Moreover, there are different ways of measuring strength. When Holger Danske squeezes sweat out of an iron glove,86 that is strength, but if he were handed a butterfly, I am afraid that he would not have sufficient strength to take it properly. To mention the sublime example, God’s omnipotence appears great in having created everything, but does it not appear equally great in the omnipotent moderation that can permit a blade of grass to grow its season. Woman is assigned the less significant tasks, which for that very reason require strength. She chooses her task, chooses it gladly, and also has the joy of continually equipping man with the conspicuous strength. I for my part believe that my wife can do wonders; and I more readily understand the greatest feat I read about than the dainty embroidery with which she clothes my earthly life.
If, however, one has it fixed in one’s head that woman is the weaker sex, which chicaners ordinarily interpret more explicitly to mean that she has her first moment in adolescence, when she exhausts, indeed, surpasses all eulogy, and with that it is over, that her strength was an illusion, and that the only real strength she has left is the strength of the scream—well, of course, one can then make all sorts of oddities out of it. Jean Paul says somewhere: solchen Secanten, Cosecanten, Tangenten, Cotangenten kommt Alles excentrisch vor, besonders das Centrum [to such secants, cosecants, tangents, cotangents, everything seems eccentric, particularly the center].87 Precisely because marriage is the center, woman must be seen in relation to it, and the same goes for man, and all this talk about and viewing [VI 139] of each sex separately is confused and profane, for what God has joined together,88 what life has destined for each other, thought must also think together. If a male hits upon the idea of separating the two, he presumably thinks he has the advantage of making the woman the victim, whereas he himself becomes just as ludicrous, a male who in a superior manner wishes to be disengaged from a relation to which he certainly is, after all, just as bound by life as is woman.
If this happens, then the bachelor (for however experienced in what one likes to call the erotic, even if one were a scoundrel or what probably is more common, a braggart—the unmarried man in ordinary language is called a bachelor) reserves the ethical categories for himself. At best this can be regarded as a caprice, for to use ethical categories to insult or at least to want to insult woman is not exactly the mark of an ethical individuality. Such a hodgepodge of paganism, which Platonically makes woman an imperfect version,89 and of Christianity, which imposes the ethical upon her, I have never seen carried through. It must indeed be a very confused brain in which an idea such as that could become so self-important that it wished itself to be given a more detailed expression.
On the other hand, the objection to woman can have a touch of deep irony that when propounded with a certain good-naturedness, indeed, with sympathy for her presumably unhappy fate of being sheer illusion, is not without a tragic and comic effect. It maintains, then, that she is the weaker sex; the tragedy is due to its being hidden from her in illusion, and hidden from her externally in man’s gallantry. It is as if all existence were playing blindman’s buff with her. Here irony has really acquired a task. Too bad the whole thing is a fiction. Nowadays woman is continually characterized in the highest terms, in the most flattering phrases, up to, indeed, far beyond the boundaries of the fantastic. Everything that is great in life is ascribed to her; on this point poetry and gallantry agree. And irony is naturally most gallant of all, for gallantry is indeed irony’s mother tongue, and it is never so gallant as when it regards the whole thing as a false alarm. Woman’s existence in the world becomes a parade of fools and irony is gallantry’s master of ceremonies; the procession itself is reminiscent of 90Hoffmann’s insane school teacher, who, holding [VI 140] a ruler like a scepter as he graciously bows to all sides, declares that his general has just returned from a victory over the Lombards; whereupon he takes some cloves out of his vest pocket, hands them to someone present with these words: Do not disdain this small token of my grace.91 Irony prostrates itself and worships most obsequiously.
