1.I
will begin with a reading of some quotations from Romantic texts as examples
of the attempts to include the entire individual in the absolute symbiosis
of Romantic love.
2.Then
I will try to sketch the self-description of society around 1800 as a reflection
of functional differentiation and as an insight into the decomposition
of the literally indivisible individual into a plurality of roles.
3.The
third step describes the mode of therapy: the Romantic suggestions to escape
the constraints of modern society in the medium of aesthetic education
(Schiller), of religion (Novalis), of ‘new mythology’ (Hölderlin,
Schelling, Hegel, Schlegel) or, last not least, love.
4.Finally,
I will try to read the semantics of love in Schlegel´s Lucinde
as a back-coupling between proto-sociological observations of modernity
and literary strategies to overcome the very framework of this society.
“Was mir nicht Alles, und ewig Alles ist, ist mir Nichts,” Hyperion writes to his friend Bellarmin, continuing: “wo finden wir das Eine [...] ? Ach! [...] wenn nur Ein Paar [...] Ein Herz, Ein unzertrennbares Leben würden.”[1]
”Ein”/One
is always written in capital letters. Hyperion believes to constitute a
unity with this woman and is convinced that mankind is not made for separation
and particularity at all: ”Wir sind nicht fürs Einzelne, Beschränkte
geschaffen.”[2]
Knowing and loving Diotima, Hyperion declares that his mistress means everything
to him: ”O so bist du ja mir Alles, rief ich!”[3]
As Hyperion, at this point, does not reflect on the social improbability
and the preconditions of his descriptions, he is using metaphors of nature
to express his supposed unity with Diotima:
”Wir waren Eine Blume nur, und unsre Seelen lebten in einander, wie die Blume, wenn sie liebt, und ihre zarten Freuden im verschloßnen Kelche verbirgt.”[4]
He
compares the union of their love with a flower which conceals its intimacy
behind its calyxes: a perfect image for the Romantic exclusion of the present
social environment. If society figures at all in Hyperion´s thinking,
it is in the mode of a utopian future emerging from Romantic love. The
relationship of Hyperion and Diotima functions as a model for the new golden
age of society.
”Unsere Seelen lebten nun immer freier und schöner zusammen, und alles in und um uns vereinigte sich zu goldenem Frieden.”[5]
Romantic
love: That is the total inclusion of every personal aspect of two individuals
in a highly intensive relationship, Romantic love is the prototype of the
final conciliation of nature, society and mankind in a universal harmony:
“Wie der Zwist der Liebenden, sind die Dissonanzen der Welt. Versöhnung ist mitten im Streit und alles Getrennte findet sich wieder.”[6]
Everything
that has been separated by the social division of labour, everybody who
has been fragmented by the dissection of the individual into a plurality
of social roles will be healed and become re-united with the separated
or alienated other. Modern man, playing occasionally the role of consumer
or producer, voter or politician, debtor or creditor, researcher or student,
defendant or judge, without ever playing exclusively one part or the other,
will leave all these roles and masquerades behind to be only himself, like
he has been in former, pre-modern epochs when each person was unquestionably
united with his social role as knight, farmer, priest or craftsman. The
Romantic paradigm for the post-modern restoration of the pre-modern unity
of person and social role is love because the semantics of Romantic love
suggests the complete inclusion of every part of a person in a relationship.
Hyperion, contemplating on a future born out of the spirit of Romantic
love, gives his prognosis:
“Es wird nur Eine Schönheit sein; und Menschheit und Natur wird sich vereinen in Eine allumfassende Gottheit.”[7]
I
will give you one more quotation, this time from Schlegel´s Lucinde,
in which almost every aspect of Romantic love can be recognised:
Ja! ich würde es für ein Märchen gehalten haben, daß es solche Freude gebe und solche Liebe, wie ich nun fühle, und eine solche Frau, die mir zugleich die zärtlichste Geliebte und die beste Gesellschaft wäre und auch eine vollkommene Freundin.
