Figures of Identity: Goethe’s Novels and the Enigmatic Self 9780271072869

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The Penn State Series in German Literature

The Penn State Series in German Literature General Editor Joseph P. Strelka, State University of New York at Albany Editorial Board Stuart Atkins, University of California at Santa Barbara Peter Demetz, Yale University Reinhold Grimm, University of Wisconsin Karl Guthke, Harvard University Erich Heller, Northwestern University Victor Lange, Princeton University Rio Preisner, The Pennsylvania State University Henry Remak, Indiana University Oskar Seidlin, Indiana University Walter Sokel, University of Virginia Blake Lee Spahr, University of California at Berkeley

Wilhelm Miiller, The Poet of the Schubert Song Cycles: His Life a n d Works, by Cecilia C. Baumann German Baroque Poetry, 1618-1723, by Robert M. Browning German Poetry in the Age of the Enlightenment, by Robert M. Browning Georg Trakl's Poetry: Toward a Union of Opposites, by Richard Detsch Kafka's Narrative Theater, by James Rolleston War, Weimar, a n d Literature: The Story of the New Merkur, 1914-1925, by Guy Stern The Leitword in Minnesang: A New Approach to Stylistic Analysis a n d Textual Criticism, by Vickie L. Ziegler Richard Beer-Hofmann: His Life a n d Work, by Esther N. Elstun

Figures of Identity

"Man erinnere sich, was wir oben von der Lehre des Roger Baco mitgeteilt . . . , daR sich namlich jede Tugend, jede Kraft, jede Tiichtigkeit, alles dem man ein Wesen, ein Dasein zuschreiben kann, ins Unendliche vervielfaltigt und zwar dadurch, daR immerfort Gleichbilder, Gleichnisse, Abbildungen als zweite Selbstheiten von ihm ausgehen, dergestalt, daR diese Abbilder sich wieder darstellen, wirksam werden, und indem sie immer fort und fort reflektieren, diese Welt der Erscheinungen ausmachen." Goethe's Schriften zur Farbenlehre, "Intentionelle Farben"

Figures of Identity Goethe's Novels and the Enigmatic Self

Clark S. Muenzer

The Pennsylvania State University Press University Park and London

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Muenzer, Clark S. Figures of identity. (The Penn State series in German literature) Includes bibliography and index. 1 . Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832-Criticism and interpretation. 2. Self-realization in literature. I. Title. 11. Series. PT1986.M8 1984 833'.6 83-43033 ISBN 0-271-00361-8

Copyright 0 1984 The Pennsylvania State University All rights reserved

Shaheen

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Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1 Turning Toward the Sublime: Reflexivity and Self-worth in Die Leiden des jungen Werther 2 The Speculative Way: Self-display and Self-completion in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre 3 Possessive Presumptions: Self-assertion in Die Wahlverwandtschaften 4 Deference and the Deferral of Aspiration: Self-denial in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre 5 Hope's Elusive Chest: Figurative Play and Goethe's Enigmatic Self Notes Bibliography Index

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Acknowledgments

"Nicht einsam bleibst du, bildest dich gesellig"

To the many friends and colleagues who assisted me in the preparation of this book, I would like to express my gratitude. Your always generous advice, criticism, and encouragement have provided enduring support. I do not simply list all of your names for fear of saying something less personal about our associations than I feel. To the National Endowment for the Humanities, The School of Criticism and Theory, and the University of Pittsburgh thanks are also due for the confidence they showed in my work through their generous financial support. I am indebted to the staff of the Pennsylvania State University Press for their superb editorial assistance.

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Introduction Of Goethe's diverse oeuvre just Faust and his four novels compelled his attention throughout his creative life. Yet, while the underlying unity of the play has repeatedly occupied critics, only occasional voices have proposed that his narrative fiction be examined from a similar standpoint.' Apparently, the formal and thematic diversity of these texts has, until recently, encouraged a view toward Goethe, the novelist, that resembles Wilhelm Meister's analysis of Shakespeare's Hamlet: "Der Held hat keinen Plan."' The author's changing artistic sentiments over a period of almost sixty years produced four distinctive examples of his extensive talent in the genre, but the differing circumstances of the novels' production precludes their cohesiveness. Hence, an almost inexhaustible array of work-specific treatments and a dearth of comprehensive studies3 Nor do summary descriptions of the novels contradict the conventional wisdom. Die Leiden des jungen Werther (1774; 1787), for example, Goethe's unique contribution to the epistolary and autobiographical forms, establishes, with its labile protagonist and tragic conclusion, his pre-romanticist credentials. By contrast, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795-96) presents a panoramic view of nature's beneficence and a protagonist who finally occupies his proper place in the world. The narrator of this prototypical novel of education (Bildungsroman), moreover, suggests a settled and responsive author who now depicts, in a classical manner, the "natural" enrichment of man through a series of formative encounters with the congenial world. Nearly fifteen years later, though, and

following a period of creative stagnation and crisis, Goethe returns to the genre with Die Wahlverwandtschaften (1809), where erotic forces threaten a complacent society and a tragedy unfolds once again. Only here the tragic self-possession of middle age erupts and not the tragic anxieties of youth. Yet while this transitional phase of Goethe's development moves him to consider the darker implications of man's presumptive relationship to his surroundings, his effort as a novelist does not end on its tragic note. We therefore find in his last novel, Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre oder die Entsagenden (1829), not so much a sequel to the Lehrjahre as a cautiously optimistic and formally innovative work that raises such modern issues as the relationship of technology to passion and self-control. Consequently, the studied respect of age for the riddles of life dominates its narrative structures, and Goethe concludes his project with a profoundly ironic book that anticipates certain attitudes and techniques that have become standards for the genre today. In light of these summaries, it is not surprising that relatively few critics have claimed to detect a hidden strategy behind Goethe's work as a novelist. To paraphrase Wilhelm Meister, an epistolary novel, a Bildungsroman, a novel of manners, and an experimental novel hardly suggest a coherent plan on their author's part. However, as Wilhelm further observes, though Hamlet himself does not have an obvious strategy, Shakespeare's play does: "Der Held hat keinen Plan, aber das Stiick ist p l a n ~ o l l . "And ~ in this spirit at least four monographs imply, to a greater or lesser degree, that Goethe's novels are of a piece. Of these, Hans Reiss' two books, which trace the genesis of related themes from Werther through the Wanderjahre, only offer a collection of discrete, though thematically consistent, readings and are therefore the least ~atisfying.~ By contrast, Eric Blackall locates a more compelling source of cohesiveness in the novels' "quest for comprehensive ~ r d e r . "Yet ~ the goal of this quest, while of major importance to Goethe, appears more formal than substantive in this otherwise detailed study, which remains remarkably reticent about the epistemological status of its ultimate organizing concept.' Stefan Blessin's more recent treatment, however, goes to some length to correct any earlier lack of precision in defining the oeuvre's center. Thus, whereas Reiss skirts the issue of a unifying problem (which Blackall locates in his notion of order) Blessin actually specifies an order for us: first, as progressive in relation to historical social forms and second, as materialistic in relation to forces that propel the individual and society toward their common goal."

Introduction In establishing an overall orientation for Goethe's novels by presenting nature as substantive, though, Blessin develops laborious interpretations through Hegelian, Marxist, and Freudian categories that curiously lapse into programmatic, and hence un-Goethean, assertions about Goethe's search for the "true" center of human and social organization.' Like Blackall and Blessin, I have tried to extend Reiss' thematic continuities by approaching each of Goethe's novels expecting to find them "of a piece." In focusing my attention on a single issue through all of the texts, though, I offer an alternative to their respective underdetermined and overdetermined strategies of order. The compelling issue here, I believe, concerns the status of the Goethean self as a consequence of the constructive process I call selfdefinition-for Goethe, a quintessentially imaginative activity that implies an ultimate order of things. However, unlike Blackall's plot (which vaguely organizes random narrative motifs in the names of fictional coherence and "human pr~gression")'~ the order of the Goethean self (which the protagonists of his novels collectively produce) is distinct in its successive phases. To delineate its evolving pattern I shall discuss the characteristic orientation for each of the protagonists-what Wilhelm calls "Gesinnungen"" in the Lehrjahre-through individual readings of the novels. In what follows, Werther, the two Wilhelm Meisters, and Eduard alike will be analyzed, as objects of fictional figuration, through the motivational complex they share: textually significant desires that stand as partial and distinctive phases in the process of self-definition. Werther's aspirations, I shall argue, which relate to personal autonomy, are not the same as Wilhelm's at the end of the Lehrjahre, when he has become an accountable gnd productive member of society. Nor is either, like Eduard, typically driven to view the outside world as an appropriative challenge. And none of them aspires, as does Wilhelm in the Wanderjahre, to conscious self-control. Nonetheless, however differently these characters appear through their separate goals and partial orientations, together their goals and orientations constitute the Goethean self as its totality. That self, though, is not-as Blessin and others would have-of a substantive nature. While spiritual, social, and psychological interests emerge in Goethe's four novels, the order of self implicit in the oeuvre as a whole is neither a spiritual, a social, or a psychological one. Instead, I conclude that the Goethean self is constituted in the symbolic or figurative disposition of these texts. In the final count,

the competing interests of their protagonists serve as orienting postures toward goals that cannot be literally achieved. As abstract possibilities, purposefulness (as a spiritual goal), participation (as a social goal), and power (as a psychological goal) are available only in pursuit. And though Werther, Wilhelm Meister, and Eduard cannot fully appreciate this, the resolutions they achieve in their novels typically introduce new problems, which then become points of departure in subsequent works. As Goethe observed to his friend Chancellor von Miiller of his symbolic technique in both the Wahlverwandtschaften and the Wanderjahre, "Jede Lijsung eines Problems ist ein neues Problem."" Apparently, he felt that his writing offered tentative solutions to problems that could not actually be solved. I propose that the self is such a problem and hope to demonstrate that Goethe's novels (which hint individually at its solution) keep the process of self-definition textually alive by re-examining every partial solution as the challenge of still another p r ~ b l e m . ' ~

Turning Toward the Sublime Reflexivity and Self-worth in Die Leiden des jungen Werther

Damon Wie an dem Tag, der dich der Welt verliehen, Die Sonne stand zum GruRe der Planeten, Bist alsobald und fort und fort gediehen Nach dem Gesetz, wonach du angetreten. So muRt du sein, dir kannst du nicht entfliehen, So sagten schon Sibyllen, so Propheten, Und keine Zeit und keine Macht zerstiickelt Gepragte Form, die lebend sich entwickelt.

Die Leiden des jungen Werther (1774; 1786) not only established Goethe's credentials as a novelist of European stature; as an immensely popular book, it also became an immediate standard of the subjective in literature and remains the quintessential novel of the heart. No serious discussion of its protagonist, in fact, can ignore his dominant inwardness. Social and psychological critics alike, Werther's champions and detractors, those interested in the text's formal and linguistic features as those inclined to regard the novel as a symptomatic cultural document: all have addressed its com-

pelling and penetrating look at the prototypical "man of feeling."' By elaborating the labile emotions of his protagonist through an intimate record of hope and despair, by examining through his epistolary testament the characteristic malaise of European Sentimentalism, Goethe, it is held, has faithfully documented the promises and the failures of the dominant mood of his youth.' Yet to approach Werther's odyssey through the serene Homeric seas of book 1 or the treacherous Ossianic storms of book 2 with an eye for only inspired originality or solipsistic excess misplaces the motivational center of the novel. For Goethe neither criticizes subjectivity as such in his fledgling effort, nor does he naively promote it as a guarantor of human authenticity. Instead-I shall argue-he configures the subjective as an image of mental reflexivity, which he then analyzes through a series of phases and elevates in a final phase as an independent law of the aspiring self. The need to analyze reflexivity and uncover the significance of the novel's numerous subjective motifs is first suggested in Werther's opening words, which begin his famous correspondence on a mildly problematic note: "Wie froh bin ich, da8 ich weg bin! Bester Freund, was ist das Herz des Menschen! Dich zu verlassen, den ich so liebe, von dem ich unzertrennlich war, und froh zu sein!" (p. 7).3 We find him, notably, underway. He is content, even exuberant to be away. But what is this motivational center we share, Werther "asks" of his letter's recipient. How can the heart be the privileged locus of our humanity, the source of our friendship and sociability, and still move me to abandon our circle without remorse? Why has our painful separation become the foundation of the joyous anticipation I now sense? Apparently, Werther's opening exclamation is an oblique question as well, the thematic prelude to a search that will involve him in a series of critical failures and a final recuperative gesture at the end of his tragic journey. The sympathetic reader of his correspondence, then, should remain sensitive to his initial attention to man's affective core and view the heart, as the source of desire, in line with Werther's own appreciation of its complexity. If subjectivity and inwardness presume an essential human substance, they also imply-as Goethe's novel begins-the need for elaboration. Perhaps something more problematic than either a tribute or cautionary tale is at stake here. Perhaps we must ask if, in dramatizing the plight of infinite human aspiring, this annal of successive and significant failure does not transcend its hagiological and didactic motifs and portray the suffering individual as something other than

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mere social or psychological ~ i c t i m .Indeed, ~ like the postulated reader of the editor's prefatory note (the "good soul," who belongs to a group of "subjectivists" different from those mentioned in the first letter),5we are urged from the start to interpret Werther's fate, not as a testament to inwardness or as a study of its dangers, but rather as the figuration of the hope to achieve a universal sense of self-worth. By punctuating Werther's correspondence with frequent references to the heart or souL6 the novel sustains the interrogative tone of his initial remarks to suggest such possibilities time and again. Hence a cumulative impression arises that its buoyant protagonist, in spite of contrary assertions, suffers from a fundamental restlessness. Even in his opening letter we learn that his self-imposed separation from family and friends was meant to extricate him from an unpleasant domestic entanglement.' An unsettled mind and its sense of relief, then, underlie Werther's joy on arrival. He first appears in the novel as an individual whose outward confidence only belies a lack of internal stability.' Before describing the idyllic pleasures of his new surroundings for his friend Wilhelm, for example, Werther notes his proclivity for unsettling associations-"Verbindungen recht ausgesucht vom Schicksal, um ein Herz wie das meine zu angstigen" (p. 7). While in search of fresh stimulations and their promise, he cannot suppress a nagging uncertainty about himself at the outset of his journey. Nor can he forget his own part in the communicative failure that originally moved him to leave his small circle of friends: Die arme Leonore! Und doch war ich unschuldig. Konnt' ich dafiir, daR, wahrend die eigensinnigen Reize ihrer Schwester mir eine angenehme Unterhaltung verschafften, daR eine Leidenschaft in dem armen Herzen sich bildete? Und doch-bin ich ganz unschuldig? (P. 7)

Characteristically, Werther's assertions generate questions and selfdoubt. Possibly in fleeing the two sisters he is really fleeing himself: in the first one, the sense of individual purpose he has yet to acquire and in the second, the confusion he must overcome about his proper place in the world. From the broader standpoint of eighteenth-century psychology, Werther's early and abbreviated allusions to his basic anxiety, like its symptomatic appearance as either enthusiasm or indifference, are not untypical.' Like all sentimentalists, he is first aware of himself through the senses. He recognizes that mental activity, and

hence fulfillment as a thinking, creative, and moral individual, depend on satisfying the needs of an appetitive mind.'' Compelled to sustain his well-being through contact with the uncertain world, he thus often becomes anxious about the sources of gratification and turns, in his early letters, to the new in an endless quest for fresh stimulation. Unwilling, like Wilhelm, to short-circuit his fear of deprivation by assuming a posture of indifference, Werther refuses willful resignation-"eine gleichgiiltige Gegenwart zu ertragen" (p. 8)-and opts instead for frantic hope-"das Gegenwartige geniel3env (p. 7). In light of these concerns, the decision to abandon the familiar and set out on a quest for new nourishment is reasonable enough. Apparently, Werther must experience the spring in this fateful year as if for the first time. Upon recognizing the world's transitoriness and sensing what was for Goethe "das grol3te ~ b e l die , schwerste Krankheit,"" he has immersed himself in the rhythmic pulses of a world being reborn in the hope of thwarting a nascent "taedium vitae." Whatever underlies the resolution to embrace the pleasures at hand, though, neither nature, nor love, nor community will sustain Werther's appetitive mind. Whatever his prospects of securing fulfillment through the sensation of new worlds, he will hardly attain the sense of permanent well-being he craves. For as soon as one object satisfies a mind like his, another must replace it. His very sharp appetite can avoid loathing and weariness only by changing its objects perpetually. Hence the restlessness and anxiety that Werther's initial optimism barely conceals. Nonetheless, on his arrival in Wahlheim, Werther can benefit from the fresh, beautiful region. He can momentarily concentrate in his isolation on his perceptions of the surroundings, and just as importantly, on his perceptual apparatus. In fact, the reflexive effects that Werther's perceptions induce occupy him far more than his concrete experiences.'' Upon receiving impressions from without, he not only luxuriates in the endless abundance of natural phenomena, he at once turns his thoughts inward to note the pleasures they stimulate. Exemplifying a mental operation that Kant would later describe, Werther feels gratified that his senses are alive and recognizes this derivative sensation subjectively, or as his own.13 Before we accept the common criticism of his pathological detachment,14 therefore, we should observe that Werther would hardly enjoy the sensations of an intimate internal life, were he oblivious to his environment. While he may move too abruptly and too frequently from the objective occasion of his feelings to their

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subjective consequences, he certainly responds to the phenomenal world at this point in his spiritual odyssey. He finds sustenance in it, even therapeutic benefits, and a pleasant alternative to his customary restlessness commands his attention from the start: ~ b r i ~ e befinde ns ich mich hier gar wohl. Die Einsamkeit ist meinem Herzen kostlicher Balsam in dieser paradiesischen Gegend, und diese Jahreszeit der Jugend warmt mit aller Fiille rnein oft schauderndes Herz. Jeder Baum, jede Hecke ist ein StrauR von Bluten, und man mochte zum Maienkafer werden, um in dern Meer von Wohlgeruchen herumschweben und alle seine Nahrung darin finden zu konnen. (p. 8)

As Werther's use of "sich befinden" more dramatically suggests than would the simple verb "to be," his surroundings have so enlivened him that no clear line exists between them in their objective and him in his subjective state. For the moment, at least, things remain pleasant for him, and his watchword is delight. Moreover, because he is animated by this feeling, he can, in harmony with the surroundings, show an exuberance equal to theirs. The world is not merely pleasant for him. It is, more significantly, the source of his pleasant mental sensations as well. Still, Werther evokes his anxious heart even as he recounts the paradisical splendor of his new circumstances. For instance, when shortly after arriving in the region he mourns the death of his spiritual mentor, the magnanimous companion of his youth, "in deren Gegenwart ich mir schien mehr zu sein, als ich war, weil ich alles war, was ich sein konnte" (p. 12), he intensifies his anxiety by configuring fulfillment as part of an irretrievable and circumscribed past. Unlike his present life, he laments, that period was without desires extending beyond the self. Never again will he feel as then that accomplishment is the measure of contentment.15 Apparently, his uneasiness will persist, and his resolution to relish the joys of the moment must fail. Indeed, what actually awaits Werther, and what his letters attest to from the start, are the inevitable and critical failures of a mind that can sustain itself only through the constant search for fresh sensations. Moreover, as the novel progresses, and he continues to suffer breakdowns in his efforts to constitute a stable self, it becomes increasingly clear that his sensualist failures will be just his first. Werther's quest begins in the firm belief that the mind can adequately nourish itself on the world. Yet paradoxically, in pursuing his desire for stability, he embraces an even more subjective, and

potentially more unstable, attitude. "Braust dieses Herz doch genug aus sich selbst" (p. l o ) , he reminds Wilhelm as early as May 13. The mere awareness of subjective sensations appears insufficient to him, because it implies a disturbing condition of dependency between his mind and the world. He therefore rejects his implicit mental subordination and is driven to locate something autonomous and entirely contained within himself as his existential goal.16As I shall argue, however, this extreme version of reflexivity also must fail him. The mind cannot recognize an independent law of the self as the foundation of self-worth until confronting failure itself. Only when Werther has re-interpreted his worldly defeats as a sign of infinite human aspiring will the departure that initiates his correspondence reach a satisfactory conc1usion." His initial and recurrent uneasiness, though, plays a necessary role in the process of self-definition. After all, it, too, constitutes a reflexive awareness. As the mind's negative response to the uncertain flow of impressions, it is the counterpoint to delight, with which it alternates as stimuli vanish and reappear. Accordingly, in his search for well-being through the appetites, Werther is not threatened so much by the pain that accompanies his moments of lack as by the sensual deprivation that follows as novelty declines. As a sentimentalist, he finds the threat of attenuation so primary that his pain, like the typical tears of the age, often figures as a mark of distinction. Hence, he rejects Wilhelm's advice of therapeutic ennui and is moved to relieve attenuation through increasingly lively experiences, including the derivative one of his own mental life. Werther's radical turn inward, then, figures as a consequence of sense-perceptions that fail to hold his interest for very long. Selfawareness in its sensate phase represents an adequate start in his search for a stable self, but it cannot end that search. Thus, the second and central phase in his spiritual odyssey, which supplements his receptive capacities with substantial intuitive powers, is already pronounced when the novel begins. Grandiose visions of his place in the world come to dominate his thoughts, and corresponding attempts to realize his visions as fact continually occupy him. Increasingly, as his experiences accumulate and he adjusts to his new situation, it is worlds of his own making that appropriately fill his epistolary pages: "Ich kehre in mich selbst zuriick," he characteristically proclaims, "und finde eine Welt!" (p. 1 3 ) . In this regard, though, the novel's reader should recall that at no point does Werther adhere to the premises of a single mode of

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self-fulfillment. He is not, after all, a philosopher. Even to suggest distinct and conscious phases in his movement toward a stable image of self is to overstate the case. Werther does not "develop": he does not process experience and grow to enjoy a secure position of responsibility and power within the world. Nor does he consciously abandon one guiding attitude for another, more adequate one. The real challenge of Goethe's text in fact lies in its simultaneous and abbreviated presentation of competing theories of the mind. Werther's letters provide only the symptoms. At most their succession traces an implicit movement toward an initial governing standpoint in the process of self-definition. As readers, we must ultimately describe this standpoint in detail. But it figures explicitly in Werther's thoughts and is intuitively recognized by him only in suicide, when he belatedly confronts his worldly failures as the essential fact of his existence. Moreover, this particular culmination, I shall argue, establishes just the starting point for Goethe in his effort as a novelist to articulate fully the problematic essence of self-definition. With these disclaimers in mind, we can examine Werther's symptomatic responses to his world through those portions of his correspondence that emphasize not the restless enthusiasm of the sensate mind, but the visionary pre-occupations of the self-assured Genie. What appears by way of contrast in this psychological type, popularized by Goethe's friend Herder,'' is a primary mental apparatus with cognitive powers, like Leibniz's "monad," independent of the world or, like Herder's "Kraft-Genie," at least equally possessed of a unique developmental substance. Within such systems the simple reflex of self-awareness, which is solely predicated on pleasurable and painful sensation^,'^ gives way to an intimate and ultimately more stable form of subjectivity. Thus, Werther's interest in the mind observing itself in turn promotes his recognition of and commitment to those internal, self-sufficient powers that exceed all achievement within the world. Nor is his shift from a quantitative approach to self-fulfillment to a qualitative one unexpected. After all, a heart that merely pulsates in response to a plethora of fresh impressions must limit self-awareness to the frequency and force of its encounters with the world. In moving "aus sich selbst," however, in containing the unique source of its own vitality, the mind guards against the world's unreliability and need no longer be concerned with attenuation. Moreover, once uneasiness has been re-interpreted as an impulse from within, and the sentimentalist's tears have become a sign of an aspiring creativity, then a

basic step has been taken toward establishing the self as an independent law. As Werther frequently suggests, a perception of personal autonomy is indispensable to human self-worth.*" The heart's "suBe Gefuhl der Freiheit" (p. 14) therefore becomes just that telos toward which Goethe's novel moves. The creative energy that Werther often claims to possess and that gradually subdues and dominates his restless enthusiasm anchors reflexivity in the imagination and not in the senses. More specifically, it links feelings-cast now as intuitions, or "Vorstellungen"-with that phase of imaginative perception to be called "primary" by Coleridge, "the living power and prime Agent of all human perception, . . . a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of Creation in the infinite I AM."21 And while the importance of this mental function in the portrayal of Werther has not been neglected, neither those critics who see in his visionary meanderings a treacherous ~ i t h d r a w a l , ~nor ' those who regard them as liberating,23have sufficiently explored the crucial part that the failing imagination plays in his overall movement toward self-definition through the recognition of self-worth. Werther's widely cited letter of May 10 offers a glimpse into the essential stages through which he will pass in the course of this spiritual odyssey. It thereby also provides an early indication of the novel's underlying structure. As already noted, the splendid isolation of the refuge Wahlheim evokes Werther's initial sense of renewal. The springtime beauty of the country region, which abounds with opportunities to gratify the senses, has produced in him a first reflexive awareness, and he often reverts from the phenomenal world to his mind, which enjoys more the act of its feeling than any objects it has felt. In fact, by describing the former lord of an English garden in the vicinity (which he himself now intends to appropriate) as "ein fuhlendes Herz . . . , das seiner selbst hier genieBen wollte" (p. 8), Werther implicitly grounds self-definition in self-gratification just before his famous letter begins. Striking a similar note of spiritual self-sufficiency, the letter's opening lines proclaim, "Eine wunderbare Heiterkeit hat meine ganze Seele eingenommen, gleich den suBen Fruhlingsmorgen, die ich mit ganzem Herzen geniehe" (p. 9). Like the cognitively secure and morally active "man of feeling" described by Herder in the prize-essay on the powers of the human mind, Werther, too, can transform "ein angenehmes Chaos von Schopfersideen voll Weisheit und Gute" into a personal world "voll Wohlordnung fur s i ~ h . " 'He ~ highlights his own sense of well-being within the world

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from the outset. With his mind so completely engaged by an environment that can sustain his attention, he is reflexively aware, and he revealingly positions the external source of his reflexivity, the delightful mornings of spring, in a subordinate spot in his utterance. Apparently, he can revel in his isolation because, in the present configuration, it provides the existential security he craves. "Ich bin allein," he recalls, "und freue mich meines Lebens in dieser Gegend, die fiir solche Seelen geschaffen ist, wie die meine" (p. 9, emphasis mine).25 Again Werther affirms his existence through a reflex that has become primary, and again he signals his subjective awareness through a reflexive verb. At this point in the reverie, though, a deficiency of the expressive faculty surfaces that runs counter to any assumption on the reader's part of an imagination able to sustain Werther's sense of creative self-sufficiency. "Ich bin so gliicklich, mein Bester," he continues, "so ganz in dem Gefiihle von ruhigem Dasein versunken, daR meine Kunst darunter leidet. Ich konnte jetzt nicht zeichnen, nicht einen Strich, und bin nie ein groRerer Maler gewesen, als in diesen Augenblicken" (p. 9). Apparently, the artist's craft has been imperilled by the power of primary inspiration. Still, one might ask whether Werther's sophistic turn of phrase is more an exercise in verbal self-delusion than an authentic resolution of his failure to paint. Is it simply a rhetorical flourish that will justify his subsequent failure^,'^ or does it complement a legitimate aspiration to contemplate the world more deeply from within? Werther's next words support the second view, since he turns at once from his thought of expressive impotence to highlight a primary intuitive power more comprehensive than his pencil and sketchbook can accommodate: Wenn das liebe Tal um mich dampft, und die hohe Sonne an der Oberflache der undurchdringlichen Finsternis meines Waldes ruht, und nur einzelne Strahlen sich in das innere Heiligtum stehlen, ich dann im hohen Grase am fallenden Bache liege, und naher an der Erde tausend mannigfaltige Graschen mir merkwiirdig werden; wenn ich das Wimmeln der kleinen Welt zwischen Halmen, die unzahligen, unergriindlichen Gestalten der Wiirmchen, der Miickchen naher an meinem Herzen fiihle, und fiihle die Gegenwart des Allmachtigen, der uns nach seinem Bilde schuf, das Wehen des Alliebenden, der uns in ewiger Wonne schwebend tragt und erhalt; mein Freund! wenn's dann um meine Augen dammert, und die Welt um mich her und der Himmel ganz in meiner Seele ruhn wie die Gestalt einer Geliebten-dann sehne ich mich oft und denke:

Ach kijnntest du das wieder ausdriicken, konntest du dem Papiere das einhauchen, was so voll, so warm in dir lebt, da8 es wiirde der Spiegel deiner Seele, wie deine Seele ist der Spiegel des unendlichen Gottes! (p. 9) Notably, Werther's creative deficiency is of the secondary imagination alone. Here, in striking anticipation of Coleridge, Goethe shows him willing and able to repeat the eternal act of creation within the finite mind. Only the recreative phase eludes him. Werther fails to transform his artist's pad into a mirror of his soul, but he successfully represents the condition of that soul as a mirror of divine splendor. And though later failures to capture this vision in palpable forms increasingly determine the course of his life and so the contour of the novel, for the moment the scope of his visionary achievement counterbalances the setback he notes: "Mein Freund-Aber ich gehe dariiber zugrunde, ich erliege unter der Gewalt der Herrlichkeit dieser Erscheinungen" (p. 9). Supremely confident in his intuitive grasp of the order of things, he can, as yet, suppress any momentary breach in his cognitive security and, in his very next letter, still bask in the warm sun of his visionary powers, "die warme, himmlische Phantasie in meinem Herzen. . . , die mir alles rings umher so paradiesisch macht" (p. 9). As already noted, the various phases of reflexivity underlying Werther's reverie duplicate the structure of Goethe's novel as a whole. We can, for example, detect in its opening lines the sensate individual's appetitive mind, which in its pursuit of nourishment has occasion to observe its own active life. Werther's pleasant surroundings have stirred pleasant sensations from within, and these interior stirrings have engaged him and promoted further mental activity. He therefore closes his eyes-or at least imagines the approach of darkness-not in a gesture of pathological detachment, as is often claimed, but in the hope of penetrating the visible surface of things.27In a place where mere blades of grass appear noteworthy, he feels bombarded by a plethora of phenomenal signifiers, in which he could simply delight. Rather than risking their attenuation, however, he substitutes for these innumerable stimuli a single comprehensive vision. At its center, mediating between God and his most minute creatures-and, like the divine urge, comprehending unity in diversity and purposefulness in confusion-stands the creatively superior mind. The power and scope of God's creation, however, even at the moment of supreme intuition, exceeds Werther's conceptual abili-

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ties, and his cognitive grasp, reflected in the failure of language, falls short. His letter of May 10 therefore ends with the imagination's defeat by the empirical world, and a sense of personal devastation, all the more profound because of the extent of his mind's original aspiration, ensues. Nourishment and a sense of well-being, then, underlie the initial reflexivity of this paradigmatic passage, which moves from authentic intuition to intuitive bravado and ends with expressive failure and self-destruction. Moreover, it becomes increasingly clear in the course of the novel that each of these phases will play a critical part in defining the path of Werther's spiritual odyssey, from the moment of his first anxious departure in restless enthusiasm to his last confident one in the recognition of self-worth.

