TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE.

The translation of any work is at best a difficult task, and must inevitably be prejudicial to whatever of beauty the original possesses.  When the principal charm of the original lies in its elegant simplicity, as in the case of the “Deutsche Liebe,” the difficulty is still further enhanced.  The translator has sought to reproduce the simple German in equally simple English, even at the risk of transferring German idioms into the English text.

The story speaks for itself.  Without plot, incidents or situations, it is nevertheless dramatically constructed, unflagging in interest, abounding in beauty, grace and pathos, and filled with the tenderest feeling of sympathy, which will go straight to the heart of every lover of the ideal in the world of humanity, and every worshipper in the world of nature.  Its brief essays upon theology, literature and social habits, contained in the dialogues between the hero and the heroine, will commend themselves to the thoughtful reader by their clearness and beauty of statement, as well as by their freedom from prejudice.  “Deutsche Liebe” is a poem in prose, whose setting is all the more beautiful and tender, in that it is freed from the bondage of metre, and has been the unacknowledged source of many a poet’s most striking utterances.

As such, the translator gives it to the public, confident that it will find ready acceptance among those who cherish the ideal, and a tender welcome by every lover of humanity.

The translator desires to make acknowledgments to J. J. Lalor, Esq., late of the Chicago Tribune for his hearty co-operation in the progress of the work, and many valuable suggestions; to Prof.  Feuling, the eminent philologist, of the University of Wisconsin, for his literal version of the extracts from the “Deutsche Theologie,” which preserve the quaintness of the original, and to Mrs. F. M. Brown, for her metrical version of Goethe’s almost untranslatable lines, “Ueber allen Gipfeln, ist Ruh,” which form the keynote of the beautiful harmony in the character of the heroine.

  G.P.U. 
  Chicago, November, 1874.

AUTHOR’S PREFACE.

Who has not, at some period of his life, seated himself at a writing-table, where, only a short time before, another sat, who now rests in the grave?  Who has not opened the drawers, which for long years have hidden the secrets of a heart now buried in the holy peace of the church-yard?  Here lie the letters which were so precious to him, the beloved one; here the pictures, ribbons, and books with marks on every leaf.  Who can now read and interpret them?  Who can gather again the withered and scattered leaves of this rose, and vivify them with fresh perfume?  The flames, in which the Greeks enveloped the bodies of the departed for the purpose of destruction; the flames, into which the ancients cast everything once dearest to the living, are now the securest repository for these relics.  With trembling fear the surviving friend reads the leaves no eye has ever seen, save those now so firmly closed, and if, after a glance, too hasty even to read them, he is convinced these letters and leaves contain nothing which men deem important, he throws them quickly upon the glowing coals—­a flash and they are gone.