Julius,
the protagonist, finishes his career as a gallant lover, as a seducer of
inexperienced young women and as a visitor of brothels in a union in which
his mistress, for the first time, fulfils every felt or known need. Lucinde
is his housewife, the mother of their daughter, the affectionate and tender
mistress, the perfect friend, the hostess of their circle and the welcomed
company. She is ”eine für alles” – one for everything. Julius describes
what he has been looking for and has been allowed to receive from Lucinde:
Denn in der Freundschaft besonders suchte ich alles, was ich entbehrte und was ich in keinem weiblichen Wesen zu finden hoffte. In dir habe ich es alles gefunden und mehr als ich zu wünschen vermochte; [...] du fühlst alles ganz und unendlich, du weißt von keinen Absonderungen, dein Wesen ist Eins und unteilbar. [...] und darum liebst du mich auch ganz und überläßt keinen Teil von mir etwa dem Staate, der Nachwelt oder den männlichen Freunden. Es gehört dir alles und wir sind uns überall die nächsten und verstehn uns am besten. Durch alle Stufen der Menschheit gehst du mit mir von der ausgelassensten Sinnlichkeit bis zur geistigsten Geistigkeit... [8]
In Julius’ perspective, Lucinde is a woman who is not split into multiple pieces of social roles, she is ”one and indivisible”, a real individual. And she also loves Julius as a real individual, not leaving any part of him to the various obligations of modern society. The Romantic couple enjoys each other, integrating all pleasures of love: from the ”most hilarious sensuality up to the most intellectual spirituality”. In a historical perspective, this can be understood as an integration of several epochal concepts of love and intimacy: the concept of Platonic love, the concept of love as passion and gallantry in which sensuality and eroticism are separated from matrimony, and the British concept of companionship. Romantic love is an integrating program of communication. Julius declares.
“Es ist alles in der Liebe: Freundschaft, schöner Umgang, Sinnlichkeit und auch Leidenschaft; und es muß alles darin sein, und eins das andre verstärken und lindern, beleben und erhöhen.”[9]
Love
includes everything: friendship, good company, sensuality, passion, and
everything must be part of it because the ingredients are enhancing and
amplifying each other.
Ich kann kein Volk mir denken, das zerrißner wäre wie die Deutschen. Handwerker siehst du, aber keine Menschen, Denker, aber keine Menschen, Priester, aber keine Menschen, Herren und Knechte, Jungen und gesetzte Leute, aber keine Menschen.
Indeed,
there are persons in Germany doing their jobs and performing their roles
as it can be expected from craftsmen and philosophers, priests and superiors,
but there is a total lack of human beings in an emphatic sense. In Hyperion´s
perspective, modern Germany looks like a field of war:
Ist das nicht, wie ein Schlachtfeld, wo Hände und Arme und alle Glieder zerstückelt untereinander liegen, indessen das vergoßne Lebensblut im Sande zerrinnt?
Ein jeder treibt das Seine, wirst du sagen [...], [und erstickt in Wahrheit jene] Kraft, [die] nicht [...] zu seinem Titel paßt, [ein jeder] ist [...] in ein Fach gedrückt, wo [...] der Geist nicht leben darf.[10]
Everybody
acts in the way expected from society; any aspect of personality not needed
to perform the roles provided by the social systems is neglected. Society
seems to be an ”anthill” (S. 92). Hyperion compares the fate of his age
with Procrustes who used to throw his prisoners into a small cradle and
cut off all the parts of their bodies that did not fit in (S. 157). In
just the same way, modernity dissects its children, in order to make them
fit in and perform their services in the ”slave-mills” (S. 161) of society.
