Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature – 3. The Reaction in France

VII
"LUCINDE" IN REAL LIFE

Behind this indistinct picture lay a far more definitely outlined reality. The youthful life of the hero corresponded pretty accurately, as Friedrich Schlegel's letters show, with that of the author. In those days Berlin had not yet become pious, but was, according to the evidence of contemporaries, a species of Venusberg, which none approached with impunity. The example of the throne sanctioned every species of moral licence. Enthusiasm for art and literature superseded the official morality which a short time before had been so powerful, but from which men were rapidly emancipating themselves.

In the autumn of 1799, the year in which Lucinde was published, Friedrich Schlegel wrote to Schleiermacher: "People here have been behaving so outrageously that Schelling has had a fresh attack of his old enthusiasm for irreligion, in which I support him with all my might. He has composed an epicurean confession of faith in the Hans Sachs-Goethe style." This was Der Widerporst.

 
"Kann es fürwahr nicht länger ertragen,
Muss wieder einmal um mich schlagen,
Wieder mich rühren mit allen Sinnen,
So mir dachten zu entrinnen
Von den hohen, überirdischen Lehren,
Dazu sie mich wollten mit Gewalt bekehren
Darum, so will auch ich bekennen
Wie ich in mir es fühle brennen,
Wie mir's in allen Adern schwillt,
Mein Wort so viel wie anderes gilt,
Da ich in bös' und guten Stunden
Mich habe gar trefflich befunden,
Seit ich gekommen in's Klare,
Die Materie sei das einzig Wahre.
Halte nichts vom Unsichtbaren,
Halt' mich allein am Offenbaren,
Was ich kann riechen, schmecken, fühlen,
Mit allen Sinnen drinnen wühlen.
Mein einzig' Religion ist die,
Dass ich liebe ein schönes Knie,
Volle Brust und schlanke Hüften,
Dazu Blumen mit süssen Düften,
Aller Lust volle Nährung,
Aller Liebe süsse Gewährung.
D'rum, sollt's eine Religion noch geben
(Ob ich gleich kann ohne solche leben),
Könnte mir vor den andern allen
Nur die katholische gefallen,
Wie sie war in den alten Zeiten,
Da es gab weder Zanken noch Streiten,
Waren alle ein Mus und Kuchen,
Thäten's nicht in der Ferne suchen,
Thäten nicht nach dem Himmel gaffen,
Hatten von Gott'nen lebend'gen Affen,
Hielten die Erde für's Centrum der Welt,
Zum Centrum der Erde Rom bestellt,
Darin der Statthalter residirt
Und der Welttheile Scepter führt,
Und lebten die Laien und die Pfaffen
Zusammen wie im Land der Schlaraffen,
Dazu sie im hohen Himmelhaus
Selber lebten in Saus und Braus,
War ein täglich Hochzeithalten
Zwischen der Jungfrau und dem Alten."¹⁷
 

Such a poem from such a hand is a genuine proof of the spirit of the times; and it is instructive to observe that when Wilhelm Schlegel (acting upon Goethe's advice) refuses to publish the poem in the Athenæum, Novalis, against whom it was especially directed, writes: "I cannot understand why Der Widerporst should not be printed. Is it on account of its atheism? Just think of Die Götter Griechenlands!"

The fashions were revolutionary – uncovered bosoms, orientally flowing garments. The tone of the most notable young women of the day was excessively free. No one was more talked of for her beauty at this time than Pauline Wiesel. She was the wife of a highly intellectual man, whose scepticism and satirical, cynical wit made a deep and disturbing impression upon young Tieck (he was the model for Abdallah and William Lovell); and she was one of Prince Louis Ferdinand's many mistresses. The attachment of the dashing young prince, in this case a real passion, still glows in his letters. A contemporary wrote of her: "I look upon her in the light of a phenomenon of Greek mythology." Alexander von Humboldt walked more than thirty miles to see her. It is characteristic of the times that the connection by which Pauline Wiesel compromised herself roused no disapprobation among her more advanced women friends. The irreproachable Rahel, for example, has not a word of blame for it; one might almost imagine that she envied Pauline. As a young girl she writes despondently: "Every means, every possible preparation for living, and yet one must never live; I never shall, and those who dare to do so have the wretched world, the whole world, against them."

