiermacher, and Dorothea, the last-mentioned says: "Things are going well with Fichte here; he is left in peace. Nicolai has intimated that no notice whatever will be taken of him so long as he does not attempt to give public lectures; this would not be well received.... I get on excellently with Fichte, and feel as much at home in this gathering of philosophers as if I had never been accustomed to anything inferior. Though I am still a little timid, this has nothing to do with Fichte personally, but rather with my own position to the world and to Friedrich—I am afraid—yet possibly I am mistaken. I cannot write another word, dear, for my philosophers are pacing up and down the room so incessantly that I am quite giddy."

Here we have a little domestic scene from Dorothea's life in Berlin. The three were so comfortable together that Fichte was desirous to make the arrangement permanent. He writes to his wife that he is trying to persuade Friedrich to remain in Berlin, and August Wilhelm and his wife to remove there. "If my plan succeeds, the two Schlegels, Schelling, who must also be persuaded to come, and we ourselves will form one family, take a large house, have only one cook, &c., &c."[5]The plan was not carried out. The wives of the two Schlegels did not get on with each other. But is it not like a breath from another world to come, in the midst of all this solicitude for Fichte and indignation at the wrong done him, upon such a passage in one of Dorothea's letters as the following: "I heartily thank your mother for the sweet picture of the saint. I keep it where I can always see it. She is the very saint I should have chosen for myself; she suits me exactly. These pictures and the Catholic music touch me so, that I am determined, if I become a Christian, to be a Catholic."[6]Nowhere is the religious confusion which distinguishes the Romantic School more plainly displayed.

But Dorothea is not the only female portrait inLucinde. During the course of his development Julius makes the acquaintance of an admirable woman, who is described as follows: "This disease was cured, was expelled, by the very first sight of a woman who was quite unique, and who was the first to exercise complete influence over his mind.... She had made her choice, and had given herself to one who was his friend as well as hers, and who was worthy of her love. Julius was the confidant. He knew exactly what it was that made him unhappy, and sternly judged his own baseness.... He forced all his love back into his inmost heart and let passion rage and burn and consume there. But his outward man was quite changed. So successful was he in counterfeiting the most childlike frankness and innocence, and in assuming a sort of fraternal brusqueness to prevent his melting into tenderness, that she never entertained the slightest suspicion. She was gay and genial in her happiness; suspecting nothing, she shunned nothing, but gave her mood and wit free play when she found him unamiable. All the nobility and all the grace, all the divinity and all the waywardness of the feminine character found in her their most refined, their most womanly expression. Each quality was allowed to develop as freely and vigorously as if it were the only one; and the daring mixture of dissimilar elements did not produce confusion, for a spirit inspired it which was a living breath of harmony and love. In the course of the same hour she would reproduce some comic episode with the refined abandon of the accomplished actress, and read a great poem with simple, touching dignity. At one time it pleased her fancy to shine and trifle in society, at another she was all enthusiasm and ardour, and presently she would be assisting others by word and deed, serious, unassuming, and gentle as a tender mother. Her manner of relating it made any trifling incident as entertaining as a delightful fairy tale. She embellished everything with feeling and wit; she had a power of comprehending everything, and of ennobling everything she touched. Nothing great or good was too holy or too common for her passionate sympathy. She understood the slightest suggestion, and answered even the question that was not asked. It was not possible to make long speeches to her; they turned naturally into interesting conversations, during which an ever-varying music of intelligent glances and sweet expressions played over her delicate features. One seemed to see these glances and expressions while reading her letters, so lucidly and genially did she write, as if talking with her correspondent. Those who only knew this side of her might think that she was merely lovable, that she would make an enchanting actress, that nothing but metre and rhyme were wanting to make her winged words exquisite poetry. But this same woman showed on every occasion that called for it the most astonishing courage and energy; and it was from this side of her character, by her own heroic standard, that she judged men."