Werther's initial isolation and the opportunity it affords for his reflexive turnings from the world secure his belief that the world is his to make as he will. In this regard, his letter of May 10 is pivotal, because it documents an aspiring originality that subordinates the mind's search for fresh stimulations to its deepening involvement in its own dynamic and autonomous inwardness. The letter's pattern of pleasing renewal, heightened reflexive awareness, and creative confidence and failure is not unique, though, as the rest of book I, which isolates and establishes the role of the imagination in the process of self-definition, demonstrates. Werther's personalized versions of his encounters in the region, like his portrayal of the natural and compelling quality of its inhabitants, typically disregard their idealization as comprehensive projects of the mind. He fails to see that the peasants, the children, and even Lotte share a significance in his life that is mediated rather than direct. Time and again, in relating his intuitions to his creative and cognitive aspirations, he stubbornly asserts their objective status as authentic goals in the search for self-worth. But while repeatedly trying to enact the dramas of his mind within the world, he hardly succeeds. He consistently fails to translate his thoughts into an order of things as grand as their visionary source. Indeed, his efforts at conceptualization are so brash, so wrong-headed, that, by the end of his life, he comes to value his personal autonomy only through their failure. Accordingly, the reader should consider Werther's early confidence in the mind's formative and expressive powers with scepticism and regard as a motivational device the

Genie-ethos that has him grasp at his visions as though they were palpable realities." Notably, Werther himself shows a rudimentary understanding for this kind of confusion and its undesirable consequences just as he embarks on his journey of self-discovery. The episode in question, which occurs when he, too, is susceptible to self-delusion, concerns his first of several encounters with a young peasant lad, whom he happens upon shortly before meeting Lotte. The boy is hopelessly in love with his widowed mistress, Werther's letter relates, and has touched him profoundly, because he captures the mind in its relation to life's most powerful and original affect. In an echo of the letter of May 10, however, Werther's inspiration again exceeds his expressive capacity, and he must invoke a superior "authorial" instance in order to indicate to Wilhelm the full impact on his own imaginative life of this remarkable "Naturerscheinung" (p. 18): "Ja, ich miiate die Gabe des groaten Dichters besitzen, um dir zugleich den Ausdruck seiner Gebarden, die Harmonie seiner Stimme, das heimliche Feuer seiner Blicke lebendig darstellen zu konnen" (p. 18). Only the most immense poetic talent, he muses, could be adequate to this boy. Again, Werther suggests his intuitive grasp of a primal scene and implicitly charges the "secondary" or constructive imagination to re-present it. And again he shows his reluctance or inability to execute for the world's eyes a vision that the mind alone can entertain without diminution: "Nein, es sprechen keine Worte die Zartheit aus, die in seinem ganzen Wesen und Ausdruck war; es ist alles nur plump, was ich wieder vorbringen konnte" (p. 18). The boy's even more engaging picture of his beloved, moreover, "das Bild dieser Treue und Zartlichkeit" (p.19), "kann ich mir nur in meiner innersten Seele wiederholen" (p. 19). It does not merely remain sequestered within his soul as an inimitable image; as an incandescent trace of authenticity, a memory of "Unschuld und Wahrheit" (p. 19), it pursues him so relentlessly that he feels obliged to visit the widow herself: "Ich will nun suchen, auch sie ehstens zu sehn" (p. 19). Yet upon further consideration, "wenn ich's recht bedenke," he concludes, ich will's vermeiden. Es ist besser, ich sehe sie durch die Augen ihres Liebhabers; vielleicht erscheint sie mir vor meinen eigenen Augen nicht so, wie sie jetzt vor mir steht, und warum sol1 ich mir das schone Bild verderben? (p. 19)

As even Werther must acknowledge in his meditation, the confusion of inner and outer, of mental grasp and world, can harm a

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vision. Only the unattainability of an interior image will guarantee the imputed perfection of its worldly occasion. Mental projects, which often animate the mind with a sense of primary formative power in contemplation, are imperilled by the impetuous pursuit of their realization. As palpable objects their significance is reduced, and the visionary's reflex of his authorial grandeur correspondingly diminishes. Shortly after this episode, Werther meets Lotte, so that his own vision of an idealized beloved rather than another's begins to compel him. Typically, though, he does not apply the isolated insight of his encounter with the peasant lad to his own affairs, and the abbreviated conclusion of his letter of two weeks before remains ineffective. A second letter, though, which follows his extensive report of the ball, strategically poses the same question of unattainability and again ironically highlights Werther's involvement with Lotte through a cautionary insight that he similarly ignores with disastrous results. The setting of this critical note is still Wahlheim, probably the vicinity of the May 10 reverie and, for Werther, its situation has proven ideal. The spot, he explains, "so nahe am Himmel" (p. 28), is not only a scant half-hour from the object of his dreams; from this distance, "bald vom Berge, bald von der Ebne" (p. 28), he can even gaze undisturbed at the lodge where Lotte lives, "das Jagdhaus, das nun alle meine Wiinsche einschlieflt" (p. 28). Indeed, the proximity of his reified desires has proven so seductive that he frequently abandons his contemplative posture and tries boldly to enter the vision itself.*"pparently, the relevance of a subsequent reflection concerning one of his customary walks in the region will remain unappreciated for some time. As Werther recalls this outing, he initially managed to maintain his contemplative pose: Es ist wunderbar: wie ich hierher kam und vom Hiigel in das schone Tal schaute, wie es mich rings umher anzog.-Dort das Waldchen!-Ach konntest du dich in seine Schatten mischen!Dort die Spitze des Berges!-Ach konntest du von da die weite Gegend iiberschauen!-Die in einander geketteten Hiigel und vertraulichen Taler!-0 konnte ich mich in ihnen verlieren! (p. 29)

He was able to experience the unity of the place as if through a magic lens. The most prominent features of the extensive landscape blended perfectly, and the scene's continuity was preserved. Moreover, as the emphatic "Dort's" and "Ach's" and subjunctive mood

underscore, Werther remained aware for a time of the crucial gap between vision and world. As the verbs "sich mischen" and "sich verlieren" further suggest, however, the inclination to enter the scene that his eyes had surveyed became irresistible. Consequently, he finally tried to experience its basic "there" as a "here and now": "Ich eilte hin," he admits, "und kehrte zuriick, und hatte nicht gefunden, was ich hoffte" (p. 29). Upon abandoning the visionary position and pursuing a place for himself within an idealized order of things, Werther experienced, significantly, only the impoverishment of an erstwhile beyond. His recollection of the failure to realize as fact what had been a project of the mind, moreover, is so profound that he concludes his account with an ominous aphoristic summation. At this point, at least, he is again sensitive to the gap between the interior perfection of visions and their less than perfect worldly embodiments: 0 es ist mit der Ferne wie mit der Zukunft! Ein grolles dammerndes Ganze ruht vor unserer Seele, unsere Empfindung verschwimmt darin wie unser Auge, und wir sehnen uns, ach! unser ganzes Wesen hinzugeben, uns mit aller Wonne eines einzigen, grollen, herrlichen Gefuhls ausfullen zu lassen. (p. 29)

The mind's eye, like the body's, can profitably contemplate unity in diversity from a distance. It can imagine a future of absolute fulfillment and aspire to a moment of satisfaction that rivals the divine presence. Yet once such a center of ultimate purposefulness so compels the individual that he seeks the congruence of mental project and world and presumes to occupy the point of completion, the world will disabuse him of his presumption. The impetuous hand will open, Werther learns, and he will discover far less in his grasp than he had hoped: "-Und ach! wenn wir hinzueilen, wenn das Dort nun Hier wird, ist alles vor wie nach, und wir stehen in unserer Armut, in unserer Eingeschranktheit, und unsere Seele lechzt nach entschliipftem Labsale" (p. 29).30Apparently, the aspiring imagination is hard pressed to realize its most attractive visions. The plenitude and scope of infinite aspirations require that they remain virtual. In contemplating the world as a vast unity, the visionary can take pleasure in his intuitive capacity. But in failing, as he must, to partake of that unity in fact, he must also learn to process empirical defeats. Until Albert's arrival, Werther can ignore this unequivocal message with impunity. Nonetheless, he insures the ironic framing of the letter of June 16, which describes his first evening together with

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Lotte, and unwittingly plays the fool. He consistently forgets that his own pleasures of the imagination-in the company of children, rustic country folk, and Lotte-are themselves predicated on their unattainability in life as images of the mind. The impulse to seize or lay hand on them actually threatens the sense of well-being that has begun to grow out of these encounters as idealized projections. Furthermore, when Werther's grasp falls short, or when he sees how others accommodate themselves to limited success, he is inclined to blame the world for its narrowness rather than himself for his presumpti~eness.~'This perception of society's indifference turns him even more deeply inward, in fact, where he claims "die tatigen und forschenden Krafte des Menschen" (p. 13) lie imprisoned. Man's vast potential for action and discovery, it seems, encourages Werther as he initially moves about the worlds he willfully creates, although he partakes of them, admittedly, "mehr in Ahnung und dunkler Begier als in Darstellung und lebendiger Kraft" (p. 13). But his intuition of autonomy sustains him for some time in his effort to break out of his confinement and achieve the personal independence he craves. Symptomatic of Werther's ill-conceived struggles throughout book 1 to liberate himself by bridging the gap between intuition ("Vorstellung") and expression ("Darstellung") is his use of the Homeric vision. In particular, the Odyssey, which he proudly reads in its original Greek, is his constant companion. As a classic rendition of the traditional hero's return to those prerogatives bestowed by birth and transmitted from one generation to the next, it perfectly mirrors for him "die patriarchalische Idee" (p. 10). Like an ancient prince he thus feels driven by an inborn sense of purposesome distant telos-and looks to Homer's account as a means of access to the perfect end he feels destined to attain. However, the seductive charms of his diminutive version of Homer's world can hardly belie his trimming of its ancient concepts to sizes more appropriate to his own situation. Indeed, in this, as in other affectations, Werther acts much like an infant lunging toward an object with both hands in order to be assured of its substantiality. In his enthusiasm for the child and for child-like cultures, he paradoxically runs the risk of becoming childish himself. "Und das Zugreifen ist doch der natiirlichste Trieb der Menschheit," he meditates. "Greifen die Kinder nicht nach allem, was ihnen in den Sinn fallt?-und ich?" (p. 84). He therefore not only reads his Homer in its original language; he also insists on expressing his personal aspirations in an awkwardly ancient idiom. Assured that his formu-

laic imitation of the natural simplicity he imagines in his new surroundings will secure his destiny, he faithfully lives his idyll for some time. And he does this unconcerned with its regressive character:32 So sehnt sich der unruhigste Vagabund zuletzt wieder nach seinem Vaterlande und findet in seiner Hiitte, an der Brust seiner Gattin, in dem Kreise seiner Kinder, in den Geschaften zu ihrer Erhaltung die Wonne, die er in der weiten Welt vergebens suchte. (p. 29)

The world's unresponsiveness merely confirms Werther's conviction that he must author his own happiness in accord with those concepts of harmonious and purposeful living that his mind can project. In this regard his "Wahlheim" becomes a place of personal freedom, a refuge that satisfies in full only because Werther has created it for himself: Wenn ich des Morgens mit Sonnenaufgange hinausgehe nach meinem Wahlheim und dort im Wirtsgarten mir meine Zuckererbsen selbst pfliicke, mich hinsetze, sie abfadne und dazwischen in meinem Homer lese; wenn ich in der kleinen Kuche mir einen Topf wahle, mir Butter aussteche, Schoten ans Feuer stelle, zudecke und mich dazusetze, sie manchmal umzuschiitteln: da fiihl' ich so lebhaft, wie die ubermiitigen Freier der Penelope Ochsen und Schweine schlachten, zerlegen und braten. Es ist nichts, da8 mich so mit einer stillen, wahren Empfindung ausfullte als die Ziige patriarchalischen Lebens, die ich, Gott sei Dank, ohne Affektation in meine Lebensart verweben kann. (p. 29)

Werther's final disclaimer notwithstanding, his precious vignette recalls just those distortions that GeRner and other nature enthusiasts produced as belated practitioners of pastoral forms. For he, too, relies on an unsuitably narrow vehicle to capture his modern ideal of self-attainment: "Sie haben ein Ideal ausgefuhrt und doch die enge durftige Hirtenwelt beibehalten."33 So long as a hybrid or "Halbheit" of this sort endures, and a vision remains captive to reality, the individual can feel, as Werther, reassured. "Ich brauche Wiegengesang," he unabashedly asserts on May 13, "und den habe ich in seiner Fulle gefunden in meinem Homer" (p. 10). He can claim that the peace of satisfaction is his. But as Werther's wording aptly suggests, his version of Homer's heroic world is diminutive. His imitation of an ancient model has not produced any ultimate

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expression of power, but only a cradle-song. Accordingly, he will have to abandon his regressive, albeit soothing, Homeric idyll before recognizing the transcendent telos of self-worth. Through book 1 it is Lotte, of course, who figures in Werther's perceptions as the chief guardian of idyllic serenity, and during this phase of their involvement, she remains the focal point of his contemplative well-being. Thus, in describing their encounter at the ball, Werther first tactfully observes the gap between intuition and expression and highlights the effects she has produced in his mind. Implying by way of introduction that the nature and the source of her perfection are indeterminate-"Und doch bin ich nicht imstande, dir zu sagen, wie sie vollkommen ist, warum sie vollkommen ist" (p. 19)-he is content to note his ability just to entertain the idea of completion that Lotte presents. Further explanations are in any case irrelevant, as the claim she has made on his faculties is absolute: "Genug, sie hat allen meinen Sinn gefangengenommen" (p. 19). As an object of pure aesthetic contemplation, Lotte initially serves as a point of reference through which Werther can feel his intuitive resources activated. More specifically, and in striking anticipation of Kant's ideal of beauty, this "Madchen von schoner Gestalt" (p. 21) refers him to his capacity to conceptualize unity, goodness, and durable self-sufficiency:" ' S o viel Einfalt bei so viel Verstand, so viel Giite bei so viel Festigkeit, und die Ruhe der Seele bei dem wahren Leben und der Tatigkeit" (p. 19). In Kantian terms, she is purposeful with respect to Werther's subjectivity, because in regarding her-"meine ganze Seele ruhte auf der Gestalt, dem Tone, dem Betragen" (p. 21)-he can appreciate his power to constitute categories of human perfection. Nonetheless, Werther soon falls from his contemplative posture35 and subsequently, in spite of Lotte's engagement to Albert, he pursues his erstwhile point of reflexive awareness as an object of emotional and physical desire. Hence her significance as a mediating form in the process of self-definition is lost. By disregarding her forthcoming marriage to the conventional rival, Werther also obscures her nobility as a challenge he has formulated for himself. He finds it more convenient to see her as a handy source of personal gratification than as his link to a transcendent imperative. To paraphrase his earlier meditation on the peasant lad and his mistress, Lotte exists primarily as an ideal image of Werther's mind. As such she testifies to his intuitive powers in contemplation. As an object of his pursuit, though, she threatens his self-esteem. The nature of this threat, which is adumbrated from a theoretical

standpoint in the letters of May 30 and June 21, becomes obvious in Werther's further account of his evening together with Lotte at the ball. Their carriage ride from the vicarage to the place of the festivities, he recalls, transformed him from a sociable escort into a dreamer lost to the surrounding world: Wie ich mich unter dem Gesprache in den schwarzen Augen weidete-wie die lebendigen Lippen und die frischen, muntern Wangen meine ganze Seele anzogen -wie ich, in den herrlichen Sinn ihrer Rede ganz versunken, oft gar die Worte nicht horte, mit denen sie sich ausdriicktedavon hast du eine Vorstellung, weil du mich kennst. Kurz, ich stieg aus dem Wagen wie ein Traumender, als wir vor dem Lusthause stille hielten, und war so in Traumen rings in der dammernden Welt verloren, dal3 ich auf die Musik kaum achtete, die uns von dem erleuchteten Saal herunter entgegenschallte. (pp. 23-24)

Like the fresh spring mornings evoked in the reverie of May 10, Lotte's charming face engaged Werther so completely that he became absorbed at once in his own perceptions. In fact, he was so deeply withdrawn that, as before, the world receded from his view.36Once on the dance floor, then, he could regard Lotte's idealized figure with an enhanced sense of self. And not surprisingly, the consequence of the transformation was again an intuition of purposefulness, which he now enthusiastically shares with his friend: Tanzen muR man sie sehen! Siehst du, sie ist so mit ganzem Herzen und mit ganzer Seele dabei, ihr ganzer Korper eine Harmonie, so sorglos, so unbefangen, als wenn das eigentlich alles ware, als wenn sie sonst nichts dachte, nichts empfande; und in dem Augenblicke gewil3 schwindet alles andere vor ihr. (p. 24)

Almost immediately, though, Werther was seized by the impulse to join in the dance and so partake of Lotte's imputed perfection. He therefore hastily abandoned his contemplative pose-"Ich bat sie um den zweiten Contretanz" (p. 24)-and entered an idealized scene that he had created himself: "Nun ging's an, und wir ergetzten uns eine Weile an mannigfaltigen Schlingungen der Arme. Mit welchem Reize, mit welcher Fliichtigkeit bewegte sie sich" (pp. 24-25). The concentration of power was so intense, he concludes, "da8 alles rings umher verging" (p. 25). The structural parallel between Werther's description of Lotte's

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dancing and his account on May 10 of the natural order of things could not be Inore pronounced. His partner's charm, which first stimulated a reflexive awareness of personal well-being, produced a vision of unity and purposefulness, and this vision became so compelling that, absorbed by its force, he lost touch with the surrounding world. However, since the dancer could hardly sustain this visionary expectation, exhaustion set in, and a familiar disappointment ensued: Wir machten einige Touren gehend im Saale, um zu verschnaufen. Dann setzte sie sich, und die Orangen, die ich beiseite gebracht hatte, die nun die einzigen noch iibrigen waren, taten vortreffliche Wirkung, nur daR mir mit jedem Schnittchen, das sie einer unbescheidenen Nachbarin ehrenhalben zuteilte, ein Stich durchs Herz ging. (p. 25)

Clearly, two Lottes figure in this account of the evening festivities." The first is a charming, perhaps somewhat exceptional small-town girl, who enjoys chatting prima inter pares with her large circle of friends and happily favors an interesting young newcomer like Werther. But the second, who becomes the goal of his striving, stands as the objective correlative of a developmental urge he has begun to sense from within. Consequently, she also becomes the problematic embodiment of his teleological aspiration. It should come as no surprise, then, that Werther consistently ignores the former in order to bring into sharper focus the idea of the latter as an image of personal destiny. Indeed, whenever the first Lotte impinges on the second, as when she turns away after their dance, he feels personally assaulted. By disturbing his vision and failing, therefore, to remain a fixed point of reference, she also inadvertently undercuts his desire for autonomy. Trying brashly to make a conceptual achievement out of his intuition, however, Werther is inclined to extend his intuitive grasp, and he moves characteristically from the tactful contemplation of Lotte's perfection to the real woman. Until her fiance's return, in fact, which forces another strategy upon him, he loses sight of her as the focal point of his teleological aspiration and correspondingly reduces her to a simple object of desire. Against this background of possessive maneuvers, Lotte's engagement assumes a dual significance. On the one hand, as a source of security and respectability, her forthcoming marriage suggests social accommodation and highlights her middle-class mentality. However

unremarkable and incongruous Albert appears to Werther, in Lotte's view his basic decency and dependability must guarantee her happiness as her exceptional friend cannot. On the other hand, though, by obstructing Werther's impulsive plans, the engagement serves a broader motivational purpose as well. For with Lotte's hand out of reach, the basis of Werther's liaison with her as it evolves through book 2 is firmly established. In no way can he settle down with his cherished girl-as Nicolai's parody suggests3'-to a life of middleclass mendacity. Indeed, his failure to displace Albert must be read as the necessary condition of his transcending such nonsense and recognizing the self in its enduring aspect. Hence his rival's encroachment paradoxically stands as the decisive factor in Werther's idealized perception of Lotte. It enables him to regard his life's purpose in terms of destiny and establishes the unattainability of the personal telos within the world: "Warum denn mich, Werther? just mich, das Eigentum eines andern? just das? Ich furchte, ich furchte, es ist nur die Unmoglichkeit, mich zu besitzen, die Ihnen diesen Wunsch so reizend macht" (pp. 102-3). In the second part of the novel Werther could hardly have achieved the recognitions he does, if in book 1 he had chosen to enter a socially possible relationship. As Lotte's parlor psychology inadvertently establishes, the project of self-definition requires his worldly failure. A critical breakdown in the effort to realize tangibly a primary intuition of independent purposefulness must precede any moral victory on his part. Love's customary completion in marriage will just not do. If the internal claim is as compelling as Werther would have, then it must transcend all quotidian accomplishments.

Finding his imitations of Homeric serenity too glib himself to serve as the foundation of self-esteem, and hence incongruent with his inclination toward the unattainable, Werther can live his idyll only briefly. Indeed, he explicitly notes, even before Albert's return, how ridiculous his charade with Lotte must appear to others: Die alberne Figur, die ich mache, wenn in Gesellschaft von ihr gesprochen wird, solltest du sehen! Wenn man mich nun gar fragt, wie sie mir gefallt?-Gefallt! Das Wort hasse ich auf den Tod. Was muR das fiir ein Mensch sein, dem Lotte gefallt, dem sie nicht alle Sinne, alle Empfindungen ausfiillt! Gefallt! Neulich fragte mich einer, wie mir Ossian gefiele! (p. 3 7 )

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Even at this early point in his movement toward defining the self as autonomous purposefulness, Werther recognizes that routine strategies of accommodation are inadequate. The "pleasing" will no longer satisfy as it did on his arrival at Wahlheim. Unlike the more conventional, he cannot be content to embellish his drab life "mit bunten Gestalten und lichten Aussichten" (p. 13). Something more compelling from within demands that he pursue satisfactions beyond all illusory, short-lived pleasures. As his hatred for the word "gefallen" and his allusion to Ossian suggest, the imperative that now propels Werther toward Lotte without regard for the obstacles in his path far exceeds the motivations of either sensual or social desire. No longer can the diminutive dream, the "traumende Resignation" of an earlier letter (p. 1 3 ) , sustain him in his search for a stable image of self. Against this background, then, Werther's Lotte becomes more than the central figure in a circumscribed pastoral poem. A fortuitous touch seems ominously animating-"Ach wie mir das durch alle Adern lauft" (p. 38)-and a harmless attention threatens with disintegration the same conceptual faculty that had been the source of his mental nourishment and delight: "Ich ziehe zuriick wie vom Feuer, und eine geheime Kraft zieht mich wieder vorwarts-mir wird's so schwindelig vor allen Sinnen. . . . ich glaube zu versinken, wie vom Wetter geriihrt" (pp. 38-39). The first reflexive consequence of Werther's involvement has been supplanted by a superior, as yet mysterious motivation that now fixes his attention. Furthermore, as he tries to define this power more precisely, he comes to see it as a destiny of personal worth-notably a moral and teleological rather than mere sensual factor of life: Nein, ich betriege mich nicht! Ich lese in ihren schwarzen Augen wahre Teilnehmung an mir und meinem Schicksal. Ja ich fiihle, und darin darf ich meinem Herzen trauen, daR sie--o darf ich, kann ich den Hirnrnel in diesen Worten aussprechen?-daR sie mich liebt! Mich liebt!--Und wie wert ich rnir selbst werde, wie ich-dir darf ich's wohl sagen, du hast Sinn fiir so etwas-wie ich rnich selbst anbete, seitdem sie mich liebt! (p. 38, emphasis mine)

Werther's perception of Lotte's sympathy has enabled him to interpret the self as destiny. He feels personally ennobled, and though he might be deluded in his interpretation of Lotte's commitment, his wording suggests, significantly, an explicit awareness of self-

worth as the foundation of identity. Indeed, since Werther now wants to define himself through Lotte in otherworldly terms, he must renounce her as an object of physical desire: "Sie ist mir heilig. Alle Begier schweigt in ihrer Gegenwart. Ich weiB nie, wie mir ist, wenn ich bei ihr bin; es ist, als wenn die Seele sich mir in allen Nerven umkehrte" (p. 39). He can effectively promote his redefinition as a man of infinite and unassailable destiny only in renunciation. Reality must not alter his vision of a person whose intuited perfection indicates his own superiority to all accomplishment. As a moral being, Werther must not just exceed in his aspiring autonomy the reach of a mind perpetually constrained by the contingent world; if he is to become a standard of pure purposefulness, he must also reject the world's illusory satisfactions. Still, Werther does not adequately appreciate the implications of his assertions for some time, and he frequently succumbs to the less demanding pull of traditional romance and object love: Ich habe mir schon manchmal vorgenommen, sie nicht so oft zu sehn. Ja wer das halten konnte! Alle Tage unterlieg' ich der Versuchung und verspreche mir heilig: morgen willst du einmal wegbleiben. Und wenn der Morgen kommt, finde ich doch wieder eine unwiderstehliche Ursache, und ehe ich mich's versehe, bin ich bei ihr. (p. 41) But in rushing toward Lotte in this way, Werther threatens his most compelling purpose. In ignoring that the pull of his love-though activated by an unattainable other-is really a pull from within, he experiences spiritual confusion, or "Verwirrung" (p. 39). Apparently, the claim of the infinite, and hence superior motivation will not tolerate its distortion for very long. Werther's dominant idea of Lotte's perfection, bolstered by her unattainability, thus crystallizes in a relationship that asserts the poverty of worldly accomplishment and affirms the hidden grandeur of expressive failure. The true power of Werther's love, in fact, like the force of the lodestone mountain in his grandmother's tale (which crushed all vessels presuming to near it)39threatens with imminent collapse the imagination (his own motivational vehicle), as he approaches in Lotte the attractive object of his dreams. Accordingly, as Albert's imminent return assures her unattainablity, and so the failure of his worldly desire, Werther registers in his correspondence the thought that his own primary imaginative powers are in decline. "Ich weiB nicht, wie ich mich ausdriicken soll," he complains, "meine vor-

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27

stellende Kraft ist so schwach, alles schwimmt und schwankt so vor meiner Seele, daR ich keinen UmriR packen kann" (pp. 40-1). The same senses and imagination that had held forth the promise of self-renewal and expressive success-"was des Menschen Cluckseligkeit macht" (p. 51)-are threatened now and have become "die Quelle seines Elendes" (p. 51), the source of an acute existential pain. As the summer ends, therefore, the joys of the previous spring appear only as painful reminders to Werther of his inability to find in the actual world some semblance of the world in his mind: Das volle, warme Gefuhl meines Herzens an der lebendigen Natur, das mich mit so vieler Wonne uberstromte, das rings umher die Welt mir zu einem Paradiese schuf, wird mir jetzt zu einem unertraglichen Peiniger, zu einem qualenden Geist, der mich auf allen Wegen verfolgt. (p. 51) The question remains, though, whether his predictable defeat will mean final and paralyzing disillusionment. Or can he salvage something from a ruined life that now appears to pursue its own tragic end? As Werther continues to evoke such issues in his letter, it is interesting that he should again refer to "the repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation." However, on this occasion, he does not just recall his former visionary confidence-"wie faRte ich das alles in mein warmes Herz, fiihlte mich in der uberfliehenden Fiille wie vergottert" (p. 52); he also criticizes the presumption of the conceptual aim at its source: Armer Tor! der du alles so gering achtest, weil du so klein bist.Vom unzuganglichen Gebirge iiber die Einode, die kein Fun betrat, bis ans Ende des unbekannten Ozeans weht der Geist des Ewigschaffenden und freut sich jedes Staubes, der ihn vernimmt und lebt. (p. 52) There are regions, Werther suggests, that remain unpassable, untrod, and unexplored. Apparently, words of negative grandeur such as these, and not words of successful comprehension, have become his lexical standard of self-worth. Properly, they now humble him by evoking God's infinite power, and they force him-like Faust confronting the "Erdgei~t"~~-toacknowledge the limits of his mental grasp. But they also offer an appropriately grand image of the mind's tragically unlimited aspiring. Just the memory of such hours of desire remain a source of com-

fort, Werther concludes: "Bruder, nur die Erinnerung jener Stunden macht mir wohl" (p. 52). Indeed, to relieve his distress the shipwrecked individual need only refer to the magnitude and force of a mental effort that aims at a hopelessly distant goal. Even as he experiences the destruction of the conceptual conveyances that he hoped would carry him safely to port, he can feel the joy of his purpose as such: "Selbst diese Anstrengung, jene unsaglichen Geluste zuriickzurufen, wieder auszusprechen, hebt meine Seele uber sich selbst" (p. 52). Perhaps through the magnitude of his own infinite hopes Werther can similarly achieve a level of reflexivity that will transcend all temporal defeat. Perhaps he can recognize in death an enduring motivational impulse that exceeds his accomplishments in the world. This redemptive possibility is of particular relevance to book 2, because there, in contrast to most of book 1,Werther casts nature as an incomprehensible and destructive force, "ein ewig verschlingendes, ewig wiederkauendes Ungeheur" (p. 53). Thus, in identifying an indomitable urge to salvage the self in the face of expressive collapse and personal torment, his letter of August 18 merely anticipates the novel's conclusion. Indeed, while world and mind appear destined for absolute disintegration, and the terror of the abyss supplants in his commentaries the joys of creation-"der Schauplatz des unendlichen Lebens verwandelt sich vor mir in den Abgrund des ewig offenen Grabes" (p. 52)-Werther, like the traditional heroes of t r a g e d ~ , ~ manages ' to die in a morally significant way. Through his carefully orchestrated death he sets the stage for an interpretive standpoint that he himself recognizes only implicitly. But he thereby prepares the "good soul" engaged by his plight to interpret his end as an explicit expression of something other than either mental collapse or revolutionary outrage. Werther's famous captivation by Ossian, his proclivity for rugged terrains and storm-filled nights, and his growing fascination with death together serve a thematic end in this regard that exceeds their customary interpretation as embodiments of his helpless turmoil. His turn to Ossianic strains, in particular, is paradigmatic for the thematic course of the novel in its final phase. For it is through these elegiac rhythms that Werther mourns thc passing of an heroic age. They recall for him an irretrievable time of accomplishment while acknowledging the commemorative power of a song that praises effort as well as deed: "Aber der Gesang sol1 deinen Namen erhalten, kunftige Zeiten sollen von dir horen, horen von dem gefallenen Morar" (p. 112).