The original of Lucinde, however, was certainly superior to her portrait, a woman of an altogether nobler type. She belonged to Rahel's circle, that group of clever young Jewesses who then represented the noblest, freest intellectual life of Berlin – a circle historically important from the fact that it was the only one in which as yet Goethe's fame was really established and true homage paid him.¹⁸ The lady in question was Moses Mendelssohn's clever, self-reliant daughter, Dorothea, who, to please her parents, had bestowed her hand upon the well-known banker, Veit. It was not by beauty but by her wit and her keen intellectuality that she captivated Friedrich Schlegel. He was at the time twenty-five years of age, she thirty-two. There was nothing sensuous or frivolous in either her appearance or manner; she had large piercing eyes and a masculine severity of expression. In his letters to his brother Wilhelm, Friedrich Schlegel praises "her sterling worth." "She is," he says, "very straightforward, and cares for nothing but love, music, wit, and philosophy." In 1789 Dorothea was divorced from her husband and followed Schlegel to Jena. The latter writes at this time: "It has never been our intention to bind ourselves to each other by any marriage contract, though I have long considered it impossible that anything but death should part us. The calculation and adjustment of present and future is antipathetic to me, yet if the detested ceremony were the necessary condition of inseparableness, I should act according to the requirement of the moment and sacrifice my most cherished opinions."

In the arranging of their relations, none of their intimates helped Friedrich and Dorothea more than their clerical friend, Schleiermacher. On none of Schlegel's friends had Lucinde had such a powerful effect. Schleiermacher was at this time chaplain of the Charité Church in Berlin. He had long followed Friedrich's emancipatory endeavours with warm sympathy, and even admiration. In his essay On Diotima, as well as in his harsh criticism of Schiller's Würde der Frauen, Friedrich had attacked the traditional conception of woman's position in society. He had held up to contempt the ordinary marriage, in which the wedded pair "live together with a feeling of mutual contempt, he seeing in her only her sex, she in him his social position, and both in their children their own production and property." What he desired was the moral and intellectual emancipation of women. Intellect and culture, combined with enthusiasm, were the qualities which in his eyes made a woman lovable. The ordinary ideal of womanliness he scorned. He writes with bitterness of the stupidity and criminality of the men who demand ignorance and innocence in women, thereby compelling them to be prudish. Prudery is false pretence of innocence. True innocence in woman he maintains to be perfectly compatible with intellectual culture. It exists wherever there is religion, i.e. capacity for enthusiasm. The idea that noble, enlightened free-thought is less becoming in the case of women than of men is only one of the many generally accepted platitudes set in circulation by Rousseau. "The thraldom of woman" is one of the curses of humanity. His highest desire as an author was, as he naively puts it, "to found a system of morality" (eine Moral zu stiften). He calls opposition to positive law and conventional ideas of right, "the first moral impulse" felt by man.

In his Vernunftkatechismus für edle Frauen ("Catechism of Reason for Noble-minded Women"), a fragment which appeared in the Athenæum, Schleiermacher writes in exactly the same strain, calling upon women to free themselves from the bonds of their sex. Nay, incredible as it may sound, it is quite possible (as Haym has proved) that the frequently quoted saying of Friedrich Schlegel, that there is nothing of serious importance to be urged against a marriage à quatre, really emanated from Schleiermacher. It is levelled at the many degrading and unreal marriages, at the "unsuccessful attempts at marriage," which the State in its foolishness makes binding, and which prevent the possibility of a true marriage. The writer of the fragment in which the saying occurs observes that most marriages are only preparatory and distant approximations to the true marriage; and Schleiermacher, in his Letters, writes that many attempts are necessary, and that "if four or five couples were taken together, really good marriages might result, provided they were allowed to exchange."

The underlying reason for the warm personal interest taken by Schleiermacher in Friedrich and Dorothea is, no doubt, to be found in his own position and circumstances at that time. A devoted attachment existed between him and Eleonore Grunow, the childless and most unhappy wife of a Berlin clergyman.

It seemed to Schleiermacher that the popular indignation roused by Lucinde was largely compounded of philistine and Pharisaical ignorance. The very people who abused it were revelling in Wieland's and Crébillon's immoral tales. "It reminds me," he says, "of the trials for witchcraft, where malice formulated the charge, and pious stupidity carried out the sentence." But what especially led to his ardent championship of the persecuted pair was, he tells us himself, the fact that most of those who complained loudly of offended morality were simply seeking a pretext for a private personal attack on Schlegel.

