The sensual quality of Goethe's eroticism was partly spent in his
relationship with Christiane Vulpius. The following passage, which forms
an interesting counterpart to Goethe's famous correspondence with
Charlotte von Stein, is taken from a letter written to Christiane
Vulpius during his absence from home. "The beds everywhere are very
wide, and you would have no reason for complaint, as you sometimes have
at home. Oh, my sweet heart! There is no such happiness on earth as
being together."
If Christiane represented sensuality, unrelieved by any other feeling,
Frau von Stein represented the most important object of Goethe's craving
for spiritual love. These two liaisons were to some extent
contemporaneous; the _Roman Elegies_ and the famous letters to Charlotte
von Stein were written at the same period. When she reproached him with
his love-affair with Christiane, he replied with consistent dualism:
"And what sort of an affair is it? Whose interests are suffering by it?"
Frau von Stein, his senior by seven years, was thirty-four years old,
and mother of seven children when Goethe first met her.
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