The Sexual Life of Our Time in Its Relations to Modern Civilization: Translated from the Sixth German EditionBloch, Iwan
Philosophy
The Sexual Life of Our Time in Its Relations to Modern Civilization: Translated from the Sixth German Edition
Bloch, Iwan
Sex; Sexual ethics
In modern love also, the Weltschmerz continues to live. The only
difference is that by means of the pessimistic philosophy it has to some
extent obtained a logical foundation. And Nietzsche has shown us the
=force= which lies hidden in this ecstasy of sorrow. Precisely on
account of the pains of the world, he affirms joyfully life and love.
Anyone who wishes to write the history of Weltschmerz, from a
psychological point of view so profoundly interesting, must not overlook
Nietzsche as a most important turning-point in that history.
The passion inspired by genius, the excess of vital energy in the “Sturm
und Drang” epoch of German literature, was admirably consistent with
that genuine, primitive Weltschmerz. Rousseau’s more indeterminate
sensibility had, on the other hand, a more powerful influence upon the
mode of feeling of =romanticism=, and this movement appears more closely
related to him than to Goethe.
=Romantic love= combines the elements of feeling of the previous epochs
in an increased subjectivism. Not nature alone, but history also,
folk-tales, legends, poetry, and the wonderful secrets of the primeval
age--all these are reflected in romantic love, and awaken singular
dreams and emotions. The “mondbeglänzte Zaubernacht” (“moon-illumined
magic night”) is much more than a mere feeling of nature; it is the
recognition of a connexion with the past and with its secret, sweet,
half-forgotten stories. Fonqué’s “Undine” is the classical type of all
this. Romantic love delights in this wonder-mood of the heart; reality
becomes, as it were, a dream. The obscure, the problematical--these
attract the romanticist. It is for this reason that he loves the night
and the night-mood of nature, rather than the clear daylight. =Moonshine
reverie= is a characteristic trait of romantic love. Everything flows
away into the indeterminate, the cloudy, the boundless. This love knows
no limitation or narrowing, no fetters. It is the sworn enemy of the
conventional, narrow-hearted, philistine morality, and of all
limitations of personality. In Friedrich Schlegel’s “Lucinde” this most
celebrated monument of romantic love, the campaign against philistinism,
as the greatest enemy of a free, noble amatory life, is most
energetically carried on. It is utterly untrue to describe “Lucinde” as
a romance in which there is a cult of suggestive nudity--as the poetry
of the flesh. It certainly preaches the free natural conception and
perception of the nude and the sexual, and is a glorious protest against
the artificial and hypocritical separation of body and soul in love;
but, on the other side, it unlocks in love the entire kingdom of the
emotional and spiritual life, and discloses its significance for the
individual man as a free personality.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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