An invincible spirit dwelt in Dorothea's frail body. She bore unfalteringly all that her violation of conventional morality brought upon her – private condemnation and public defamation in the shape of innuendoes in the attacks on Lucinde. She displayed the most enduring devotion and the most self-sacrificing faithfulness to the man she had chosen. She not only shares his interests and aims, but bears with his unreasonableness and resigns herself uncomplainingly to the caprices of the most capricious of lovers. Nay, more than this, her good sense and cheerfulness scatter all the clouds of despondency that gather round herself and others. Her merry laughter brings relief from Schleiermacher's subtle argumentativeness and Friedrich's transcendental irony. Free in every other respect from feminine sentimentality, she is completely engrossed in admiration of the man she loves, and, with touching modesty, centres all her pride in him. When her novel Florentin is published, a book in which, in spite of its many weaknesses, there is more creative power than in any of Friedrich Schlegel's productions, what makes her happiest and proudest is that his name (as editor) stands on the title-page. She jests merrily on the subject of her literary activity. Blushing and with a beating heart, she sends the first volume of her book to Schleiermacher, and she smiles at the numerous red strokes which adorn the returned manuscript. "There is always the deuce in it where the dative and accusative ought to be." The fact that she too felt impelled to write at the time (about the year 1800) when all the Romanticists, even Schleiermacher and Schelling, were committing literary sins, marks her as one of the German Romantic literary circle; and, moreover, her novel is, in reality, an expression of all the prevailing ideas, an imitation of Wilhelm Meister and Franz Sternbald, an exaltation of the harmoniously cultivated few at the expense of the vulgar crowd, a glorification of the free Bohemian life, of idleness and admirable frivolity, of purposelessness in the midst of the prose of reality.

Dorothea has endowed her hero with characteristics which obviously correspond to Friedrich's as they appeared to her admiring woman's eyes. "In spite of a peculiar and often repellent manner, he has the gift of making himself popular, and wins all hearts without caring whether he does or not. It is of no avail to arm one's self against him with all one's pride; somehow or other he gains entire possession of one. It is often most exasperating not to be able to withstand him, as he himself is not to be won. At times it seems as if he attached another meaning to his words than their obvious one; sometimes when the most flattering things are said to him, he looks utterly indifferent, as if it were a matter of course; at other times, quite unexpectedly, some chance word, let fall without any special intention, affords him the greatest pleasure; he either finds in it or puts into it some peculiar meaning… But you can imagine how often he gives offence in society."

Florentin's confessions, too, especially those relating to his wild life as a youth in Venice, remind us of Friedrich's youthful experiences in Leipzig. Although Florentin is an Italian, he feels himself strongly attracted by German art and German artists. He teaches himself to draw and paint, and makes his living, now as the gifted Romantic dilettante artist, now as the no less Romantic musician, roaming from village to village. His birth is wrapt in mystery. He is, as he himself says, "the solitary, the outcast, the child of chance. Something indescribable, which I can only call my destiny, drives me on." He avoids all ties of affection: "Alone will I bear the curse which has been laid upon me."¹⁹

It is unnecessary to criticise this characterisation in detail and point out how naïve and excessively Romantic it is. None the less, its writer is in many ways superior to her surroundings. Not for nothing was she the daughter of the sober, sagacious Moses Mendelssohn.

She would like, she says, to see Friedrich the literary artist, but she would love him better still if she could see in him the worthy citizen of a well-ordered state; it seems to her, indeed, that the character and desires of all her revolutionary friends make literary occupations, reviewing and such-like, as unsuitable for them as a child's cradle for a giant: her ideal is Götz von Berlichingen, who only took up the pen as a rest from the sword.²⁰

Here again we are impressed by what strikes us in reading of Frau von Kalb, namely, that the women of this period display more virile and more concentrated power than the men, and that they persist in treating from the social standpoint questions which the men desire to treat only from the literary. They feel the oppression of existing circumstances more strongly, are less enervated by overmuch book-learning, and look at things more practically than the men.

