Modern German literature contains many sincere tributes, in prose and
verse, to the purity and nobility of true love and its refining
influence. The psychologist Horwicz refers briefly (38) to the way in
which
"love, growing up as a mighty passion from the substratum of
sexual life, has, under the repressing influence of
centuries of habits and customs, taken on an entirely new,
_supersensual, ethereal_ character, so that to a lover every
thought of _naturalia_ seems indelicate and improper." "I
feel it deeply that love must ennoble, not crush me,"
wrote the poet Korner; and again,
"Your sweet name was my talisman, which led me undefiled
through youth's wild storms, amid the corruption of the
times, and protected my inner sanctum." "O God!" wrote
Beethoven, "let me at last find her who is destined to be
mine, and who shall strengthen me in virtue."
According to Dr. Abel, while love longs ardently to possess the
beloved, to enjoy her presence and sympathy, it has also a more or
less prominent mental trait which ennobles the passion and places it
at the service of the ideal of its fancy. It is accompanied by an
enthusiasm for the good and the beautiful in general, which comes to
most people only during the brief period of love. "It is a temporary
self-exaltation, _purifying the desires_ and urging the lover to
generous deeds."
Des höchste Glück hat keine Lieder,
Der Liebe Lust ist still und mild;
Ein Kuss, ein Blicken hin und wieder,
Und alle Sehnsucht ist gestillt.
--_Geibel_.
Schiller defined love as an eager "desire for another's happiness."
"Love," he adds, "is the most beautiful phenomenon in all animated
nature, the mightiest magnet in the spiritual world, the source of
veneration and the sublimest virtues." Even Goethe had moments when he
appreciated the purity of love, and he confutes his own coarse
conception that was referred to in the last section when he makes
Werther write: "She is sacred to me. _All desire is silent in her
presence."_[41]
The French Edward Schuré exclaims, in his _History of German Song_:
"What surprises us foreigners in the poems of this
people is the unbounded faith in love, as the supreme
power in the world, as the most beautiful and _divine
thing_ on earth, ... the first and last word of
creation, its only principle of life, because it alone
can urge us to complete self-surrender."
Schuré's intimation that this respect for love is peculiar to the
Germans is, of course, absurd, for it is found in the modern
literature of all civilized countries of Europe and America; as for
instance in Michael Angelo's
The might of one fair face sublimes my love,
For it _hath weaned my heart from low desires_.