There is more praise than art in this portrait. Sainte-Beuve would have given us a very different delineation. The original of the picture is a woman who, after the publication of her letters under the title Caroline, was known, as if she had been a queen, only by this, her Christian name. It simplified matters, too, to designate her thus, for she had had so many surnames that it was difficult to know by which to call her. She was a daughter of the well-known German philologist, Michaelis; her first husband was a Dr. Böhmer; after his death she married A. W. Schlegel, and her third husband was Schelling. These two last marriages placed her in the centre of the Romantic circle, which seems naturally to group itself round her. She was its own special muse. Grier, the gifted translator of Calderon and Ariosto, says of her that she is by far the cleverest woman he has known. Steffens and Wilhelm von Humboldt use similar expressions. A. W. Schlegel writes of several of his essays, that they are "in part the work of a highly gifted woman, who possessed all the qualifications of a successful author, but whose ambition did not lie in that direction." Schelling writes at the time of her death: "Even had she not been to me what she was, I should mourn the human being, should lament that this intellectual paragon no longer exists, this rare woman, who to masculine strength of soul and the keenest intellect united the tenderest, most womanly, most loving heart. We shall never see her like again." Her portrait is very striking—fascinating, refined, roguish, and yet tender. She is quite in Leonardo's style. Dorothea is far less complex.

Caroline was born in 1763, and was twenty-one at the time of her first marriage. A. W. Schlegel made her acquaintance whilst he was a student at Göttingen, and fell in love with her, but she refused to marry him. Intercourse between them was broken off for a time, but was carried on by correspondence while Schlegel was at Amsterdam, where he went as a tutor in 1791. Here various amorous episodes, amongst them one serious love affair, threw Caroline for a time into the shade. Meanwhile, she was entangling herself in a net of the strangest relations. In 1799 she had gone to Mainz, where she lived in the house of Georg Forster, Humboldt's teacher, a man equally distinguished as a scientist and an author. When this gifted and admirable, but far too sanguine man, embarked on revolutionary enterprises and attempted to extend French republicanism to the Rhine districts, Caroline enthusiastically aided and abetted him. She was in communication with the members of the Republican Club in Mainz, and she was unjustly suspected of communicating with the enemy through her brother-in-law, G. Böhmer, who was Custine's secretary. When Mainz was reconquered by the German troops, she was arrested, and spent several months in barbarous imprisonment, sharing a room with seven other people. From prison she wrote to A. W. Schlegel for assistance.

Her position was even worse than it appeared to be. In Mainz, in desperation at the disappointment of her dearest hopes (she had expected that the manly, energetic Tatter would offer her his hand), she had thrown herself into the arms of her adorer for the moment, a Frenchman, and the results of this connection would inevitably compromise her for ever, if she were not freed from prison in time. Schlegel's influence and her own brother's unremitting endeavours procured her release. With quiet chivalry August Wilhelm placed Caroline, now forsaken by all her other friends, under the protection of his younger brother, Friedrich. It was in these singularly unpropitious circumstances that Friedrich made her acquaintance. He was by no means prepossessed in her favour, in fact, was inclined to look upon her with contempt; yet this is how he writes: "I had certainly not expected simplicity and a positively divine truthfulness.... She made a profound impression upon me. I longed to be in a position to win her confidence and friendship; but the moment she showed some return of the feeling I saw very clearly that the bare attempt would lead to the most painful struggles, and that if a friendship between us were possible at all, it could only be the fruit of much that was unjustifiable.... Thenceforward every selfish desire was abandoned. The relation in which I stood to her was perfectly innocent and simple. In my behaviour there was the reverence of a son, the candour of a brother, the frankness of a child, and the unobtrusiveness of a stranger."[7]

In 1796 A. W. Schlegel married his somewhat deeply compromised friend. Her circle soon included all the leading men of the day. She was in constant intercourse with Goethe, Herder, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Tieck, Schleiermacher, and Hardenberg. This was the time of Goethe's intimate connection with the young school. It was in the process of formation, and its members held their first meetings at Jena. Caroline breakfasts with Goethe, dines with Fichte, and is soon only too inseparable from Schelling.

The following extract from one of her letters to Schelling (March 1, 1801) affords an example of the vigour and the subtlety of this remarkable woman's criticism: "You surely do not expect me, dearest friend, to enlighten you as to the compass of Fichte's mind, though you almost express yourself as if you did. It has always seemed to me as if, in spite of his incomparable reasoning powers, the soundness of his deductions, his lucidity and accuracy, his direct intuition of the Ego, and his discoverer's enthusiasm—as if in spite of all this he were limited. My explanation of the matter is, that the divine spark is lacking in him; and if you have broken through a circle from which he has not been able to escape, I believe that you have done it not so much as the philosopher—don't scold me if I am using the word wrongly—but rather because there is poetry in you and none in him. Poetical inspiration led you directly to productiveness; keenness of apprehension led him to knowledge. He has light, the clearest and brightest, but you have warmth as well; and light can only illuminate, while warmth produces. Now, have I not seen all this cleverly?—just as one sees a boundless landscape through a keyhole."

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