Still plainer expression is given to the ecstatic passion of the sensual Ego in a sacramental hymn (No. vii. of the Spiritual Songs): "Few know the secret of love, feel for ever unsatisfied, for ever athirst. The divine significance of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper is an enigma to the carnal mind. But he who even once has drunk in the breath of life from warm, beloved lips, whose heart has melted in the quivering flames of holy fire, whose eyes have been opened to fathom the unfathomable depths of heaven—he will eat of His body and drink of His blood for ever more. Who has yet discerned the transcendent meaning of the earthly body? Who can say that he understands the blood? The day is coming when all body will be one body; then the beatified pair will float in heavenly blood. Oh! that the ocean were already reddening, that the rocks were softening into fragrant flesh! The sweet repast never ends, love is never satisfied. Never can it have the beloved near enough, close enough to its inmost self. By lips that are ever more tenderly amorous, the heavenly nutriment is ever more eagerly seized and transformed. Hotter and hotter burns the passion of the soul, thirstier, ever thirstier grows the heart; and so the feast of love endures from everlasting to everlasting. Had those who abstain but once tasted of it, they would forsake everything and seat themselves beside us at the table of longing, which is ever furnished with guests. They would comprehend the infinite fulness of love, and extol our feast of the Body and the Blood."[5]
These lines give us an excellent idea of the nature and main characteristics of mysticism. Mysticism retains all the old religious forms, but it truly feels their significance; it speaks the same language as orthodoxy, but it changes a dead language into a living one. Herein lay the secret of its victory in the Middle Ages over that dry, formal scholasticism which it consumed in its glow. This made it the precursor of the Reformation. The mystic needs no external dogma; in his pious rapture he is his own priest. But, as his spiritual life is altogether an inward life, he does not abolish external dogma, and in the end actually becomes a sacerdotalist.
In mystically prophetic words Novalis foretells the coming of the new kingdom of sacred darkness:—
"Es bricht die neue Welt herein
Und verdunkelt den hellsten Sonnenschein.
Man sieht nun aus bemoosten Trümmern
Eine wunderseltsame Zukunft schimmern,
Und was vordem alltäglich war,
Scheint jetzo fremd und wunderbar.
Der Liebe Reich ist aufgethan,
Die Fabel fängt zu spinnen an.
Das Urspiel jeder Natur beginnt,
Auf kräftige Worte jedes sinnt,
Und so das grosse Weltgemüth
Ueberall sich regt und unendlich blüht.
* * * * * * *
Die Welt wird Traum, der Traum wird Welt,
Und was man glaubt, es sei geschehn,
Kann mann von weitem erst kommen sehn;
Frei soll die Phantasie erst schalten,
Nach ihrem Gefallen die Fäden verweben,
Hier manches verschleiern, dort manches entfalten,
Und endlich in magischem Dunst verschweben.
Wehmuth und Wollust, Tod und Leben
Sind hier in innigster Sympathie,—
Wer sich der höchsten Lieb' ergeben,
Genest von ihren Wunden nie."[6]
Night, death, sensual rapture, heavenly bliss—these ideas are still more firmly interwoven in the verses above the churchyard gate, in Heinrich von Ofterdingen. The dead say:—
"Süsser Reiz der Mitternächte,
Stiller Kreis geheimer Mächte,
Wollust räthselhafter Spiele,
Wir nur kennen euch.
* * * * * * *
Leiser Wünsche süsses Plaudern
Hören wir allein, und schauen
Immerdar in sel'ge Augen,
Schmecken nichts als Mund und Kuss.
Alles was wir nur berühren,
Wird zu heissen Balsamfrüchten,
Wird zu weichen zarten Brüsten,
Opfern kühner Lust.
Immer wächst und blüht Verlangen
Am Geliebten festzuhangen,
Ihn im Innern zu empfangen,
Eins mit ihm zu sein.
Seinem Durste nicht zu wehren,
Sich im Wechsel zu verzehren,
Von einander sich zu nähren,
Von einander nur allein.
So in Lieb' und hoher Wollust
Sind wir immerdar versunken,
Seit der wilde trübe Funken
Jener Welt erlosch;
Seit der Hügel sich geschlossen
Und der Scheiterhaufen sprühte,
Und dem schauernden Gemüthe
Nun das Erdgesicht zerfloss."[7]
This mysticism, which deems the dead happy because it supposes them to be revelling in all sensual delights, becomes, in its practical application, a sort of quietism, that is, preference for a vegetating, plant-like life, the life extolled in Lucinde.
"The plants," says Novalis, "are the plainest speech of the earth; every new leaf, every remarkable flower is some mystery which is trying to reveal itself, and which remains motionless and dumb only because from very joy and love it can neither move nor speak. If one chances in solitude upon such a flower, does not everything around it seem transfigured? do not the little feathered songsters seem to seek its vicinity? One could weep for gladness, and, forgetting the world, could bury one's hands and feet in the ground, take root, and never leave that happy neighbourhood."
What an overdose of sentiment! It provides its own cruel parody in the insane situation which reminds us Danes of one in Holberg's Ulysses von Ithacia.
In another part of Ofterdingen we read: "Flowers exactly correspond to children ... like children they are found lowest down, nearest the earth; the clouds, again, are possibly revelations of the second, higher childhood, of Paradise regained; therefore it is that they shed such refreshing dews upon the children of earth." In the Romantic jargon there is even talk of the childlikeness of clouds. Naïveté aspires, and is not satisfied until it has reached the sky. O Polonius!—These naïve clouds are the true, the proper symbols of Romanticism.