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Like the vanquished warrior on the Gaelic plain, Werther can fall reassured. He can experience redemption as an emblem of the self's relation to a developmental principle independent of the hostile world. The internal values that guide a person's effortseven in defeat-finally emerge through his story as the sign of a personal destiny without regard for actual accomplishment. The telos to which Werther is alerted through his "impossible" involvement with Lotte is in all this much like the noumenal order of Kant's critical philosophy as presented in the third critique. In both instances the mind's first moral awareness comes through its failure to process with the customary categories of understanding certain special kinds of experience. It fails, for example, to grasp realities that are threatening because of their sheer magnitude. And for Werther, as for Kant's aesthetic persona, these mental breakdowns in confronting scenes of great extension or power facilitate the recuperative response of the sublime. Kant's unique contribution to the study of sublimity concerns its placement within a comprehensive aesthetic system that maps out a topography of the mind. Hence the heuristic value of his argument in reading Werther. In analyzing subjective, or aesthetic, experience Kant describes an initial reflexivity-like that of Goethe's protagonist-that is based on "das Gefiihl der Lust oder U n l u ~ t . " ~ ~ And his presentation then similarly traces the mind's path through appetitive and contemplative phases of such awareness to reach a last transformation that recognizes an internal purposefulness independent of the sensible world. Kant calls this final turn of mind toward "eine von der Natur ganz unabhangige ZweckmaBigkeit in u ~ s ' sublime. ' ~ ~ As the supreme aesthetic moment, which involves a three-fold movement for Kant, the sublime snatches an almost moral victory from the jaws of empirical defeat. Like Goethe in Werther's letter of May 10, Kant's analysis begins with the imagination, the aspect of judgment that alerts the mind (through its contemplation of an object of beauty as a unified presentation of the manifold) to its ability to order the phenomenal world through concepts. So long as the "Einbildungskraft" successfully accomplishes this "Zusammensetzung des Mannigfaltigen der A n s ~ h a u u n g , "and ~ ~ its free-play with the understanding is maintained, man's conceptual powers are engaged and his cognitive security reinforced. Hence the "beautiful," according to Kant, is purposeful, or "zweckmaRig," in relation to the subject of contemplation, though in relation to its object, its purposefulness is indeterminate.45

When the concept of unity falls short, however, and the imagination fails to order what the senses have perceived, the aesthetic faculty's work for the understanding is disrupted, and the feeling of displeasure, or "Unlust," occurs where pleasure, or "Wohlgefallen," was earlier felt. This failure, which is occasioned in confronting either the infinitely large or the immensely powerful, is significant for Kant, because through it the mind's attention shifts from its cognitive to its moral capacity. Unlike Werther in his reverie on May 10, then, which abruptly concludes on a note of expressive failure, Kant's aesthetic persona experiences at this critical juncture only a momentary collapse, or "Hemmung der Leben~krafte,"~~ and the secondary, or negative, pleasure of "Bewunderung" or "AchtungV4' immediately follows the paralysis of the conceptual apparatus. For in reflecting on the cause of its expressive collapse, the mind comes to recognize a superior dimension unknown to it before. Infinite scope or infinite power in the respective cases of the mathematical and dynamic sublime alerts the individual to his own power of reason, which for Kant belongs exclusively to the noumenal realm of values.48 The initial two phases that Kant describes in the mind's turn to the sublime neatly duplicate the critical episodes in Werther's account of Wahlheim, first in book 1 and then after his return in book 2. Thus, until Albert arrives, Werther remains confident that the imaginative ordering of his refuge of choice authentically expresses his autonomous self. He feels his powers of mind reinforced. As with Kant's cognitively secure persona, his momentary sense of well-being confirms the belief that he can partake of the worlds he imagines. Once the rival returns, though, to shake this belief, Werther's amorous project brings to his view another aspect of reflexivity. For Lotte will presumably figure as a fixed element only in Albert's world. Only for him can she become a token of middleclass security and accomplishment. For Werther, though, she will increasingly signal the collapse of the family idyll and so, too, the disruptive effect on his aspiring mind of the inevitable "in vain": "Umsonst strecke ich meine Arme nach ihr aus, morgens, wenn ich von schweren Traumen aufdammere, vergebens suche ich sie nachts in meinem Bette, wenn mich ein gliicklicher, unschuldiger Traum getauscht hat" (p. 53). Either the imagination innocently deceives, or the mind must awaken to its own false projects-in which case the dream, as in Werther's outburst, becomes too much to bear. Left not with the prospect of a fulfilling embrace or comprehensive accomplishment, but rather with extended arms, Wer-

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ther must ominously feel in nightmarish defeat that the world he so recently constructed for himself and hoped to secure must fail him as well. Within the year, of course, these fears are confirmed, as the note of August 21, 1 7 7 2 , emphasizes. "Alles, alles ist vorubergegangen!" he laments. Kein Wink der vorigen Welt, kein Pulsschlag meines damaligen Gefuhles. Mir ist es, wie es einem Geiste sein miillte, der in das ausgebrannte, zerstorte SchloR zuriickkehrte, das er als bliihender Furst einst gebaut und mit allen Gaben der Herrlichkeit ausgestattet. . . . (p. 76)

To borrow Kant's phrase, Werther's thoughts on his painful decline, like the documentary material that traces it from the time of his departure from Wahlheim in August of 1771 until his suicide in December of 1772, attest to an existential paralysis-a "Hemmung der LebenskAftev-that has been inexorable in its advance. Thus, almost twelve months earlier, Werther admits, "Ich habe keine Vorstellungskraft, kein Gefuhl an der Natur, und die Bucher ekeln mich an. Wenn wir uns selbst fehlen, fehlt uns doch alles" (p. 53). The primary imagination, which had been his source of reflexive well-being and his foundation of existential confidence, has abandoned him here and actually threatens the self it had earlier constituted. In fact, Werther will fail consistently in all subsequent efforts to realize a love that must remain, by definition, beyond his grasp. Hence fear of overextension, sensory collapse, and even death begin to take hold: Wenn ich bei ihr gesessen bin, zwei, drei Stunden, und mich an ihrer Gestalt, an ihrem Betragen, an dem himmlischen Ausdruck ihrer Worte geweidet habe, und nun nach und nach alle meine Sinne aufgespannt werden, mir es duster vor den Augen wird, ich kaum noch hore, und es mich an die Gurgel faBt wie ein Meuchelmorder, dann mein Herz in wilden Schlagen den bedrangten Sinnen Luft zu machen sucht und ihre Verwirrung nur vermehrtWilhelm, ich weiB oft nicht, ob ich auf der Welt bin! (p. 55)

As the moment of departure from Wahlheim and Lotte approaches, Werther significantly illustrates his condition through an episodic description that duplicates through a darkened lens the structure of his reverie on May 1 0 . He thereby anticipates as well the critical phases of his exit at th3 novel's end. For all three instances depict

first a primary experience of overwhelming impact and then the breakdown of those faculties that normally process the outside world. Whatever the pain and anxiety of this failure, however, the loss, as Werther unintentionally implies, is not without possible benefit. Even now he hints that it draws him to another realm by forcing his turn from the empirical world. Perhaps, in anticipation of Kant, he will yet enjoy the negative pleasure that ensues, when at its moment of greatest despair, the mind looks beyond all temporal involvement to a destiny independent of conceptual achievements. "So mu8 ich fort, mu8 hinaus," he acknowledges, "und schweife dann weit im Felde umher; einen jahen Berg zu klettern ist dann meine Freude" (p. 55). Perhaps he will find through his love's unattainability the joyful awareness he associates with his solitary walks through the rugged landscapes and treacherous terrains and experience, in turn, the noble pleasures of the sublime.4Y The episode at the embassy at the start of book 2 is critical in this regard, because it forces upon Werther the recognition that worldly success and personal destiny are unrelated. Thus he can say of his princely benefactor, Auch schatzt er rneinen Verstand und rneine Talente rnehr als dies Herz, das doch mein einziger Stolz ist, das ganz allein die Quelle von allem ist, aller Kraft, aller Seligkeit und alles Elendes. Ach, was ich weiR, kann jeder wissen-mein Herz habe ich allein. (p. 74)

As the prime mover in his life, Werther's heart, and not his conceptual faculty, is his mark of distinction. He follows it, therefore, as one must follow the call of a personal law that knows no limits to its claims: "Ich will nur Lotten wieder naher, das ist alles. Und ich lache uber mein eigenes Herz-und tu' ihm seinen Willen" (p. 75). He follows it back to Wahlheim again, where Lotte, now married and unattainable, awaits him as the objective correlative to his infinite aspiring. Moreover, upon finding himself near her again, and confronting through her his telos, Werther captures the full magnitude of his motivation through an image that appropriately suggests his final turn toward the sublime: "Wie, wenn Albert sturbe? Du wurdest! ja, sie wurde-und dann laufe ich dem Hirngespinste nach, bis es mich a n Abgriinde fiihret, vor denen ich zuriickbebe" (p. 76, emphasis mine). In a significant and unexpected reversal, Werther pictures the possibilty of a union with Lotte in terms of vertigo and collapse. Clearly, the love that compels his return now differs from the love of the earlier idyll. Like the threat of an im-

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measurable force in nature, it pushes Werther to an existential brink. The question therefore arises: will he fall in his initial confusion, or will he regain his composure and, like Kant's serenely composed mind in its recovery. from an overwhelming jolt, intuitively recognize through his failures an inherent and unassailable disposition toward the ~nattainable?~" That Goethe traces the second and not the first of these courses in his novel and depicts his protagonist's departure as a standard of moral victory rather than empirical defeat, is suggested in part by the calm in which Werther contemplates death. Because he tends to interpret his involvement with Lotte as the consequence of a developmental "law" that is all the more grand for its unattainability, his acceptance of his end appears fatefully serene. In this regard, the similar "fate" of the simple peasant lad, who is also involved in an "impossible" relationship (having pursued, like Werther, an amorous claim that remains unfulfilled), establishes the symbolic potential of his own love for Lotte. Accordingly, Werther can, in sympathy with his spiritual brother, become convinced that a special destiny, and not some pathological obsession, is the autonomous source of his deeds. To reach an awareness of independent personal worth, though, he must respond to the imminent collapse of his world without madness or criminal p a ~ s i o n . Rather ~' than dissolve in that critical moment of terrifying despair, "da mein ganzes Wesen zwischen Sein und Nichtsein zittert, da die Vergangenheit wie ein Blitz iiber dem finstern Abgrunde der Zukunft leuchtet und alles um mich her versinkt und mit mir die Welt untergeht" (p. 86), Werther must turn himself about. He must look beyond for an instant and see through past failures not to the future's abyss, but rather to its glory-as a time of aspirations so great that, in Wordsworth's phrase, they remain "evermore about to be."52 Against this background of faith, then, and with this recuperative gesture in mind, Werther invokes others, who in death were also destined to "suffer" the world's inadequacies in the name of some transcendent mission.53 Hence, the novel's many "Christian" allusions, which like Werther's final self-configuration through Christ, establish a standard of spiritual destiny as the last measure of a life that could salvage something of hope and enduring value54only in death.55 But even before facilitating this interpretive strategy by identifying himself through (if not with) his divine a n t e ~ e d e n t , ~ " Werther unwittingly anticipates his last saving turn of mind while describing an encounter with a young madman, whom he finds

blithely "collecting flowers" on a winter heath. "Ich merkte was Unheimliches" (p. 89), he recalls, and we may assume that some hitherto unnoticed dimension to his life has engaged him.57In fact, as the stranger speaks to Werther, it becomes clear that his madness involves more than the futile search for flowers as winter nears. For the boy talks of kings and emperors and expresses a hope to honor his beloved as she deserves, once his superiors reward his service. The significance of all this, as Werther concludes in his letter, lies in the madman's inclination to attribute his unhappiness not to his own misguided desires, but to the world's deficiency, "einer irdischen Hindernis" (p. 90). Accordingly, the implication arises that if Goethe's protagonist can also rise above his earthly misfortunes and reinterpret them as a sign of his superior moral capacity, then he, too, will avoid dying "trostlos" (p. go), like the mortally ill, without comfort or hope. At this juncture, the reader could infer-as the editor does in reporting the observations of Albert's friends-that Werther's suicide resulted from a radical disorientation, that he was "possessed" by destructive affects, and insanity had set in: Unrnut und Unlust hatten in Werthers Seele irnrner tiefer Wurzel geschlagen, sich fester untereinander verschlungen und sein ganzes Wesen nach und nach eingenornrnen. Die Harrnonie seines Geistes war vollig zerstort, eine innerliche Hitze und Heftigkeit, die alle Krafte seiner Natur durcheinanderarbeitete, brachte die widrigsten Wirkungen hervor. . . . (p. 93)

Or, in light of the numerous indications of sublimity in Werther's account of his final days, he could interpret such readings as subreptions and look to the circumstances of his suicide for further indications that it was managed as a "moral" departure. Does Werther die without hope or salvation, we must ask, or does his death suggest a turning from the world, a last serene gesture that configures him in a relationship to a superior law of personal autonomy? Werther's own description of a last walk in his cherished valley on the night of December 12 indicates which of these interpretations is the more appropriate. "Nachts nach eilfe," he relates, "rannte ich hinaus": Ein fiirchterliches Schauspiel, vom Fels herunter die wiihlenden Fluten in dern Mondlichte wirbeln zu sehen, iiber iicker und Wiesen und Hecken und alles, und das weite Tal hinauf und hinab eine stiirrnende See im Sausen des Windes! (pp. 98-99)

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The terror, confusion, and overwhelming impact of nature as a destructive force suggested one of two choices to the solitary walker. Either he could plunge to his death and find an exit to match his turmoil: Da uberfiel rnich ein Schauer, und wieder ein Sehnen! Ach, rnit offenen Arrnen stand ich gegen den Abgrund und atrnete hinab! hinab! und verlor rnich in der Wonne, rneine Qualen, rneine Leiden da hinabzusturrnen! dahinzubrausen wie die Wellen! (p. 99) Or, as actually occurred, he could step from the brink and prepare for a more uplifting death, which though less "elemental" in its execution, might even be "artf~l."~"Hence,"Meine Uhr ist noch nicht ausgelaufen, ich fiihle es!" (p. 99). At a moment conducive to despair, Werther has notably begun to sense that his departure might stand as a beginning, as a figuration of promise and not just a memory of pain. In the time he has left, then, and in spite of all indications to the contrary, he gradually assures that his deed will survive as an affirmation of his life rather than its condemnation. Indeed, he even seems to have convinced the sceptical editor of the possibility: Der EntschluB, die Welt zu verlassen, hatte in dieser Zeit, unter solchen Urnstanden in Werthers Seele irnrner rnehr Kraft gewonnen. Seit der Ruckkehr zu Lotten war es irnrner seine letzte Aussicht und Hoffnung gewesen; doch hatte er sich gesagt, es solle keine ubereilte, keine rasche Tat sein, er wolle rnit der besten Uberzeugung,rnit der rnoglichst ruhigen Entschlossenheit diesen Schritt tun. (p. 100) Quite simply, Werther stages his death so that it appears publicly as a victory rather than a defeat. He refers in increasingly explicit terms to Christ, for example, and leaves for Lotte precise instructions about his burial, including a note on his "costume" and a list of props!s9 Furthermore, when he requests in this spirit that she transmit his story through her brothers and sisters-"erzahle ihnen das Schicksal ihres unglucklichen Freundes" (p. 123)-he sets the stage for his own transformation from a person into a book. Werther himself thus intuitively prepares his presentation to a world of sympathetic souls as the immensely popular "Buchlein" (p. 7), Die Leiden des jungen Werther. And he thereby ensures through its "Herausgeber" that his departure be viewed as a success, and his "sufferings" as a standard of human possibility per se. Aspirations of purposefulness so great that they cannot be realized in fact must be expressed as fiction a1onee6O

As Werther's valedictory letter to Lotte documents, then, Goethe's first novel concludes on a note more profoundly optimistic than is conveyed in the letters of the previous spring6' On December 1 2 Werther was still unprepared to die in an affirmative way. Eleven days later, though, at the same hour, he articulates the end of his spiritual odyssey, like Kant's aesthetic persona, as a radical turning and thereby saves himself from pointless self-annihilation. All personal turmoil is past, he reflects. The storms have been weathered, and the world is calm: "Alles ist so still um mich her, und so ruhig meine Seele" (p. 122). Encouraged by his renewed sense of vitality, he steps toward the window of his chamber and observes "durch die stiirmenden, voriiberfliehenden Wolken einzelne Sterne des ewigen Himmels!" (p. 122) The view refers him to the presence of something similarly eternal within himself that, like the stars, has just emerged from a cover of darkness, disappointment, and defeat. So he imagines for the moment his own participation in the divine: "Nein, ihr werdet nicht fallen!" (p. 122). And in a gesture that completes the failed transport to the heavenly Father in the letter of May 10, he concludes, "Der Ewige tragt euch an seinem Herzen, und mich" (p. 122).~' Werther's union with the Dipper is notable, for its most prominent stars, "die Deichselsterne des Wagens, des liebsten unter allen Gestirnen" (p. 122),refer him in death to the unassailable power of his love for Lotte, and by implication, to the independent and eternal law of personal destiny that he feels has guided the course of his life. "Mit welcher Trunkenheit habe ich ihn oft angesehen," he recalls, "ihn zum Zeichen, zum heiligen Merksteine meiner gegenwartigen Seligkeit gemacht!" (p. 122). Werther returns, then, within this constellation to the paternal bosom to constitute himself as a sign, a figure of failure, but also of transcendence. That is, he finally engages us by representing in all of its potential grandeur a developmental principle that is as compelling for his creator as the Categorical Imperative would be for Kant. This internal imperative, the "Damon" of the "Urworte. Orphisch" cycle (which introduces each of the chapters in my study) is an unchangeable law, and as such, it locates man's sense of self-worth within an image of pure purposefulness that resists the assault of time. Die Leiden des jungen Werther thus concludes by presenting a form of reflexivity, a "ganz unabhangige ZweckmaBigkeit,"" that establishes an inborn telos as the basis of self-fulfillment. It finally privileges a destiny that cannot be realized in life. As Werther's "Schicksal" also suggests, though, it can be recognized figuratively, in a turn toward the sublime.

The Speculative Way Self-display and Self-completion in Wilhelrn Meisters Lehrjahre

Tyche Die strenge Grenze doch urngeht gefallig Ein Wandelndes, das rnit und urn uns wandelt; Nicht einsarn bleibst du, bildest dich gesellig Und handelst wohl, so wie ein andrer handelt. Irn Leben ist's bald hin- bald widerfallig, Es ist ein Tand und wird so durchgetandelt. Schon hat sich still der Jahre Kreis geriindet, Die Larnpe harrt der Flarnrne, die entziindet.

In Werther Goethe moves toward a figuration of self that refers the individual to a destiny of autonomous purposefulness. But he does not simply end his first novel by establishing such a law. As the editor's final words suggest, the telos highlighted through Werther's temporal defeats must be read against a background of disturbing consequences for the people he touched. Hence, we are left, not with the serene transport of the valedictory letter, but with the sobering account of Werther's last convulsive hours. Albert was in shock and Lotte in mortal danger, the editor cautions, and the fear of communal unrest was widespread as well.

At issue in this concluding note is a new set of problems in the search for the self, and problems that are inextricably part of a teleological resolution to the identity issue. For in basing self-definition on an unattainable law of personal development in his first novel, Goethe has chosen to bracket the possibility of defining the self through an authentic course of action from within the world. The question remains, though, whether the sublime imperative of temporal failure might involve a pragmatic dimension as well. And if this is so, what change must the telos undergo for it to serve a more extensive social purpose? In the second of his novels, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (179596), Goethe explores these and related questions through the encounters ("Begegnungen") and growth of a protagonist who, unlike Werther, does not belatedly recognize a lofty developmental goal. Instead, the youthful Meister is thoroughly convinced that a clearly defined purpose in life will guide him to personal and public success. Thus neither uneasiness nor a hostile environment marks his early experiences; nor does his quest end by forcing his imaginative turn toward the unattainable. In contrast to his tragic predecessor, in fact, Wilhelm is propelled from the start by what he unhesitatingly portrays as destiny's call. Rather than reject an inhospitable world in a gesture of suicidal sublimation, he therefore sets out resolutely confident in his intrinsic worth.' He stands ready to accept nature's generosity, he implies, and even enrich the world by pursuing .his theatrical m i s ~ i o n . ~ The original fragment of the novel, Wilhelm Meisters theatralische Sendung3 breaks off just as Wilhelm achieves this certainty and, believing his dream in reach, decides to sign a contract as a professional actor. Significantly, his thoughts at this critical moment, together with the narrator's commentary, recall the structure of transcendence-with its phases of failure and recuperation-that mark the end of Werther's odyssey as well. Like his spiritual brother, Wilhelm of the Theatralische Sendung suspiciously views the uncontrollable circumstances of his life as repressive and unbearable: Zu denen Lasten, die unserm Freunde auflagen und ihn nach und nach gleichsam eingequetscht hatten, gesellte sich nun der Tod seines Vaters, das Schicksal der Seinigen, und prente sein Gemiit so gewaltsam zusammen, da8 er irgendwo einen Ausgang suchen m~Rte.~

And like Werther, he draws, at this point of profound confusion, on an inner resource, "die Eigenschaft der menschlichen Seele, dafi sie

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sich dann am schnellsten erhebt, wenn sie am starksten niedergedruckt ~ i r d , in " ~response to the pressures he feels: Alles wendete und kehrte sich auf und nieder und mehr als einma1 durcheinander. Endlich fiihlte er die ganze Starke seiner Jugend, schiittelte sich und trat mit einem freien mutigen Blick vor die Gegenwart, hinter welche sich frohliche Bilder der Zukunft drangten.'j

In marked contrast to Werther, though, whose story concludes with the mere intimation of self-completion, Wilhelm is willing and able to reformulate the developmental challenge of some indeterminate future as one of the present moment instead. Accordingly, the Theatralische Sendung does not end, as does Goethe's first novel, with a recuperative gesture that leads from conceptual failure to visionary success, thereby highlighting an unattainable hope. It does not raise a teleological prospect to compensate for the world's unresponsiveness. Rather, it suggests an underlying faith in its protagonist's mission, which will presumably guarantee his self-worth. In a sense, then, the Theatralische Sendung does not really "end," because it leaves the reader feeling that Wilhelm's wordly challenges can be met and his dreams secured. Apparently, in recognizing something unassailable within himself,' the individual can initiate an existential quest as well as mark its unhappy conclusion. Nonetheless, by having Wilhelm entertain the hope of translating his vision into personal and social action, Goethe has touched on a problem reminiscent of Werther's conclusion as presented in the editor's final report. After all, a reflexive expression of self-esteem hardly constitutes a theodicy. The Theatralische Sendung has only reformulated the question of autonomous development from within a positive frame. Accordingly, when Goethe returned to his manuscript some years after completing the scene in which Wilhelm signs his contract,' he restructured its ending as a problematic departure for his protagonist. By introducing his revisions with a lengthy and ironic look back at Wilhelm's childhood fascination for puppets, he fundamentally revised the figuration of the self in both Werther and the Theatralische Sendung as telos or transcendent value. Through Wilhelm's experience of the theater (his first response to destiny's call) Goethe found the means to explore in the Lehrjahre how the world handles youthful presumptions while promoting the general good. From a narrative standpoint the novel's distancing technique

enabled self-worth to emerge as only the first phase in the overall process of self-definition. Goethe could, through his narrator's irony, highlight the functional importance of Wilhelm's attachment to the theater without endorsing as an unassailable teleological principle his inflated ambition to found a national institution. As the temporal expression of an ennobling personal destiny, Wilhelm's theatrical mission thus acquires in the Lehrjahre the intermediate status of necessary illusion. It becomes a mediating form in the natural socialization of the self, but not in itself an authentic developmental goal. As such, it figures now as the problematic challenge of the novel's first five books, and not, as was still the case in the Theatralische Sendung, the rightful goal of Wilhelm's worldly aspiration. The redefinition of telos in the Lehrjahre9 parallels Wilhelm's typical vacillations between two existential attitudes" that, as motivational clusters, also mark the diverging poles of its overall structure. Accordingly, like some of the novel's readers, who have been drawn to its "poetic" features, he feels initially propelled by a spiritual destiny. Believing himself disposed toward an unassailable "God-term," he unfairly attacks, like these readers, the many prosaic motifs in his life. Whatever obstructs his fanciful flights, he implies, all those constraints that are the unfortunate consequence of socialization, must be opposed. This "poetic" tendency, which recalls the recognition of selfworth at the end of Werther and the Theatralische Sendung, includes in the Lehrjahre everything Wilhelm values more than his middle-class heritage: dramatic poetry, the theater, Mariane, the aristocratic individual, as well as Shakespeare's Hamlet, the "Stiftsdame," and his mysterious companions, the Harpist and Mignon. For in one way or another, each of these existential investments affirms for him his own infinite aspirations. And they do this while belittling the novel's second motivational cluster: the money, commerce, and wealth of the social sphere, which Wilhelm believes is replete with obstacles to authentic self-fulfillment." What the course of Wilhelm's adventures actually traces, though, in spite of his conviction that "poetry" must vanquish "prose," is a two-fold movement through which the "prosaic" establishes its rights in the developmental process (the Tower Society), only to yield to another standpoint (Felix-Natalie) that proves superior to both. The point is, while the Lehrjahre begins where Werther ends and the Theatralische Sendung stops, it continues by exploring the assumptions of their teleological resolutions, which it gradually

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recasts for reader and protagonist alike. Wilhelm finally learns to accept the reduction of his lofty ambitions from ends to means and comes to see that the individual can capitalize on self-worth by participating in the commerce of the world. He comes to regard his intimations of transcendence as enabling devices and accepts socialization as a natural process that makes the "poetic" effective and the "prosaic" valuable. And with these insights, he can, by the novel's last chapters, entertain a new vision of generational power. Only in portions of books 7 and 8, though, where his personal vantage point partially merges with the superior standpoint of the Tower Society, does Wilhelm correctly interpret the formative encounters of his life as an orderly pattern. Only here can he evaluate the discrete events of his past with reference to the rational process called "Bildung." In fact, like its guiding spirit, the Abbe, the Tower-motif in particular reifies the overall interpretive challenge to the reader to configure all that befalls Wilhelm through book 6 as opportunities for personal investment. Taken individually each of his experiences leads nowhere. But together they stand as the unforeseeable result of a speculative process and yield a sum of good fortune to the world at large and to the adventurous investor Wilhelm, who has learned the intelligent management of risk.'' Of all the motivational encounters that, as personal investments, surreptitiously participate in this process of natural beneficence, none is as telling for Wilhelm as the theater. As the focal point of a paradigmatic speculative activity, his theatrical transactions not only suggest that theoretical pre-conceptions and practical achievements can be constructively linked; they also demonstrate that even narrowly defined existential choices like Wilhelm's, or those of the commercial speculator, can produce unforeseen profits and distribute unexpected wealth to the world at large. Through book 5 , for example, where Wilhelm mounts the stage as a professional actor in the role of Hamlet, he takes each of his critical decisions with a view to freeing himself of the quotidian. Charged by his "poetic" destiny, he hopes, like Werther, to realize as personal gain his complete autonomy: "Ich komme mir vor, wie ein Gefangener, der in einem Kerker lauschend seine Fesseln abfeilt" (p. 67). However, he fails to see that in justifying his escape from the spiritual poverty of his middle-class milieu by running away with the actress Mariane, he is rejecting an ethos similar to his own. He remains unaware that, like the merchants he criticizes, he too has learned to calculate advantage in the name of a promised order of things. Like his friend Werner, he feels compelled to seize

profitable opportunities for the sake of personal gain. "Ich will nicht unbesonnen torichte, verwegene Schritte tun; mein Plan ist entworfen," he proclaims, "und ich will ihn ruhig ausfuhren" (p. 65). But he also ignores that his hope for himself, in the guise of the ennobling institution of a national theater, cannot succeed as he has planned. Wilhelm's perceived order of things of course differs from Werner's profit aim on at least one account. After all, the goal of his investment is to offer his countrymen "himmlische Genusse" (pp. 66-67). Its correlative is the prospect of personal and social transcendence and not just the accumulation of material wealth. Through his love for Mariane, which has already brought joys "die immer himmlisch genennt werden miissen, weil wir uns in jenen Augenblicken aus uns selbst geriickt, uber uns selbst erhaben fiihlen" (p. 67), Wilhelm believes that he has captured-as Werther cannot-a sublimity of self that follows life's victories and not its defeats. And this perception further convinces him that the sublime national order to which he so often refers in his existential deliberations must be realized as fact. What emerges in the Lehrjahre in sharp contrast to Werther, therefore, and defines it as a Bildungsroman, is a teleological aspiration that has been modified. Wilhelm's longing, as "eine Art realer Sehnsucht," is not content, like the "ideelle Sehnsucht" of his tragic predecessor, with a single, grand, belated intuition of transcendence.13 Instead, it casts a primary experience of happiness, the affair with Mariane,14as a sign of the world's responsiveness. In spite of the numerous obstacles in his pre-ordained path of development, Goethe's second protagonist remains confident that each moment will provide further successes, and together, these will confirm his dream of self-worth: Ja, Liebste, es ist mir gar nicht bange. Was mit so vie1 Frohlichkeit begonnen wird, muR ein gluckliches Ende erreichen. Ich habe nie gezweifelt, daR man sein Fortkommen in der Welt finden konne, wenn es einem Ernst ist, und fuhle Mut genug fur zwei, ja fur mehrere einen reichlichen Unterhalt zu gewinnen. "Die Welt ist undankbar," sagen viele; ich habe noch nicht gefunden, daR sie undankbar sei, wenn man auf die rechte Art etwas fur sie zu tun weiB. (p. 6 6 )

Wilhelm's misconception, of course, which for some time will determine his critical choices, concerns his proclivity to identify his love for Mariane, "alle Freuden der Liebe" (p. 65), and his love

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for the theater: "Das Schicksal sorgt fur die Liebe, und um so gewisser, da Liebe geniigsam ist. Mein Herz hat schon lange meiner Eltern Haus verlassen; es ist bei Dir, wie mein Geist auf der Biihne schwebt" (p. 65). In point of fact, these two personal investments already combine in book 1 to produce an ambivalent notion of destiny that seductively promises "neue Seligkeiten in dem bestatigten Gedanken der Dauer" (p. 65). Unbeknownst to Wilhelm, the providential path he plans to follow works in ways far less obvious and less direct than his self-assured declarations presume. That is, the pragmatics of "Schicksal," as the application of a conceptual frame to life's critical choices, involve more than just recognizing a telos and then expressing it in ennobling deeds. Nonetheless, since this insight is a goal and not a starting point for Wilhelm, he can, momentarily, err productively in this regard. He can, for example, justify his actions-including his deception of family and friends-by embracing a quasi-religious standard of authenticity. Furthermore, he can do this though his choices fail to distinguish authentically absolute ends from means that merely refer to an absolute in deceptively vague terms. As the letter to Mariane proclaims, "Es ist nur eine Formel unter uns, aber eine so schone Formel, der Segen des Himmels zu dem Segen der Erde" (p. 66). Ideologically confident in his aim, Wilhelm believes that decisive action must secure his vision as reality. He has sufficient funds to make his start, and once these are depleted, he characteristically asserts, "wird der Himmel weiterhelfen" (p. 66). Wilhelm's misguided faith and subsequent disillusionments notwithstanding, his unbridled spirit of adventure through book 1 is not entirely off the mark. For even while futilely grasping at his theatrical dream and investing in flawed objects in its pursuit, he drifts toward a hidden goal and an authentic destination that he will secure through his association with the Tower Society in book 7 and Felix and Natalie in book 8. What is questionable in Wilhelm's encounters, then, and what his "Bildung" must correct, is not his personal dreaming as such. Indeed, as a'novel of natural order, Goethe's prototypical Bildungsroman demonstrates that dreams often do serve a social good by encouraging participation in the affairs of the world. Wilhelm errs rather in presuming to know from the outset the precise form of his spiritual commission and in assuming that some noumenal force will guarantee each action he takes. At this early point in his education, for instance, he still dangerously confuses earthly and heavenly blessings and articulates his artistic aspirations as the fateful consequence of a divine

plan. By portraying himself as the major link in a motivational chain forged by some transcendent intelligence, he rests assured that "heaven will help" him realize his plans. He thus clings to his childhood belief in the irreconcilability of poetry and prose and unfairly criticizes the part that money plays in his life. Insensitive to the way the world works, he fails to recognize the "speculative" nature of both personal and financial investment and does not see that his intrinsic worth will produce profits only after his teleological goal has been redefined as an ennabling means. But in the words of the novel's chief ideologue, the Abbe," Wilhelm must replace this youthful faith in destiny ("Schicksal") with the challenge of reason ("Vernunft"). He must learn to welcome life's chance opportunities ("Zufall") as occasions for rational response and then gratefully accept the unexpected good fortunes that ensue. From the standpoint of Goethean epistemology, the change in emphasis from Werther to the Lehrjahre illustrates the mind's practical dependency, in the matter of self-definition, on hypothetical constructs. The motif of intrinsic worth from the earlier novel, where the self is configured through reference to an infinitely remote developmental imperative, reappears in the later novel to facilitate the self's subsequent configuration, within a conceptual framework, as performative worth. Function thus replaces value as the measure of human fulfillment, and Wilhelm's theatrical mission can be justified through the hidden aim it promotes. Accordingly, his dream of freedom for himself and his countrymen, which he invests in the theater as a national institution, will operate like all other Goethean hypotheses-as "Geriiste, die man vor dem Gebaude auffiihrt, und die man abtragt, wenn das Gebaude fertig ist. Sie sind dem Arbeiter unentbehrlich; nur muR er das Geriiste nicht fiir das Gebaude ansehn."I6 In overestimating his theatrical dreams, Wilhelm apparently confuses its form for a substance it lacks. As a Bildungsroman, though, the Lehrjahre requires of him just this kind of confusion for some time. However misguided his particular formula of purposefulness, he must presume his activities purposeful in order to further the commerce of life and guarantee his participation in a meaningful order of things. To paraphrase Goethe, who asserts in a late maxim, "Der Mensch mu8 bei dem Glauben verharren, dal3 das Unbegreifliche begreiflich sei; er wiirde sonst nicht forschen,"" Wilhelm must cling to the illusion that his theatrical mission will guarantee his intrinsic worth; otherwise he would not effect its transformation into the broader concepts of social responsibility and natural consequence that conclude his existential apprenticeship.

