Give me peace; the helter skelter
     Of the wide world has gone by;
     And this narrow, silent shelter
     Holds the potent healing balm.

By the side of this idyllic consummation of the longing for love, there is the other, the ecstatic consummation of mutual rapture.  It almost blots out individual consciousness in the singly (no longer doubly) felt, body and soul entrancing ecstasy; it is such sheer delight that pleasure is no longer perceived as a distinct element, but rather is there the consciousness of a complete transformation of life.  Pleasure, which, a great psychologist maintains, “craves eternity” is annihilated in its perfection, knows no more of itself, and is a part of the lovers’ sense of complete unity.  It does not “crave eternity”; such a craving is its last stage but one, the outer court (further than which Nietzsche as far as eroticism is concerned never penetrated); in the innermost sanctuary pleasure disappears; it has no longer any meaning, it becomes void before the new consciousness.  The supreme ecstasy of great love proves that the summit of human emotion is beyond pleasure and pain, and does not acknowledge the limitations of bodily existence.  Thus, of necessity, the rapture of love must engender the idea of its own eternity, the destruction of individual consciousness.  I will quote in this connection a few verses by Erika Rheinsch: 

     To open now my lips were vain indeed,
     Nor word nor even kiss could e’er confess
     What sighs and joy and grief and happiness
     Would flash from me to you with lightning speed.

     Nor hope nor pray’r can still the soul’s desire,
     For God Himself can never join us twain;
     My bitter tears fall on my heart like rain
     And cannot quench its all-consuming fire.

     Oh!  Now to break the spell—­the storm to breast
     With broken heart and life-blood ebbing fast,
     Bearing the pangs of death for you, at last,
     Dark troubled love—­at last thou wert at rest!

We perceive that love can no longer content itself with the penultimate—­it must dare the last heroic step which creates beyond body and soul something new and final, for “God Himself can never join us twain.”  The love-death is the last and inevitable conclusion of reciprocal love which knows of no value but itself, and is resolved to face eternity, so that no alien influence shall reach it.  The two powers, love and death, tower above human life fatefully and mysteriously; an isolated experience cannot appease them, they involve the whole existence.  To the individual who loves with an all-absorbing love, and to the individual on the point of death, everything dwindles into insignificance.  Before the majesty of the love-death life breaks down, to be laid hold of and transcended in a new (divined) sphere.