In view of the remarkable coincidence between the proposal in Goethe’s “Elective Affinities” and the Japanese custom, we are probably justified in assuming that Goethe was acquainted with the latter.
“Lucinde” gave expression to the feelings and moods of the time in respect of love and marriage on behalf of a circle far wider than that of the romanticists. At no time were the ideals of free love so deeply felt, so enthusiastically presented, as then; above all, by the beautiful Karoline, who, after long “marriage wanderings,” especially with A. W. Schegel, finally found the happiness of her life in a free marriage with Schelling, which subsequently became a legally recognized union.
“In her letters,” says Kuno Fischer, “she praises again and again the man of her choice and of her heart, in whose love she had really attained the goal which she had longed and sought in labyrinthine wanderings.... And that Schelling was the man who was able completely to master the heart of this woman and to make her his own, gives to his features also an expression which beautifies them.”[194]
Rahel, Dorothea Schlegel, and Henriette Herz, extolled, under the influence of “Lucinde,” the happiness of free love. For this period of genius in Jena and Berlin, as Rudolph von Gottschall calls it, the free-love relationship of Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia and Frau Pauline Wiesel was typical. This relationship is more intimately known to us from the letters exchanged between the two, published by Alexander Büchner in 1865. In these letters, to quote a saying of Ludmilla Assing, we find “the most passionate expression of all that it is possible to express in writing.”
In France the discussion of the question of free love was to an important extent associated with the communistic-socialistic ideas of Saint Simon, Enfantin, and Fourier. Before this, Rétif de la Bretonne, in his “Découverte Australe” (a work which exercised a great influence upon Charles Fourier),[195] demanded that the duration of marriage should be in the first instance two years, with which period the contract should spontaneously terminate. Saint Simon and Barrault proclaimed the “free wife,” Père Enfantin proclaimed the “free union,” and Fourier proclaimed “free love” in the phalanstery.
A reflection of this idea is to be found in the novels of George Sand, especially “Lelia” and “Jacques,” these tragedies of marriage; in “Jacques,” for example, we find the following passage:
“I continue to believe that marriage is one of the most hateful of institutions. I have no doubt whatever that when the human race has advanced further towards rationality and the love of justice, marriage will be abolished. A human and not less sacred union would then replace it, and the existence of the children would be not less cared for and secured, without therefore binding in eternal fetters the freedom of the parents.”
We must mention Hortense Allart de Méritens (1801-1879) as a contemporary of the much-loving George Sand, and, like her, a theoretical and practical advocate of free love. She was cousin to the well-known authoress Delphine Gay, and herself wrote a roman à clef, published in 1872, “Les Enchantements de Prudence,” in which she records the history of her own life, devoted to free love. First the beloved of a nobleman, she ran away when she discovered she was pregnant, and then lived successively with the Italian statesman Gino Capponi (1826-1829); with the celebrated French author Chateaubriand (1829-1831); with the English novelist and poet Bulwer (1831-1836); the Italian Mazzini (1837-1840); the critic Sainte-Beuve (1840-1841); these being all free unions. From 1843 to 1846 she was the perfectly legitimate and extremely unhappy wife of an architect named Napoléon de Méritens, whereas with her earlier lovers she had lived most happily. Léon Séché, in the Revue de Paris of July 1, 1907, has recently described the life of this notable priestess of free love, to whose above-mentioned romance George Sand wrote a preface (cf. Literarisches Echo of August 1, 1907, pp. 1612, 1613).
In Sweden at about the same time the celebrated poet C. J. L. Almquist was a powerful advocate for free love. In the numbers for July and August, 1900, of the monthly review, Die Insel, Ellen Key has published a thoughtful essay, containing an analysis of Almquist’s views on this subject.
In the novel “Es Geht An” Almquist advocates the thesis that true love needs no consecration by a marriage ceremony. On the contrary, a ceremony of this kind belies the very nature of marriage, for it forms and cements false unions; and any relationship concluded on the lowest grounds, if it has only been preceded by a marriage ceremony, is regarded as pure, whilst a union based upon true love without marriage is regarded as unchaste. In the sense of free love Lara Widbeck, in “Es Geht An,” arranges her own life and that of her husband Albert. Both are to be masters of their respective persons and of their respective property; they are to live for themselves, the work of each is to be pursued independently of the other, and in this way it will be possible to preserve a lifelong love, instead of seeing love transformed into lifelong indifference or hate.