own. As occasions offer, you will hear more about him and gradually learn to know him.
Schleiermacher to E. von Willich.
[CXLI.] [No date.]
I am almost astonished at my having sent you the letters on the Lucinda1 without the least foreboding of evil, for I have reason to believe that they have already estranged two friends from me. It is the most delicate subject on which a man can write, and one regarding which misapprehensions may easily occur, and are likely to be taken up most seriously by the best men and to be made the basis of a series of false conclusions. You may suppose that I am anxious to hear what your opinion is, more especially of the view which I take of the subject, which is not, however, mine exclusively, because I have had real persons in view in all the characters I have introduced; and the most remarkable character, that of Leonore, is drawn entirely from life.2 Whatever is said under this name are her thoughts, and in many instances even her words. Had I known that our mutual friend had spoken to you of this little publication, I should most likely have touched upon it in our conversation; we were at one moment so near the subject that I might easily have introduced it.
But what is the subject that I should not have been glad to have discussed with you? In spite of the many matters that were mooted, it seems to me that I did not make a sufficiently good use of the time. Such is usually the case on similar occasions, but it is a comfort to think that the one generally knows more of the other than is actually spoken, and I hope that you will write to me freely without waiting for me to write to you, for I am just now disagreeably overwhelmed with business, whereas you are living in the enjoyment of golden freedom—in such freedom as I have not long witnessed, and the reflection of which in your whole nature has done me much good.
I have in my mind a very vivid picture of you, such as you are in the circle amid which I saw you, but I should have liked to have seen you with the Countess and in that circle which forms the supplement to the other. Yet I should not be doing justice to your communications, were I to deny, that they have afforded me a very clear conception of your whole existence. As regards myself, I am a bad narrator, except on special occasions; but should there be anything you wish to know without waiting until it comes of itself, God knows when, then ask without reserve. Or if you wish to have a more vivid impression, then be good and keep your promise, and come and witness my life as I have witnessed yours.
Greet every one from me, each according to his due, one more heartily than another, but none so heartily as yourself.
[CXLII.] [No date.]
At last I am able to sit down to write you a regular letter; my first lines were, as you will see, only intended to serve as introduction. I have been long silent, it is true, but in the meantime I have dwelt upon and deeply enjoyed in my heart, the fortunate occurrence which brought us together, the manner in which we found and recognized each other, and my new happiness in all its fulness. I think that, upon the whole, we very soon apprehended—indeed, in a measure we knew beforehand—that we were mentally akin and were living in the same sphere, and I cannot therefore understand how it was that my openness towards you, and the calmness with which I gave myself up to you, could have appeared to our Jette as something new. But I soon felt that there was something more than this general affinity between us, and that you might become my friend, in a sense in which no one had been so for a very long time. I confidently hoped that it would be so, and wrote it to Jette, and patiently awaited, as is my wont, the gradual development of the relation. And you wish it to be so; you will be my friend and brother! But why should I not at once address you as a brother, as if we had touched our glasses and drank to our sweet union.3
Do you remember how little I had to tell you in Klinkow, when you asked me about my friends? In fact I had not one in the entire sense of the word. In the first period of my conscious self-development I had two friends; our views and our aspirations, which were different from those of all the persons who surrounded us, were identical, and such identity is a delightful bond of union. The one of these, who had, I believe, strength enough to have remained my friend, died early; the other was by his religious feelings and by his timidity chained to circumstances, amid which our friendship could not but soon feel itself starved for want of communication, and thus he has in point of fact ceased to be my friend, although I still remember him with undiminished affection, and he, no doubt, in a certain measure, feels the the same towards me.
Later I met in the province of Prussia—where I lived three years—but only towards the close of my stay there, a country clergyman, an excellent man, simple and genuine, of sterling moral worth, possessing a pure love of truth, and living quite in patriarchal style. We became very much attached to each other; but independently of the inequality of years which, although he had found eternal youth, nevertheless produced certain dissimilarities, there were always many points on which I felt that I could not venture to pour myself out quite freely to him; and since I was induced, in consequence of a long letter which he wrote me about Schlegel’s Lucinda, to send him my letters on the subject, I do not know how I stand with him, but I suspect that they may have led to misconstructions which will be the more difficult to rectify, the more delicate may be the form which they have assumed in his mind. I think of him with pain now.
Besides a strange individual, about whom it would take me too long to speak at present, I have now only to mention Friedrich Schlegel. Before the world I may and must call him my friend, for he is to me in rich measure what is generally understood by this name. There is great similarity in the results of our reasoning, and in our scientific and historical opinions; we both aspire to the highest gaol; and with this there exists between us brotherly union, a deep interest in the conduct and concerns of one another, while the life, the actions, and the circumstances of each, is open to the other; but the utter dissimilarity of our sensitive natures—his quick and violent temper, his inordinate susceptibility, his ineradicable tendency to suspicion,—all this prevents me from treating him with that unbounded sincerity which my heart yearns for, obliges me, in order to avoid misunderstandings, to express things to him otherwise than I express them to myself, and is the cause of there being ever in my innermost soul secrets which I cannot impart to him, or which he forces me to keep back. He maintains, indeed, that the Monologues have given him the key to all the apparent discords in my nature, but I am by no means sure that this is the case.
You have been the first to express the wish that we should be friends, let us then once for all picture to ourselves in advance, and endeavour to feel and to know, what we may be and become to each other, and then simply continue our path together without reflecting upon whether we realize this, and how our relation to each other gradually develops itself.
Your letters, with the vivid pictures of your life, and the strong evidences of your remembrance of me, have affected me more than I can describe. I feel myself more elevated and happier than ever. The belief that my life and my existence in themselves, and not only the premeditated exhibition of these, have a living hold upon other minds and hearts, requires to be thus confirmed to me.
Although I knew that it was through the Monologues that you had first learnt to value me, I do not believe that I thought of them once while I was in Prenzlau; I lived in the present, and in the contemplation of your inner being; but I glory in having written them; I was driven to it by an irresistible desire to pour out my soul to the empty air, without any premeditated object, without a thought of producing any effect, and I have often said to myself that it was folly; but, while thinking myself a fool, I have grown wise.
Farewell! Greetings and blessings!