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In response to the challenge of an absolute spiritual imperative, then, Wilhelm lives out a contradiction without recognizing it. To reach a goal that he cannot know for some time, he naively lives within the framework of his own noble aspirations, treating "das Unmogliche," or the attainment of personal autonomy, "als wenn es moglich ware."" But since conceptualizing an ideational structure for Goethe involves its distortion-"Eine jede Idee tritt als ein fremder Gast in die Erscheinung, und wie sie sich zu realisieren beginnt, ist sie kaum von Phantasie und Phantasterei zu unterscheiden"'9-Wilhelm does this at the risk of appearing foolish and deceived by his best motivations. The narrator's irony, critically admired since the time of Friedrich Schlegel's review,20 rests largely on this productive ignorance. Indeed, the discrepancy between Wilhelm's express beliefs and the course of his life is the key to our own education as readers. His childhood polemic between the muses of tragic poetry and commerce, for example, unabashedly maintains that the two dispositions are irreconcilable. But his subsequent critical choices and their consequences continually belie his assertions, and he holds fast to the premise that "heaven" will help in his effort to escape his middle-class heritage. Furthermore, he persists in his judgment wonderously unaware that the family fortune has aided him time and again. To his way of thinking, the force of a noble idea, embraced as an ennobling destiny will, of itself, lift him to pre-ordained heights of self-attainment. The novel's reader, though, cannot fail to recognize the constructive role that the wealth of Wilhelm's father plays in preserving his theatrical dream until other, more substantial fulfillments are found. In point of fact, the money Wilhelm spurns for so long, like the way of life he so criticizes in his friend, the merchant Werner, does not differ essentially from his own theatrical aspirations: "Im Grunde aber gingen sie doch, weil sie beide gute Menschen waren, nebeneinander, miteinander nach einem Ziel und konnten niemals begreifen, warum denn keiner den andern auf seine Gesinnung reduzieren konne" (p. 61). As the basis of speculative ventures, both motivations compel their adherents to partake in the affairs of the world. Both suggest, to hopeful regisseur and entrepreneur alike, the illusory prospect of values that can be actualized without being transformed. The evolution of Wilhelm's relationship to Werner, and by implication, to the commercial aspirations he portrays, is especially in-

structive because of this unnoticed similarity between his personal dream of a national theater and his friend's of pecuniary profit. What the novel portrays in this regard are contrastive paths of development that begin poles apart, then converge near the end of Wilhelm's adventures, only to diverge again almost at once. Werner's initial standpoint, which is formulated at length in book 1, takes up the conclusion to Wilhelm's polemic in verse, which, to Werner's mind, grossly misrepresents his own mission. Wilhelm's fanciful allegory, he recalls, "ist nicht im geringsten lobenswiirdig; schon vormals argerte mich diese Komposition genug und zog dir den Unwillen des Vaters zu. Es mogen ganz artige Verse sein; aber die Vorstellungsart ist grundfalsch" (p. 37). Apparently, then as now, Wilhelm's muse of tragedy, his "Tochter der Freiheit," of whom he fondly claimed in the preceding chapter, "das Gefiihl ihrer selbst gab ihr Wiirde und Stolz" (p. 32), derives her dignity as much from an external contrast as any innate virtue." And, as Werner further protests, the cost of Wilhelm's insipient contrast between art and commerce is a distortion that he, as a promising merchant. must correct: Ich erinnere rnich noch deines personifizierten Gewerbes, deiner zusamrnengeschrurnpften erbarrnlichen Sibylle. Du rnagst das Bild in irgendeinem elenden Krarnladen aufgeschnappt haben. Von der Handlung hattest du darnals keinen Begriff. (p. 37)

Indeed, at the time of this interview as well, Wilhelm still appears to lack Werner's sense for the beauty of trade. He has yet to appreciate, as his friend, its human dynamics. Decidedly, the moment belongs to the merchant, who continues his rhapsody by articulating an ideology more advanced than Wilhelm's current beliefs or, for that matter, beyond his own subsequent development: Ich wuRte nicht, wessen Geist ausgebreiteter ware, ausgebreiteter sein rnuRte, als der Geist eines echten Handelsrnannes. Welchen ~ b e r b l i c kverschafft uns nicht die Ordnung, in der wir unsere Geschafte fuhren! Sie 1aRt uns jederzeit das Ganze uberschauen, ohne da8 wir notig hatten, uns durch das Einzelne verwirren zu lassen. (p. 37)

Like the ethos of the reorganized Tower Society, which secretly surveys Wilhelm's existential investments and guides his education, Werner's spirit of authentic commerce offers the individual a unifying concept through which discrete financial investments can

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be accommodated into a satisfying whole. Assisted by the wonder of double-entry bookkeeping, "eine der schonsten Erfindungen des menschlichen Geistes" (p. 37), the merchant can similarly survey a world he has helped to create himself. While pursuing his eudaemonistic aims on a foundation of "Ordnung und Klarheit" (p. 37), and tabulating daily "die Summe seines wachsenden Glucks" (pp. 37-38), he too can rest assured that his is a spiritual charge, "da8 manche Fahigkeiten des Geistes auch dabei ihr freies Spiel haben konnen" (p. 38). Wilhelm, nonetheless, only listens to Werner's enthusiastic apology in bemused detachment, since he knows that his superior poetic charge, now confirmed by his love for Mariane, requires that he free himself from all that his friend has just elevated: Er glaubte den hellen Wink des Schicksals zu verstehen, das ihm durch Marianen die Hand reichte, sich aus dem stockenden, schleppenden burgerlichen Leben herauszureiflen, aus dem er schon so lange sich zu retten gewunscht hatte. (p. 35)

That his heritage might involve alternate purposes, or the ledger offer the same chance for personal fulfillment as the stage, does not as yet figure in his thoughts. Nor does he appreciate the insubstantial foundation of his theatrical ambition, "ein Gemalde auf Nebelgrund" (p. 35), or its sole possible redemption as "eine lebendige H e ~ r i s t i k . "For ~ ~ the moment he does not appreciate, as does Werner, that intimations of intrinsic worth, if conceptualized as projects of personal enrichment, can serve a social purpose without being realized as such. At this point in the narration, Werner surpasses Wilhelm in all these regards. In addition to the promise of personal gain that his profession involves, he can, in line with Adam Smithz3or KantZ4or the Tower Society's Abbe, discern its ultimate, and less obvious aim. And so he concludes his panegyric on trade with the novel's most direct and extensive justification of the speculative life, which his artistic friend continues to view as a standard of inauthenticity. All merchants, Werner offers, in turning risk to personal advantage, do not just enrich themselves by accumulating profits. As a mere aggregate of competing desires, these managers of the market do not only capitalize on their skill, "durch alle Arten von Spedition und Spekulation einen Teil des Geldes und Wohlbefindens, das in der Welt seinen notwendigen Kreislauf fuhrt, an sich zu rei8en" (p. 38). Each also guarantees through the commercial community he has

helped to create universal participation in a "natural" process. The motivation for individual profit, Werner concludes, results in an ideal commerce of goods that finally facilitates an authentically economic distribution of the world's wealth: Wirf einen Blick auf die naturlichen und kunstlichen Produkte aller Weltteile, betrachte, wie sie wechselweise zur Notdurft geworden sind! Welch eine angenehme, geistreiche Sorgfalt ist es, alles, was in dem Augenblicke am meisten gesucht wird und doch bald fehlt, bald schwer zu haben ist, zu kennen, jedem, was er verlangt, leicht und schnell zu verschaffen, sich vorsichtig in Vorrat zu setzen und den Vorteil jedes Augenblickes dieser groRen Zirkulation zu genienen! (p. 38) Each merchant can thus point with pride to the part he plays in the growth and well-being of society at large: "Die geringste Ware siehst du im Zusammenhange mit dem ganzen Handel, und eben darum haltst du nichts fiir gering, weil alles die Zirkulation vermehrt, von welcher dein Leben seine Nahrung zieht" (p. 38). By viewing even the most unlikely circumstance as a speculative opportunity and redeeming the most trivial products as parts of a conceptual whole that measures individual effort in terms of sustenance and life, Werner implicitly promises to transform and transcend his original motivation of monetary reward. However, neither an individual nor a social balance sheet can entirely accommodate the true sum of life, what Wilhelm earlier called "das eigentliche Fazit des Lebens" (p. 37) and insisted the commercial accountant ignores. Indeed, even Werner must acknowledge, uncharacteristically, that the merchant's ultimate reward for the assumption of risk lies with his incalculable adventure in the world: Nicht in Zahlen allein, mein Freund, erscheint uns der Gewinn; das Gluck ist die Gottin der lebendigen Menschen, und um ihre Gunst wahrhaft zu empfinden, muR man leben und Menschen sehen, die sich recht lebendig bemuhen und recht sinnlich geniehen. (p. 40) Ironically, as the Lehrjahre unfolds from this early exchange of views between the inspired artist and merchant, and the former sets out to pursue his theatrical mission while the latter follows his pecuniary dream, it is Wilhelm's collective experiences that illustrate Werner's theory of natural beneficence. Seizing upon chance opportunities time and again and capitalizing on unperceived errors while binding others to himself through the unforeseen conse-

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quences of his acts, it remains for him to exemplify the Tower Society's notion of speculative self-investment. Wilhelm's efforts, then, and not those of his friend, will bring safely to port the inestimable good fortune to which Werner refers. He, above all, will retrieve the treasure from the treacherous elemental depths, "dem falschen Wasser" (p. 40), and return home with the priceless cargo, his son?

Between Wilhelm's long delayed departure from home near the start of book 2 and his choice by book 8 to abandon the stage once and for all, Goethe explores his speculative theatrical adventure in extensive and, from the standpoint of Werner's accounting ideal, revealing detail. Specifically, he examines Wilhelm's pursuit of his mission, including its explicit ideological justification, with a view to its functional importance in his overall development. Moreover, to highlight its similarity to Werner's mission and thereby demonstrate that personal and financial speculation work remarkably alike, the narrator associates money and pecuniary issues with many of Wilhelm's decisions en route to his professional debut as Hamlet.'" In terms of the ledger, Wilhelm's aim to mount the stage expresses a hope of personal profit no less compelling in his view than Werner's aim to amass as much personal capital as his talents permit. The driving concept behind the artistic venture, which he periodically articulates until the news of his father's deathz7and summarizes in a lengthy letter to Werner, is the aristocratic ideal of graceful self-display." In matters of personal development, Wilhelm asserts, the man of noble birth enjoys a clear advantage over the commoner, who feels split from within and can entertain selfcompletion only as an alluring prospect. Not only does the aristocrat enjoy the harmonious interplay among all of his faculties; he also experiences the satisfaction of personal expression-"eine gewisse allgemeine, wenn ich sagen darf, personelle Ausbildung" (p. 290). By contrast, the commoner makes himself useful or, at best, attains intellectual prominence. He cannot, though, achieve through the simple admiration of his person as total effect the dignity of the nobleman's self-sufficient personality: "seine Personlichkeit geht aber verloren, er mag sich stellen, wie er will" (p. 290). The aristocrat, then, who associates exclusively in elegant circles,

dutifully projects a pose of unstudied self-possession, Wilhelm concludes. He counts among his peers by virtue of posture alone. And since this is so, "da er mit seiner Figur, mit seiner Person, es sei bei Hofe oder bei der Armee, bezahlen mu8" (p. 290), he instinctively cuts his public figure to show habitually "dab er etwas auf sie halt" (p. 290). By valuing his outward appearance and reducing nobility to formalized performative gestures, he guarantees his self-worth in the eyes of the world: Eine gewisse feierliche Grazie bei gewohnlichen Dingen, eine Art von leichtsinniger Zierlichkeit bei ernsthaften und wichtigen kleidet ihn wohl, weil er sehen lafit, da8 er iiberall im Gleichgewicht steht. Er ist eine offentliche Person, und je ausgebildeter seine Bewegungen, je sonorer seine Stimme, je gehaltner und gemessener sein ganzes Wesen ist, desto vollkommner ist er. (p. 290)

Not unlike the long columns of figures in the merchant's tables, which also yield a satisfactory net result, the discrete calculations of bodily effect in Wilhelm's idealized aristocrat combine to produce a pleasing human totality that exists for the sake of a net public appearance. Consequently, a noble image of harmony and serene self-presence emerges in Wilhelm's discussion as the universal standard of self-completion: Wenn er sich auI3erlich in jedem Momente seines Lebens zu beherrschen wein, so hat niemand eine weitere Forderung an ihn zu machen, und alles iibrige, was er an und um sich hat, Fahigkeit, Talent, Reichtum, alles scheinen nur Zugaben zu sein. (pp. 290-91)

Not surprisingly, Wilhelm's aristocratic ideal figures for some time in his own developmental adventure as a personal standard as well. After all, it has already helped guide him to this critical point as an ideological principle of the first order. And through the theater, it will now enable him, he believes, to plan and measure the success of his further self-investment. In any case, driven by an intuitive sense of purpose, he has always sought the balanced selfdisplay of the nobility, he claims; his intuitions must only become conscious acts to guarantee continued success. Hence he summarizes "rnit einem Worte" (p. 290), or in a single, unambiguous phrase, what was, until this moment, just a goal without a way: Mich selbst, ganz wie ich da bin, auszubilden, das war dunkel von Jugend auf mein Wunsch und meine Absicht. Noch hege ich eben

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diese Gesinnungen, nur dafi mir die Mittel, die mir es moglich machen werden, etwas deutlicher sind. [p. 290)

The means to his end, Wilhelm suggests, "zu jener harmonischen Ausbildung meiner Natur, die mir meine Geburt versagt" (p. 291), lie in the theater, which he now grasps for the first time as an enabling device. For it promises him, as a disadvantaged son of the middle-class, the opportunity to learn what the nobleman intrinsically offers the world at large "durch die Darstellung seiner Person" (p. 291): Ich habe, seit ich Dich verlassen, durch Leibesubung viel gewonnen; ich habe viel von meiner gewohnlichen Verlegenheit abgelegt und stelle mich so ziemlich dar. Ebenso habe ich meine Sprache und Stimme ausgebildet, und ich darf ohne Eitelkeit sagen, daR ich in Gesellschaften nicht miRfalle. Nun leugne ich Dir nicht, daR mein Trieb taglich uniiberwindlicher wird, eine offentliche Person zu sein, und in einem weitern Kreise zu gefallen und zu wirken. (pp. 291-92)

Through gesture and voice, and the fine art of self-display that only the theater can teach, Wilhelm asserts to have found the path to social accomplishment. The pleasing effects of his acting, he implies, will secure his place in a public realm as complete as the sum of discrete individuals that together constitute society's harmonious whole: Auf den Brettern erscheint der gebildete Mensch so gut personlich in seinem Glanz als in den obern Klassen; Geist und Korper mussen bei jeder Bemuhung gleichen Schritt gehen, und ich werde da so gut sein und scheinen konnen als irgend anderswo. (p. 292)

In light of Wilhelm's ideological justification of his professional choice, his most important adventures following the Mariane affair appear not only as a series of formative encounters in accord with his stated aim, but also as the personal investments of people who have been similarly propelled in their lives by clearly articulated purposes. In most of these cases the individuals in question have been guided by more restrictive concepts than Wilhelm's. But all of the "personalities" he happens upon while finding his way toward the Tower Society in books 7 and 8 share with him an ideological disposition no less essential than his own theatrical one for their speculative success.

No two of these episodic strands diverge more than Philine's, which presents the novel's most alluring and irrepressible evanescence, and the pietistic aunt's of book 6. Yet both characters, who are committed to opposite points-of-view ("Gesinnungen"), help Wilhelm clarify his own conceptual needs. And both therefore contribute to his socialization. Philine, who figures on the "credit" side of his existential account, represents through her person the charms and excitements of the playful Not only does she revive Wilhelm's interest in the fortunes of life by increasing his receptivity for the incalculable gifts of each discrete moment; in the aftermath of his devastating affair with Mariane, she demonstrates that love must not depend on a distant telos, or mark some providential path, to satisfy. As her personal formula for happiness implies, love remains largely a matter of chance opportunities and disinterested joys: "Und wenn ich dich lieb habe, was geht's dich an?" (p. 235). In this, as Laertes suggests, Philine is "the true Eve," pure f e m i n i n i t ~ , ~ or" the "Stammutter des weiblichen Geschlechts" (p. 100). She distracts Wilhelm from his typically insubstantial hopes and, through her exemplary enjoyment of nature's enticements, restores his confidence in a world he was meant to inhabit and enrich. By contrast, the "schone Seele" of book 6 is guided by an ascetic ideology that requires absolute commitment to the law of her own unassailable individuality. Even in her youth, she recalls, all things depended on this. Then as now, she was certain "da8 alles von der Beschaffenheit meiner Seele abhing" (p. 377). Like Werther's charge of autonomy, or Wilhelm's theatrical purpose at the start of his journey, her spiritual orientation grounds her existence. But her honesty about this path, her "regelmaRige Selbsttatigkeit" (p. 407), which has produced the high-principled application of her mission to all of her choices, also suggests of her, as Laertes does of Philine, "daR sie keine Heuchlerin ist" (p. 100).Like her sensual counterpart, then, the aunt, who closes the phase of Wilhelm's adventure that Philine begins, finds peace in one-sidedness. She can rest assured that she has created in her self an ideologically pure individual: Dan ich immer vorwarts, nie ruckwarts gehe, daR meine Handlungen immer mehr der Idee ahnlich werden, die ich mir von der Vollkommenheit gernacht habe, daR ich taglich mehr Leichtigkeit fuhle, das zu tun, was ich fur recht halte, selbst bei der Schwache meines Korpers, der mir so manchen Dienst versagt: laI3t sich das alles aus der menschlichen Natur, deren Verderben ich so tief eingesehen habe, erklaren? Fiir mich nun einmal nicht. (p. 420)

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In short, she can feel secure, because she has lived in accord with a concept of self-completion that postulates a radically reduced developmental goal. In order to find her place in the world, she has simply expanded it from within. By excluding all that does not serve the clarification of her essential nature, she has extended her interior space, as Werther could not, until it accommodates all of her needs. That the aunt's ideological expression of the developmental telos involves the most delicate confusion of the subjective and objective poles3' is of no consequence to this emblem of pure inwardness, who concludes her confessions by characterizing her motivation as a divinely sanctioned force, "ein Trieb, der mich leitet und mich immer recht fiihret" (p. 420). For Wilhelm, however, her memoir offers a negative account of what Philine's sensuality had begun to exemplify positively some time before. Through both personalities, that is, through the spirited sensualist first and then the passionate spiritualist, he experiences the effectiveness of ideological commitment. He comes to recognize the performative, or functional, value of the guiding idea (eidos) in constituting an intensively harmonious, if not universally, capable i n d i ~ i d u a l . ~ ' Such radical consistency of purpose, expressed through the adherence to a single motivating principle is, I have argued, at the heart of Wilhelm's own existential speculations. Unlike Philine or the "Stiftsdame," though, Wilhelm revises his personal goal over the years. Thus, even as he articulates his reason for pursuing the aristocratic ideal in the letter to Werner, he has, without realizing, already outgrown his particular version of human emulation. Through good fortune and the beneficent supervision of his unknown friends from the Tower Society, he has begun to collect experiences that will enable him to reformulate his own guiding ethos, and, while turning from its limited contents, still benefit from its formal effectiveness. Accordingly, as Wilhelm nears the conclusion of his apprenticeship, he replaces his ideal of the outwardly graceful and universally effective personality with the Abbe's concept of social harmony-a quintessentially rational, and hence natural order of things. But he appreciates this pivotal change himself only after abandoning the stage. Hence it remains for the reader to note the narrator's irony and recognize as deficient an ideology that Wilhelm naively pursues for some time.33 The impulse to appropriate the aristocratic ideal through the theater begins to take shape in book 3, where Wilhelm enjoys his

first contact with the aristocratic world in a fleeting affair with the "beautiful countess" and a fledgling effort at dramatic art. Together, the narrator suggests, these experiences reconfirm a longstanding belief in the mutual power of love, literature, and personal elegance-"der Liebe, des poetischen Hervorbringens und der personlichen Darstellung" (p. 80)-and Wilhelm welcomes them in the hope of renewing his earlier commitment to the stage. Brashly evoking his old dream, "das Cute, Edle, GroBe durch das Schauspie1 zu versinnlichen" (p. 106), he therefore sets out again at the end of book 2, with his faith shaken but not destroyed by the Mariane affair, to reinstate his personal purpose in life. Wilhelm's new adventure begins with an unexpected appearance at his inn of a small cortege of petty nobility, whose acquaintance he feels driven to make. Significantly, just a momentary glance toward the countess moves him to change his plans and accompany his new theatrical friends, who have already been invited to perform at the count's nearby estate. In the narrator's words, Wilhelm sees in this happy encounter an opportunity to educate himself about life and humanity as a whole: ". . . unser Freund, der auf Menschenkenntnis ausging, wollte die Gelegenheit nicht versaumen, die groBe Welt naher kennen zu lernen, in der er viele Aufschliisse uber das Leben, uber sich selbst und die Kunst zu erlangen hoffte" (p. 154). He therefore seizes the chance and follows the decision with his first extensive justification of an ideological standpoint that will gradually dominate his thinking and intrude on his actions time and again. Those of privileged birth, he muses, must benefit from their innate worth, "ein angeborenes Vermogen" (p. 154), and all they undertake must succeed: "Wie sicher bluhet ein Handel, der auf ein gutes Kapital gegriindet ist" (p. 154). Not only are such people well-equipped to judge the value of earthly things, "den Wert und Unwert irdischer Dinge" (p. 154); they are also the first to penetrate a matter's essential core: "Wer kann seinen Geist friiher auf das Notwendige, das Nutzliche, das Wahre leiten!" (p. 154). Unaware that he has ironically drawn on commercial metaphors to portray aristocratic virtue, Wilhelm continues through book 3 to flourish in the pomp and circumstance of the "lesser great." As yet unwilling to admit the incongruity of his situation, he participates in a "noble" masquerade expecting to bask in the light of his hosts' "natural" glory. But he does not recognize that the lustre he cherishes in them, and his own misguided vanity, are only intermediate phases in the process of authentic socialization. For the masks

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through which these persons speak separate rather than unite. As no inner harmony lies beneath their powder and rouge, moreover, theirs is a public display that deceives. The effects they produce are superficial, and in spite of their alluring sociability, no nourishing human exchange thrives in their world. Indeed, as Wilhelm's impetuous embrace of the countess suggests, personal contact is possible among his aristocratic associates of this book only inauthentically, as farce.34Hence the comic deception of the count in which the young merchant demeans his misplaced passion for the beautiful wife of his host and contributes subsequently to her own perception of intimacy as a cancerous threat and to her husband's exaggerated fear of death. The hidden logic of Wilhelm's education nonetheless requires that he not abandon his commitment to the theater just yet. That is, he must still happen upon Shakespeare and come to see that elegance does not equal nobility as a developmental goal, even as he pursues through the stage the grace of elegant society. And he must learn to appreciate an alternate challenge in Shakespeare's poetic vision, even as he seeks the director Serlo in book 4 and announces a short time later his decision to mount the stage professionally in pursuit of the aristocratic ideal of self-display. Indeed, only after Wilhelm answers Shakespeare's call by preparing his performance of Hamlet, will he be able to flee theatrical artifice altogether and accept the natural dignity of social responsibility. Only then, and near the end of the novel, will he feel content in his quest and look to both future and.past at last certain of his role in the productive sum of events that constitute the natural progress of mankind.35 What Wilhelm gains through his study of Shakespeare's tragedy in particular is an appreciation for man's natural nobility. The Bard, he discovers, articulates the problem of human destiny without offering facile or obvious solutions: "Es scheint, als wenn er uns alle Ratsel offenbarte, ohne daR man doch sagen kann: 'hier oder dort ist das Wort der Auflosung' " (p. 192). Shakespeare's plays exemplify the need to conceptualize human affairs and ascribe a natural consequence to human motivation. But they do not therefore assume that the governing principle in a person's life involves categories that are free of ambivalence. Nature, Wilhelm argues, is a case in point: Seine Menschen scheinen natiirliche Menschen zu sein, und sie sind es doch nicht. Diese geheimnisvollsten und zusammengesetztesten Geschopfe der Natur handeln vor uns in seinen Stiicken, als

wenn sie Uhren waren, deren Zifferblatt und Gehause man von Kristall gebildet hatte, sie zeigen nach ihrer Bestimmung den Lauf der Stunden an, und man kann zugleich das Rader- und Federwerk erkennen, das sie treibt. (p. 192) In other words, Shakespeare's art suggests that human actions are governed in some organized fashion. It recognizes a dynamic regularity in human affairs. Yet while presuming an ideological center, his plays also refuse to specify determining ideas. The forces underlying human motivation apparently resist straightforward accounting. Within the Shakespearean universe, man is finally like a clock with a transparent face and visible works. Consequently, Wilhelm must learn to pursue his own self-definition and to conduct his existential speculations in search of temporal continuities rlnd conceptual clarity without ignoring life's enigmatic foundation in threatening elemental drives. In accord with the mechanism of speculative investment, however, he will capitalize on his interest in Shakespeare indirectly and only gradually. Wilhelm will soon find the conceptual key to Hamlet through a tone in which he can play the part "mit allen Abweichungen und Schattierungen" (p. 217), but he will clarify the role that "nature" has played in his own affairs only after his performance is over. Nor will his acting success in book 5 stem from any native talent.36Rather, like the dilettante who chooses his roles to fit his existential situation, Wilhelm plays Hamlet effectively, because, as Jarno suggests, he is merely playing h i m ~ e l f . ~Still, ' in bringing to view through his interpretation of the play a concept of nature that acknowledges man's intrinsic nobility, his patrimonial aspirations, and the importance in life, as in art, of unifying concepts, the Lehrjahre's protagonist also facilitates a final and adequate accounting of his own past. Shakespeare's attitude toward self-worth, as it crystallizes in Wilhelm's reading of Hamlet, represents in the Lehrjahre a final look at the teleological question that concludes Werther and that still figures as an existential goal in the Theatralische Sendung. To examine it, he first considers what Hamlet must have been like before the death of the king: Ich suchte jede Spur auf, die sich von dem Charakter Hamlets in friiher Zeit vor dem Tode seines Vaters zeigte; ich bemerkte, was unabhangig von dieser traurigen Begebenheit, unabhangig von den nachfolgenden schrecklichen Ereignissen dieser interessante Jiing-

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ling gewesen war, und was er ohne sie vielleicht geworden ware. (p. 21 7, emphasis mine) The Prince, he concludes, is intrinsically worthy of attention and concern (like Werther). Independent of the subsequent tragic course of events, he is interesting. And this interest, which is highlighted, though not determined by the outcome of the play, rests on Hamlet's "princely" essence, his natural dignity and the spiritual aspiration at its source: Zart und edel entsprossen, wuchs die konigliche Blurne unter den unrnittelbaren Einfliissen der Majestat hervor; der Begriff des Rechts und der fiirstlichen Wiirde, das Gefiihl des Guten und Anstandigen rnit dern BewuRtsein der Hohe seiner Geburt entwickelten sich zugleich in ihm. Er war ein Fiirst, ein geborner Fiirst, und wiinschte zu regieren, . . . (p. 217) As seen through Wilhelm's eyes, Hamlet's driving aspiration, like his own, aims at a superior standpoint. In both cases a position is sought above or beyond the quotidian from which the world can be ruled in accord with a universal notion of virtue and justice. However, in an interpretive turn that revises the transcendent quality of Hamlet's telos, Wilhelm refers to his model through a series of organic images and so touches on an aspect of self-definition that his own self-image still lacks. By recognizing a natural principle at work in the destiny of his dramatic counterpart, he has also implicitly recognized an order to human affairs that operates within life rather than beyond it. But he still must determine the significance of such a principle in his own existential accounting. Wilhelm's search for "~bersicht"and "Folge" (p. 217) in Shakespeare's play, then, cannot conclude with his association of human nobility and natural process. He therefore takes up the issue of "nature" in a second interpretation a short time later, as though propelled by the cognitive force of his earlier formulation. Only now, hoping to refine his conceptual key, he considers Hamlet's circumstances through their presentation within the play and evaluates the hero's choices in light of old Hamlet's death. "Denken Sie sich einen Prinzen, wie ich ihn geschildert habe," he explains to Aurelie, dessen Vater unvermutet stirbt. Ehrgeiz und Herrschsucht sind nicht die Leidenschaften, die ihn beleben; er hatte sich's gefallen lassen, Sohn eines Konigs zu sein; aber nun ist er erst genotigt, auf den

Abstand aufmerksamer zu werden, der den Kijnig vom Untertanen scheidet. Das Recht zur Krone war nicht erblich, und doch hatte ein langeres Leben seines Vaters die Anspriiche seines einzigen Sohnes mehr befestigt und die Hoffnung zur Krone gesichert. (p. 244)

Apparently, the similarity between Wilhelm and Hamlet does not end with their teleological aspirations. For like his royal counterpart upon the death of his father, the novel's protagonist is driven upon his own father's death to re-establish, and so personally authorize, what had seemed a pre-ordained spiritual mission. At this point in his life, Wilhelm's attention, like Hamlet's, must turn from a theoretical interest in destiny to the more pragmatic question of his full and legitimate participation in the generational order of things. Birth alone will secure for neither his succession to the father's generative power, and so the charge to each upon the precursor's death is clear: claim your patrimony and provide for the family kingdom.38 The ghost's ringing "Erinnere dich meiner!" (p. 245) must translate for Wilhelm into the equally compelling imperative of his own absent father as orchestrated by the Abbe during the premiere performance of Shakespeare's play: "Zum erstenund letztenmal! Flieh! Jiingling, flieh!" (p. 328) If Wilhelm's personal worth is to be guaranteed, then he must abandon the stage at once. He will locate his authentic mission only when he grasps the rights and duties of the father. He will end his apprenticeship when he occupies, once and for all, the unique position of progenitor. The telos, after passing through its ideological phase, must give way to the arche in the quest for the self. This redefinition cannot take place, though, and Wilhelm cannot stake his claim as Felix's father with Natalie at his side, until he acknowledges the surreptitious organizing role played by "nature" in his existential speculations. He must finally recognize what he fails to see while studying and performing Hamlet: his own figuration through the concept of aristocratic self-display is limited, and a superior concept-as embodied in the principles of the Tower Society-was at work all the while he pursued his mistaken goal. In short, Wilhelm has yet to accept the fortunate and unforeseen sum of his varied personal investments as a natural consequence. And in this regard, it is Shakespeare's tragedy that again instructs him about the concept of natural order and prepares him to accept the Society's ideology of natural beneficence as the key to the happiness he progressively wins.39 In his scattered speculations on Hamlet, which all revolve about

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the hidden "sense" of the play, Wilhelm admits that no single interpretation could resolve the complexities of the work. Nonetheless, the interrelationship among its various levels of action, he suggests, reveals a consistency unavailable to the casual glance: "Der Held hat keinen Plan, aber das Stiick ist planvoll" (p. 254). Shakespeare's is no conventional revenge tragedy, for its circumstances have a life of their own. The "ungeheure Tat" (p. 254), Claudius' murder of the king, "walzt sich in ihren Folgen fort," and in spite of the characters' explicit intentions, tragic consequences ensue-"wie wunderbarW-as though driven by that prior event: "Weder Irdischen noch Unterirdischen kann gelingen, was dem Schicksal allein vorbehalten ist. Die Gerichtsstunde kommt. Der Bose fallt mit dem Guten. Ein Geschlecht wird weggemaht, und das andere sproBt auf" (pp. 254-55). Though Wilhelm's moment of reckoning, in contrast to Hamlet's, recalls theodicy rather than tragedy, Goethe's Bildungsroman traces, in a spirit similar to Wilhelm's interpretation of Shakespeare's play, a course for its protagonist that is at continual odds with his explicit intentions. Hence, the secret aim of the novel shows a net gain and not a net loss. In Felix, his son, and Natalie, his betrothed, Wilhelm records a sum of good fortune in his existential ledger that miraculously makes good the earlier misfortune of his affair with Mariane. While his summation of Hamlet in book 5 still evokes the power of fate, then, and he continues to refer to his personal destiny for some time, through books 7 and 8 he revises this view. Responding to the influence of his friends from the Tower Society and its leader, the Abbe-who, as Jarno suggests, fancies himself a providential instance of sorts (p. 554)40-Wilhelm gratefully accepts the role of a beneficent existential force in his life and concludes his education hoping to work in and through the world rather than above or beyond it.

Much like Wilhelm's "transparent clock," the Lehrjahre, in its last two books, brings into view a "Rader- und Federwerk" (p. 192) of its own. Known as the Tower Society, this governing mechanism not only mysteriously participates in the protagonist's early development; it clarifies and sums up, as a "narrative" instance, his discrete personal investments through book 6.41As Jarno explains, the secret society was originally a youthful experiment founded by a small group of friends in the naive hope of bettering the world.

