[151] “The time of love is not age, it is not youth: the time of love is the moment,” says Beate, one of Gutzkow’s characters, at the end of the tragedy “Ein Weisser Blatt.”
[152] K. Frenzel, “Karl Gutzkow,” published in “Büsten und Bilder,” pp. 177 and 178 (Hanover, 1864).
[153] Heinrich Stümcke refers to this connexion between naturalism and symbolism in a very thoughtful essay (“Zwischen den Garben,” p. 156; Leipzig, 1899).
CHAPTER IX
THE ARTISTIC ELEMENT IN MODERN LOVE
“I am of opinion that love bears within itself, more than any other moral relationship, the sense of the beautiful, and when anywhere a heavy heart begins to move its wings and to strive towards the ideal, it is in the time when it loves. Without doubt an æsthetic perception always accompanies the eye of the lover, and in a greater degree than it ever accompanies the dispassionate eye.”—Kuno Fischer.
CONTENTS OF CHAPTER IX
Ennoblement and reform of the amatory life as a demand of our time — The battle with the elemental forces of the sexual impulse and of asceticism — The artistic element in modern love — Erotic rhythmotropism — Sexuality and æsthetics — The awakening of æsthetic sensibility at the time of puberty — Importance of sensuality to life and to the poietic impulse — The example of Annette von Droste-Hülshoff — Sensuality of great poets and artists — Views of recent æsthetics regarding the relations between sexual love and artistic perception — Rôle of the erotic need for illusion in social life — Emerson, Konrad Lange, and William Scherer, on the æsthetic eroticism of social life — The liberating and vitalizing elements therein — Significance of modern individual beauty — Misnamed “nervous” beauty — The English “Pre-Raphaelites” and the ideal of beauty — Masculine beauty — Why women love ugly men — Caroline Schlegel, Goethe, Eduard von Hartmann, and Swedenborg, on this subject — The attractive force of the poietic and the spiritual in man.