Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - 2. The Romantic School in Germany — John Shaqi
Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - 2. The Romantic School in GermanyBrandes, Georg
History
Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - 2. The Romantic School in Germany
Brandes, Georg
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- History and criticism; Naturalism in literature; Romanticism
The model for Schiller's young Queen Elizabeth was Charlotte von Kalb.
This lady, the passion of the poet's youth, had been unwillingly forced
into matrimony by her parents. She and Schiller met in 1784, and in
1788 they were still meditating a permanent union of their destinies.
Soon after Schiller left her, she became Jean Paul's mistress.
(Caroline Schlegel jestingly calls her Jeannette Pauline.) Jean Paul
characterises her thus: "She has two great possessions: great eyes (I
never saw their like) and a great soul." He himself confesses that it
is she whom he has described in one of his principal works as the
Titaness, Linda. In _Titan_ (118 Zykel) we are told of Linda that she
must be tenderly treated, not only on account of her delicacy, but
also in the matter of her aversion to matrimony, which is extreme.
She cannot even accompany a friend to the altar, which she calls the
scaffold of woman's liberty, the funeral pyre of the noblest, freest
love. To take, she says, the best possible view of it, the heroic
epic of love is there transformed into the pastoral of marriage. Her
sensible friend vainly insists that her aversion to marriage can have
no other ground than her hatred of priests; that wedlock only signifies
everlasting love, and all true love regards itself as everlasting; that
there are as many unhappy free-love connections as marriages, if not
more, &c.
Frau von Kalb herself writes to Jean Paul: "Why all this talk about
seduction? Spare the poor creatures, I beg of you, and alarm their
hearts and consciences no more. Nature is petrified enough already.
I shall never change my opinion on this subject; I do not understand
this virtue, and cannot call any one blessed for its sake. Religion
here upon earth is nothing else than the development and maintenance
of the powers and capacities with which our natures have been endowed.
Man should not submit to compulsion, but neither should he acquiesce
in wrongful renunciation. Let the bold, powerful, mature human nature,
which knows and uses its strength, have its way. But in our generation
human nature is weak and contemptible. Our laws are the outcome of
wretchedness and dire necessity, seldom of wisdom. Love needs no laws."
A vigorous mind speaks to us in this letter. The leap from this to
the idea of _Lucinde_ is not a long one, but the fall to the very
vulgar elaboration of _Lucinde_ is great. We do not, however, rightly
understand these outbursts until we understand the social conditions
which produced them, and realise that they are not isolated and
accidental tirades, but are conditioned by the position in which the
majority of poetic natures stood to society at that time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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