However, as typically happens with the young, their seriousness of purpose was shrouded in ceremony and, being more form than substance, it obscured their foolish ambitions and intents: Die Neigung der Jugend zum Geheimnis, zu Zeremonien und groRen Worten ist auflerordentlich und oft ein Zeichen einer gewissen Tiefe des Charakters. Man will in diesen Jahren sein ganzes Wesen, wenn auch nur dunkel und unbestimmt, ergriffen und beriihrt fiihlen. Der Jiingling, der vieles ahnet, glaubt in einem Geheimnisse viel zu finden, in ein Geheimnis viel legen und durch dasselbe wirken zu miissen. (pp. 548-49)

In its inception as ritual and mystery this haven of the novel's social engineers recalls Wilhelm's childhood fascination for theatrics. He, no less than his future associates, we have been told, enjoyed as a youngster that obscure sense of purpose veiled in the cloak of self-righteousness. He, too, felt naively assured of his selfworth. Hence, the "mystical curtain" (p. 17) behind which he manipulated his wooden troupe, the locked doors of the "sacred" cupboard and its alluring sweets (p. 19), the attic refuge where, as prospective leader of an uneducated nation, he first secretly read the play of tiny David's victory over the "Philistine" Goliath (p. Z l ) , and the "oriental" bedroom of his hopeful prayers and forbidden dreams. Still, such youthful intuitions of purposefulness would have been of little consequence to either Wilhelm or his aristocratic friends of books 7 and 8, had they not been translated into pragmatic courses that gradually merge into a single course of natural and social progress. Obscure beginnings are a necessary part of clarified ends, Goethe implies in the Lehrjahre, but their effectiveness depends on a regulatory mechanism of which the enthusiastic young are unaware. And, in accord with this insight, his novel's last two books reify the process of universal clarification through the Tower Society and its leader, whose ideology of personal and social accounting offers a superior narrative vantage point for Wilhelm and reader alike. The view from the Tower, then, enables Wilhelm to redeem the "errors" of his past. By enjoying an unexpected profit that falls to him as a consequence of his misplaced enthusiasms, he demonstrates that nature protects those who, like himself, set out in the world equipped only with their untested faith. Such youthful idealists might risk the pursuit of false riches in committing themselves to personal ideas of good fortune. But

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their efforts also promote the commerce of life, and so work surreptitiously for the general good. All who inhabit the "heights" of books 7 and 8 do not share identical views or follow identical purposes, however. Indeed, their secret corporation, which is transformed into an economic organization dedicated to the security and well-being of society during a revolutionary era,42 includes a remarkable variety of individuals. Furthermore, while all of them together promote a single concept of natural order and progress, each is variously aware of nature's hidden works, and each variously represents its positive and visible effects. Among these complementary views from the Tower, the most limited one belongs to Jarno, who in explaining to Wilhelm the liberal attitude of the Abbe, calls attention to his own low regard for the youthful obfuscations of his friends. "Ich konnte mich am wenigsten in dieses Wesen finden" (p. 549), he reminisces: Ich war alter als die andern; ich hatte von Jugend auf klar gesehen, und wiinschte in allen Dingen nichts als Klarheit; ich hatte kein ander Interesse, als die Welt zu kennen, wie sie war, und steckte mit dieser Liebhaberei die iibrigen besten Gefahrten an. . . . (p. 549)

A person's need for clarity will hardly suffer self-delusions or, for that matter, the delusions of others, Jarno implies. Hence, an urge to act as if the order of things can be completely known has dominated his relationships with others. A dangerous cynicism, for example, and an occasionally ruthless analytical intelligence have persistently warned Wilhelm through the course of his career of misguided ambitions. Jarno cannot tolerate seeing his friend waste his personal resources on the theater, and so he exhorts him from the start, like a relentless cost accountant, to abandon this venture at once. Still, Jarno's passionate commitment to an ideology of order, clarity, and the efficient exploitation of individual wealth has, like Wilhelm's commitment to the theater and harmonious self-display, brought him to unforeseen regions and offered him unexpected riches. After all, the interest in Shakespeare's enigmatic vision was initially his. Apparently the clarification Jarno seeks of the world cannot be satisfied with facile accounts of human motivation, so he turned to this extraordinary and wonderful poet (p. 191), whose plays-as Wilhelm learns-lay bare such matters and offer the seeking mind a profound and complete clarification of nature's hidden economy.

Jarno appropriately figures, therefore, in Wilhelm's education. As an early emissary from the Tower Society, he helps guide his young friend, through a commitment to orderly behavior and organized thought, to that serene location where clarity legitimately rules as nature's implicit order in matters of individual and social growth. The various fields of clarity, however-its expression as pragmatic, ethical, aesthetic, or developmental orders-are exemplified for Wilhelm through personalities other than Jarno. And the guiding ideologies they embody so refine and expand the rule of natural sense that the novel's reader is left, in conclusion, on the dangerous edge of nature's realm. Indeed, the ultimate expression of nature in the Lehrjahre forces a problematic look at aspects of the human condition that are unaccountable in nature's own terms, and so beyond the reach of the Tower Society's ideological standpoint as well. As a social visionary and a charismatic leader of mythical dimensions, Lothario typifies the change that marks the apotheosis of nature in the novel's last two books. Thus, Wilhelm is exhorted by Jarno to learn more about this outstanding man, wie sein ~ b e r b l i c kund seine Tatigkeit unzertrennlich rniteinander verbunden sind, wie er irnmer im Fortschreiten ist, wie er sich ausbreitet und jeden mit fortreifit. Er fiihrt, wo er auch sei, eine Welt mit sich, seine Gegenwart belebt und feuert an. (p. 553)

Whereas Jarno analyzes individuals and would restrict human action on the basis of efficiency, his younger friend, the erstwhile Don Juan and overseas adventurer, acts on impulse to effect changes he intuitively knows will promote the health and wellbeing of society as a whole. Like his own estate-"ein altes unregelmaRiges SchloR mit einigen Tiirmen und Giebeln," which is connected in its disparate parts and surrounded by bountiful gardens (pp. 422-23)-he presents, in his individual undertakings, an incongruous fagade that works in the name of a productive whole. Lothario substitutes effective deeds for Jarno's efficiency reports and sets as his standard not the costs of a course of action, but its certain benefits. He can, it is true, destroy in one day what others have built for years. But he can drive those around him to renewal as well-"das Zerstorte hundertfaltig wiederherzustellen" (p. 553). He is always prepared to seize the opportunity at hand-"das Nachste" (p. 431)-because, in his characteristic, almost reckless fashion, he believes he can turn it to the good. In short, Lothario

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embodies the spirit of risk that nature requires of the individual in its hidden movement toward unexpected and incalculable good fortune. To reap the benefits of this exceptional prod~ctivity,~9hough, the state must think about securing and protecting its wealth. Lothario therefore balances his personal abandon and trustful approach to risk with a belief in decisive action and a concern for future generations. If children are to enjoy the "lebhafte freie Tatigkeit" (p. 507) of parents, he suggests, the land they inherit must not be encumbered by privilege. All feudal practices, including "das Lehnshokuspokus" (p. 507), and the irregular, or "unnatural," exemption of aristocratic property from taxes, must be abandoned to sustain the state, which otherwise will not survive revolutionary threats. Energetic political action, moreover, must be complemented by the will to conserve at home. Hence, Lothario chooses as his bride Therese, whose excellence surpasses the accomplishments of men. She is, he explains, the perfect domestic embodiment of his social vision, the epitome of all historical women of her kind: ". . . diese Klarheit uber die Umstande, diese Gewandtheit in allen Fallen, diese Sicherheit im einzelnen, wodurch das Ganze sich immer so gut befindet, ohne daR sie jemals daran zu denken scheinen" (p. 467). Indeed, as the novel's female version of Lothario's "regelmaRige Tatigkeit" (p. 453), Therese is the complete administrator, who intuitively coordinates the individual tasks of her realm in order to guarantee its vitality"um diese immer wiederkehrende Ordnung in einer unverruckten, lebendigen Folge durchzufiihren!" (p. 453). Moving through the Tower from the levels occupied by Jarno and Lothario to still loftier heights, we reach, at the prospects of Lothario's uncle and the Abbe, a vantage point where practical efficiency (Jarno) yields to explicit theories of action (the Abbe); while the intuitive expression of nature's hidden order (Lothario) yields to broadly ethical and aesthetic ideologies (the uncle). In the elusive Abbe, who supervises the education of his charges from a distance and occasionally speaks to Wilhelm at critical points in his adventures through emissaries like Jarno and a twin brother,44 we have the novel's supreme accountant. For like Jarno, or for that matter, like Werner-who joins these rationalists in an appropriate round of I'hombre4' as book 8 begins-the Abbe promotes clarity as his ideal. However, unlike these lesser managers, who only strive to maximize individual gain by the efficient investment of personal resources, the Abbe is guided by his understanding of nature's more extensive economy. Hence, he tolerates such "wasteful" ef-

forts as Wilhelm's "poetic" and "theatrical" speculations in the knowledge that his charge's errors will contribute to his growth. Or, more generally, he accepts the one-sided development of any individual, because he knows that it is within nature's overall strategy to maximize social wealth: "Nur alle Menschen machen die Menschheit aus, nur alle Krafte zusammengenommen die Welt" (p. 552). His "freie scharfe Blick" (p. 552) thus enables him to accommodate in his social ledger "figures" that remain obscure to the less k e e n - e ~ e dAnd . ~ ~ this superior speculative capacity is, as even Jarno must recognize, "was ihm gewissermafien die Herrschaft iiber uns alle erhalt" (p. 552). In terms of ideology, the Abbe's privileged view of natural beneficence as theodicy implies an analytic intelligence that relates all partial events to a single concept of harmony. By tabulating a person's discrete experiences-however misguided his intents-he can finally establish a "just" existential balance. Credits finally offset debits in his system of natural accounting, because the speculative adventure fosters exchanges between and among individuals to increase the world's wealth. In the Abbe's view, then, each person's worth is performative. Each makes his special contribution and is responsible to find his proper "fit" within society, which is no more nor less than a grid of coordinated functions. Everything virtual in human affairs can become actual, he asserts, "aber nicht in einem, sondern in vielen" (p. 552). The symbolism of the uncle's aesthetic ideology is related to the Abbe's system of individual and social accounting, but it also extends and deepens his interest in nature as a conceptual whole. As a standard of reckoning for both men, nature enables disparate experiences to be joined. For the Abbe, though, nature's ultimate order comes to view in a harmonious society; for the uncle, its clarification occurs, epistemologically, in the perceiving mind and its created products. For the former, the randomness of individual aspiration is subsumed in a hidden natural law that coordinates all diverse activities into a greater social sum, or the utopian moment of "humanity"; for the latter, change over time presents a challenge to interpret nature substantively, as a vital process rather than just a benign regulatory principle. The uncle's task therefore replaces the Abbe's coordinating interest with an integrative one: life's successive phases must all be contained within a unified order of growth. And in accord with his more dynamic view, he imagines nature's transformational essence through symbolic conceptualizations of productivity rather than through tabular calculations of social achievement.

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His "Saal der Vergangenheit" is a case in point. Here, in contrast to the Tower's secret room (with its grid-like depository containing the natural accounts of the initiates' lives), we find a subterranean mausoleum, with a succession af remarkable paintings. Immediately upon entering this room (where Mignon has been buried and where Natalie will serve as priestess after the uncle's death) the visitor, we learn, is engaged by the symbolic gallery, which depicts the course of human life through the primary image of the family: Hier dieses Bild der Mutter, die ihr Kind ans Herz driickt, wird viele Generationen gliicklicher Mutter iiberleben. Nach Jahrhunderten vielleicht erfreut sich ein Vater dieses bartigen Mannes, der seinen Ernst ablegt und sich mit seinem Sohne neckt. So verschamt wird durch alle Zeiten die Braut sitzen und bei ihren stillen Wiinschen noch bediirfen, da8 man sie troste, da8 man ihr zurede; so ungeduldig wird der Brautigam auf der Schwelle horchen, ob er hereintreten darf. (p. 541)

The relationship of part to whole is expressed in the uncle's paintings generationally rather than socially. Accordingly, his aesthetic standpoint, unlike the Abbe's ethical speculations, does not reduce individuals to contiguous functions and then coordinate their partial contributions with reference to a sum of societal wealth. Instead, it features the individual as a substantive rather than a contributory part and places him in relation to a temporally constituted whole. At stake in the uncle's idea of nature as process, and hence implicit in Wilhelm's recognition of Felix as his son, is the underlying continuity of discrete moments in time.47The issue of micro- and macro-structure thus supplants in Wilhelm's thoughts the Abbe's interest in the tabulation of individual human accomplishments through reference to a single regulatory principle: Wilhelms Augen schweiften auf unzahlige Bilder umher. Vom ersten frohen Triebe der Kindheit, jedes Glied im Spiele nur zu brauchen und zu iiben, bis zum ruhigen abgeschiedenen Ernste des Weisen konnte man in schoner, lebendiger Folge sehen, wie der Mensch keine angeborene Neigung und Fahigkeit besitzt, ohne sie zu brauchen und zu nutzen. (p. 541, emphasis mine)

Not only does each family member figure substantively within a vital whole as an essential generational part; each successive part contains the developmental substance through which that whole is

defined as human life. Humanity, then, as a point of conceptual reference, is construed sequentially here, from both the individual and generational standpoints. The present becomes significant in this imaginative representation only in relation to the future and the past: "'Welch ein Leben!' rief er aus, 'in diesem Saale der Vergangenheit! man konnte ihn ebensogut den Saal der Gegenwart und der Zukunft nennen. So war alles und so wird alles sein!' " (p. 541). Along these lines, the curious motto inscribed above the uncle's crypt-"Gedenke zu leben" (p. 540)-suggests that the past, as the absolute beginning of things, or the location of the generative power that is life, remains vital as Furthermore, from the standpoint of the uncle's aesthetic ideology, nature-as mysterious and originating center-suggests in the human sphere man's authorial grandeur as divine architect: Das ganze Weltwesen liegt vor uns wie ein groRer Steinbruch vor dem Baurneister, der nur dann den Narnen verdient, wenn er aus diesen zuhlligen Naturrnassen ein in seinern Geiste entsprungenes Urbild mit der groRten Okonomie, ZweckmaRigkeit und Festigkeit zusamrnenstellt. Alles auRer uns ist nur Element, ja, ich darf wohl sagen, auch alles an uns; aber tief in uns liegt diese schopferische Kraft, die das zu erschaffen verrnag, was sein soll, und uns nicht ruhen und rasten l a t , bis wir es auRer uns oder an uns auf eine oder die andere Weise dargestellt haben. (p. 405)

Like his friend the Abbe, the uncle portrays life as rife with opportunities to seize in the pursuit of self-completion. He, too, envisions an orderliness to the developmental process. However, in locating the source of order within the individual, and identifying basic human productivity with the urge to create or generate a world, he goes beyond the Abbe's faith in theodicy. Indeed, his aesthetic ideology, like the novel itself, identifies a problematic point where the limits of human power, and the difference between nature, on the one hand, and human nature, on the other, begin to emerge.49 This is not to say that Wilhelm must abandon the uncle's representation of the self as productive and vital substance. After all, his speculative adventure ends fortunately when, through his son, he accepts his place in the generational cycle of things. His existential apprenticeship concludes, so to speak, and his natural majority begins, with his role as father. Hence, the query in book 7 about Wilhelm's paternity elicits a congratulatory response from the Abbe

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and yields a "heavenly gift" (p. 497) in the child. And it facilitates his "return homeH5' in book 8, where he is repatriated upon discovering his grandfather's art collection in the possesion of Natalie, his future betrothed. However, as her symbolic role in Wilhelm's good fortune and its elaboration in the cautionary tale of Mignon and her father the Harpist further suggest, an ideology of natural productivity involves special problems regarding the arche-logical aspect of self-definition. In the case of Wilhelm's beautiful amazon, whose vision compels him from the time of the attack in book 4 through a series of lesser crises, until the promise of a union in the novel's last chapter, we find traces of nature as both providential economy (the Abbe) and productive power (the uncle).51 From either standpoint, though, N a t a l i e a s healer, provider, and luminous figure of hop-mbodies the promise of a world ordered on the principle of rhythmic growth. As her aunt, the noble recluse of book 6, recalls, hers is a quiet, almost hidden effectiveness. Even as a child, she was always alert and ready to help where help was required and retreat where it was not: Sie war keinen Augenblick ihres Lebens unbeschaftigt, und jedes Geschaft ward unter ihren Handen zur wurdigen Handlung. Alles schien ihr gleich, wenn sie nur das verrichten konnte, was in der Zeit und am Platz war, und ebenso konnte sie ruhig, ohne Ungeduld, bleiben, wenn sich nichts zu tun fand. (p. 417)

Like time's cyclical passage, Natalie's actions-"diese Tatigkeit ohne Bedurfnis einer Beschaftigung" (pp. 417-18)-were inherently purposeful, but hardly compulsive. Indeed, as Wilhelm, upon arriving at her estate suggests, Natalie's development was more like the course of natural than human events: "Der Gang Ihres Lebens . . . ist wohl immer sehr gleich gewesen? . . . Sie haben sich, man fuhlt es Ihnen wohl an, nie verwirrt" (p. 526). In light of this disposition it is entirely natural, therefore, that Natalie's uncle should leave his property to her. As a priestess of generational continuity, she consistently acts charitably and provides for the kingdom of man what nature, according to Goethe's theory of c o m p e n s a t i ~ n provides ,~~ for organic life: Ich erinnere mich von Jugend an kaum eines lebhaftern Eindrucks, als da8 ich uberall die Bedurfnisse der Menschen sah und ein uniiberwindliches Verlangen empfand, sie auszugleichen. . . . Die Reize der leblosen Natur, fur die so viele Menschen auaerst

ernpfanglich sind, hatten keine Wirkung auf mich, beinah noch weniger die Reize der Kunst; rneine angenehrnste Ernpfindung war und ist es noch, wenn sich rnir ein Mangel, ein Bediirfnis in der Welt darstellte, sogleich im Geiste einen Ersatz, ein Mittel, eine Hiilfe aufzufinden. (p. 526)

Indeed, in her spirit of compensatory aid, Natalie stands as the novel's human correlative of natural beneficence. As her foolish brother Friedrich maliciously claims, she apparently decides to marry Wilhelm only after having ascertained that the assembled company is one bride short. With a father in need of a wife and a son in need of a mother, her choice, as the charitable "amazon" (in Goethe's iconography, the human embodiment of nature's productive polarity5" is clear. The family must be completed. In resolving this crisis, though, and providing the novel with its traditional comic conclusion, Wilhelm's betrothed also reveals the line that separates a natural process, or a system of natural accounting, from events in the realm of human motivation. For man, who receives nature's gift as the fortunate realization of his productive capacities, does not share with the plant the assurance of either regular growth or fruition. Instead, both the path of individual development and its "happy" end remain unpredictable. In fact, no sooner does man insist on certain natural rights in his personal and social development, than additional problems arise, as the story of Augustin and Mignon illustrates. Natalie's "vegetative" way can, it seems, when applied literally to human life, unleash tragic consequences as Wilhelm, of course, reaffirms his faith in the world and in other human beings on the novel's last pages just by contemplating in Felix the fortunate consequence of his paternal vitality. He can accept nature's gift in good faith, because throughout his "apprenticeship" to life, he has promoted the happy turn of events through the uniquely human virtues of friendship and trust ( " T r e ~ e " )As .~~ a master of nothing except these, he has sustained his aspirations as a positive force and so wins Natalie, who as his bride does not just epitomize natural economy, but as the embodiment of "Glaube, Liebe und Hoffnung" (p. 532), represents the perfection of human nature as well. In contrast to Wilhelm's positive development, Mignon and her father exemplify a tragedy of self-definition that refuses to distinguish the ways of human and organic growth." For Augustin, this meant pursuing in his sister Sperata an illicit object of desire as

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though a natural right were involved. His tragedy, which brings to light the "wondrous remainder" of human life beyond the neat tabulations of the Abbe's natural ledger,57already began with his father, whose ideological rigidity brought unbearable suffering both to him and Mignon, the enigmatic offspring of his incestuous intimacy. As a basically noble and magnanimous individual, well-regarded for the unimpeachable consequence and consistency of his words and deeds,58the father found himself in later years with a pregnant wife. Apparently ashamed to have been part to so unnatural a turn of events, he hid his paternity and entrusted the baby daughter to a neighboring friend. Some years later, though, when Augustin, whom he had intended for the priesthood, met the beautiful "neighbor" and fell immediately in love, the paternal presumption of what is natural and right took a new and more frightful turn in the Like his father, Augustin also explicitly justified his actions on natural grounds. His love for Sperata is proper, he explained, because she made possible his escape "aus dem Zustande der unnatiirlichen Absonderung von den Menschen" (p. 582). Even upon learning that their incestuous encounter would produce a child, he boldly insisted that their marriage be sanctioned. After all, their union is "der Natur gemaD" (p. 583), he argued, in strict accord with nature's most ancient laws. In further justifying his desires and protesting his family's interference in what he viewed as his natural prerogative, Augustin not only felt healed of destructive self-doubt by nature's most wonderful gift; he also exonerated himself and Sperata by comparing their love to the reproductive functions of the lily: Nun, da mich die giitige Natur durch ihre groRten Gaben, durch die Liebe, wieder geheilt hat, da ich an dem Busen eines himmlischen Madchens wieder fiihle, daB ich bin, daR sie ist, daB wir eins sind, daR aus dieser lebendigen Verbindung ein Drittes entstehen und uns entgegenlacheln soll, nun eroffnet ihr die Flammen eurer Hollen . . . und stellt sie dem lebhaften, wahren, unzerstorlichen GenuR der reinen Liebe entgegen! . . . fragt die Natur und euer Herz, sie wird euch lehren . . . . Seht die Lilien an: entspringt nicht Gatte und Gattin auf einem Stengel? Verbindet beide nicht die Blurne, die beide gebar, und ist die Lilie nicht das Bild der Unschuld, und ihre geschwisterliche Vereinigung nicht fruchtbar? (pp. 583-84, emphasis mine)

Significantly, Augustin's self-justification applies a principle of organic growth to the realm of human motivation without consider-

ing the irregularities of human and societal development or the characteristic moments of error and crisis that demand fraternal trust. He thus reveals both the ultimate attraction and inherent danger of the Lehrjahre's "natural" ideology. That is, what he finally sought through the union with Sperata was their immersion in the generative center of life. He could not tolerate his exclusion from the source of his own vital energies. Hence his selection of an emblematic standard in the lily to suggest the unimpeded flow of life's vital sap through an entire family. In this species, at least, the child partakes of the parent's productive energy without first suffering painful separation. However, Augustin's motivation, which is arch6-logical in its refusal to abandon the point of absolute beginning, can hardly achieve its intended goals. Indeed, his story paradigmatically presents the recuperative ideal in its most tragic aspect. His guilt is so intense, and his isolation and longing so extreme, that they finally threaten the very forces of joyful life ( F e l i ~ ) that ~ ' his presumptive union with Sperata would have affirmed. As the innocent victim of this union, Mignon exemplifies the potential for suffering that so radically distinguishes human life from the life of the plant. Her melodies are inextricably woven with her father's dark tones. And in this-as her plaintive duet with the Harpist makes clear-she is the Lehrjahre's tragic counterpart to Natalie, who exemplifies human nature in its most positive moment of trust ("Treue"): Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt, WeiR, was ich leide! Allein und abgetrennt Von aller Freude, Seh' ich ans Firmament Nach jener Seite. (pp. 240-41)

Because Mignon's longing remains without hope, her being projects a fear of natural progression rather than confidence in nature's hidden economy (Natalie). Accordingly, she finally stands over and against the Tower Society's various systems of reckoning: "Die Vernunft ist grausam, . . . das Herz ist besser" (p. 489). Indeed, for Wilhelm and reader alike, Mignon is that unique and enigmatic quantity of human motivation that resists tabular comprehension. Unlike her father, she never presumes to return to a center of generational continuity where her inchoate desires might

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flower and produce fruit. Her becoming is thus anything but natural? "So laBt mich scheinen, bis ich werde . . ." (p. 515). Characteristically inarticulate in her speech, sexually ambiguous, and remarkably uneven in her motions, she in fact defies all natural growth, which she increasingly views not as a comfort, but as a threat. "Dahin! Dahin," she sings in her "Italienlied."62 The same land of warmth and natural bounty once evoked by her father to assert his rights over S ~ e r a t abegins ~ ~ Mignon's mysterious plea. But as she draws closer in her second and final strophe to this worldly destination, the land of her birth (as the goal of generational power") becomes more ominous, and the prospect of a successful return more fearful. For now awaiting her at the archelogical destination is not a celebration of familial vitality such as Augustin saw expressed in his lily, but rather a nebulous netherworld of a decidedly destructive potential: Kennst du den Berg und seinen Wolkensteg? Das Maultier sucht im Nebel seinen Weg, In Hohlen wohnt der Drachen alte Brut, Es sturzt der Fels und uber ihn die Flut: Kennst du ihn wohl? Dahin! Dahin Geht unser Weg; o Vater, laR uns ziehn! (p. 145)

In the human world, the powers that initiate life and foster growth can assume sinister as well as hopeful forms. Arche-logical aspirations can bring pain as well as joy. This is man's tragic lot. Indeed, as the object of such longing becomes increasingly palpable, the chances are that its presumed enjoyment will be tied to irredeemable costs. Thus, even as he celebrates his unique good fortune on the novel's last page, Wilhelm cannot entirely suppress "das eigentliche Fazit des Lebens" (p. 37), life's tragic remainder. For once the risks of involvement are assumed and desire has asserted its claim from within the world, the individual cannot partake of its wealth without viewing his well-being through all the errors and crises and painful misadventures that preceded it. Wilhelm cannot look at Felix without recalling Mariane. As he suggests, the child is more than just a welcome gift from nature's abundant storehouse, a unique "Gabe des Himmels" (p. 496) that neatly settles his existential account. He is also "ein einzelner Wiirfel . . . , auf dessen vielfachen Seiten der Wert und der Unwert der menschlichen Natur so deutlich eingegraben war" (p. 502, em-

phasis mine). Like all human beings, he is an enigmatic die that has more worth than the sum of its discrete faces. And it is just this enigma of nature in its human and potentially tragic form" that Goethe returns to elaborate in his final two efforts as a novelist.

Possessive Presumptions Self-assertion in Die Wahlverwandtschaften

Eros Die bleibt nicht aus!-Er,,sturzt vom Hirnrnel nieder. Wohin er sich aus alter Ode schwang, Er schwebt heran auf luftigem Gefieder Urn Stirn und Brust den Fruhlingstag entlang, Scheint jetzt zu fliehn, vom Fliehen kehrt er wieder, Da wird ein Wohl irn Weh, so siil3 und bang. Gar rnanches Herz verschwebt irn Allgerneinen, Doch widrnet sich das edelste dern Einen.

Nowhere in Goethe's oeuvre does the country estate figure more prominently than in his enigmatic novel of manners,' Die Wahlverwandtschaften (1809). Here, in marked contrast to his other three novels, a single setting, with its many natural and constructed features, is the center of textual stability. Moreover, Eduard's property, like Mann's "other-wordly" sanatorium in Der Zauberberg, suggests powers independent of those who would enjoy its protective s e c l u s i ~ n Captivated .~ by the charms of the place, the major characters enter it unsuspecting. But they soon find themselves caught (by its essential ambivalence instead) between hope and despair, birth and death, renewal and decay.

The estate, which is surveyed and mapped out for the reader by its baronial lord and his friend the C a ~ t a i nincludes ,~ a variety of structures to accommodate the living and leisure requirements of its aristocratic inhabitants. More than the residence, however, its surrounding horticultural and decorative gardens characteristically compel the attention of the novel's protagonist and emerge, significantly, as the initial focal point of his self-assertive inclinations. Of course, the garden of the Wahlverwandtschaften is not Goethe's first use of this motif in his novelistic oeuvre. In Werther, for example, an early letter describes the refuge of the late Graf von M., who, like his self-declared successor, was moved by the beauty of the surroundings to establish a garden on one of the region's hills. And the setting's pleasing perspective, Werther informs us, not only continues to soothe his sensate heart; its English manner speaks to his reflexive interests, which the spiritus loci sympathetically reinforces. Hence, the imperative of Werther's development is joined in his aspirations with the ducal "Lieblingsplatzchen," and he has only to appropriate the spot, he concludes, to see his personal claim fulfilled: "Bald werde ich Herr vom Garten sein; der Gartner ist mir zugetan, nur seit den paar Tagen, und er wird sich nicht ubel dabei befinden" (p.8). The subsequent failure of Werther's appropriative urge, which secures neither this nor other gardens of desire, finally motivates his turn from the prospect of rule in an earthly paradise to the acceptance of a patrimony as pure as its unattainability. Furthermore his decision, "meinen Fursten von der zuckenden Qua1 des langsam absterbenden Lebens auf einmal [zu] befreien" [p. 82), produces a figuration of the self as autonomous purposefulness. But as elaborated in chapter 2, Goethe moves beyond Werther's concluding recognition of self-worth in wordly defeat to portray in the Lehrjahre a unique and inestimable good fortune through Wilhelm's discovery of Felix as his son-a fulfilling event, claimed on the novel's last page, "das ich nicht verdiene, und das ich mit nichts in der Welt vertauschen mochte" (p. 610). Wilhelm, in contrast to Werther, comes to enjoy nature's bounteous fruits and returns triumphantly to the family k i n g d ~ m where ,~ he gratefully accepts his patrimony. Accordingly, he can view the discrete experiences of his life as points of reference that unite the hopes of the past and the joys of the future. Upon establishing a new and productive relationship between himself and the world by partaking of his child's vitality, he can integrate desire and fulfillment in a moment of trust. Thus, while watching Felix frolic in a garden on

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Lothario's estate at the beginning of book 8, Wilhelm appreciates the promise of all things "auRer sich" (p. 498) for the first time and sees the self as the result of a process of retrieval and recuperation. He acknowledges the challenge to reach out and reappropriate what other fathers had secured.' And to underscore the natural legitimacy of this additional image of self, Goethe associates Wilhelm's reflections on paternity and generational continuity with an emerging interest in the nurseries of his friend's estate: Mit welchem Interesse betrachtete er die Baumschulen und die Gebaude! Wie lebhaft sann er darauf, das Vernachlassigte wiederherzustellen und das Verfallene zu erneuern. . . . Alles, was er anzulegen gedachte, sollte dem Knaben entgegenwachsen, und alles, was er herstellte, sollte eine Dauer auf einige Geschlechter haben. In diesem Sinne waren seine Lehrjahre geendigt. (p. 502)