The good aspect of this objection is that it carries the stamp of fiction to such an extent that it cannot insult even the weakest. On the contrary, it is entertaining, amusing, and one can without hesitation indulge in it, unless one became somewhat dubious by seeing it advanced in dead earnest. If the objection attempts to explain some aspect of life, then one can one-two-three reduce it to its most lofty expression—that marriage or any positive relation to woman is a hindrance. In unhappy love she has her supreme reality [Realitet], and here her meaning is so doubtful that she signifies nothing positive but is negatively the occasion for the arousal of the unhappy lover’s ideality. Thus the objection is reduced to its briefest expression and thereby also in absurdum [to absurdity], just as the objection itself is making a show of wanting to have all life take the same path. Indeed, to condense the whole content of existence in this manner is a devil’s haste, the speed of a Caesar—not in capturing but in losing. Lichtenberg declares somewhere that there are critics who with a single stroke of the pen have crossed every boundary of sound reasoning;92 similarly, an impatient thinker of this sort seems not to find time even to begin the conclusion of his conditional clause. This kind of thinker seems to want to carry out Augustine’s teaching that by means of celibacy multo citius civitas dei compleretur, et acceleraretur terminus seculi [God’s Kingdom will be filled much faster, and the end of the world will be hastened],93 although as a jest, for we cannot expect an objection of this kind to have a religious background such as Augustine has. But as a secular observation on life it truly is, as is usually said of women’s letters, “in haste,” and lacks what we generally say women’s are usually said to consist of essentially—postscripts. Along with Hamann one can appropriately shout at this speedy fellow, who naturally considers a married man a procrastinator—“Bah”—if there is even time for that and the fellow is [VI 141] not already so far away that “scarcely his coattails remain behind in existence.”94
I return to the subject of falling in love. It remains intact, no thought reaches it, it is a wonder. The resolution of marriage is so far from wanting to invalidate it that, on the contrary, it presupposes it. But falling in love is no marriage, and a resolution alone is no marriage, either. Now someone may think that it is because of the miserableness of life and of existence that falling in love is unable to carry through by itself and therefore it has to accept the convoy of marriage. Far from it. No, falling in love penetrates all existence and does this in marriage. The situation is just the reverse. It is an insult to love to be unwilling to have marriage intervene, as if love were something so spontaneous and immediate that it cannot be harnessed with a resolution. On the contrary, it is no insult to a genius to say of him that his power of resolution is just as highborn as his inborn immediacy, that as guarantor he takes charge of his genius. It is insulting to him to say that he lacks resolution or that his resolution is not in proportion to his genius. This does not mean that the resolution would gradually take over as the genius subsides, so that finally he is attired in the resolution and has become another person than when attired in his genius. The beautiful meaning, however, is that the resolution is contemporary with the genius, and in its own way is just as great; thus the person who received the gracious gift of immediacy lets himself be married to it in the resolution—and this is indeed the beautiful meaning of marriage.
It is even easier to show this in marriage than in genius, because by this time love is already a subsequent immediacy, a heat lightning that commences at a time when the will may be sufficiently developed to comprehend a resolution just as crucial as falling in love, taken in its immediacy, is crucial. Understood in this way, marriage is the deepest, highest, and most beautiful expression of love. Love is the gift of the god, but in the resolution of marriage the lovers make themselves worthy of receiving it. Be life ever so paradisiacal, to leave out the resolution is unbeautiful, and just as unbeautiful in the direction of spirit as it is
unbeautiful in the opposite direction, that adolescents marry.
Later, I shall go into this subject further, but here it might be best to look around a little, to pause a moment at falling in love in its critical aspect. Of course, what is established here on the basis of experience will not and cannot serve to diminish [VI 142] marriage but serves merely to illustrate. Falling in love has always been much sought after, and some people grow no more weary of seeking (sit venia verbo [pardon the expression]) and desiring the wonder of falling in love than “the nanny goat wearies of cropping green buds.” But precisely here is the difficulty; here it is that the enemy sows evil seed95 while the lovers are not thinking about it. Even the seducer lets falling in love stand as something he cannot give himself (so it is only very young apprentices or Münchhausens96 who carry on about making conquests), but the demonic in him makes him decide with demonic resolution to make the enjoyment as brief and thus, so he thinks, as intense as possible. By means of this demonic resolution, the seducer, in relation to evil, is actually great; without this resolution, he is really no seducer. Nevertheless, he can do plenty of damage and his life can become quite warped, even though it is more innocent than an actual seducer’s life, and it acquires a more innocent appearance because the forgetfulness of time intervenes. Such a person is aware of falling in love; he is not evil enough to make a demonic resolution, but neither is he good enough to make the good resolution; he is, to express myself concretely, not good enough to become a husband in the noble sense in which I take this word for what it is, in the noble sense in which a man is a husband only when he is worthy of the gift of the god.
