Saturday night later, after sharing a Beaune 1er Cru 2005 Cuvée Dames Hospitallers, Hospices de Beaune, I isolated myself to watch a show, broadcast by Arte several months ago. I experienced the joy of finding an exceptional mind, both mundane, simple, amazed, looking beautiful and true, and yet the ninth proved, and the shame of having neglected its existence, or at least its importance. In short, I realized I knew almost nothing of Rahel Varnhagen von Ense , born Levin. It seems to embody many of the qualities of a spirit of deepest of his time: he receives in his living room the authors known and unknown, she feels torn between his roots (for which the Jewish case) and his desire for liberation, she browses and mischievous, it manifests in all a real joy mingled interrogation, she was disappointed, she insists, is discouraged, is raised. She arrived in Paris, stays more than a year after the Revolution, and wondered how she could live so long away from this wonderful city. She is German, and Prussian, and even European, and French. She admires Napoleon, then sorry when the emperor invaded his beloved country. It is engaged in the game of love and sensuality, not offended no freedom of manners, not recriminate never, "argues" not: it goes its way, guided by his kindness, intelligence and security to their tastes.
I discovered, in the introduction to "Letters" of the great Marquis Astolfo Custine of Ense Varnhagen to and from Ense Varnhagen Rael, published in 1870, said Roger Pierrot what this creature very common " Rahel Levin's salon in her house in the Jägerstrasse [...] drew from 1801 to 1806, Berlin's intellectual elite and foreign visitors. Citing [...] years, Friedrich Gentz wrote to Rachel that she was "Romanticism in person." "We met
her brothers Schlegel, Count of Salm, Prince de Ligne and even Prince Ludwig Ferdinand of Prussia, his close friend. Rahel Varnhagen von Ense wife in 1814. " She converted to Lutheranism at the same time not to interfere with hopes for a diplomatic career of her husband and a certain attraction to Christianity tinged mystical theosophy. It does not, however, disowned its roots, keeping a sort of tenderness for the Judaism of his parents . .
She became acquainted with Delphine Custine (who knew a little about Chateaubriand, this "Epicurean to Catholic imagination" as Sainte-Beuve) and his son, Astolfo in 1816. Their deep friendship, their respective curiosities the result to be written over three hundred letters. Then installed in Karlsruhe, she returned to Berlin in 1819, where she hosted a new show. She receives Alexander von Humboldt, Heinrich Heine, Bettina von Arnim ... At it forms the spirit of Young Germany , very inspired by the ideas of light, bright, hot from Paris instead of Berlin, then smothered with " the heavy atmosphere of political and religious reaction .
Note that Custine itself was in a state of rupture with all codes of social background, the prevailing morality, a time when these concepts meant something. Custine was gay, tortured by his inclination, assailed by remorse ... It is therefore not surprising his real admiration for Rachel. He devotes an early tribute to La Revue de Paris in 1837. Rachel, the beautiful European, died in 1834.
is why I feel rahelien.
Document: Rahel Levin Varnhagen portrait by William Hensel (1822), photo Jörg P. Anders; Institution: BPK / Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
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