Nonetheless, while the Lehrjahre ends on an note of celebration and casts the family as a token of trust in man's rightful participation in the generational cycle of things, and while Goethe appears to affirm through Wilhelm the capacity to receive and promote the dangerous gift from above called the "Idee der Metam~rphose,"~ through Augustin and Mignon, he casts a shadow on the presumption to realize archi%logical desires through stable social forms. After all, in equating life's essence and "die Eigenschaft, an sich oder aus sich ihresgleichen hervorzubringen"' he suggests in the human sphere the propagation of forms identical to their source and hence likewise driven by aspirations that cannot rest. The happy result of a project of desire such as Felix, then, while a token of continuity, can end, like Mignon, as a token of instability.' In trying to possess, preserve, and extend his patrimony, the son must summon powers of integration that, 'when radically applied, can disrupt what he would have secured. The promise and danger of the integrative urge figures in the Wahlverwandtschaften within the context of a self-assured society that becomes trapped between the stabilizing and destabilizing force of this erotic propensity. So the novel begins, appropriately, where the Lehrjahre ends, in the nursery of a manorial garden: Eduard-so nennen wir einen reichen Baron im besten Mannesalter-Eduard hatte in seiner Baumschule die schonste Stunde eines Aprilnachmittags zugebracht, um frisch erhaltene Propfreiser auf junge Stamme zu bringen. Sein Geschaft war eben vollendet; er legte die Geratschaften in das Futteral zusammen und betrachtete

seine Arbeit mit Vergniigen, als der Gartner hinzutrat und sich an dem teilnehmenden FleiRe des Herrn ergetzte. (p. 242) What Goethe first portrays in his tale of illicit passion, though, is neither a garden of illusory desire, as in Werther, nor one of token bounty, as in the Lehrjahre. Furthermore, as a figure within the garden, his protagonist neither anxiously longs for control, nor gratefully celebrates an unexpected good fortune. In marked contrast to both Werther and Wilhelm, in fact, Eduard initially appears, as befits his rank, age, and wealth, as a man confidently in control of himself and what he calls his own. Everything highlighted in the preliminary glimpse into his world suggests satisfactory completion. Like God reviewing his daily creation in Genesis, he, too, the rich lord of this earthly estate, regards his works proudly and authoritatively pronounces them "good." Eduard's first presentation as a self-appointed author of generational continuity is significant, for throughout he will typically view his surroundings from a center of personal power. Whatever enters his domain seems subject to his proprietary rights, and he can submit it, he feels, to the whims of his formative instincts. Indeed, so confident is he in the opening pages that his lordly touch will, of its own, guarantee the perfection of his realm, that he makes his way through the old and new grounds of the estate "mit Vergniigen" (p. 242). Here he can work self-assuredly, because he believes that his labor, like the plant's vital energies, will not just initiate growth, but also guarantee fruition. While the spirit of the early spring therefore permeates his world, the "schonste Stunde eines Aprilnachmittags" of the opening page does not-as in Werther-remind a dislocated individual that his lot will quickly change. Nor does it suggest that presently a gratifying new refuge will be his. Instead, it highlights the assumption of an already secure person that he and his environment are one. Eduard, who recently returned with his bride to his ancestral home, apparently hopes to follow the path of his deceased father and renew the riches he has only begun to enjoy. All the novel's creative efforts are undertaken in this recuperative state of mind. Even "die neue Schopfung" (p. 242), Charlotte's moss hut, which Eduard inspects in chapter 1, like the pavilion they will erect and the improvements they plan for the grounds, is not meant apart from the original property, but as its natural extension. Eduard's purposes, in fact, as typically archblogical, consistently aim to unite the old and the new. In order to expand his domain and guar-

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antee the continuity of his and his father's ownership, he continually initiates projects of inclusion that would awaken his originary instincts by attaching the young or displaced onto what he calls his own. Hence his grafting of shoots onto established stems in the novel's opening sentence, or his subsequent suggestion that Charlotte's tiny hut could accommodate yet another: "Fur einen Dritten ist auch wohl noch Platz" (p. 243). The ulterior motive behind Eduard's remark, Charlotte soon learns, lies in his plan to bring an unemployed (and therefore unattached) friend of his youth, the Captain, to the estate. Unlike his spouse, he cannot content himself with just securing the existential foundation of their recent marriage.g Indeed, their seclusion will be satisfactory only if it serves as the basis for their further development: "Die Anlage, die wir bis jetzt zu unserm Dasein gemacht haben, ist von guter Art; sollen wir aber nichts weiter darauf bauen, und soll sich nichts weiter daraus entwickeln?" (p. 247). The couple's mutual work, Eduard implies, must take additional people into account: "Was ich im Garten leiste, du im Park, soll das nur fur Einsiedler getan sein?" (p. 247). For their conjugal foundation to thrive, they must now reach beyond their enclosed world and invite others in. The invitations to the Captain in chapter 2 and to Ottilie in chapter 5 soon follow in this spirit, as grafting operations in the social sphere. Charlotte's initial hesitations to her husband's plan, however, and Eduard's troubled response, serve to underscore at this critical point in his life-"eben da er seinen Jugendfreund an sich heranziehen, da er sein ganzes Dasein gleichsam abschliehen wollte" (p. 249)-that self-completion for him depends on his attaching the lives of others to his own. Indeed, the implication arises that, for Eduard, fulfillment is synonomous with the permanent involvement of friends and acquaintances in his affairs. Only by including them in his projects of reappropriation will he secure the riches bequeathed to him by his wealthy parents. He will become "sein eigner Herr" (p. 249) only after they become subservient to his generative aspirations. And though neither Eduard nor Ottilie at first recognizes his single-minded behavior-what Goethe called his "Eigensinn,"'o-for its submerged appropriative interest, the novel's heroine comes directly under its sway. Thus, like the Captain, she finds in her "master of love"" a new lease on life: "Denn sie hatte zuerst Leben und Freude in Eduard gefunden" (p. 351). But she profits from her involvement only at a cost. As the primary object of Eduard's erotic propensity, Ottilie gives to her host (like a

shoot on an established stem) and appears, from his limited standpoint, to represent a life-enhancing opportunity. By encouraging his possessive presumption, however, she also emerges as the focal point of a fictional demonstration that will relentlessly disclose the tragic dimension of such behavior. What Eduard's "Eigensinn" gradually produces, then, is an exemplary tale.'' As Goethe commented to Eckermann in response to Solger's criticism, "Ich mul3te ihn so machen, um das Factum herv~rzubringen."'~ Necessity, that is, does not reside in the Wahlverwandtschaften with the setting, as some have argued14; nor are its major characters driven by personal demons beyond their understanding and control. Rather, the necessity here, as in any figurative order, concerns relationships: how they can be established to compel meanings and then improperly interpreted, as if such meanings were not tentative, but a b ~ o l u t e . ' ~ In this regard, Eduard's impetuosity, which he expresses in the unfailing assertion of his formative rights, results in disruptive rearrangements of human relationships that are finally significant as a textual rather than just a social problem. That is, the novel's submerged central theme, which becomes explicit in its many portents and signs,16 does not involve so much marriage and morality as the way in which these conventional motifs participate in the universal process of signification." Hence the reader, if not the major agents of narrative action, must ask of the text the really pertinent questions: in Eduard's case, for example, how does an irrepressible erotic urge help constitute meaning; and at what, in cognitive terms, do his many appropriative projects aim? In particular, what underlies his desire to include Ottilie as an irredeemable part of his world? And finally, what limits, if any, must be observed in the drive to constitute self-definition as the integration of desire and fulfillment? Can signs, which reflect the mind's effort to create a satisfying order of things, produce what they promise, or is the coincidence of the sign's signifier (desire) and its signified (fulfillment) only a dangerous presumption?'' To begin elaborating these issues, Eduard's motivating role in the novel must be examined in greater than normal detail. Specifically, we must attend to those episodes and situations (like Ottilie's invitation and Eduard's early responses to her) where his self-assertive inclinations are central to the construction of the plot.'' As chapter 4 begins, the process of inclusion that characterizes Eduard's relation to the outside world has been clearly established. Thus the Captain has arrived on his insistence, and plans to extend

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the "Erbgut und Aufenthalt" (p. 259) as far as the eye can seeZ0are already underway. Apparently, whoever enters the secluded setting will soon figure in the arche-logical aspirations of its owner. Accordingly, as the couple and their friend set out on one of their prolonged walks through the estate and admire its vegetative splendor, Eduard shows renewed interest in its natural abundance, which now depends for its vitality on him. Indeed, when they pause to survey some poplars and sycamores that had been transplanted in his youth, he recalls for his companions his own role in their survival and so establishes his need to provide for the continuity of life as longstanding. Some years earlier, Eduard explains, his father had uprooted the plants while expanding the manorial garden: "Es waren junge Stammchen, die ich rettete, als mein Vater, bei der Anlage zu einem neuen Teil des grol3en Schlo8gartens, sie mitten im Sommer ausroden lie8" (p. 260). Hence, the implication arises that even as an adolescent, he had an interest in generational problems. And in harmony with this urge, he can now appreciate the Captain's topographical chart of his property, because it enables him to see the quintessentially vigorous estate as his own for the first time: "Eduard sah seine Besitzungen auf das deutlichste aus dem Papier wie eine neue Schopfung hervorgewachsen. Er glaubte sie jetzt erst kennenzulernen, sie schienen ihm jetzt erst recht zu gehoren" (p. 261). Nor is it surprising that, as a next order of business, Eduard should introduce into his life the unsuspecting Ottilie, who naively embodies, like Natalie in the Lehrjahre, the very powers of order and succession that he typically longs to promote: "Was nicht aus dem Vorhergehenden folgt, begreift sie nicht" (p. 264). Ottilie's failures at the boarding school notwithstanding, she is, in the words of the assistant to the school's head mistress, one of those "verschlossene Friichte, die erst die rechten, kernhaften sind und die sich friiher oder spater zu einem schonen Leben entwickeln" (p. 264). Her insights, though, are more intuitive than pragmatic; and more sensitive to internal than external resemblances, she shows promise, not as a student, but as a teacher: "Sie lernt nicht als eine, die erzogen werden soll, sondern als eine, die erziehen will; nicht als Schiilerin, sondern als kiinftige Lehrerin" (p. 265). Like the fruit containing the seed of its perfection, Ottilie falls into Eduard's estate as the challenge of a substantive form. She is, in the human sphere, a correlative to Goethe's idea of metamorphosis and thus symbolically complements her host's desire to renew his world. But to function in this way she must also become the tragic

focal point of his desire to define himself as an author of generational continuity. Her fateful invitation is prompted through a conversation that Eduard, Charlotte, and the Captain pursue about a chemical process known as "Wahlverwandtschaft," or elective affinity. As critics have repeatedly argued," this episode is central, because it anticipates the social rearrangements at the heart of the plot. Yet it is also noteworthy on account of its narrative context and what has preceded it. After all, the friend's discussion of the reaction, we learn, allows them to address the issue of selection and union in the natural sphere in human terms. Consequently, Eduard's reverse inclination to view his own existence as a natural process-established in the novel's opening chapters-begins to appear in a new and more critical light." AS Charlotte herself so emphatically suggests, the extent to which natural and social events comprehend identical categories of understanding is debatable. That a personal challenge can be properly articulated through reference to the nonhuman world is an assumption worthy of examination. Are Eduard's various recuperative projects (including Ottilie) then just a natural response to his perception of the self as the lord of the realm, we might ask in a similar spirit of inquiry, or are they possessive presumptions instead, fundamental confusions that ignore the axiomatic gap, in matters of signification, between desire and fulfillment? In the ensuing discussion, the novel's characters explore these topics at length and suggest where solutions to such problems possibly lie. The narrative situation evolves in the following way. With the completion of the day's work Eduard and the Captain customarily spend the evening with Charlotte, and the three entertain themselves with conversation, reading, and music. Frequently, Eduard-whose earnest enthusiasm inclines him to equate "Geschafte und Beschaftigung" with "Unterhaltung und Zerstreuung" (pp. 266-67)-reads to his wife and friend, whom he tries to captivate with the use of strategic pauses and emphases. These recitations appeal to him, it appears, because even as amusement, they maintain his "authorial" presence. Nor is it surprising that he does not tolerate Charlotte's habit of peeking into his book. In fact, when she does this in chapter 4, she provokes an unusually harsh response from her spouse, who would justify his quirk on exaggerated existential grounds: Wollte man sich doch solche Unarten, wie so manches andre, was der Gesellschaft lastig ist, ein fiir allemal abgewijhnen! Wenn ich

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jemand vorlese, ist es denn nicht, als wenn ich ihm miindlich etwas vortriige? Das Geschriebene, das Gedruckte tritt an die Stelle meines eigenen Sinnes, meines eigenen Herzens; und wiirde ich mich wohl zu reden bemuhen, wenn ein Fensterchen vor meiner Stirn, vor meiner Brust angebracht ware, so daR der, dem ich meine Gedanken einzeln zuzahlen, meine Empfindungen einzeln zureichen will, immer schon lange vorher wissen kijnnte, wo es mit mir hinaus wollte? Wenn mir jemand ins Buch sieht, so ist mir immer, als wenn ich in zwei Stucke gerissen wiirde. (p. 269) Eduard's anxiety, which he portrays as a brutal division of the self into two parts, surfaces because he characteristically views his own voice in divine terms. Apparently, he feels compelled in his recitations to return the written or derivative text to an original state by absorbing it into his dominating presence. Furthermore, since its significance is determined in this regard by its equation with his oratorical power, any encroachment of his control must diminish his capacity to restore its original glory. With his authority questioned or disturbed, he would fail as an author of textual continuity and find himself deprived of his raison d'&tre. Charlotte, however, senses the misplaced urgency of her husband's objection and cleverly diverts his attention by justifying her intrusion with reference to the specific content of the text he was reading. She was distracted, she claims, when she heard Eduard mention "relationships," for the scientific term brought certain family relations to mind, specifically, several cousins, "die mir gerade in diesem Augenblick zu schaffen machen" (p. 270). Her husband then replies, "Es ist eine Gleichnisrede, die dich verfiihrt und verwirrt hat" (p. 270), and through the rest of the chapter, the company discusses the chemical reaction and the adequacy of its analogical designation. Eduard initially takes charge and directs the discussion with a general assertion about human nature. While their topic concerns only inorganic matter-"Hier wird freilich nur von Erden und Mineralien gehandeltW--man often sees his surroundings as just an extension of the self: "Aber der Mensch ist ein wahrer NarziB; er bespiegelt sich iiberall gern selbst, er legt sich als Folie der ganzen Welt unter" (p. 270).23The question arises, therefore, whether descriptive procedures like "Wahlverwandschaft" are compatible with facts. In the case of the so-called chemical affinities, for example, is it appropriate to connect inanimate elements and a volitional being, man? Or, to paraphrase Goethe's announcement of his novel's publication, does the assumption of a single natural realm

justify treating human nature and nonhuman natural events through a universal language that does not distinguish the unions of people from those of chemical element^?'^ While no direct answer to these questions emerges in the course of the conversation, the characters make a number of points to indicate the benefits and dangers of the figurative language under their scrutiny. Thus the Captain cautiously remarks, by way of introduction, that the scientific community hardly speaks for all time any more, and it is impossible to say "ob man in der wissenschaftlichen Welt noch so dariiber denkt, ob es zu den neuern Lehren pant" (p. 270). Or, in a more lighthearted vein, Charlotte, by way of conclusion, presses the analogy to its limit and associates volition with the chemist who conducts the experiment, while reserving compulsion for the elements he has chosen to unite.25 In either case, though, it becomes clear that whatever their usefulness, such analogies must be carefully applied: Diese Gleichnisreden sind artig und unterhaltend, und wer spielt nicht gern mit iihnlichkeiten! Aber der Mensch ist doch urn so manche Stufe iiber jene Elemente erhoht, und wenn er hier mit den schonen Worten Wahl und Wahlverwandtschaft etwas freigebig gewesen, so tut er wohl, wieder in sich selbst zuriickzukehren und den Wert solcher Ausdriicke bei diesem Anla0 recht zu bedenken. (P. 275)

As even the novel's characters admit, the usefulness of the analogy under discussion depends on its tentativeness. Its value stands in direct relation to the discourse of ambiguity it has generated in Eduard and Charlotte's parlor. Consequently, the central figure of the Wahlverwandtschaften does not point out any final meaning. Nor does it identify the chthonic basis in the tragedy about to unfold. Instead, it simply highlights the disturbing insight that no sequence of natural events can be understood apart from imperfect systems of human signification. In his inability to think beyond himself, man continually asserts the forms of his mind upon the outside world. However, this should not further imply that he can reverse the procedure at will and grasp the figures of his imagination literally. To do so would be to ignore the fundamental gap that separates the world from the mind. The cognitive lack that first prompted the use of the analogy must not give way to the presumption that truths can be directly possessed. Nonetheless, what Eduard describes for Charlotte as a "Gleichnisrede" and explains as a consequence of man's narcissistic drive

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to control his surroundings through anthropomorphic designations can delude as well. In appropriating a part of the nonhuman world by using human terms, the assertive individual can be seduced into viewing the resulting figurations as personal imperatives. Were he to presume duplicating within the human sphere a natural event that can be captured only linguistically, however, then his analogical assertion would become dangerously pragmatic. His figurative word, which should underscore the impossibility of literal understanding, would no longer be capable of generating a symbolic discourse of problematic possibilities. Interestingly, the underlying tension in the chemical analogy of chapter 4 between determinate meanings and the discursive suspension of conclusive results (that is, between language in its pragmatic and heuristically playful aspects) relates this episode to a central distinction of current rhetorical theory, and by implication, to the course of the novel as a whole. The point is, while Eduard initially recognizes in man's possessive desires a self-assertive drive to secure meaning through the world's semiological appropriation and so begins the conversation on figurative language by figuratively highlighting its basis in a narcissistic will-to-power, he ends the chapter by ignoring the limitations of this power. Thus, after debating a number of competing interpretations for the figuration "Wahlverwandtschaft," he insists that one interpretation, in particular, have priority: Nun denn . . . , bis wir alles dieses mit Augen sehen, wollen wir diese Formel als Gleichnisrede betrachten, woraus wir uns eine Lehre zum unmittelbaren Gebrauch ziehen. Du stellst das A vor, Charlotte, und ich dein B; denn eigentlich hange ich doch nur von dir ab und folge dir wie dem A das B. Das C ist ganz deutlich der Kapitan, der mich fiir diesmal dir einigermaoen entzieht. Nun ist es billig, da8, wenn du nicht ins Unbestimmte entweichen sollst, dir fur ein D gesorgt werde, und das ist ganz ohne Frage das liebenswurdige Damchen Ottilie, gegen deren Annaherung du dich nicht langer verteidigen darfst. (p. 276, emphasis mine)

As the emphasized phrases in Eduard's exhortation suggest, he is inclined to overestimate the efficacy of analogical speech. Determinate meanings are possible, he assumes, and actions can properly replace words. Furthermore, having isolated the pragmatic aspect of speech, he assumes that the narcissistic urge at its source will find its appropriative desires fulfilled. With meanings transparent in words, and the sign's signifier grasped as a means of access to its

signified, the process of appropriation can continue as if figurative language could secure for the individual those things beyond his reach that he feels compelled to include in his world. Eduard's confusion here, as through the rest of the novel, brings to mind the distinction between rhetoric as persuasion and rhetoric as the study of tropes.26 Traditionally, the orator's task was the former, and rhetorical study was concerned-in the spirit of Aristotle-"with the modes of pers~asion."~'More recently, though, under Nietzsche's influence, literary critics have begun to examine the nature of figurative language itself. They have come to regard it as the basis of a textual strategy that does not, as traditionally assumed, aim at the translation of words into deeds, but rather at the postponement of presence through action, and hence the postponement of literal meaning as well. Along these lines, then, Goethe's motivational use of rhetoric in his Wahlverwandtschaften, and in particular, his characterization of Eduard as an effective orator in the traditional sense," represents more than a bit of realistic portrayal. Indeed, through a remarkably consistent association of Eduard's persuasive capacities, on the one hand, and his urge to control and appropriate whatever enters his world, on the other, Goethe demonstrates, in his third novel, that the self, as an assertive presence, can remain precariously unaware of its own presumption of power and correspondingly insensitive to the textual nature of self-definition.

Until Ottilie's arrival in chapter 6, Eduard satisfies his need for authorial control rather harmlessly. His dilettantish gardening, the frenetic management of the estate, even the self-indulgent obstinacy of his speech that would see his words translate into deeds all point to an overbearing personality, but hardly to a destructive one. Yet shortly after Charlotte's orphaned niece enters his secluded world, his assertive behavior works at cross-purposes so that his projects of appropriation and renewal begin to point to disruption, ruin, and death. The forces that command his attention recoil on the small circle of friends, and his once secure country refuge becomes the scene of uncanny threats. The story of Eduard's appropriative urge, as a consequence of the archE-logical aspiration, illustrates the limits within which an individual can presume to occupy and manage a center of originating power. Specifically, the urgency and lability of his emerging erotic

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designs on Ottilie, through whom he aspires to his goal of generational continuity, result in human tragedies, like those of Augustin and Mignon, unknown to vegetative life. The presumption of such self-interested behavior concerns the need to possess others through one's cares and attentions. First the Captain, and then Ottilie, will ostensibly benefit from the generous support of their wealthy host. But it is actually Eduard who depends upon them. Without their attachment to him, he would not have an opportunity to express his authorial will. Like his gardener's "stubborn" plant, which thrives only if pampered, he must have people about him responding to his every whim to assure him of his possessions and power.'' Eduard's attraction to Ottilie is hardly remarkable, then, given his arche-logical strategy of defining the self as the source of all vigor and well-being in the world. What has attached itself to him will one day grow, he stubbornly hopes, to celebrate its beauty and strength in his paternal gift. It is interesting to note in this regard that his chosen name,30 which is strategically placed at the head of the novel's first two chapters to underscore his initiating role, means "rich guardian." Hence the implication that Eduard will protect what he calls his own. And Ottilie, like his other projects of appropriation, enjoys his protection in good faith. Neither at first recognizes the egotistical motives to his fatherly generosity. Having instigated in chapter 6 the landscaping projects that draw Charlotte and the Captain together, by the start of chapter 7, Eduard, who has already begun to sense for his young guest "eine stille, freundliche Neigung in seinem Herzen" (p. 289), can increasingly concentrate on situating her more securely in his world. Ottilie's response to her host's attention (though positive to his way of thinking) is, as the narrator suggests, partially the result of his narcissistic desire for self-presence, or "Selbstliebe" (p. 289). However, their mutual attraction can also be attributed to the complementary needs of Eduard's paternal aspirations and Ottilie's fragile perfection. Her challenge, which Eduard answers in his imperfect way, is that of some distant order. As such, it calls on him to draw her out of her isolation and inform his world with her characteristic integrity, that intuitive sense for the proper, the essential, and the originary. Moreover, in apparent agreement with Eduard's implicit recognition of such perfection, and the assistant's earlier remarks, even the narrator feels compelled to mention the salutary effects that Ottilie's presence at the estate has produced. Not only has she quickly learned the underlying principles of the

household: "Ottilie hatte schnell die ganze Ordnung eingesehen, ja, was noch mehr ist, empfunden. Was sie fur alle, fur einen jeden insbesondre zu besorgen hatte, begriff sie leicht. Alles geschah punktlich" (p. 282); she also has established herself as a domestic facilitator, a spirit of completion that appears to work from within rather than from without: "Sie wuBte anzuordnen, ohne daB sie zu befehlen schien, und wo jemand saumte, verrichtete sie das Geschaft gleich selbst" (p. 282). Like the splendid color of the emerald, which exerts on the visual sense "einige Heilkraft" (p. 283), Ottilie appears to the novel's male characters, including the narrator, as "ein wahrer Augentrost" (p. 283): "Wer sie erblickt, den kann nichts ~ b l e sanwehen; er fuhlt sich mit sich selbst und mit der Welt in ~bereinstimmung"(p. 283). For the moment, at least, she is a human token of health and well-being, and so for Eduard, a suitable vehicle through which to express his authorial hopes. In accord with these introductory observations, chapter 7 focuses on the effects that Eduard and Ottilie have on one another during her early days at the estate. We learn, for example, that she complements her sympathetic appreciation of his domestic wants with a sound understanding of his work in the horticultural and decorative gardens: "Ebenso wuBte sie im Baum- und Blumengarten Bescheid" (p. 289). Moreover, as a result of her capacity to answer Eduard's needs in an inobtrusive way,31Ottilie begins to benefit from his attentions herself: "Hiezu kam noch, daR sie gesprachiger und offener schien, sobald sie sich allein trafen" (p. 289). Significantly, Eduard's dominating presence has already attached Ottilie to his world, which she probably entered with some trepidation. But her willingness to attend to her host and to adjust her life according to his requirements signals her basic receptivity to his recuperative goals. Consequently, all that remains now for Eduard to fulfill his authorial desire is to make permanent Ottilie's participation in his affairs. He symbolically accomplishes this on one of the customary walks that the friends undertake, with Eduard and Ottilie normally leading the way, and Charlotte and the Captain following behind. On the day in question the more adventurous pair, whose outings have taken them increasingly far from the residence, reach an outlying region of the property that is entirely overgrown and, as a result, impassable. Nonetheless, as a huntsman familiar with the terrain. Eduard does not hesistate to advance: Eduard . . . drang mit Ottilien auf einem bewachsenen Pfade weiter vor, wohl wissend, da8 die alte, zwischen Felsen versteckte Miihle

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nicht weit abliegen konnte. Allein, der wenig betretene Pfad verlor sich bald, und sie fanden sich im dichten Gebiisch zwischen moosigem Gestein verirrt. . . . (p. 291)

Ominously, he and his companion pass through a region that has resisted all efforts at control and appropriation. As the entrance to a symbolic n e t h e r ~ o r l d , in ~ ' fact, it refutes the arch6logical hope for continuous vitality and productivity. Yet precisely in this place of threatening insubstantiality, Eduard makes a request of Ottilie and tries to assert rights over her that would irrefutably express his possessive presumptions as fact: Ich habe eine Bitte, liebe Ottilie; verzeihen Sie mir die, wenn Sie mir sie auch versagen! Sie machen kein Geheimnis daraus, und es braucht es auch nicht, dafi sie unter Ihrem Gewand, auf Ihrer Brust ein Miniaturbild tragen. Es ist das Bild Ihres Vaters, des braven Mannes, den Sie kaum gekannt und der in jedem Sinne eine Stelle an Ihrem Herzen verdient. (p. 292)

Not surprisingly, as aspiring provider and protector, Eduard cannot tolerate the idea of a center of power outside of himself. He therefore focuses his attention on Ottilie's quite literal attachment to her father. This link disturbs him, because it suggests that any control he might gain over her must remain secondary. She will become an authentic object of his generative urge, and he will reach his arch;-logical goal, only by usurping the paternal role for himself. In this spirit of delusion, then, and with a scarcely concealed duplicity, Eduard notes that the locket might injure Ottilie, and he asks her to remove it, if not from her memory, then at least from her person: Tun Sie es mir zuliebe, entfernen Sie das Bild, nicht aus Ihrem Andenken, nicht aus Ihrem Zimmer; ja geben Sie ihm den schijnsten, den heiligsten Ort Ihrer Wohnung; nur von Ihrer Brust entfernen Sie etwas, dessen Nahe mir, vielleicht aus iibertriebener ~ n ~ s t lichkeit, so gefahrlich scheint! (p. 292)

The true danger, of course, and hence the reason for Eduard's anxiety, is not the proximity of the miniature to Ottilie's breast, but rather the intrusion into his world of a prior generative source that would unmask his paternal presumptions. Still, as the typically self-assertive individual, Eduard also exemplifies the universal erotic urge that, for Goethe, underlies cognition.33Understanding,

as an appropriative process, involves imposing the forms of the mind on bits and pieces of the world. And in tacit recognition of this, as though she accepted as an unfortunate necessity the submission of any ideational structure to man's imperfect formative will, Ottilie accedes to Eduard's request: Ottilie schwieg und hatte, wahrend er sprach, vor sich hingesehen; dann, ohne ~ b e r e i l u nund ~ ohne Zaudern, mit einem Blick mehr gen Himmel als auf Eduard gewendet, loste sie die Kette, zog das Bild hervor, driickte es gegen ihre Stirn und reichte es dem Freunde hin. . . . (p. 292) As a human embodiment of the "beautiful," for Goethe, the mind's sole access to nature's secret laws,34his novel's heroine can make her perfection available only by entering a less than perfect world. That her entry signals a fall, and compromises the idea she embodies of the substantive form (because "Erscheinung und Entzweien" are s y n o n o m ~ u s ~involves ~) Ottilie and Eduard in a universal tragedy as The extent of this involvement, which is a consequence of Eduard's eroticism, his need to celebrate his personal power and control as the determining fact of his world, becomes increasingly clear after the "fateful" episode at the mill. Indeed, by the conclusion of part 1, Eduard has accomplished three narratively significant things: first, he has instigated the invitations that produce his own "spiritual" union with Ottilie and his wife's with the Captain; second, he has so deeply involved the two guests in his affairs that their extrication becomes painfully difficult; and third, he has laid the foundation of a relationship that will cast the chance events of his life as affirmations of an illicit involvement and so bolster his confidence in the rightness and strength of his formative will. When Ottilie suggests, for example, upon their return from the mill, that the new pavilion be erected on a different spot, Eduard triumphantly moves the Captain and Charlotte to her view "als ob die Erfindung sein gewesen ware" (p. 295). Since he now sees her as an extension of himself, her idea is, for all intents and purposes, his own. Or when she joins him in instrumental duets and perfectly accon~modatesher playing to his own flawed performance so that "daraus wieder eine Art von lebendigem Ganzen entsprang" (p. 297), he similarly takes false pride in the distorted result, as though it were based on a natural and legitimate union. The dangerous confusion of Eduard's view, and so the delusion

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underlying his confidence in his self-assertive presence, emerges in the report of the festivities on Charlotte's birthday, when the cornerstone for the new pavilion is laid. To help celebrate both events, each of which highlights the role of beginnings and reinforces Eduard's arche-logical interests, representatives of the crafts have been invited to participate in a symbolic ritual. Chief among the participants, however, is only the mason, whose versified speech the narrator summarizes in prose. "Drei Dinge . . . ," we are told, "sind bei einem Gebaude zu beachten: da8 es am rechten Fleck stehe; daR es wohl gegrundet, da8 es vollkommen ausgefuhrt sei" (p. 299). And while the first and the last of these considerations, the respective responsibilities of proprietor and craftsmen, are important, the second, the task of the mason, is essential: Aber das zweite, die Grundung, ist des Maurers Angelegenheit und, daR wir es nur keck heraussagen, die Hauptangelegenheit des ganzen Unternehmens. Es ist ein ernstes Geschaft, und unsre Einladung ist ernsthaft; denn diese Feierlichkeit wird in der Tiefe begangen. Hier innerhalb dieses engen, ausgegrabenen Raums erweisen Sie uns die Ehre, als Zeugen unseres geheirnnisvollen Geschaftes zu erscheinen. (p. 300) As the narrator's tactful reluctance to reproduce literally the masonic master's rhymed speech suggests, his business is shrouded in mystery. Not only does his work start beneath the surface of the earth, where the powers of generation reside; its results are normally hidden from sight and forgotten as well: Des Maurers Arbeit . . . , zwar jetzt unter freiern Himmel, geschieht, wo nicht immer irn Verborgnen, doch zum Verborgnen. Der regelmaRig aufgefuhrte Grund wird verschuttet, und sogar bei den Mauern, die wir am Tage auffuhren, ist man unser am Ende kaum eingedenk. (p. 301) Among all the mason's responsibilities, the foundation's cornerstone, upon which he focuses his remarks, is the most characteristic and crucial. For this piece alone determines the soundness of the entire project: Diesen Grundstein, der rnit seiner Ecke die rechte Ecke des Gebaudes, rnit seiner Rechtwinkligkeit die Regelmanigkeit desselben, rnit seiner wasser- und senkrechten Lage Lot und Waage aller

Mauern und Wande bezeichnet, konnten wir ohne weiteres niederlegen; denn er ruhte wohl auf seiner eignen Schwere. (p. 300)

Nor is the significance of the stone irrelevant to Eduard's defining aspiration, which similarly involves his positioning at a point of absolute origin. Like the mason, he might in fact ask of himself: "Wer hat mehr als er das SelbstbewuRtsein zu nahren Ursach?" (p. 301). Or, he might think of the tasks he undertakes, the foundations he presumes to lay, in the spirit of the speaker's words, like the arche, as a token of the power to initiate. After all, for later generations the "Grundstein" becomes a "Denkstein" (p. 301) as well. However, while Eduard subsequently celebrates in his appropriative projects the fulfilling aspects of the cornerstone ritual, he tragically fails to grasp the weight of the mason's concluding remarks. He continually behaves as though his determination alone will guarantee the completion of all he initiates without acknowledging the intrusion in human affairs of t r a n s i t o r i n e s ~ Indeed, .~~ he boldly ignores what the workmen and other celebrants respectfully acknowledge by burying their personal mementos within the stone. The building about to be erected, in spite of their efforts and hopes, will not stand for all time: Wir grunden diesen Stein fur ewig, zur Sicherung des langsten Genusses der gegenwartigen und kunftigen Besitzer dieses Hauses. Allein indem wir hier gleichsam einen Schatz vergraben, so denken wir zugleich, bei dem grundlichsten aller Geschafte, an die Verganglichkeit der menschlichen Dinge; wir denken uns eine Moglichkeit, daR dieser festversiegelte Deckel wieder aufgehoben werden konne, welches nicht anders geschehen diirfte, als wenn das alles wieder zerstort ware, was wir noch nicht einmal aufgefiihrt haben. (p. 302)