The first important event in the life of the young couple was Fichte's coming to live with them. Fichte had been accused of teaching atheism, and his position as a professor was in jeopardy. Caroline Schlegel writes to a friend: "I must answer your questions about the Fichte affair, though it is a very painful one to me and to all admirers of honourable, frank behaviour. You know pretty well yourself what to think of the first accusation, made by a bigoted sovereign and his counsellors, half of them Catholics, the rest Moravian Brethren… But Fichte is so exasperated by all sorts of reports from Weimar, about things looking bad for him there, &c. &c., that he declares he will resign if they reprimand him, or put any restriction on his teaching… All who would stand well at court, and the professors whom Fichte has outshone, denounce his boldness and precipitancy. He is abandoned, actually avoided."

In a letter written jointly by Friedrich, Schleiermacher, and Dorothea, the last-mentioned says: "Things are going well with Fichte here; he is left in peace. Nicolai has intimated that no notice whatever will be taken of him so long as he does not attempt to give public lectures; this would not be well received… I get on excellently with Fichte, and feel as much at home in this gathering of philosophers as if I had never been accustomed to anything inferior. Though I am still a little timid, this has nothing to do with Fichte personally, but rather with my own position to the world and to Friedrich – I am afraid – yet possibly I am mistaken. I cannot write another word, dear, for my philosophers are pacing up and down the room so incessantly that I am quite giddy."

Here we have a little domestic scene from Dorothea's life in Berlin. The three were so comfortable together that Fichte was desirous to make the arrangement permanent. He writes to his wife that he is trying to persuade Friedrich to remain in Berlin, and August Wilhelm and his wife to remove there. "If my plan succeeds, the two Schlegels, Schelling, who must also be persuaded to come, and we ourselves will form one family, take a large house, have only one cook, &c., &c."²¹ The plan was not carried out. The wives of the two Schlegels did not get on with each other. But is it not like a breath from another world to come, in the midst of all this solicitude for Fichte and indignation at the wrong done him, upon such a passage in one of Dorothea's letters as the following: "I heartily thank your mother for the sweet picture of the saint. I keep it where I can always see it. She is the very saint I should have chosen for myself; she suits me exactly. These pictures and the Catholic music touch me so, that I am determined, if I become a Christian, to be a Catholic."²² Nowhere is the religious confusion which distinguishes the Romantic School more plainly displayed.

But Dorothea is not the only female portrait in Lucinde. During the course of his development Julius makes the acquaintance of an admirable woman, who is described as follows: "This disease was cured, was expelled, by the very first sight of a woman who was quite unique, and who was the first to exercise complete influence over his mind… She had made her choice, and had given herself to one who was his friend as well as hers, and who was worthy of her love. Julius was the confidant. He knew exactly what it was that made him unhappy, and sternly judged his own baseness… He forced all his love back into his inmost heart and let passion rage and burn and consume there. But his outward man was quite changed. So successful was he in counterfeiting the most childlike frankness and innocence, and in assuming a sort of fraternal brusqueness to prevent his melting into tenderness, that she never entertained the slightest suspicion. She was gay and genial in her happiness; suspecting nothing, she shunned nothing, but gave her mood and wit free play when she found him unamiable. All the nobility and all the grace, all the divinity and all the waywardness of the feminine character found in her their most refined, their most womanly expression. Each quality was allowed to develop as freely and vigorously as if it were the only one; and the daring mixture of dissimilar elements did not produce confusion, for a spirit inspired it which was a living breath of harmony and love. In the course of the same hour she would reproduce some comic episode with the refined abandon of the accomplished actress, and read a great poem with simple, touching dignity. At one time it pleased her fancy to shine and trifle in society, at another she was all enthusiasm and ardour, and presently she would be assisting others by word and deed, serious, unassuming, and gentle as a tender mother. Her manner of relating it made any trifling incident as entertaining as a delightful fairy tale. She embellished everything with feeling and wit; she had a power of comprehending everything, and of ennobling everything she touched. Nothing great or good was too holy or too common for her passionate sympathy. She understood the slightest suggestion, and answered even the question that was not asked. It was not possible to make long speeches to her; they turned naturally into interesting conversations, during which an ever-varying music of intelligent glances and sweet expressions played over her delicate features. One seemed to see these glances and expressions while reading her letters, so lucidly and genially did she write, as if talking with her correspondent. Those who only knew this side of her might think that she was merely lovable, that she would make an enchanting actress, that nothing but metre and rhyme were wanting to make her winged words exquisite poetry. But this same woman showed on every occasion that called for it the most astonishing courage and energy; and it was from this side of her character, by her own heroic standard, that she judged men."

