'_Dec._12, 1843.--When Goethe received a letter from Zelter,
with a handsome superscription, he said. "Lay that aside; it
is Zelter's true hand-writing. Every man has a dæmon, who is
busy to confuse and limit his life. No way is the action of
this power more clearly shown, than in the hand-writing. On
this occasion, the evil influences have been evaded; the mood,
the hand, the pen and paper have conspired to let our friend
write truly himself."
'You may perceive, I quote from memory, as the sentences
are anything but Goethean; but I think often of this little
passage. With me, for weeks and months, the dæmon works his
will. Nothing succeeds with me. I fall ill, or am otherwise
interrupted. At these times, whether of frost, or sultry
weather, I would gladly neither plant nor reap,--wait for
the better times, which sometimes come, when I forget that
sickness is ever possible; when all interruptions are upborne
like straws on the full stream of my life, and the words that
accompany it are as much in harmony as sedges murmuring near
the bank. Not all, yet not unlike. But it often happens, that
something presents itself, and must be done, in the bad time;
nothing presents itself in the good: so I, like the others,
seem worse and poorer than I am.'
In another letter to an earlier friend, she expatiates a little.
'As to the Dæmoniacal, I know not that I can say to you
anything more precise than you find from Goethe. There are
no precise terms for such thoughts. The word _instinctive_
indicates their existence. I intimated it in the little piece
on the Drachenfels. It may be best understood, perhaps, by a
symbol. As the sun shines from the serene heavens, dispelling
noxious exhalations, and calling forth exquisite thoughts
on the surface of earth in the shape of shrub or flower, so
gnome-like works the fire within the hidden caverns and secret
veins of earth, fashioning existences which have a longer
share in time, perhaps, because they are not immortal in
thought. Love, beauty, wisdom, goodness are intelligent, but
this power moves only to seize its prey. It is not necessarily
either malignant or the reverse, but it has no scope beyond
demonstrating its existence. When conscious, self-asserting,
it becomes (as power working for its own sake, unwilling to
acknowledge love for its superior, must) the devil. That is
the legend of Lucifer, the star that would not own its
centre. Yet, while it is unconscious, it is not devilish, only
dæmoniac. In nature, we trace it in all volcanic workings, in
a boding position of lights, in whispers of the wind, which
has no pedigree; in deceitful invitations of the water, in the
sullen rock, which never shall find a voice, and in the shapes
of all those beings who go about seeking what they may devour.
We speak of a mystery, a dread; we shudder, but we approach
still nearer, and a part of our nature listens, sometimes
answers to this influence, which, if not indestructible, is at
least indissolubly linked with the existence of matter.
'In genius, and in character, it works, as you say,
instinctively; it refuses to be analyzed by the understanding,
and is most of all inaccessible to the person who possesses
it. We can only say, I have it, he has it. You have seen it
often in the eyes of those Italian faces you like. It is most
obvious in the eye. As we look on such eyes, we think on
the tiger, the serpent, beings who lurk, glide, fascinate,
mysteriously control. For it is occult by its nature, and if
it could meet you on the highway, and be familiarly known as
an acquaintance, could not exist. The angels of light do not
love, yet they do not insist on exterminating it.
'It has given rise to the fables of wizard, enchantress, and
the like; these beings are scarcely good, yet not necessarily
bad. Power tempts them. They draw their skills from the dead,
because their being is coeval with that of matter, and matter
is the mother of death.'
In later days, she allowed herself sometimes to dwell sadly on the
resistances which she called her fate, and remarked, that 'all life
that has been or could be natural to me, is invariably denied.'