The point is, while the appropriative urge aspires to the permanent enjoyment of all it controls, and the assertive self acts on the world believing in its natural and legitimate presence at the generative center of things (the arche), in human affairs, the fulfillment of this aspiration can be pursued only as a misapplied presumption. If, like Eduard, a person childishly disregards his temporal predicament and equates the tentative results of his appropriative activities with some ultimate significance, then all the relationships he imagines must fail. Ample evidence of such failings on Eduard's part, and of their tragic consequences, surfaces throughout the rest of the novel. Al-

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ready noted in this regard is his proclivity to offer self-serving interpretations of chance events. Eduard repeatedly attaches significances to things that cast his involvement with Ottilie as a circumstance of fate, and by implication, fuel his aspiration to an originating center. Thus, his importuning speech at the mill only makes explicit the underlying motives of the grafting operations in chapter 1, the invitations to the needy friend and niece in chapters 2 and 5, and the landscaping efforts and attentions toward Ottilie throughout part 1. Subsequently, though, such actions speak increasingly for themselves. For instance, when Eduard decides to reclaim the estate's single glacial lake, which his forbears had divided into three ponds, he shows, characteristically, his resistance to formative efforts other than his own. Or, when he insists on seeing his own handwriting in some papers that Ottilie copies for him, he shows himself unable and unwilling to distinguish a personal "reading" of the world from the absolute meaning he desires, but cannot attain. In fact, Eduard's presumptive will cannot tolerate alternate articulations. No matter how arbitrary or transparently self-centered his interpretations become, they promise him the end of desire by sanctioning any wish he happens to entertain. The most striking instance of Eduard's interpretive imperialism and its shortcomings occurs in the novel's only scene of intimacy, the pivotal act of so-called "spiritual" adultery with Charlotte in chapter 1 1 . ~ 'What transpires is a conjugal union into which the illicit thoughts of the couple too easily intrude. As the decisive moment approaches, the adventuresome husband, who has mysteriously found his way to his wife's chamber, again seizes an opportunity to test the strength of his presence and requests her permission to stay: Eduard war so liebenswiirdig, so freundlich, so dringend; er bat sie, bei ihr bleiben zu diirfen, er forderte nicht, bald ernst bald scherzhaft suchte er sie zu bereden, er dachte nicht daran, dal3 er Rechte habe, und loschte zuletzt mutwillig die Kerze aus. (p. 321)

Apparently, Eduard's confidence in his (rhetorical) ability to translate his words immediately into fulfilling results moves him to pursue what custom alone should provide. However, once the will so recklessly assumes its effectiveness and justifies its every project simply by asserting itself, fundamental confusions arise to put in a critical light the desire to occupy a center of authorial power:

In der Lampendammerung sogleich behauptete die innre Neigung, behauptete die Einbildungskraft ihre Rechte iiber das Wirkliche: Eduard hielt nur Ottilien in seinen Armen, Charlotten schwebte der Hauptmann naher oder ferner vor der Seele, und so verwebten, wundersam genug, sich Abwesendes und Gegenwartiges reizend und wonnevoll durcheinander. (p. 321)

At the moment of conception, when the mystery of origins should caution deference, husband and wife both falsely equate the desire for an absent partner in spiritual love with their physical embrace. Moreover, having confused the thought and the fact of their encounter, they effectively confuse desire and fulfillment as well. In Eduard's case this particular confusion, with its profound implications for the judgment, dominates his actions henceforth and determines the tragic developments that ensue. Unlike Charlotte, who can correct her course by the end of part 1 and reject the alluring equation of (absent) desires and (present) fulfillments, her impetuous husband continually denies the gap that must separate an image of fulfillment and its realization. While her more prosaic temperament enables her to avoid the facile literalization of the figural, Eduard persistently embraces the concrete signs of desire (the signifiers) as if these were their intended objects (the signif i e d ~ instead. ) The Wahlverwandtschaften, then, does not dramatize the constraints of the marriage vow so much as the right of language to condemn the identification of its elusive figurative mode with the literal, the proper, or the ultimately p o s ~ e s s i b l e .Eduard's ~~ unrestrained eroticism, however, which must realize desire as appropriation, thrives on just this kind of transgression. To him a thought or design without an immediate consequence, a signifier that does not lead to a fulfilling embrace with a signified, a figuration that cannot recover the presence to which it points, are all intolerable limits of linguistic signification. Accordingly, after leaving his wife's chamber following their remarkable "semiotic crimeu-"die Sonne schien ihm ein Verbrechen zu beleuchten" (p. 321)-he can repress all residual sense of wrong-doing and persist in his deluded ways: "Denn so ist die Liebe beschaffen, da8 sie allein recht zu haben glaubt und alle anderen Rechte vor ihr verschwinden" (p. 322). Eduard's repeated assertion of interpretive rights in his attempts to cast as necessary, even divinely sanctioned, the arbitrary and self-serving assignation of meaning to chance events finally refuses

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to recognize any constraint^.^' His duets with Ottilie, her sympathetic duplication of his hand, the headaches they share, his discovery that the treasured sycamores were transplanted on the same date as her birth: each of these "signs" reinforces the others and, in the narrator's words, "treibt ihn ins Unendliche" (p. 328). On Ottilie's birthday, for example, only Eduard wants a public celebration at the dedication of the nearly completed "Lustgebaude," and he typically plans to end the festivities with a fireworks display. Even after an accident occurs, and a boy is nearly drowned in the lake, he refuses to change his plans and return with the other guests to the safety of the residence: Nein, Ottilie! . . . das AuRerordentliche geschieht nicht auf glattem, gewohnlichem Wege. Dieser iiberraschende Vorfall von heute abend bringt uns schneller zusammen. Du bist die Meine! Ich habe dirs schon so oft gesagt und geschworen; wir wollen es nicht mehr sagen und schworen, nun sol1 es werden. (p. 338)

Like the other signs he creates, indeed like every serious word Eduard speaks, this one has the quality of an oath. It involves a pragmatic intent that will not rest until the object of desire has been appropriated once and for all. But, as the narrator earlier observed, such passionate readings of the world, Eduard's compulsion to see things exclusively in terms of his own designs, actually undermine the security and social satisfaction that his control was supposed to promote: "Indem [seine Leidenschaft] ihn immer weiter fuhrte, empfand er die Beschrankung, in der man ihn zu halten schien, immer unangenehmer. Die freundliche Geselligkeit verlor sich. Sein Herz war verschlossen . . ." (p. 331). The remainder of the novel portrays Ottilie's gradual awakening to its central lesson of semiotic misappropriation and Eduard's inability to appreciate, until her death, the nature of his delusion. By the conclusion of part 1 , in fact, where Charlotte's pregnancy becomes the unalterable circumstance of Ottilie's relationship with Eduard, his beloved has already cautiously begun to retreat from his g r a ~ p . ~ Eduard, ' though, in spite of a self-imposed exile, continues to exert his will on both women, who together await the birth of his child. Thus, he not only insists in his departing note that Charlotte share his house with Ottilie; he takes morbid pleasure in bequeathing his estate to her, if he should die in the forthcoming campaign: "Es war ihm eine sune Empfindung, Ottilien das Gut vermachen zu konnen" (p. 359). Since he loves Ottilie "eigentlich"

(p. 355), as he claims, and to his mind, she is his literal extension, she, and not Charlotte, is his proper heir. Among all the motivational examples of Eduard's propensity to misuse figurative language through its mystifying application as a vehicle of desire, none is more revealing than the "Kelchglas" that appears at critical points as the story unfolds. Engraved with the initials E and 0 "in sehr zierlicher Verschlingung" (p. 303)-perhaps to commemorate Eduard's friendship with the Captain (Otto), or to recall his own chosen and given names-the goblet is part of a set that belonged to him since his youth. In any event, with his mark permanently inscribed on its surface, it has long stood as a token of his right to call something his own-an object, a name, another person. When the glass reappears at the cornerstone ceremony, though, the context of its appearance has changed, and so, too, has its manner of signification. For here it emerges in the hands of the mason, who ends his speech on the mystery of origins by raising this memento of Eduard's legal majority to his lips: "Und so leerte er ein wohlgeschliffenes Kelchglas auf einen Zug aus und warf es in die Luft; denn es bezeichnet das ~ b e r m a Beiner Freude, das GefaB zu zerstoren, dessen man sich in der Frohlichkeit bedient" (p. 302). To be shattered now rather than treasured and kept, the glass signifies the (arche-logical) joy at the moment of conception. The uniqueness of any beginning, it would seem, requires that this object never be used again in the same However, having cast the significance of the glass in these terms, the mason looks on to see his interpretive purpose thwarted almost at once: "Aber diesmal ereignete es sich anders: das Glas kam nicht wieder auf den Boden" (pp. 302-3). Caught by a workman perched on some scaffolding, it eludes its latest destiny and serves further as a vehicle of signification. Accordingly, when it is mentioned for the second time, now by Eduard, who purchased it from its lucky owner, "der diesen Zufall als ein gliickliches Zeichen fiir sich ansah" (p. 303), it has already been the object of several willful interpretive (semiotic) efforts, none of which has achieved its owner's intended purpose or desire. From even this partial history of Eduard's glass goblet, the assertion of interpretive rights appears, at best, a tentative affair. A sign will authentically reflect the formative will of an individual only as long as its signifier (which has been constituted in the desire to bring an unattainable goal into view) is not forcibly merged with its signified (which stands for presence, or the fulfillment of a goal, the elimination of desire and hence, of the signifier as well). If the process of signification is to continue, and a sign be effective, both

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of its constituent parts must survive. Desire must be perpetuated, and possession, as the presence of the literal and true, must be deferred for figurative language to reveal without deluding. In ignorance of these implications, however, and in accord with a pragmatic view of rhetoric as persuasion, Eduard reappropriates the goblet for a handsome price in the hope of establishing through it an eternal truth. "Sieh dieses Glas!" he exorts Mittler on their meeting before departing for the campaign: Unsere Namensziige sind dareingeschnitten. Ein frohlich Jubelnder warf es in die Luft; niemand sollte mehr daraus trinken, auf dem felsigen Boden sollte es zerschellen; aber es ward aufgefangen. Urn hohen Preis habe ich es wieder eingehandelt, und ich trinke nun taglich daraus, urn rnich taglich zu iiberzeugen, daD alle Verhaltnisse unzerstorlich sind, die das Schicksal beschlossen hat. (p. 356, emphasis mine)

Simply stated, Eduard has, with characteristic presumption, bought the glass in order to possess happiness by possessing its sign. And he then transfers to this object (now charged with his personal hopes) the same powers of presence and effective speech that typify his relations with others. The glass, he assumes, can become an authorial force. Like the traditional orator, it can bridge the gap between design and action. But in accomplishing this, it would also imply, incorrectly, that its owner's deepest desire (to integrate Ottilie into his. world) can be realized as fact. Eduard's rhetorical purpose, though, no less confused than its vehicle of intoxication, suggests for the reader that his semiotic application is actually a misapplication. Cast in Eduard's terms, the sign cannot survive as a cognitive facilitator. It cannot promote a process of problematic signification that owes its life to the postponement of closure. Shortly before he returns to his estate near the end of part 2, Eduard, "mit Ehrenzeichen geschmiickt" (p. 446), further dramatizes this state of affairs, when he reveals to his friend (now a major) a new turn in the object's fortunes: "So will ich mich denn selbst," rief ich mir zu, als ich an diesem einsamen Orte soviel zweifelhafte Stunden verlebt hatte, "mich selbst will ich an die Stelle des Glases zum Zeichen machen, ob unsre Verbindung moglich sei oder nicht." (p. 447,emphasis mine)

In a move to guarantee the coincidence of desire and fulfillment, Eduard reversed the process of signification by replacing the inher-

ently fragile sign with his bodily presence. In a final attempt to prove "Ottilie konne die Meine werden" (p. 447), and hence in a final appropriative gesture, he staked his presumed authorial powers against the fortunes of war. By surviving the dangers of battle in the hope "Ottilien zu gewinnen" (p. 447), he could properly stand, like other fortuitous objects, as a token. He could become a luminous sign through his personal will, which, in its divine wisdom and strength, conceived a course of action destined for completion: "Ottilie ist mein, und was noch zwischen diesem Gedanken und der Ausfuhrung liegt, kann ich nur fur nichts bedeutend ansehen" (p. 447). Where Eduard's strategy would deny meaning, though, is precisely where Goethe locates fictional discourse. After all, as an endless process of figurative signification, literature thrives in the gap that separates thought and execution. As a testimony to the possible, it strives to preserve and extend the line between the mind and reality. Hence Eduard's sanguine equation of mental project and deed, his effort to close the gap between desire and fulfillment rather than open it in pursuit, is finally refuted by the novel's denouement. And we learn, appropriately, shortly before Eduard's death that his cherished glass, that fragile vehicle of his erotic designs, was "kein wahrhafter Prophet" (p. 489). Indeed, it was duplicitous on more counts than one: Denn eines Tages, als Eduard das geliebte Glas zum Munde brachte, entfernte er es mit Entsetzen wieder; es war dasselbe und nicht dasselbe; er vermiRt ein kleines Kennzeichen. Man dringt in den Kammerdiener, und dieser mu0 gestehen, das echte Glas sei unlangst zerbrochen und ein Gleiches, auch aus Eduards Jugendzeit, untergeschoben worden. (p. 489)

Ironically, Eduard himself, who is left more with a duplicate than with a duplicitous object-sign, has provided through his belated detection a key to the Goethean process of signification. For his glass (which is like the original and refers to it) is, properly speaking, not it.44The true object, "das echte Glas," which Eduard willfully interpreted as the union of desire and fulfillment, could not withstand the pressure of his erotic investment and broke. Its life as a sign had to end once its signifier was absorbed into the consuming presence of its signified. In his third novel, then, Goethe prepares the way for establishing a principle of self-definition that is at work in each of the texts

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under discussion: the figurative nature of identity cannot tolerate the attempt to grasp as real the absent goals to which human desires refer. Like Eduard's goblet, which poignantly loses its worth for him and is redeemable only as a sign, the Goethean self finally emerges as a token of its own fragility and of the law of figurative appropriation, according to which the permanent coincidence of desire and fulfillment is a presumptive state of affairs that cannot be held onto with impunity. Relationships can be evoked, as Goethe's symbolic discourse demonstrates. But as structures of desire, they authentically exist for the mind only in pursuit. Their orienting centers, like the center of generative power and control in the Wahlverwandtschaften (the arche), can be neither managed nor occupied at will. Except for Ottilie, none of the novel's major characters recognizes, either implicitly or explicity, this fundamental constraint on interpreting the world through signs. Eduard, of course, helps bring to light the limits of figurative usage through the negative example of his self-assertive behavior-his presumption that self-presence can guarantee the translation of thought into deed, word into action, desire into possession. Hence the emphasis in his portrayal on effective speech: "Er hatte eine sehr wohlklingende, tiefe Stimme und war fruher wegen lebhafter, gefuhlter Rezitation dichterischer und rednerischer Arbeiten angenehm und beriihmt gewesen" (pp. 268-69). It remains for Ottilie, though, to understand the enigmatic course of life's eccentric path, and its refusal to allow the control of events from a center of power so extensive that a person's mark can be felt from one generation to the next. This is not to say that Ottilie denies generational aspirations, as her startling response to the English Lord's pendulum-experiment makes clear.45 She simply withdraws from a society that bases its well-being on the presumption of acting in literal accord with natural principles. And in so doing, she highlights as tragic the failure to acknowledge the provisional quality of human claims to conceive, secure, and extend formative rights over the outside world. The laws of the place to where Ottilie withdraws, in marked contrast to the principles that govern Eduard's estate, banish inflated hope and false faith and offer resignation or renunciation as a more restrained and suitably human standard of authenticity. The epistemological status of this standpoint, however, is neither explicitly nor extensively treated in the Wahlverwandtschaften. Indeed, its relevance to the issue of self-definition emerges fully only in Goethe's last novel, Wilhelrn Meisters Wanderjahre. However, its

contours already appear in Ottilie's intuitively correct behavior after the death of Eduard and Charlotte's infant son, as well as in the marginally articulate notations of her diary. Accordingly, I shall turn in conclusion to this episode and to this curious narrative insertion in order to introduce some problems of major concern in my final two chapters. The baby Otto, who, with the face of the Captain and Ottilie's eyes,46carries the mark of his parents' illicit desires, embodies the tragic impossibility of the attitudes that produced him. Like Eduard's glass, his son cannot tolerate the strain of a human will that would eliminate desire through self-assertion. He therefore dies, as an example of his father's misplaced urge to be at the origin of things, in the newly restored glacial lake and remains, in contrast to Felix, a memento rnori. No longer a token of nature's incalculable gifts, the child has become a reminder of the constraints imposed on the life of the mind by its linguistic determination. No human effort, the infant's death appears to caution, however self-assured, can presume to duplicate, or for that matter, to comprehend, the fortunate process of self-completion, productivity, and generational continuity at the heart of organic life. Against this background, Ottilie's role in the drowning signals her unconscious resistance to Eduard's "grafting" propensity, his fundamental need to attach her to his world: "Er wollte seine alten Rechte geltend machen und sie in seine Arme schlieflen" (pp. 45455). For though his sudden reappearance at the lake so startles and disturbs her that she momentarily harbors hopes of a union with him,47once he leaves and the child falls from her grip to its watery grave, the force of clarity penetrates her confusion, indicating that the child, as an embodiment of absent objects of desire willfully made present, could not have survived. Thus, when Ottilie returns to the pavilion and awakens from a trance-like state, she announces that she has recognized the error of her involvement with Eduard, whom she now renounces for good: Ich bin entschlossen . . . , und wozu ich entschlossen bin, muRt du gleich erfahren. Eduards werd ich nie! Auf eine schreckliche Weise hat Gott mir die Augen geoffnet, in welchem Verbrechen ich befangen bin. Ich will es biiRen; und niemand gedenke mich von meinem Vorsatz abzubringen! (p. 463)

The religious tone of Ottilie's confession notwithstanding, the course of action she plans to follow, her "neue Bahn," has nothing

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to do with traditional morality. Nor has the tragedy alerted her, in the manner of Schiller's heroines, to her spiritual reserves. Indeed, as fragments of her diary earlier suggest, her cautionary divinity is more likely the god who presides over authentically deferential aspirations and whose realm-in contrast to Eduard's estate-requires the tactful use of symbolic figures in interpreting the world. Within this realm, which for Goethe describes the limits of fictional and scientific discourse, the separation of the figurative and literal modes is strictly observed. Thus, in aspiring to the arche's vitality, in aiming to promote generational continuity, the individual cannot, like Eduard, deny the distinction between organic growth and human volition with impunity. What is permitted, though, is a life of creative figuration that recognizes in the failure of individual projects of appropriation a signal to renew such efforts ad infiniturn, rather than conclude them in a spirit of premature self-satisfaction. Notably, this alternative spirit of resisting closure, and thereby escaping the fatal embrace of false hopes or false beliefs, is traced in the famous red thread of Ottilie's diary.48 Described in its first installment, for example, is her involvement with Eduard in terms of portraits that, as images or derivative figurations, "fix" an object of desire as an eternally distant point of reference: Es gibt mancherlei Denkmale und Merkzeichen, die uns Entfernte und Abgeschiedene naher bringen. Keins ist von der Bedeutung des Bildes. Die Unterhaltung mit einem geliebten Bilde, selbst wenn es unahnlich ist, hat was Reizendes, wie es manchmal etwas Reizendes hat, sich mit einem Freunde streiten. Man fiihlt auf eine angenehme Weise, daR man zu zweien ist und doch nicht auseinander kann. (p. 369)

Contact with even unsuccessful copies is productively captivating, it appears, because they eschew the willful absorption of one of the partners by the other. Where satisfaction depends on the playful exchange of opposing views, individual desire can make no claims to absolute power and control. Indeed, the figurative form precludes such presumptions and accepts that its own life, though longer than that of the discrete biological form, is limited as well: So kann einem das Leben nach dem Tode doch immer wie ein zweites Leben vorkommen, in das man nun im Bilde, in der ~ b e r schrift eintritt und langer darin verweilt als in dem eigentlichen lebendigen Leben. Aber auch dieses Bild, dieses zweite Dasein ver-

lischt friiher oder spater. Wie uber die Menschen, so auch uber die Denkmaler laRt sich die Zeit ihr Recht nicht nehmen. (p. 370) No figuration can survive indefinitely. None has absolute validity. Each derivative form can only tentatively evoke an original point of reference and then slip from sight in order to make place for other similar derivations. In short, no single recuperative project can situate the signified within the grasp of an all-powerful will. But all such projects can, together, constitute the ideal signifier as their own problematic play. In accord with these observations, Ottilie's decision to renounce Eduard, as a gesture of resistance to his commanding pre~ence,~' implies an intuitive recognition of the priority that "dieses zweite Dasein," the figurative life, has over biological or literal life. Her refusal to speak and to eat signals her acceptance of a mode of being that can tolerate, even welcome the limitations of reading the world authentically through signs.50 Nor does this mode, as asceticism, suggest spiritual regeneration on her part. Instead, it embodies a resolve that is unique to signs to forestall fulfillment and facilitate discourse by keeping aspiration alive, and hence the idealized objects of aspiration as well. Ottilie's faith, unlike that of the vulgar believers at her shrine, finds peace in textual derivations, in discursive writing, rather than in pragmatic speech. That this was also Goethe's belief becomes apparent in his last novel, where a master vantage point figures through which the entire problem of the self can be surveyed.

Deference and the Deferral of Aspiration Self-denial in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre

Anangke Da ist's denn wieder, wie die Sterne wollten: Bedingung und Gesetz, und aller Wille 1st nur ein Wollen, weil wir eben sollten, Und vor dem Willen schweigt die Willkiir stille; Das Liebste wird vom Herzen weggescholten, Dem harten MuR bequemt sich Will' und Grille. So sind wir scheinfrei denn nach manchen Jahren Nur enger dran, als wir am Anfang waren.

The opening pages of Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre oder die Entsagenden (1821; 1829) intertwine the story of Saint Joseph the Second with Wilhelm's valedictory letters to Natalie.' As the second of Wilhelm's letters suggest, these two thematic strands touch on a number of points while diverging on othew2 In terms of familial piety, for instance, the Joseph encounter dramatizes Wilhelm's attitude of "Verehrung" (p. 28) toward his beloved: "Hat nicht selbst das Zusammentreffen dieser beiden Liebenden etwas ~ h n l i c h e s mit dem unsrigen?" (p. 28). But the similarity of the relationships,

their common basis in crisis, does not obscure that Wilhelm is Felix's true father, Natalie his adoptive mother, while for Joseph and Marie the reverse is true.3 Furthermore, while the carpenter enjoys the company of his wife and his children and remains secure in his secluded valley within the confines of the abandoned monastery, Wilhelm, as wanderer and renunciant, has accepted the burden of separation. It is particularly appropriate, therefore, that in noting the similarity between himself and his new friend, he formulates his observation as a question. Like so many of the subsequent episodes and insertions in the Wanderjahre, its initial narrative focus hints at some universal significance only to resist definitive e ~ a l u a t i o nHence, .~ while the conclusion of the Lehrjahre, with its attention to Wilhelm's pat ern it^,^ has prepared the reader for the depiction of familial piety in the sequel, the "correct" interpretive perspective on this theme remains uncertain: are we to understand Wilhelm's encounter with the latter-day saint as a glimpse into the realm of primal forms, a Goethean aperCu that privileges him with an experience against which all others must be measured? Or does it provide a negative contrast instead, like Eduard's, a regressive, even arrogant, at best naive attempt to appropriate an authentic generative force and thereby experience the power of a strong predecessor? As the Wahlverwandtschaften suggests, answers to questions like these cannot be categorical. Points of interpretive certainty cannot be reached, whatever a reader's theoretical d i s p ~ s i t i o n Indeed, .~ Wilhelm's deployment of the domestic theme as a puzzle,' even its summation in the few brief questions of his second letter to Natalie (p. 28), implies that so fundamental an issue can be authentically approached only through an interrogative posture. In accord with the final standpoint of the Wahlverwandtschaften, then, Goethe intends in this episode to highlight generational fulfillment as a problematic idea. Rather than assert the priority of one concept of family over and against all others, he establishes its enigmatic essence and alerts the reader that other ideational structures, including the self, must also be seen as interpretive challenges without determinate resolutions. "Man sagt: zwischen zwei entgegengesetzten Meinungen liege die Wahrheit mitten inne," one of the Wanderjahre's maxims cautions. "Keineswegs! Das Problem liegt dazwischen, das Unschaubare, das ewig tatige Leben, in Ruhe gedacht" (p. 309).

Along these lines, the faintest of motivational echoes from the previous novel puts into relief the dominant theme of the Saint

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Joseph episode by again raising the generational issue as a perplexing consequence of intimate human associations. After all, the young caretaker's imitation of his saint constitutes a tableau vivant. It attempts to retrieve from the past and arrest for the present a vital force that has survived through time to offer a promise of communal security. In a limited sense, then, Joseph, within his secluded valley recalls Eduard, the rich guardian of the paternal estate. Both have as their aim revitalizing a self-contained world. And both pursue their recuperative project by attending to a female figure at once irresistibly attractive and elusive. Like Eduard, in fact, whose efforts at renewal are adumbrated in the grafting of shoots onto established stems, Joseph believes that growth can be promoted and life maintained by a grafting operation: "Denn wenn das Leblose lebendig ist, so kann es auch wohl Lebendiges hervorbringen" (p. 15). He has therefore attached himself and his family to the ruined monastery and is confident they can thrive on its residual saps or, as Wilhelm puts it, its essential "Lebenskraft" (p. 15).' Even Joseph's union with the widowed and pregnant Marie, who entered their marriage with the progeny of another man, can be viewed as an operation of this kind. Indeed, though Eduard's more complex motivations erect an insurmountable barrier between himself and Ottilie, the attention Marie attracts and the reserve she elicits from Joseph lend her an aura of significance not unlike that surrounding Charlotte's niece, whom the young architect presents as "the mother of Godug in one of his tableaux. Accordingly, the epithets establishing Marie's spirituality are identical to those attached to Ottilie: both are portrayed as ideational forms, Goethean "Ge~talten,"'~and both are thus "liebenswiirdig," "schon," and "himmlisch."" In this regard, Joseph's attentiveness toward Marie en route to the midwife's home, like Eduard's pedagogical attentions and gifts to Ottilie,12 is part of an overall project of appropriation. For each would include in his secluded world an animating force that promises him a privileged place within the realm of generational continuity. And each would maintain this contact by sharing with his object of desire those things he considers his own. Thus Joseph, reminiscent of Eduard after Ottilie's arrival at the estate, hopefully offers the distraught stranger a glimpse into his native region by bringing her its flowers, revealing to her its mountains and forests-"so vie1 kostbare Schatze," he explains, "die ich ihr zuzueignen dachte, um mich mit ihr in Verhaltnis zu setzen, wie man es durch Geschenke zu tun sucht" (p. 24).

That Joseph succeeds in his union with Marie while Eduard fails with Ottilie, that he animates his world and gains a son while Eduard loses one, is due to his native tact. Through his willing acceptance of exclusion from the midwife's home at the time of the birth, the caretaker establishes, as Eduard could not, his reluctance to occupy the generational center of things. Even in success, then, the recuperative effort that opens the Wanderjahre suggests an ambivalence typical for Goethe's later viewsl3 on powerful integrating structures. As already noted, the most prominent and problematic of such principles, "die Idee der Metamorphose," is "eine hochst ehrwiirdige, aber zugleich hochst gefahrliche Gabe von oben."14 Not that Goethe could ever renounce his faith in governing forms, or that he could categorically reject the arche-logical aspirations of scientific and literary pursuits. But by casting the arche as problematic, and asserting its tantalizing hold on the mind while acknowledging its elusiveness, he finally recasts the relationship between all boundary phenomena and the inquiring mind. "Idee," "Gestalt," "Urphanomen," "Typus," "Metamorphose," "Leben," "Entelechie" continue to designate for him a center of original power within the world. Each term still implies an unchanging regulatory principle as a point of stability within the temporal flux of life.15 Yet these captivating forms, in their refusal of comprehension, also require the deferral of final "meanings." Rather than penetrate to a determining source, Goethe is content, as artistic and scientific investigator, to create discourses of alternate assignations, each of which challenges further interpretation and which only together constitute the true process of understanding. The structure of this process can be seen most clearly in Goethe's theory of scientific discovery, specifically in his notion of the experimental series.16 Overwhelmed by the hydra of empiricism," yet reticent about the generative "idea" (arche), the investigator, he urges, must situate himself on some middle ground." He must fix "empirical phenomena" by isolating and securing "das Bestimmte der Ers~heinungen"'~ in a carefully constructed experiment." Then, after imposing on nature the rudiments of a lexical system," he can cast the "empirical phenomenon" as a "scientific phenomenon," which through its emerging "Konstanz und Konsequenz" brings to light "ein empirisches Gesetz."" This empirical principle next serves as a heuristic device and enables the investigator to perform additional experiments, each of which provokes further interpretive turns that together finally promote the articulation of the "pure

Deference and the Deferral of Aspiration

phenomenon," "das letzte Ziel unserer Krafte."z3But even this ultimate goal, Goethe cautions, has been constituted in the consistency of effects brought to light by a human experimenter. Hence, as is urged in the foreword of the Farbenlehre (1810),the human mark on individual "scientific phenomena" must not be suppressed. Indeed, these phenomena should be seen as words, and their subsequent rational amalgamationsz4as texts: Denn eigentlich sollte der Schreibende sprechen und seinen Zuhorern die Phanomene, teils wie sie uns ungesucht entgegenkommen [empirical phenomenon], teils wie sie durch absichtliche Vorrichtungen nach Zweck und Willen dargestellt werden konnen [scientific phenomenon], als Text erst anschaulich machen; alsdann wiirde jedes Erlautern, Erklaren, Auslegen einer lebendigen Wirkung nicht ermangeln."

Moreover, as textual accounts of phenomenal representations, the results of scientific investigation cannot presume to duplicate the generative center within nature. More modestly, they simply recall the conditions created in the attempt of the experimenter to make nature speak: Denn hier wird nicht nach Ursachen gefragt, sondern nach Bedingungen, unter welchen die Phanomene erscheinen; es wird ihre konsequente Folge, ihr ewiges Wiederkehren unter tausenderlei Umstanden, ihre Einerleiheit und Veranderlichkeit angeschaut und angenommen, ihre Bestimmtheit anerkannt und durch den menschlichen Geist wieder be~tirnmt.'~

Notably, Goethe's preferred experimental procedures are predicated on the mind's precarious suspension between "Idee und Erfahr~ng."~'In this they favor a semiotic approach to significance that recalls Ottilie's return to an authentic course at the end of the Wahlvenvandtschaften. Accordingly, in his last novel Goethe turns increasingly from presumed centers of teleological, ideological, and arch8-logical aspiration to explicit representations of human desire through chains of tentative, self-referential s i g n i f i e r ~ The . ~ ~ evolving discourse, called "Symbolik" by Goethe, faithfully preserves the mind's defining aspirations as text. But its energy is more internal than external, and Goethe's ideal investigator (like the "organizing intelligence" at work in the Wanderjah~-e,~') must typically postulate an Archimedean point of determination as an epistemological necessity that produces analogies: closely related expressions that provoke further thought.

In their analogical structure, each of life's infinite manifestations does not point to some final cognitive destination, but rather to all other manifestations: "Jedes Existierende ist ein Analogon alles E~istierenden."~' Each becomes involved in a process of figurative signification with the advantage "da8 sie nicht abschlie8t und eigentlich nichts Letztes will" (p. 296). Moreover, when judiciously applied, such a mode of figurative appropriation eschews both premature generalization and fragmented per~eption.~' "Wie gute Gesellschaft, die immer mehr anregt als gibt,"32Goethe's scientific and literary discourse defers closure. By promoting an endless process of interpretive assertion and reassertion it sustains its own life.33 Against this background, the compositional complexity of the Wanderjahre, like its protean form, appears commensurate with its major thematic concerns. For the last of the novels is "experimental" precisely in the Goethean sense.34 Each of its many strands, like an experimental series, amalgamates significant motifs for the purpose of isolating and bringing to view fundamental issues concerning the self.35And like all "Urphanomene" or boundary concerns in Goethe's thought, these issues are raised to highlight their problematic character. Through the indirect articulation of man's relation to an ultimate spiritual aim (telos), or to an originating formal principle (arche), or to a point of overall accountability (idea), the novel transforms the border region of these focal points of human piety36from a seductive abyss into a bridge. Indeed, in its frame and its interlocuted stories, in its letters, diary entries, and aphorisms, in its use of technological treatise and poetry, it offers parallel chains of signifiers that express the self's defining aspirations through alternate figurations and so point more to each othe than to categorical solutions: Denn eigentlich unternehmen wir umsonst, das Wesen eines Dinges auszudriicken. Wirkungen werden wir gewahr, und eine vollstandige Geschichte dieser Wirkungen umfaBte wohl allenfalls das Wesen jenes Dinges. Vergebens bemiihen wir uns, den Charakter eines Menschen zu schildern; man stelle dagegen seine Handlungen, seine Taten zusammen, und ein Bild des Charakters wird uns entgegentreten.37

From the standpoint of Goethe's cognitive reti~ence,~' the work ethos of the Wanderjahre appears in a new light. Deeds become significant, he suggests, as the basic elements of narrative texts.

