It is only a few letters that have survived from Günderrode to Friedrich Creuzer – and if they have, they are copies written by Creuzer’s wife, Sophie Creuzer. Approximately one hundred of Günderrode’s letters are not extant or have vanished. In her letters, Günderrode writes often of her inner disquiet and laments the inadequacy of the epistolary form as a proxy for meeting her beloved. Over and above this, dreams function as a way to articulate wishes and desires, such as the longed-for release from external constraints: “The friend just visited me, he was quite lively and there was an unusual blush glowing on his cheek; he said he had dreamed of Eusebio in that morn’s slumber, how he had been in complete union with him and had wandered through charming valleys and wooded hills in blessed love and freedom.”

Using code names means that the play of communication serves to creative closeness through linguistic distance: “The friend was just here, he said he had often wanted to write to you […] It is curious but in thought he possesses the object he loves so completely that there are moments when he thinks that you can only think of something certainly and thoroughly that it might at one point become real in the way you might think it.” In this way, the relationship between Günderrode and Creuzer is an ideal of love, of both longing and suffering, and one that is only made possible by epistolary correspondence – and necessarily fails because of it.