It
is Friedrich Schiller who gave in his Ästhetische Erziehung des
Menschen, published in 1795, an outstanding description of the end
of the corporate state and the transition into modern modes of differentiating
and coding communication. Starting point of his considerations is the following
observation: The identity of a human being, up to that moment completely
determined by the affiliation to state, guild, house, family, age or gender,
is at stake now. The human being, thus far thought indivisible, has been
torn into “fragments”, which is why the re-integration into an intact unit
becomes a strong motive for Romantic utopias. Sociologically speaking,
one could diagnose a division into system-specific service- and client-roles;
and the handling of these roles alone decides the question of the inclusion
of persons into system-communications. Not birth, state, or inherited privileges,
but specific knowledge and acquired qualities are now decisive for the
promotion of persons in society. The reason is, as Schiller has noted in
a sensitive as well as irritated way, that ”state and church, laws and
customs, leisure and work”, in short: every social area formerly integrated
into corporations, status, guilds and households, are now ”separated
into pieces”. The modern human being is thus reduced to a mere ”Formular”,
a “form” that is filled out depending on the included “business”. “Indifferent
towards character”, Schiller claims, politics, economy, law, science and
religion are only interested in “fragmentary parts” of the human being,
i.e. in his or her roles as voters, customers, attorneys, subjects, culprits,
patients, taxpayers or churchgoers. The “individual skills” necessary for
the adequate performance in the communication process of the functional
systems are developed and cared for by the systems themselves and ”zu einer
großen Intensität [...] getrieben”, when, on the other hand,
all “remaining talents” that are not included are neglected. Specialisation
is one effect of this process, alienation the other:
Der Dichter vergöttlicht die Einbildungskraft, der Philosoph die Vernunft, der Geschäftsmann den gesunden Menschenverstand, und der Epikuräer die Sinnlichkeit. Der Kaufmann sieht stolz auf den Gelehrten herab, dieser verachtet den Künstler, die Gelehrten selbst bemitleiden sich unter einander [...] Der Mathematiker findet keinen Geschmack an der Dichtkunst, der Dichter an der Mathematik, der Jurist an der moralischen Religionslehre, der Theolog an der Rechtslehre...[11]
Like
Hölderlin´s Hyperion, Schlegel´s Lucinde
is also influenced by Schiller´s observations. As can be expected
from 18th century semantics, Schlegel focusses his observations
on the difference between the human being as such and his social roles.
Human personality is located in the inside of a person, social roles are
described as ephemeral phenomenons. “Was wir ein Leben nennen,
ist für den ganzen ewigen innern Menschen nur ein einziger
Gedanke, ein unteilbares Gefühl”, Julius declares, and we are
told that he is involved “an allem Äußern” without any
“Zweck und Maß in seinem Innern”.[12]Julius
experiences a strange distinction between his public acting and his internal
feeling and thinking. The essential part of himself Julius
locates in his inside: “Sein ganzes Wesen war gleichsam von der Oberfläche
zurückgetreten nach dem Innern” (S. 49). Everything
that has constituted the essence of a person in the corporate state: his
or her manner of appearance, clothing, coat of arms or hairdo, is now regarded
as peripheral. How Julius dresses himself, which ”house” he descends from,
which religion he belongs to, how high his property amounts are, or whether
he will inherit a title we are not told, because this kind of information
is regarded as impersonal and secondary. But the problem is that modern
society is based exactly on these trivialities and that the procedures
of the functional systems have only access to the external, visible roles
of the person and not on his or her intrinsic and special individuality.
This discrepancy between the reality of society and the high esteem ofindividuality
makes the boom of those Romantic utopias plausible which promise a future
where every talent and quality of a person will be included in society,
where every part will be integrated in the whole, where no force of specialisation
will alienate the rich facilities of the individual.
“glaubte alles in ihr vereinigt zu
besitzen, was er sonst einzeln geliebt hatte: die schöne Neuheit
des Sinnes, die hinreißende Leidenschaftlichkeit, die bescheidne
Tätigkeit und Bildsamkeit und den großen Charakter.” (S.
