Wanderers above the Sea of Fog
Artist influenced by the work of Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840)
Oil on canvas, 1818
Private collection
The Embrace at the Edge of the World
Two naked men stand at the summit of a rocky promontory, one man’s arm resting around the shoulders of the other, their bodies turned toward a rolling sea of clouds stretching into the distance. The world beneath their feet dissolves into mist, with only a few dark ridges still emerging, while the bluish mountains in the background fade into a cold, diffuse light. The landscape retains the majesty and verticality characteristic of Caspar David Friedrich¹, yet the presence of this couple transforms the scene into a moment of shared, intimate, and silent contemplation.
Two Gazes toward the Same Infinity
This variation shifts the central motif of the Wanderer, traditionally alone before the immensity, toward a two-person presence that profoundly renews its meaning. Whereas the original depicts an individual confronted with the unknown, this queer reinterpretation—placing a same-sex couple within the scene—creates an experience of height and sublimity lived together, without breaking the introspective impulse inherent to Romanticism².
Solitude
In Europe at the time, the figure of the isolated man often overlapped—albeit unintentionally—with the social solitude experienced by homosexual men, who were frequently condemned to discretion, erasure, and marginal existence. Two embracing men do not dissolve this solitude. They form instead a tightened, almost invisible unit facing the world from a place history had not prepared for them. Their union becomes a tender answer to a reality that confined them to silence
Shifted Tension
The gesture of embrace alters the posture of the Wanderer without betraying Friedrich’s aesthetic. The two male bodies, exposed in their nudity to the cold light, remain vulnerable before the immensity. Their shared presence does not lessen the tension between human fragility and the grandeur of the landscape; it redirects it. The sublime no longer speaks to a single subject but to a delicate unity moving forward as two, giving a new tone to the experience of vertigo. Infinity becomes a shared horizon where vulnerability turns into quiet strength.
Anchoring and Affirmation
For H. Gaßner³, the Romantic figure seeks an anchoring beyond the horizon. Here, that anchoring shifts toward mutual support. The two travelers do not abolish solitude; they reinvent it. They form a shared presence capable of inhabiting the unknown without being lost within it. The mist, the light, and the rocks become the stage of a discreet yet steadfast affirmation: that of a couple who no longer needs to retreat into invisibility.
A Solitary Pair
From this perspective, the queer reinterpretation does not divert Friedrich; it reveals one of the latent possibilities within his work. It links the existential solitude of the Wanderer to the social solitude of homosexual lives in the Romantic era. It transforms the confrontation with the world into an experience held by two, without diminishing either the strength of the landscape or the depth of the questioning.
An Expanded Sublime
Finally, this proposal broadens the scope of the work. Two men in an embrace at a mountain summit are not merely a couple. They assert a way of being in the world that refuses marginalization and connects to universal narratives of self-discovery. Their gaze toward the horizon does not ask for permission to exist. It affirms that queer experience, with its softness, tensions, and power, belongs fully to the realm of the sublime⁴. This reading brings to light what the original held in reserve. It shows that the vastness of the world can welcome all lives and reminds us that the freedom to exist in the diversity of queer identitiesand gay or homosexual experiences is itself a form of elevation capable of embracing the infinite.
Curiosity Piqued?
1. Börsch-Supan, Helmut. Caspar David Friedrich. Munich, Prestel Verlag, 1973.
2. Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe, and Jean-Luc Nancy. L’Absolu littéraire. Théorie de la littérature du romantisme allemand. Paris, Seuil, 1978.
3. Gaßner, Harald. Caspar David Friedrich: Naturwirklichkeit und Kunstwahrheit. Nuremberg, Verlag des Germanischen Nationalmuseums, 1990.
4. Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. 1757.