There is more praise than art in this portrait. Sainte-Beuve would have given us a very different delineation. The original of the picture is a woman who, after the publication of her letters under the title Caroline, was known, as if she had been a queen, only by this, her Christian name. It simplified matters, too, to designate her thus, for she had had so many surnames that it was difficult to know by which to call her. She was a daughter of the well-known German philologist, Michaelis; her first husband was a Dr. Böhmer; after his death she married A. W. Schlegel, and her third husband was Schelling. These two last marriages placed her in the centre of the Romantic circle, which seems naturally to group itself round her. She was its own special muse. Grier, the gifted translator of Calderon and Ariosto, says of her that she is by far the cleverest woman he has known. Steffens and Wilhelm von Humboldt use similar expressions. A. W. Schlegel writes of several of his essays, that they are "in part the work of a highly gifted woman, who possessed all the qualifications of a successful author, but whose ambition did not lie in that direction." Schelling writes at the time of her death: "Even had she not been to me what she was, I should mourn the human being, should lament that this intellectual paragon no longer exists, this rare woman, who to masculine strength of soul and the keenest intellect united the tenderest, most womanly, most loving heart. We shall never see her like again." Her portrait is very striking – fascinating, refined, roguish, and yet tender. She is quite in Leonardo's style. Dorothea is far less complex.

Caroline was born in 1763, and was twenty-one at the time of her first marriage. A. W. Schlegel made her acquaintance whilst he was a student at Göttingen, and fell in love with her, but she refused to marry him. Intercourse between them was broken off for a time, but was carried on by correspondence while Schlegel was at Amsterdam, where he went as a tutor in 1791. Here various amorous episodes, amongst them one serious love affair, threw Caroline for a time into the shade. Meanwhile, she was entangling herself in a net of the strangest relations. In 1799 she had gone to Mainz, where she lived in the house of Georg Forster, Humboldt's teacher, a man equally distinguished as a scientist and an author. When this gifted and admirable, but far too sanguine man, embarked on revolutionary enterprises and attempted to extend French republicanism to the Rhine districts, Caroline enthusiastically aided and abetted him. She was in communication with the members of the Republican Club in Mainz, and she was unjustly suspected of communicating with the enemy through her brother-in-law, G. Böhmer, who was Custine's secretary. When Mainz was reconquered by the German troops, she was arrested, and spent several months in barbarous imprisonment, sharing a room with seven other people. From prison she wrote to A. W. Schlegel for assistance.

Her position was even worse than it appeared to be. In Mainz, in desperation at the disappointment of her dearest hopes (she had expected that the manly, energetic Tatter would offer her his hand), she had thrown herself into the arms of her adorer for the moment, a Frenchman, and the results of this connection would inevitably compromise her for ever, if she were not freed from prison in time. Schlegel's influence and her own brother's unremitting endeavours procured her release. With quiet chivalry August Wilhelm placed Caroline, now forsaken by all her other friends, under the protection of his younger brother, Friedrich. It was in these singularly unpropitious circumstances that Friedrich made her acquaintance. He was by no means prepossessed in her favour, in fact, was inclined to look upon her with contempt; yet this is how he writes: "I had certainly not expected simplicity and a positively divine truthfulness… She made a profound impression upon me. I longed to be in a position to win her confidence and friendship; but the moment she showed some return of the feeling I saw very clearly that the bare attempt would lead to the most painful struggles, and that if a friendship between us were possible at all, it could only be the fruit of much that was unjustifiable… Thenceforward every selfish desire was abandoned. The relation in which I stood to her was perfectly innocent and simple. In my behaviour there was the reverence of a son, the candour of a brother, the frankness of a child, and the unobtrusiveness of a stranger."²³

In 1796 A. W. Schlegel married his somewhat deeply compromised friend. Her circle soon included all the leading men of the day. She was in constant intercourse with Goethe, Herder, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Tieck, Schleiermacher, and Hardenberg. This was the time of Goethe's intimate connection with the young school. It was in the process of formation, and its members held their first meetings at Jena. Caroline breakfasts with Goethe, dines with Fichte, and is soon only too inseparable from Schelling.