If I were to give an example of deviation in falling in love, I would mention Goethe—that is, Goethe as he portrayed himself in Aus meinem Leben.97 His personal life is extraneous; I refrain from any judgment. I do not credit myself with sufficient esthetic refinement to evaluate his poetic works, but there are certain things I can understand as well as a child; and there is one thing marriage does not understand, even if, to repeat, it is tempered in jest. It does not understand jest, and in addition to the seducer’s, there is still another counterpart to the good resolution—namely, subterfuges.
In Aus meinem Leben, an existence is portrayed that is not a seducer’s; it is too chivalrous for that, even though in the direction of spirit (ethically understood) this chivalry is inferior to a seducer’s, for it lacks decisive resolution; but a demonic resolution is, of course, also ethical—that is, ethically bad. But an existence such as this more readily finds forgiveness in the [VI 143] world, indeed, all too readily, for the existing person is actually in love. But then, yes, then the ardor cooled; he had made a mistake; he goes away “in a courteous manner.”98 A half year later he even knows how to give reasons, good reasons, why the break and the distancing were sensible and almost praiseworthy: After all, it didn’t amount to much, just a little village belle; there was too much passion, passion doesn’t last in the long run, etc. etc., for this chatter can be as prolonged as one wishes. By means of a half year and with the aid of a theory of perspective, the fact of falling in love has become a happening (this is both an impiety against erotic love and a fraud against the ethical, and a satire upon oneself) from which it is now a bit of luck to have escaped. Everything becomes confused to me the moment I consider that such an existence is supposed to be a poetic life. I feel as if I were sitting on a conciliation board, far from the boldness of immediacy and far from the high-mindedness of resolution, far from the heaven of falling in love and far from the judgment day of resolution; I feel as if I were sitting on a conciliation commission99 surrounded by fatuous folk listening to a talented attorney defend blunders with a certain poetic ingenuity. If the attorney himself were the hero of those burlesque love affairs, one might very well, from the ethical point of view, lose patience. The cast of actresses is absolutely without blame for their being burlesque love affairs (all honor to Goethe’s portrayal, be it Dichtung [poetry] or Wahrheit [truth]), for as far as I recall there is no reason to assume that any one of them left tragedy for vaudeville. In other words, if a little village belle has been so unfortunate as to misunderstand His Excellency, if she remains true to herself, I know from what I learned as a child—and still know nothing better—that she advances: from the idyll to tragedy. But if His Excellency has been so unfortunate as to misunderstand himself and furthermore is additionally unfortunate in the way in which he wants to make amends for it, I know from what I learned as a child—and still know nothing better—that he has left tragedy and drama and is established in vaudeville.
Time has a strange power. If that poetic character in Aus meinem Leben had acknowledged that it was nevertheless bound to end rather soon or if, having had no inkling of it [VI 144] beforehand and having no other way of making amends, he nevertheless had been ethical enough to regard himself as a scoundrel, then he would have been declared a seducer, and the warning bell would have been sounded every time he approached a village. But now, now he is a knight—well, not exactly a knight, but then we are not living in the age of chivalry, either—but still something of a knight, a person of status who perfectly fits the saying aut Caesar, aut nihil [either Caesar, or nothing].100
Some time goes by; he himself sorrows over the broken relationship, which, however, as circumspectly as possible is kept from taking on any of the more serious aspects of a break. He sorrows a little over the poor girl, it is not pretense, he really sorrows—no, really! This, however, is carrying politeness rather far; it is, after all, a sympathy and condolence that will only increase the pain. The break itself or, to put it more precisely and accurately, this polite and amicable agreement about a departure is precisely what is most insulting; this final forgery, that any girl, when it is established that a man has a contractual obligation, should not be a peremptory creditor, this forgery, that a bankrupt will not report his total deficit, is really the most shocking thing of all, and yet it is with this politeness that he bought the world’s forgiveness. Oh, the sorrowing lover! He is sorrowing not over his instability, over this flare-up of ardor, over this shift in the world of the spirit, not over his sins. That poetic character would probably call such a sorrow depression, for he expressly laments that the age and he as a part of it have become depressed by reading English authors—Young,101 for example. Well, why not? If one is so constituted, one can become depressed by listening to a sermon, if it really has substance, as Young has, but Young is far from depressing.
