"Dich führt zur Dichtung Andacht brünst'ger Liebe,
Du willst zum Tempel dir das Leben bilden,
Wo Götterrecht die Freiheit lös' und binde.
Und dass ohn' Opfer der Altar nicht bliebe,
Entführtest Du den himmlischen Gefilden,
Die hohe Gluth der leuchtenden Lucinde."[1]
And when Kotzebue published the comedy, Der hyperboräische Esel, which satirises Friedrich and his book, August Wilhelm responded with the witty satire, Ehrenpforte für den Präsidenten von Kotzebue; but privately he called the book a "foolish rhapsody." Tieck called it "eine wunderliche Chimäre," and even Schleiermacher attempted to disavow his authorship of the Letters on the Subject of Lucinde, after his inclination to a species of sensual mysticism had given place to a Protestant-rationalistic tendency. Nevertheless, or rather, for this very reason, it is of importance that we should inquire into the nature of these letters, which were written with the aim of proving Lucinde to be, not merely an innocent, but a good and holy book, the worth of which is testified to by the delight which high-minded women take in it. On the letters of two such women, his sister, Ernestine, and his friend, Eleonore Grunow, Schleiermacher's own are based.
There is little of general interest for us nowadays in these letters, so we shall only notice their salient points. As Lucinde is the solitary contribution of Romanticism towards the solution of a social problem, and as marriage is almost the only social question grappled with by literature generally at the beginning of the century (Goethe's Wanderjahre alone, in the manner of Rousseau's romances, occupying itself with a wider range of such questions), it will be of interest to compare the utterances of the different European literatures on this subject.
Schleiermacher's book is an attack upon prudery. At the very beginning he writes: "I was almost inclined to believe that you had become a prude; if you had, I should have entreated you to go and settle in England, to which country I should like to banish the whole genus." And one division of the book is entirely devoted to an analysis of that false modesty which precludes true modesty, and causes so much unnecessary misery.
"The anxious and narrow-minded modesty by which society at the present day is characterised, has its root in the consciousness of a great and general wrongheadedness and depravity. But where is it to end? It is bound to spread farther and farther. If people are perpetually on the lookout for what is immodest, they will end by discovering it in every domain of thought, and all conversation and social intercourse must cease.... utter depravation and the perfect education by which man returns to innocence, both do away with modesty; in the first case true modesty, as well as false, is destroyed; in the second, it ceases to be a thing to which much attention is paid or much importance attached.[2]
"Is it not the case, dear child, that everything spiritual in man has its beginning in an instinctive, vague, inward impulse, which only the action of the individual, frequently repeated, develops into definite, conscious will and a perfected faculty. Not until they have developed so far can there be any question of a lasting connection between these inward impulses and definite objects. Why should love be different from everything else? Is it reasonable to expect the highest faculty of man to be perfect from the first? Should it be easier to love than to eat and drink? Surely in love too there must be preparatory attempts, from which nothing permanent results, but which all tend to make the feeling more distinct and more noble. The connection of these attempts with any definite object is merely accidental, at first often purely imaginary, and always ephemeral—as ephemeral as the feeling itself, which soon gives place to one more clearly defined and intense. Inquire of the most mature and highly cultivated men and women; you will find that they smile at the thought of their first love as at any other laughable childish performance, and often live in complete indifference side by side with the object of it. According to the nature of things it must be so, and to insist upon faithfulness and a lasting connection is as dangerous as it is foolish."
Schleiermacher naturally warns his correspondent against what he calls the chimera of the holiness of first love: "Do not believe that everything depends upon something coming of it. The novels which support this idea, and make love between the same two beings develop uninterruptedly from its first raw beginning to its highest perfection, are as hurtful as they are silly; and their authors, as a rule, have as little understanding of love as they have of art.... When the more or less indefinite love longing settles upon a definite object, there necessarily arises a definite connection, and a point of closest approach. When this point has been reached and you feel that it is not the right one, not one that can be held, what is there left for you to do but to part again? Only after such an attempt has been completed as an attempt, that is to say, after the connection has been broken off, can the memory of it and reflection upon it produce a truer understanding of the longing and feeling, and thus prepare for another and better attempt. Is there any obligation to make the next with the same person? Upon what can such an obligation be founded? I, for my part, consider this more unnatural than love between brother and sister. Allow yourself perfect liberty, then; endeavouring only to preserve a pure-minded, clear feeling that it is merely an experiment, so that you may be prevented from sanctioning and perpetuating that which is not intended to be more, by that self-surrender which, from its nature, ought to mark the end of experiments and the beginning of a true and lasting love. Such a mistake, which is both the consequence and the cause of the most miserable delusions, you must regard as the most terrible thing that can happen to you; I would have you understand that this is in reality allowing one's self to be seduced. When you have found true love, and feel yourself to have reached the point at which you can perfect your character and make your life beautiful and worthy, diffidence and fear of the last and most precious seal of union will seem to you pure affectation. The only danger lies in the fact that every attempt, from its very nature, aims at reaching this point. The point of sufficiency can only be discovered by satiety. But if you are healthy in mind and heart, you will, as often as one of these attempts to love approaches this point, feel an aversion which is something far higher and holier than any law, or than what generally goes by the name of modesty and chastity."
