And she left me alive, and I live, which is the main point.
Others may, if they choose, enjoy the good fortune of having their lady-love adorn their grave with garlands, and water them with the tears of fidelity. Oh, women! hate me, laugh at me, jilt me, but let me live! Life is all too laughably sweet, and the world too delightfully bewildered; it is the dream of an intoxicated god, who has taken French leave of the carousing multitude of immortals, and has laid himself down to sleep in a solitary star, and knows not himself that he created all that he dreams—and the dream-images form themselves in such a mad, variegated fashion, and often so harmoniously reasonable—the Iliad, Plato, the battle of Marathon, Moses, Medician Venus, Strasburg Cathedral, the French Revolution, Hegel, the steamboat, etc., etc., are single good thoughts in this divine dream—but it will not last long, and the god awakes, and rubs his sleepy eyes, and smiles—and our world has run to nothing—yes, has never been.
No matter! I live. If I am but a shadowy image in a dream, still this is better than the cold, black, void, annihilation of Death. Life is the greatest good, and death the worst evil. Berlin lieutenants of the guard may sneer and call it cowardice because the Prince of Homburg shudders when he beholds his open grave. Henry Kleist had, however, as much courage as his high-breasted, tightly-laced colleagues, and has, alas! proved it. But all strong men love life. Goethe’s Egmont does not part willingly from the “cheerful wont of being and working.” Immermann’s Edwin clings to life “like a little child to his mother’s breast,” and though he finds it hard to live by stranger mercy, he still begs for mercy: “For life and breath is still the highest.”
When Odysseus in the under-world sees Achilles as the leader of dead heroes, and extols his renown among the living, and his glory even among the dead, Achilles answers—
“No more discourse of death consolingly, noble Odysseus!
Rather would I in the field as daily labourer be toiling,
Slave to the meanest of men, a pauper and lacking possessions,
Than ’mid the infinite host of long-vanished mortals be ruler.”
Yes, when Major Duvent challenged the great Israel Lyon to fight with pistols, and said to him, “If you do not meet me, Mr. Lyon, you are a dog;” the latter replied, “I would rather be a live dog than a dead lion!” and he was right. I have fought often enough, Madam, to dare to say this, God be praised! I live! Red life pulses in my veins; earth yields beneath my feet; in the glow of love I embrace trees and statues, and they live in my embrace. Every woman is to me the gift of a world. I revel in the melody of her countenance, and with a single glance of my eye I can enjoy more than others with their every limb through all their lives. Every instant is to me an eternity. I do not measure time with the ell of Brabant or of Hamburg, and I need no priest to promise me a second life, for I can live enough in this life, when I live backwards in the life of those who have gone before me, and win myself an eternity in the realm of the past.
And I live! The great pulsation of nature beats too in my breast; and when I carol aloud I am answered by a thousandfold echo. I hear a thousand nightingales. Spring has sent them to awaken earth from her morning slumber, and earth trembles with ecstasy. Her flowers are hymns, which she sings in inspiration to the sun. The sun moves far too slowly. I would fain lash on his steeds that they might advance more rapidly. But when he sinks hissing in the sea, and the night rises with her passionate eyes, oh! then true pleasure first thrills through me, the evening breezes lie like flattering maidens on my wild heart, and the stars wink to me, and I rise and sweep over the little earth and the little thoughts of men.