LUCINDA (1799)
By FRIEDRICH SCHLEGEL
TRANSLATED BY PAUL BERNARD THOMAS
PROLOGUE
Smiling with emotion Petrarch opens the collection of his immortal romanzas with a prefatory survey. The clever Boccaccio talks with flattering courtesy to all women, both at the beginning and at the end of his opulent book. The great Cervantes too, an old man in agony, but still genial and full of delicate wit, drapes the motley spectacle of his lifelike writings with the costly tapestry of a preface, which in itself is a beautiful and romantic painting.
Uproot a stately plant from its fertile, maternal soil, and there will still cling lovingly to it much that can seem superfluous only to a niggard.
But what shall my spirit bestow upon its offspring, which, like its parent, is as poor in poesy as it is rich in love?
Just one word, a parting trope: It is not alone the royal eagle who may despise the croaking of the raven; the swan, too, is proud and takes no note of it. Nothing concerns him except to keep clean the sheen of his white pinions. He thinks only of nestling against Leda's bosom without hurting her, and of breathing forth into song everything that is mortal within him.
[Illustration: #THE CREATION# From the Painting by Moritz von
Schwind]