Note 89 — Lohengrin

The comparison of birth with a shipwreck, by the Roman poet Lucretius, seems to be in perfect harmony with this symbolism: “Behold the infant: Like a shipwrecked sailor, cast ashore by the fury of the billows, the poor child lies naked on the ground, bereft of all means for existence, after Nature has dragged him in pain from the mother’s womb. With plaintive wailing he filleth the place of his birth, and he is right, for many evils await him in life” (Lucretius, “De Nature Rerum,” V, 222-227). Similarly, the first version of Schiller’s “Robbers,” in speaking of Nature, says: “She endowed us with the spirit of invention, when she exposed us naked and helpless on the shore of the great Ocean, the World. Let him swim who may, and let the clumsy perish!”