He who wishes to understand how the various love-problems are represented in the literature of the present, strongly influenced as it is by the problem-poems of Ibsen, by Zola’s naturalism, and by the French symbolism[153] dependent on him, will find it described later in a special chapter devoted to love in the literature of to-day.
In the following chapter we have to consider one additional influence which is especially apparent in the love and eroticism of the present day, and possesses great importance for the individualization of love. This is the artistic element in modern love.
[134] H. T. Finck, “Romantic Love and Personal Beauty.”
[135] Cf. G. Hirth, “Ways to Freedom,” pp. 468-472 (Munich, 1903).
[136] G. Saint-Yves (“La Littérature Amoureuse,” Paris, 1887, p. 25) also sees in the æsthetic contemplation of the beloved person the fundamental root of individual love. It has gradually developed out of the ordinary æsthetic contemplation of nature. An interesting proof of this connexion is the Song of Solomon, in which the æsthetic stimuli of the beloved one are compared with every possible animate and inanimate natural object.
[137] Cf. regarding the numerous variations of this ancient couplet, the interesting account given by Arthur Kopp, “Old Proverbs and Popular Rhymes for Loving Hearts,” published in the Zeitschrift des Vereins für Volkskunde, Heft i., pp. 8, 9 (Berlin, 1902).
[138] Minne is an old German word (now obsolete) for love, “the love of fair women.” The minnesinger were love-singers who sang their own compositions to the accompaniment of the music of harp or viol—in fact, they were lyric poets. The most flourishing years of this art were from about 1170 to 1250; thus the minnesinger were contemporary with and closely akin to the Provençal troubadours. But the German development was essentially native, and the minnesinger’s treatment of love was characterized by a more ideal note than was usually attained by the troubadours. A good, though brief, account (with a list of authorities) is given of the minnesinger in “Chambers’s Encyclopædia.”—Translator.
[139] Jacob Falke, “The Society of Knighthood in the Epoch of the Cult of Women,” p. 49.
[140] In her letters (“Letters of Ninon de l’Enclos,” with ten etchings by Karl Walser, Berlin, 1906), the deep spiritual relationships of love found a classical representation.