This kind of existence, which essentially is scarcely a paradigm, can nevertheless figuratively assume a paradigmatic character or be paradigmatic by the accident of being an irregular declension, according to which several lives are indeed formed. One dare not say that they form their lives according to it, for they are too innocent [uskyldig] for that, and this is precisely their excuse [Undskyldning]: it happens to them; they themselves do not know how it happens. Indeed, at times such people are even visionaries who are pursuing the ideal. They do not learn any more from their love affairs than what a lottery player learns from losing. This last observation does not apply, of course, to that poet in Aus meinem Leben. He is too great not to learn, too superior not to harvest advantage, [VI 145] and if he had been just as ethically inspired as he is gloriously endowed, he, more than anyone else, would have discovered and solved the problem: whether there is an intellectual existence so eminent that in the profoundest sense it cannot become commensurable with the erotic, for the response that one loves many times, that one parcels out one’s superiority, is merely a disorientation that neither esthetically nor ethically satisfies what could be termed a decent man’s more serious demand upon life. That poet seems to have learned a great deal; indeed, just as the latest philosophy has made it a term of abuse to speak of Kant’s honest way, in the same way Goethe smiles in a superior manner at Klopstock because he was so concerned whether Meta, his first love who had married again, would belong to him in another life.102
So what has happened in such an ex
istence? One does not stop with falling in love, but neither does resolution enter in. The reflection out of which the resolution comes into existence in order to grasp the falling in love blunders; it becomes a reflection over falling in love. The reason I have dwelt on this is to point out what will be shown again later103—that the reflection behind resolution just lets falling in love stand and pays attention to totally different matters. Hence that existing poet in Aus meinem Leben104 arrives at no resolution; he is not a seducer, he does not become a married man, he becomes—a connoisseur.
To what extent every poet-existence should itself be a poem, also under what angle of refraction his life in this respect should stand to his poetry, I do not venture to decide. However, this much is certain: an existence such as the one in Aus meinem Leben is bound to have an influence on the poetic production. If this is Goethe’s own life, then this seems to explain that what one misses most of all in Goethe is pathos. The pathos of immediacy he does not have; for that he is too intellectual, but neither has he made his way through to win the highest pathos. Every time that existing poet faces the crisis, he backs out. This he does in every possible direction. He relates that he has had a strict religious upbringing.105 This is an impression of childhood and certainly not part of the nonsense one sheds over the years, since with respect to religion it is [VI 146] really true that one learns the best things as a child and acquires a presupposition that can never, never be replaced. A period comes later in his life when the impression of this piety almost overwhelms him. This is the crisis and is entirely in order; the more intelligent an individuality, the more difficult his assigned task to preserve and regain childhood’s pious faith. Now what does that poet do, he who otherwise, as he himself relates, has done all sorts of exercises to train himself not to be afraid in the dark, not to be upset by seeing a corpse or by being alone at night in a graveyard106—he backs out, separates it and himself, avoids contact.107 Good Lord, if a person was indeed a bit afraid of walking alone in the dark it would not be so dreadful, but to retreat when it is a matter of being true to oneself in one’s impression of childhood, where it is a matter, with the renunciation of every claim upon life or for a meaningful existence even to the point of despair, of fighting for the precious recollection of one’s parents (for even if that poet repeatedly recalls his mother, can he believe that in her or in his father’s eyes it was accidental that they allowed the religious to have such a great influence on the child?), of fighting for the fellowship of faith with the dead, for what they had regarded as the one thing needful, what he himself once upon a time in childlike innocence wholeheartedly accepted—at this point to leap away—should this not be avenged by the absence of pathos in the poetry? If that poet is Goethe himself, might this not then explain that the idolized hero, whose most accidental utterances and statements are collected, published, read, worshiped as holy relics, this idolized hero who is called king in the realm of thought, that he, to put it mildly, is titular king of the eternal kingdom of religion? In Goethe’s sound wisdom there is supposed to be a cure for mental aberration and above all for depression, which he himself knew how to avoid.108 How strange. Everyone knows from what he learned at his mother’s knee that diversion is most dangerous for the person who has a disposition toward depression—indeed, it is even dangerous for the person who is not so disposed. How strange—that he who has grown a little older and a little more mature (provided he then believes that the wiser person is supposed to be different from the simple soul in that he understands what the latter understands and understands it better, and understands somewhat more and does not think that the wise man is supposed to be [VI 147] distinguished because the only thing he does not grasp is what the simple soul understands) knows that to back away from a task is to indenture himself and his soul to depression sooner or later; but Goethe knew how to avoid this another way. This, however, is only in order to illuminate the erotic.
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