56)
The
singular attributes of his former liaisons are incorporated in his love
to Lucinde. In this context, love and life become inseparably united. As
Schleiermacher observes in his “Intimate Letters on Lucinde” (1800): “die
ganze Liebe und das ganze Leben” coincide.[14]This
unity of passion, friendship, eroticism, sensuality and matrimony is self-sufficient
in its social dimension – the couple separates itself from its social environment
and only converses with a very few friends, an elitist model like Schiller’s
”Staat des schönen Scheins” –, and is completed in its temporal dimension
– there is no epochal change, there is no future expected, the mode of
love is eternity. If this Romantic love is taken as an allegory of contemporary
utopian hopes, its structure equals the condition of post-modernity: Future
does not longer matter, formerly separated discourses are re-integrated.
A love including every personal aspect and assimilating every social role
can, therefore, function as a utopian paradigm for further social evolution.
Love seems to be just another answer to the romantic question of how to
overcome modernity, like Schiller’s ”Aesthetic education” or Novalis´
project of a neo-Catholic, unified Europe.
Mrs.
Schlaffer has given a persuasive interpretation of Julius´ love to
the three mayor female protagonists in Schlegel´s novel, but – beside
her disregard of Julius’ other engagements and his own leading motives
– she does not care about the question which problem of historical philosophy
it actually is to which love is meant to give an answer. If one considers
that Lucinde is a mistress totally different from all the others – what
makes her attractive not only for her lover, but also for Romantic philosophy
of history. I think that both philosophical speculation on history and
literary imagination in the Romantic era are quarrelling with the same
difficulties: to realise the transformation of the corporate state into
modern society and to deal with its consequences. The social project of
a not alienated civilisation where everybody can live out his facilities,
and the erotic project of a symbiotic love where the fragmented and divided
individuals are once again completely united have the following referential
problem in common: that modernity decomposes the individual, that modern
social systems only include roles, not human beings, that communicative
addresses will only have a chance of connectivity if they use highly specialised
codes in which authenticity does not matter, but acting. Romantic love
is simulating an enclave where these modern burdens are banned; which is
why Julius calls his relationship with Lucinde society as well as family:
”Lucinde verband und erhielt das Ganze und so entstand eine freie Gesellschaft, oder vielmehr eine große Familie” (S. 57)
Romantic
love – as featured in Romantic romances – suggests family as a model for
society. And not the poetic concept, but this proposition had success for
a long period of time. In his ”Phenomenology of Spirit” (1807), Hegel claims
that the state finds his prototypical form in the family.[15]
Even Marx confirms this opinion, although in a renewed sense. Family, so
Marx, is indeed the germ cell of state, but only as far as family is the
first organisation where the division of labour takes part and in which
a tendency towards slavery can be observed since ancient times.[16]
Still, both philosophers detect the differentiated parts of society included
in the family – that’s their Romantic heritage.
Coming
back to Schlegel: The genuine Romantic hopes in love and society failed
in reality, but the Romantic ideal of the integration of love, companionship,
sexuality and matrimony has survived in today´s semantics. ”The Romantic
movement”, as Alain de Botton claims in his book about ”sex, shopping,
and the novel”,[17]
still finds its fans, but perhaps an advanced experiment like Schlegel’s
can only convince in the world of literature, released from all risks and
needs of modern everyday life. Love between Julius and Lucinde was a very
interesting and thrilling concept, and it was entertaining or scandalising
Schlegel’s readers and guaranteed a great literary success. But the prior
connectivity, however, Romantic love has produced was inside literary communication:
in the form of more novels. Outside of literature, the Romantic semantics
of intimacy remained without successors. The type of convenient marriage,
as depicted by Theodor Fontane, has won the race in reality. The claim
of Romantic love to incorporate every part of oneself into an all-including
relationship was exceptionally exclusive. In modern society even love should
know its roles, institutions and times. The communication of intimacy is
a coded and specialised social system as well – and not a paradigm to overcome
functional differentiation. In German literary history, people lost interest
in Romantic love in the second third of the 19th century. Authors
like Fontane started their narratives at a point where Romantic novels
ended: with a match, ready to proceed with the exploration of the destruction
of love, families and relationships. Adultery becomes a fascinating topic
in Realistic literature: Realistic novels like ”Effi Briest” quote the
motives of Romantic love only to mock or to treat them ironically. The
Romantic post-modernity is past.