MISTER MYSTERY RESPONDS

The salon of Mrs. Schopenhauer hosted, in the session of the third week of February 1809, the following participants: Adele, the hostess' daughter, Goethe, Friedrich Schlegel and his wife Dorothea, Bettina Brentano, Wieland, Achim bon Arnim and the brilliant composer Ludwig van Beethoven, incarnation of musical Romanticism, who at that time had found a temporary relief to his deafness thanks to an acoustic trumpet. In the hearth of the fireplace a large fire heats the room. Everyone is sitting around this source of heat, which also constitutes the only lighting of the living room. The first part of the soiree is musical in nature. Beethoven accompanies Bettina Brentano on the piano. Bettina intones lieder centered on themes of romantic love. After an hour of uninterrupted concert, Beethoven stop playing the piano and join the other guests after receiving a warm ovation. However, Bettina is so absorbed in the lieder's emotion that she continues as if nothing had happened....

When young Oskar entered the room where the defenestrated Arthur Schopenhauer lay, he had to accustom his eyes to the gloom as the wide window had been closed by criss-crossed wooden planks. The only light that illuminated the place came from the flame of a candle that was on the patient's bedside table. -Good afternoon, Mr. Schopenhauer. I think you have already been notified of my visit, so ... - Are you the one Oskar? -Oskar Gershhstein, at you service. - What’s your interest in knowing me? Don’t lie! -Well ... I've heard many people talking about you ... -So I'm famous, huh? And to what do I owe my fame? And don’t tell me to my books because I haven’t written any yet. But I plan to write them. I have a very clear notion of the Truth in my head. -Can I ask what notion is that, sir? Then Schopenhauer proceeded to make a summary of his philosophy. In that early period of his life, he was already heavily influenced by the Hindu religion. Particularly successful seem...

“Where does this air current come from?” Byron asked Schlegel who was sitting next to him. "Oh, it's Novalis’ ears. They’ve not stopped flapping since the lightning struck him.” Apart from the hostess or the "salonnière", a select group of intellectuals and writers were gathered in Johanna Schopenhauer's salon. There were Lord Byron and Ludwig Tieck, but also Johanna’s daughter Adela, Bettina Brentano, Achim von Arnim, Novalis, Friedrich Schlegel and Goethe. Goethe (whose fondness for eating onions is well known) was eating a raw onion. He had showed up at the party accompanied by his mistress, Christiane Vulpius, to the scandal of Bettina who, to demonstrate her vexation, began to pirouette. Byron watched her stunned. He ignored that, among the major figures of German Romanticism, pirouette was the usual way to show anger. His amazement increased when he saw Christiane suddenly stand up and spin around like a spinning top. This attitude was the conventional r...

In our society, Chiromancy (also called Palmistry, that is to say, fortune-telling by palm reading) is as discredited as, in my home, the title of yacht pilot of my cousin. (It will be a month that, to celebrate the recent obtaining of his title, my cousin took us all to sail his tiny yacht and we were shipwrecked.) But in the romantic era things were very different. Especially in Weimar, where the chiromantic gifts of Mrs. Schopenhauer were famous. Of course, I do not mean the wife of the founder of the Philosophical pessimism, who, as everybody knows, remained single throughout his life. I mean his mother, Johanna Schopenhauer, who at the beginning of the 19th century was the hostess of a salon in the style of the French institution. (You know, those groups of selected people who had a get together at some lady’s house). There is no greater contrast of characters than those of Arthur and his vivacious and jovial mother. Imagine a strict, austere and conservative mother and his s...