One of the most striking and, unless classed among his numerous other pathological traits, one of the most puzzling of Lenau’s characteristics is the perverseness of his nature.  His intimate friends were wont to explain it, or rather to leave it unexplained by calling it his “Husarenlaune” when the poet would give vent to an apparently unprovoked and unreasonable burst of anger, and on seeing the consternation of those present, would just as suddenly throw himself into a fit of laughter quite as inexplicable as his rage.  He takes delight in things which in the ordinarily constructed mind would produce just the reverse feeling.  Speaking once of a particularly ill-favored person of his acquaintance he says:  “Eine so gewaltige Haesslichkeit bleibt ewig neu und kann sich nie abnuetzen.  Es ist was Frisches darin, ich sehe sie gerne."[122] And in not a few of his poems we see a certain predilection for the gruesome, the horrible.  So in the remarkable figure employed in “Faust:” 

    Die Traeume, ungelehr’ge Bestien, schleichen
    Noch immer nach des Wahns verscharrten Leichen.[123]

This perverseness of disposition is in a large measure accounted for by the fact that Lenau was eternally at war with himself.  Speaking in the most general way, Hoelderlin’s Weltschmerz had its origin in his conflict with the outer world, Lenau’s on the other hand must be attributed mainly to the unceasing conflict or “Zwiespalt” within his breast.  In his childhood a devout Roman Catholic, he shows in his “Faust” (1833-36) a mind filled with scepticism and pantheistic ideas; “Savonarola” (1837) marks his return to and glorification of the Christian faith; while in the “Albigenser” (1838-42) the poet again champions complete emancipation of thought and belief.  Only a few months elapsed between the writing of the two poems “Wanderung im Gebirge” (1830), in which the most orthodox faith in a personal God is expressed, and “Die Zweifler” (1831).  The only consistent feature of his poems is their profound melancholy.  But Lenau’s inner struggle of soul did not consist merely in his vacillating between religious faith and doubt; it was the conflict of instinct with reason.  This is evident in his relations with Sophie Loewenthal.  He knows that their love is an unequal one[124] and chides her for her coldness,[125] warning her not to humiliate him, not even in jest;[126] he knows too that his alternating moods of exaltation and dejection resulting from the intensity of his unsatisfied love are destroying him.[127] “Oefter hat sich der Gedanke bei mir angemeldet:  Entschlage dich dieser Abhaengigkeit und gestatte diesem Weibe keinen so maechtigen Einfluss auf deine Stimmungen.  Kein Mensch auf Erden soll dich so beherrschen.  Doch bald stiess ich diesen Gedanken wieder zurueck als einen Verraeter an meiner Liebe, und ich bot mein reizbares Herz wieder gerne dar Deinen zaertlichen Misshandlungen.—­O geliebtes Herz! missbrauche Deine Gewalt nicht!  Ich bitte Dich, liebe Sophie!"[128] And yet, in spite of it all, he is unable to free himself from the thrall of passion:  “Wie wird doch all mein Trotz und Stolz so gar zu nichte, wenn die Furcht in mir erwacht, dass Du mich weniger liebest";[129] and all this from the same pen that once wrote:  “das Wort Gnade hat ein Schuft erfunden."[130]