riedrich
Schlegel's radicalism. He came to hold opinions which were for the
most part the exact opposite of those he had held in his youth. The
vociferous friend of individual liberty became a reactionary champion
of authority. Of course he grew ashamed of _Lucinda_ and excluded it
from his collected works.

Such was the soil in which the naughty book grew. It was an era of lax
ideas regarding the marriage tie. Wilhelm Schlegel married a divorced
woman who was destined in due time to transfer herself without legal
formalities to Schelling. Goethe had set the example by his conscience
marriage with Christiane Vulpius. It remains only to be said that the
most of Friedrich Schlegel's intimates, including his brother Wilhelm,
advised against the publication of _Lucinda_. But here, as in the
matter of his marriage, the author felt that he had a duty to
perform: it was necessary to declare independence of Mrs. Grundy's
tyranny and shock people for their own good. But the reader of today
will feel that the worst shortcomings of the book are not its
immoralities, but its sins against art.

It will be observed that while _Lucinda_ was called by its author a
"novel," it hardly deserves that name. There is no story, no
development of a plot. The book consists of disconnected glimpses in
the form of letters, disquisitions, rhapsodies, conversations, etc.,
each with a more or less suggestive heading. Two of these
sections--one cannot call them chapters--are omitted in the
translation, namely, "Allegory of Impudence" and, "Apprenticeship of
Manhood."

LUCINDA (1799)

By FRIEDRICH SCHLEGEL

TRANSLATED BY PAUL BERNARD THOMAS

PROLOGUE

Smiling with emotion Petrarch opens the collection of his immortal
romanzas with a prefatory survey. The clever Boccaccio talks with
flattering courtesy to all women, both at the beginning and at the end
of his opulent book. The great Cervantes too, an old man in agony, but
still genial and full of delicate wit, drapes the motley spectacle of
his lifelike writings with the costly tapestry of a preface, which in
itself is a beautiful and romantic painting.

Uproot a stately plant from its fertile, maternal soil, and there will
still cling lovingly to it much that can seem superfluous only to a
niggard.

But what shall my spirit bestow upon its offspring, which, like its
parent, is as poor in poesy as it is rich in love?

Just one word, a parting trope: It is not alone the royal eagle