The following extract from one of her letters to Schelling (March 1, 1801) affords an example of the vigour and the subtlety of this remarkable woman's criticism: "You surely do not expect me, dearest friend, to enlighten you as to the compass of Fichte's mind, though you almost express yourself as if you did. It has always seemed to me as if, in spite of his incomparable reasoning powers, the soundness of his deductions, his lucidity and accuracy, his direct intuition of the Ego, and his discoverer's enthusiasm – as if in spite of all this he were limited. My explanation of the matter is, that the divine spark is lacking in him; and if you have broken through a circle from which he has not been able to escape, I believe that you have done it not so much as the philosopher – don't scold me if I am using the word wrongly – but rather because there is poetry in you and none in him. Poetical inspiration led you directly to productiveness; keenness of apprehension led him to knowledge. He has light, the clearest and brightest, but you have warmth as well; and light can only illuminate, while warmth produces. Now, have I not seen all this cleverly? – just as one sees a boundless landscape through a keyhole."

In another letter we find an amusing reference to Hegel, which shows us that philosopher in a novel light: "Hegel is playing the beau and general gallant" (Hegel macht den Galanten und allgemeinen Cicisbeo).²⁴

Caroline shares enthusiastically in all the efforts of the Romantic School; she revises, reviews anonymously, writes herself, influences other writers directly and indirectly. She is obliged to expend that politico-revolutionary ardour, of which she possesses a far larger share than the men, on literary skirmishes and intrigues. We find her, for instance, writing an anonymous and tolerably sharp review of Schlegel's Ion; Schlegel replies, also anonymously, criticising her criticism; then Caroline calls Schelling to her assistance, and he, acting as her champion, falls upon Schlegel still more heavily in a third anonymous article, written in an extremely polished manner – at the same time writing privately to him that he hopes he will not take it amiss. It is to Caroline that the misunderstanding and final rupture between Schiller and Schlegel is due; she sets the brothers against the poet by her extremely witty but unfair mockery of his style; Schiller, on his side, cannot be acquitted of having treated them with considerable haughtiness at the beginning of their literary career. His name for Caroline is "Dame Lucifer."

Caroline's worst side was displayed in her small-minded hatred of poor Dorothea Veit, whom she positively persecuted. This hatred disturbed the beautiful relation between August Wilhelm and Friedrich, who were intimate friends as well as brothers. At one time it threatened to separate them altogether. Observe the way in which she speaks of Dorothea: "Friedrich was present at the performance of Alarkos, and immediately afterwards got into a post-chaise and set off for France, where it is his intention to be married in republican fashion. Under Robespierre, drowning in the Loire went by the name of noces republicaines; such a wedding for one half of the couple I should not object to."

Her best qualities were called forth by her daughter, that remarkable child, Auguste Böhmer, whose name, although she died at the age of fifteen, has a place in the history of German literature. All who read this child's criticism of Friedrich or of Dorothea, or her rhymed letters to Tieck and Schleiermacher, are astounded by her precociousness. Her death was a turning-point in Caroline's life. Schelling, who very possibly had been first attracted by the daughter, drew nearer to the mother in her sudden and sad bereavement. He was then quite young, labouring ardently at his earliest works, glowing with passion, sparkling with genius, the favourite of Goethe. Caroline and he had a great common sorrow and need of consolation. Their feeling for each other soon assumed the character of passionate love. The publication by the unscrupulous opponents of the Romanticists of a pamphlet in which it was asserted that Schelling, with his crazy Naturphilosophie and the treatment he had recommended, had shortened the child's life, only drew them closer together. The charge was a pure fabrication. It was in his reply to this pamphlet that Schelling made use of the violent language quoted in the introduction to Lassalle's Capital and Labour. Caroline's relations with Schlegel had long been of the coldest; he and she lived in different towns. Had she been of a jealous disposition, she would have found abundant cause for complaint. After his separation from Caroline, Schlegel formed a connection with Tieck's sister, Sophie Bernhardi, who divorced her husband for his sake. His last attempt at marriage, with the daughter of Paulus, the rationalist, was not a success, and ended in a divorce.