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Furthermore, these texts capture significance, not as substance, but as "Bild," a figuration that generates interpretation by referring to additional figuration^.^' "Alles ist ja nur symbolisch zu nehmen und uberall steckt noch etwas anderes dahinter," he claimed of the Wahlverwandtschaften and the Wanderjahre in a conversation with Chancellor von Miiller. "Jede Losung eines Problems ist ein neues Pr~blem."~~ At work in the last of Goethe's novels, then, is a strategy of deferral that accounts for the formal diversity of the text and its bewildering array of competing interests. Here an integrating vantage point is evoked only to be displaced from the center of things to the periphery almost at once. The Wanderjahre's standpoints are too numerous, their filiations too labyrinthian, for total integration to be achieved: "Da bleibt nun fur den ernst Betrachtenden nichts ubrig, als daB er sich entschliefie, irgendwo den Mittelpunkt hinzusetzen und alsdann zu sehen und zu suchen, wie er das ubrige peripherisch behandle."41 The novel's center, like the center of atmospheric phenomena, cannot be occupied. In the spirit of the ideal scientific investigator, who can only postulate this or that point of reference, its "renunciants" (as its ideal reader) will only find keys that must be relinquished because they cannot really open locks. Each of the Wanderjahre's significant motifs, each of its characters, stories, or episodes appears to point in a discernible direction and promise a resolution. But like the "Steine des AnstoBes, uber die ein jeder Wanderer stolpern muR," the markers along the "secret paths of the book" prove to be stumbling blocks (p. 460). As Goethe's strategic distractions, the text's multiple interests become essential detours and serve as reminders of the need to renounce all ultimate meanings, even as they are pursued. As derivations drawn from presumed centers of significance, his narrative building blocks are, in fact, abstractions in the basic sense of the Moreover, within the world of the novel, whoever fails to see himself similarly "abstracted," and so fails to renounce his particular center of personal a ~ p i r a t i o nmust , ~ ~ also count as a failure in the search for self-definition. Insight into the derivative nature of the self comes to Wilhelm quite early, during an astronomical observation at Makarie's estate, when he reflects on man's cosmic condition. Customarily, this episode is seen as an example of epiphany rather than cognitive l i m i t a t i ~ n ~ ~ - aviewpoint with some textual support. Thus, the narrator highlights the clarity of the nocturnal sky-"Die heiterste Nacht, von allen Sternen leuchtend und funkelnd" (p. 118)-and

he implies that Wilhelm's inner clarity was no less remarkable. Moreover, his conventional reading of Wilhelm's affective and cognitive response to an experience of sublime splendor proceeds without qualification. The sheer power of the scene, we learn, first seized Wilhelm with such surprise that, even with his eyes closed, the threat of personal destruction overwhelmed him: "Ergriffen und erstaunt hielt er sich beide Augen zu. Das Ungeheure hort auf, erhaben zu sein, es iiberreicht unsre Fassungskraft, es droht, uns zu vernichten" (p. 119). At the moment of cognitive collapse, though, Wilhelm's sense of self was maintained, as his own words-in the spirit of Kant's third critique-assure: "Was bin ich denn gegen das All," sprach er zu seinem Geiste; "wie kann ich ihm gegeniiber, wie kann ich in seiner Mitte stehen?" Nach einem kurzen Uberdenken jedoch fuhr er fort: "Das Resultat unsres heutigen Abends lost ja auch das Ratsel des gegenwartigen Augenblicks. Wie kann sich der Mensch gegen das Unendliche stellen, als wenn er alle geistigen Krafte, die nach vielen Seiten hingezogen werden, in seinem Innersten, Tiefsten versammelt, wenn er sich fragt: 'Darfst d u dich in der Mitte dieser ewig lebendigen Ordnung auch nur denken, sobald sich nicht gleichfalls in dir ein beharrlich Bewegtes, urn einen reinen Mittelpunkt kreisend, hervortut?' " (p. 119)

Like Kant's aesthetic persona in recognizing his moral capacity, and Werther in evoking his personal "Damon," Wilhelm appears to turn in this scene from the threat of cognitive frustration to an intuition of personal grandeur. After all, his "beharrlich Bewegtes" is just another locution for the source of all individual development. In marked contrast to more conventional participants in the sublime, though, Wilhelm does not presume to occupy a field of absolute significance. Instead, he postulates a pure center within the self only to keep it at a distance, as a fictional possibility on the far side of actual experience. Even his reference to it is interrogative. Indeed, the peripheral position of the developmental principle in Wilhelm's reflection highlights the derivative status of the Goethean self, which has now been evoked as an abstraction-drawn from a pure center, but no longer within it.45Such centers are no more available than their cosmic counterpart, Wilhelm concludes, and they therefore remain enigmatic: "Und selbst, wenn es dir schwer wiirde, diesen Mittelpunkt in deinem Busen aufzufinden, so wiirdest du ihn daran erkennen, dal3 eine wohlwollende, wohltatige Wirkung von ihm ausgeht und von ihm Zeugnis gibt" (p. 119).

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Apparently, the self-aspiring individual must be content with the play of the derivative ("Wirkung"), the infinite deferral of the true self, which has become just a postulate of the mind. As such, it remains indeterminable-as Wilhelm suggests-available only through an oblique testimony ("Zeugnis") to its own imperceptible grandeur. Nowhere does Goethe offer more striking examples of an endlessly derivative self than in his use (throughout his oeuvre and in the Wanderjahre, in particular) of lateral relationship^.^^ After all, as siblings, individuals figure as temporal specifications of an absolutely prior force, and this configuration is both their promise and misfortune. Through it they share, like the analogical construction, or "closely related expression," an origin and a special proximity. Additionally, though, they experience division and separation through each other. And to remain mindful of this, siblings mustlike the investigator who relies on analogies-demonstrate tact, what Goethe calls "die heilige Scheu der nahen Verwandtschaft" in describing his own relationship to his sister C ~ r n e l i a . ~ ~ The Goethean moment of perfection, "das Ziel des innigsten Bestrebens,"*' recalls this attitude in its refusal to integrate discrete moments of time into an experience of absolute presence. As the poem "Elegie" (1823) teaches, man can only transform, and not abandon, his temporality. Like the priority of a parent for the sibling, paradise-as pure priority-remains unavailable for the poet. He can entertain its unity only as a token of the mind. As such, it can be re-presented, but only as figuration: "Die Stunden glichen sich in zartem Wandern 1 Wie Schwestern zwar, doch keine ganz den andern."49 Like the poet's day of sororial hours, authentic fulfillment testifies to a point of total integration while postponing its realization. In fact, as a condition of returning to paradise, the poet must renounce an array of appropriative urges-"Selbstsinn," "Eigennutz," and "Eigenwille." He must accept his predicament and answer the gods' challenge of temporal loss: Mir ist das All, ich bin rnir selbst verloren, Der ich noch erst den Gottern Liebling war: Sie pruften rnich, verliehen rnir Pandoren, So reich a n Gutern, reicher an Gefahr; Sie drangten rnich zurn gabeseligen Munde, Sie trennen rnich-und richten rnich zu Grunde."

Like the formative idea of metamorphosis, Pandora (who is also a gift of dangerous abundance) emerges in this meditation on renun-

ciation through the "Spezifikationstrieb," the Goethean principle underlying the relationship among siblings as welL5' The resounding "Ach!" of the first abstraction from a primal source, the cry from the cosmic wound that was heard "als das All mit Machtgebarde 1 In die Wirklichkeiten b r a ~ h , "would ~ ~ also be heard in all subsequent abstractions. For Goethe, then, no single phenomenon or isolated specification can duplicate the primary source that produced it. Each relates to all others without being identical. To answer the gods' challenge the individual must participate in the infinite play of signifiers: "Er wiederholt ihr Bild zu tausendmalen."53 He must renounce the lure of reintegration and joyfully accept the derivative status of his life. For the Wanderjahre's reader such recognition requires an ongoing effort of interpretive restraint. On the one hand, each letter or report, each interpolated story or tale, each motif or episode in the frame invites scrutiny as a focal point through which the novel in its entirety can be grasped. But in isolating and bringing into relief a particular detail, the reader risks ignoring the larger field from which it has been drawn. Like Wilhelm upon gazing at Natalie through a telescope from a ridge in the novel's first version, he may, momentarily, mistake the periphery for the center.54 But in persisting in this error, and thus failing to recall the fundamental confusion of his view, he will find himself standing on a precarious interpretive ledge. Ideally, then-in scrutinizing this testimony to Goethe's "Schreibseligkeit" (p. 78)-the reader must avoid foregrounding one of its abstractions at the cost of its others. To remain in harmony with the narrative technique of the novel, he must attend to its dispersive interests as fundamental abstractions that together determine the playful shape of its elusive text.

The related issues of sourcelderivation, foregroundhackground, or centerlperiphery are so basic to the problem of self-definition in Goethe that Wilhelm reflects on these strategies as early as the Wanderjahre's first book. The setting, a model horticultural estate where he and Felix are entertained by an eccentric family of loquacious aristocrats, includes a portrait gallery to which he finds his way one morning and, as the narrator notes, "ergotzte sich an so mancher bekannten Gestalt" (p. 79). Like the biography, Wilhelm muses, the portrait is uniquely constituted: "Das Portrat wie die Biographie haben ein ganz eigenes Interesse" (p. 79). Both forms,

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he explains, strategically isolate the individual, whose presentation as a significant focal point engages the observer or reader: "Der bedeutende Mensch, den man sich ohne Umgebung nicht denken kann, tritt einzeln abgesondert heraus" (p. 79). The human object of pictorial or narrative representation is abstracted from a sustaining environment to become a semiotic structure ("bedeutend"). He therefore stands before us as an impossible thought: a derivative without a source, a foregrounded fragment without any surrounding background. Furthermore, postured "vor uns wie vor einen Spiegel" (p. 79), he compels us in a remarkable way: "Ihm sollen wir entschiedene Aufmerksamkeit zuwenden, wir sollen uns ausschlieRlich mit ihm beschaftigen, wie er behaglich vor dem Spiegelglas mit sich beschaftiget ist" (p. 79). The observer-subject in Wilhelm's meditation is linked to the portrait as an image to an image. He has himself become a derivation. Moreover, the source of this mirror image, the portrait-object under his scrutiny, is a derivation or abstraction as well: "Ein Feldherr ist es, der jetzt das ganze Heer reprbentiert, hinter den so Kaiser als Konige, fur die er kampft, ins Trube zurucktreten" (p. 79). Emperor and king, the worldly embodiments of divine presence and absolute power, recede to an indistinct background and hence facilitate the captivating play between the observer and the portraitured individual: "Der gewandte Hofmann steht vor uns, eben als wenn er uns den Hof machte, wir denken nicht an die groRe Welt, fur die er sich eigentlich so anmutig ausgebildet hat" (P. 79). At this point in his gallery visit, Wilhelm is struck by the process of mutual self-definition that his observations appear to involve: "~berraschendwar sodann unserm Beschauer die khnlichkeit mancher langst vorubergegangenen mit lebendigen, ihm bekannten und leibhaftig gesehenen Menschen, ja ~ h n l i c h k e i tmit ihm selbst!" (p. 79). Notably, he has located a series of analogical projections at the source of his sense of self and then grounded the stability of this sense on a capacity to sustain the resulting play of signifiers. Wilhelm's observations therefore conclude, not surprisingly, with yet another derived point of reference, a literary figuration that he borrows from Plautus: "Und warum sollten sich nur Zwillingsmenachmen aus einer Mutter entwickeln? Sollte die groRe Mutter der Gotter und Menschen nicht auch das gleiche Gebild aus ihrem fruchtbaren SchoRe gleichzeitig oder in Pausen hervorbringen konnen?" (p. 79). Thus left with an image of twins, the quintessential human derivation, we find in Wilhelm's con-

cluding reflection the present moment divided in itself." Accordingly, when he next moves from the outside gallery to some interior rooms, where a second gallery is located, the intent is only to highlight a contrast already noted between an older notion of the self, on the one hand, and a contemporary view, on the other: Er ward freundlich in die innern Zimmer gefiihrt, wo er kostliche Bilder bedeutender Manner des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts sah, in vollstandiger Gegenwart, wie sie fiir sich leibten und lebten, ohne sich etwa im Spiegel oder im Zuschauer zu beschauen, sich selbst gelassen und geniigend, nur durch ihr Dasein wirkend, nicht durch irgendein Wollen oder Vornehmen. (p. 79,emphasis mine)

As an era of absolute self-presence, the sixteenth-century produced portraits that are properly displayed in a gallery at the center of the uncle's manorial home. Wilhelm, though, who has just recognized in his own age a refusal of intrinsic self-definition, must be content to see himself through the first gallery's paintings. In contrast to his portrayal in the Lehrjahre, he has, like the individuals of these paintings, evolved as an abstract figuration of a presumably fruitful, though painfully remote s ~ u r c e . ~ W e n che e , will achieve self-definition, like them, only through a series of similarly constituted figurations and not through the nostalgic search for a single substantive center. With the self cast in Makarie's observatory as an abstraction, and then articulated in the uncle's gallery as a discourse among derived figurations, the implication arises that personal identity, as a discursive idea, informs not only the Wanderjahre, but Goethe's entire novelistic oeuvre as well. To begin examining this thesis, we might turn first to book 2, where the editor frames Wilhelm's choice of profession with a lengthy account of a utopian school. As the critical literature points out, this portion of the Wanderjahre has special weight, because it systematically outlines a moral and aesthetic philosophy with the novel's larger themes in mind. Accordingly, if a goal in the journey toward self can be described for Goethe's novelistic oeuvre through the collective lives of the Wanderjahre's "renunciants," then this framing episode probably contains some revealing clues. As book 2 begins, the reader finds Wilhelm, together with Felix, at the border of the pedagogical province, "in der sie so manches Merkwiirdige erfahren sollten" (p. 149). And toward its conclusion several years later, the father reappears, now trained as a surgeon,

Deference and the Deferral of Aspiration to obtain a detailed account of his son's progress during the intervening period. Even before depositing Felix at the school, though, Wilhelm learns of its overall educational project through an old antiquarian: the young person's specialized training in fields suitable to his native inclination, or "was ihm gemaR ist" (p. 148). In marked contrast to the Tower Society's program in the Lehrjahre, the teachers at this school help their charges avoid the excesses of youthful enthusiasm: "Sie verkiirzen die Umwege, durch welche der Mensch von seiner Bestimmung, nur allzugefallig, abirren mag" (p. 148). They therefore value the crafts as the foundation of all other vocations, and the school figures prominently in the utopian project of book 3, which, again in contrast to the Lehrjahre, emphasizes the division of labor and social cooperation at the cost of harmonious development.'' The province's practical concerns, though, are important to its pedagogues only in facilitating their more basic goal: to instill in all of the students, whatever their differences, a heightened sense of gratitude and self-respect. Each pupil must learn to regard the individual as an instance of divine creation, paradoxically tied to the earth and his fellowmen. And in response to this aim, forms of religious instruction in man's spiritual, material, and social life5' dominate the curriculum, which culminates in an ultimate concern for the self, "die Ehrfurcht vor sich selbst" (p. 157). To highlight the doctrine of reverences as a key to self-definition, Goethe has Wilhelm encounter its most rudimentary expression as soon as he crosses the province's boundary. Thus, after introducing himself and Felix to the supervisor of some young boys preparing a harvest festival, he notes their unusual greeting of distinct, almost ritualized gestures: Die jiingsten legten die Arme kreuzweis iiber die Brust und blickten frohlich gen Himmel, die mittlern hielten die Arme auf den Riicken und schauten lachelnd zur Erde, die dritten standen strack und mutig; die Arme niedergesenkt wendeten sie den Kopf nach der rechten Seite und stellten sich in eine Reihe. . . . (pp. 149-50) The remarkable scene prompts a question from Wilhelm, to which the supervisor replies that each gesture corresponds to a different developmental level. However, when the curious visitor probes further into the mysterious greetings, his inquiry is deflected with reference to the supervisor's superiors, "Hoheren, als ich bin," who alone can provide additional explanations. Wilhelm, though, is

momentarily assured "da8 es nicht leere Grimassen sind, da8 vielmehr den Kindern zwar nicht die hochste, aber doch eine leitende, fa8liche Bedeutung uberliefert wird" (p. 150). Moreover, the children have themselves been admonished not to chat about these matters, "und so modifiziert sich die Lehre hundertfaltig" (p. 150). What first emerges in Wilhelm's encounter with the school's doctrine of "Ehrfurchten" is not just their connection to certain mysteries, "gewissen Geheimnissen" (p. 150), however. After all, as greetings, the gestures of the students establish contact to facilitate communication. Thus, they involve more a rudimentary invitation to discourse than a simple expression of content. As Wilhelm has just heard, even among the least capable children, the reverences stimulate their own duplication, or "hundredfold modifications," which are highlighted in the varied colors of their clothes.5g Accordingly, Wilhelm's information about them is continually supplemented, and their import increasingly shifts to deferred meanings. Indeed, by the end of book 2, the reader is left not with a substantive definition of the self (the object of the ultimate reverence) but rather with a web of signifying possibilities that, like the children's greetings, constitutes the self as a pattern of abstract figurations with no determinate significance. The strategy of deferral dramatized in Wilhelm's first encounter with a school "official" underlies its attitude of "Ehrfurcht" as well, which is at the heart of both its educational doctrines and the novel's culminating definition of the self. By regarding a compelling center of significance ("ehren") that is also threatening ("furchten"), the gesture of deference seems to challenge substantive explanations that call then for further explanation. Hence, "Ehrfurcht" ultimately postpones the attainment of the comprehensive vantage point to which it has directed the attention of the mind: "Jede Losung eines Problems ist ein neues Pr~blem."~O While the basic expression of each of the reverences is directional, and each points to a possible locus of existential clarity, the paths they trace in the novel actually lead Wilhelm only from one informant to another, from one interpretation to the next. Though he arrives expecting to meet the school's director, for example-"Sie begruBten einen und den andern und fragten nach dem 0bern"-the supervisor with the children in the field is notably ill informed about his superior, "von dessen Aufenhalt man keine Rechenschaft geben konnte" (p. 149). Already implicit in Wilhelm's letter of introduction, in fact-"An den Obern, oder die DreieH-is the division of the leader into constitutive parts. And though he appears to

Deference and the Deferral of Aspiration have left a trace-"Man verfolgte nunmehr die Spur des Obern, welche man gefunden zu haben glaubte" (p. 151)-in the end Wilhelm does not reach him, but only an odd trinity that stands as the derivation, or semiotic consequence of his putative authority: Da sich der Obere nicht erreichen lieR, sagte der Aufseher: "Ich muR Euch nun verlassen, meine Geschafte zu verfolgen; doch will ich Euch zu den Dreien bringen, die unsern Heiligtumern vorstehen. Euer Brief ist auch an sie gerichtet, und sie zusammen stellen den Obern vor." (p. 153) Subsequently, Wilhelm receives extensive explanations of the school's sacred shrines, which "in einen besondern Bezirk abgeschlossen" (p. 154) serve as "die sichtbaren Gegenstande der Verehrung" (p. 153). As visual supplements to the ritualized greetings of the pupils, the galleries not only recall those at the uncle's estate; together with a complementary doctrine of primary faiths and a credo, they also figure in the discourse of abstract signifiers that provides oblique testimony to "die Ehrfurcht vor sich selbst." Thus, even the editor of the novel points out that his own words do not faithfully reproduce the explanatory conversation between Wilhelm and the Three, "dessen Inhalt wir . . . in der Kiirze zusammenfassen" (p. 154), and a summary of its major points must suffice. Apparently, by offering explanations in search of additional explanation," he, too, can highlight the strategy of deferral that characterizes the problematic nature of self-definition, both for the Wanderjahre and for Goethe's novelistic oeuvre in its entirety. In the course of his mysterious exchange, Wilhelm first hears the children's greeting explained with reference to the three-fold doctrine of reverence. The necessary condition "damit der Mensch nach allen Seiten zu ein Mensch sei" (p. 154), he is instructed, is "Ehrfurcht," an attitude that has to be learned. Furthermore, since deference is not accessible as such, it must be transmitted through a series of derivative forms of which the first, the "Ehrfurcht vor dem, was iiber uns ist" (p. 155), corresponds to the greeting of the youngest of the children: Jene Gebarde, die Arme kreuzweis uber die Brust, einen freudigen Blick gen Himmel, das ist, was wir unmiindigen Kindern auflegen und zugleich das Zeugnis von ihnen verlangen, daR ein Gott da droben sei, der sich in Eltern, Lehrern, Vorgesetzten abbildet und offenbart. (p. 155)

Self-definition, and hence the basic reverence to be learned, must recognize a realm of transcendence ("da droben"). The autonomy of parents, teachers, and officials serves to reinforce in the child an idea of universal value, which is then experienced as its own reduplication ("abbilden"). Presumably, the child's lack of maturity facilitates the identification of primary and derivative forms. And this, in turn, establishes the possibility of his enjoying such autonomy himself. Against this exegetical background Wilhelm next learns that each reverence refers to one of the three religious traditions in the paintings of the province's sanctuary and that three articles of faith supplement the traditions." In the case of the reverence "vor dem, was iiber uns ist," the Three include the so-called pagan faiths, "die Religion der Volker," which saw "die erste gluckliche Ablosung von einer niedern Furcht" (p. 156). Among these, the most prominent, termed "heidnisch," was practiced by the ancient Hebrews, whom we now recognize, Wilhelm is told, for their unfailing durability: An Selbstandigkeit, Festigkeit, Tapferkeit und, wenn alles das nicht mehr gilt, an Zaheit sucht es seinesgleichen. Es ist das beharrlichste Volk der Erde, es ist, es war, es wird sein, um den Namen Jehova durch alle Zeiten zu verherrlichen. (p. 160)'~

Like the reverence to which it refers, the Hebrew faith attests to a destiny of autonomy. Independent of the temporal flux, it has, as telos, existed for all time. Appropriately, then, its glory surpasses the meagre accomplishments of its adherentseti4 The reverence "vor dem, was unter uns ist" substitutes a material interest for the spiritual interest of the teleological reverence and looks to the world rather than to a transcendent God for its mythology. As a fallen creature, man has, according to Goethe, two souls. His first heavenly home has been supplemented by a home on the earth: "Die auf den Rucken gefalteten, gleichsam gebundenen Hande, der gesenkte, lachelnde Blick sagen, daR man die Erde wohl und heiter zu betrachten habe" (p. 155). Because the earth sustains the individual-"sie gibt Gelegenheit zur NahrungW-it, too, is an object of deference. As the source of ineffable pleasures-"sie gewahrt unsagliche Freuden" (p. 155)-it teaches man to appreciate his needs and desires. Just as importantly, though, as an arch& logical point of reference, the earth suggests dangers as well. For in his erotic propensity, man not only secures his environment by

Deference and the Deferral of Aspiration

asserting control over the outside world; he also causes suffering through the often presumptive expression of his will: Aber unverhaltnismaDige Leiden bringt sie. Wenn einer sich korperlich beschadigte, verschuldend oder unschuldig, wenn ihn andere vorsatzlich oder zufallig verletzten, wenn das irdische Willenlose ihm ein Leid zufiigte, das bedenk' er wohl: denn solche Gefahr begleitet ihn sein Leben lang. (p. 1 5 5 ) ~ ~

Here passion occurs in its double sense, as desire and suffering. It is entirely fitting, therefore, that the religious counterpoint for the second "Ehrfurcht" is Christian: Wir nennen sie die christliche, weil sich in ihr eine solche Sinnesart am meisten offenbart; es ist ein Letztes, wozu die Menschheit gelangen konnte und muRte. Aber was gehorte dazu, die Erde nicht allein unter sich liegen zu lassen und sich auf einen hohern Geburtsort zu berufen, sondern auch Niedrigkeit und Armut, Spott und Verachtung, Schmach und Elend, Leiden und Tod als gottlich anzuerkennen, ja Siinde selbst und Verbrechen nicht als Hindernisse, sondern als Fordernisse des Heiligen zu verehren und liebzugewinnen. (p. 1 5 7 ) ~ ~

The man-God Christ, as a figuration of the arche-logical reverence, brings to view through his death "die gottliche Tiefe des Leidens" (p. 164), an aspect of the Christian myth that defines the extent and limits of humanity. Clearly, redemption, like the recuperative challenge of the arche, cannot exist apart from the pain and death that is the lot of a fallen state. Hence the rather frightening shrine of the second reverence, "das Heiligtum des Schmerzes" (p. 164), which is shown only to students who are about to leave the school. The reverence "vor dem, was uns gleich ist" refers man to all who might aspire to autonomy and power, but cannot attain them. Accordingly, deference in its third phase substitutes a social interest for the positive form of transcendence through the spirit and its negative form through the body, and the student is instructed to join his fellows in a military pose: "Dann aber heiRen wir ihn, sich ermannen, gegen Kameraden gewendet nach ihnen sich richten" (p. 155). By uniting in this way-"Nun steht er strack und kiihn, nicht etwa selbstisch vereinzeltW-he finds hope in a common s t r u g g l e "nur in Verbindung mit seinesgleichen macht er Fronte gegen die WeltV(p. 155)-and can occupy a region of cooperative effort that lies comfortably between the "beyonds" of God and the earth. In

the order of faiths, then, this intermediate position refers to the second, or philosophical one, "denn der Philosoph, der sich in die Mitte stellt, muR alles Hohere zu sich herab, alles Niedere zu sich herauf ziehen, und nur in diesem Mittelzustand verdient er den Namen des Weisen" (p. 156). And, like the other reverences and faiths, it has been represented in the sacred g a l l e r ~ ,where ~' Jesus is portrayed, now as Christ's human supplement, only in life. Abstracted in this way, apart from his death and resurrection ("ganz von dem Ende desselben abgesondert"), he appears "als ein wahrer Philosoph" (p. 163). At first glance, the reader might gather from the wealth of explanatory detail offered by the Three that the province's objects of reverence are substantive and that their framing as mystery merely heightens respect for their formative role in the process of self-definition. The dominant irony in Goethe's portrayal of the school and its curious doctrines, however, also implies "a kind of masonic h o ~ ~ s - p o ~ Indeed, ~ s . " ~as~ an illustration of Goethe's strategy of deferral, the doctrine appears to suggest more than the various themes brought to Wilhelm's attention in the course of his visit. For neither singly nor as a group do the objects of individual reverence occur apart from limited human representations. Like the "pure phenomena" of Goethe's experimental series, they can be grasped only as textualized abstractions that have been constituted by man. Furthermore, like the investigator's "scientific phenomena," each of these ideational forms leads to the next one rather than beyond its own discourse toward some global significance. Thus, Wilhelm moves among the explanatory representations of the province like Theseus in the labyrinth?' passing from the children's initial gestures, through their supervisor's description of them as greetings and signs of deference, to the Three's explanation of the doctrine itself and its foregrounding in the articles of faith and the sanctified galleries. Nor does he ever reach the mysterious superior in whose name the school's officials, including the Trinity, claim to speak. Undoubtedly connected to the play of the school's three administrators is the play of the three reverences and their relation, in turn, to the "Ehrfurcht vor sich selbst," which (as the "master" reverence) is constituted in the unity of the preceding three: "Zu welcher von diesen Religionen bekennt ihr euch denn insbesondere?" sagte Wilhelm. "Zu allen dreien," erwiderten jene; "denn sie zusammen bringen eigentlich die wahre Religion hervor; aus diesen drei Ehrfurchten entspringt die oberste Ehrfurcht, die Ehrfurcht vor sich selbst." (p. 157)

Deference and the Deferral of Aspiration Apparently, the school is inclined to regard its religious and ethical doctrines in substantive terms after all. Hence its portrayal of the culminating reverence as a natural consequence ("hervorbringen," "entspringen") of the three others. Yet this goal in the process of self-definition is also described, paradoxically, as the source of its own discrete phases: "und jene entwickeln sich abermals aus dieser" (p. 157). Like its object of veneration, the self, it is viewed, we are told, as both consequence and cause. Configured as both derivative and origin, though, the school's culminating reverence makes sense only as an enabling abstraction-a goal that is postulated in order to trace a way. Like the self that informs Goethe's novels, it is ultimately a point of reduplication to which its partial abstractions refer in constituting the figurative play of human aspiration." Significantly, the fourth reverence evokes a "true" faith in order to make possible its own elaboration. And in the final count, this kind of elaboration, with all of its deferences and deferrals, must be recognized as the master vantage point, the "superior" attitude, in matters of self-definition as well. For like other structuring principles in Goethe, the self evades the comprehensive grasp of the mind. No more or less than a necessary fiction, it frees the understanding from the "hydra" of empirical selves that would deny identity. But as implied in the province's doctrine of reverences, it is a center that can be authentically viewed only through its peripheral resolutions. As a process of textual configuration, it becomes the symbolic discourse of its own enigmatic design: Die Symbolik [the quasi-religious doctrine of the pedagogical province] verwandelt die Erscheinung [ the empirical self] in Idee [the pure self], die Idee in ein Bild [the province's various representations of its doctrines], und so, da8 die Idee im Bild immer unendlich wirksam und unerreichbar bleibt [the textual play of signifying abstractions] und, selbst in allen Sprachen ausgesprochen, doch unaussprechlich bliebe."

As the nominal protagonist of the Wanderjahre, Wilhelm moves reverently within and among diverse regions of human aspiration, which like the pedagogical province, feature strategies of deferential foregrounding and deferral of closure. In particular, his involvement as friend, interested observer, and fellow renunciant in the

narrative strands that trace the symbolic activities of Makarie, Montan, and Lenardo provides a red thread for the reader to facilitate the discursive extension of the three reverences from book 2 and their culmination in the ultimate reverence for the self. In a concluding chapter I shall look at the last of these in the context of Wilhelm's relation to Felix and his career as surgeon to summarize Goethe's view on self-definition as it evolves in his novelistic oeuvre. But I must first examine the three other reverences through the interests of Wilhelm's associates in the spiritual, elemental, and social regions of human aspiration. In book 1 Wilhelm encounters the "kluge Tante" Makarie, whose name suggests spiritual serenity, mediating the domestic affairs of her nieces and nephew. But her mediation efforts, he learns, are only incidental to a more compelling interest in the movement of heavenly bodies, and it is as prophetic stargazer that Makarie has occupied the critics. The question that has intrigued so many of the novel's readers concerns this interest and its relationship to Goethe's cosmology: is Makarie simply a vehicle of his mystical teleology, or does she rather suggest his ironic rejection of any and all mystification^?^^ For as a problematic center of indeterminable significance, Makarie is initially characterized with both possibilities in mind: In krankem Verfall des Korpers, in bliihender Gesundheit des Geistes ward sie geschildert, als wenn die Stimme einer unsichtbar gewordenen Ursibylle rein gottliche Worte iiber die menschlichen Dinge ganz einfach aussprache. (p. 65)

Her intuitive grasp of cosmic events appears, disconcertingly, no less remarkable than her severe physical handicap, and the question remains. Against the background of Makarie's radical division between body and mind, Trunz has identified Goethe's incipient Platonism, while Schmitz has seen his reluctance to accept (as in Plotinus) the Platonic limitation of truth and authenticity to the realm of substantive forms.73As happens so often in the Wanderjahre, though, questions arise, competing solutions are proposed, but no firm conclusions can be drawn. In Makarie's case, therefore, as its most dramatic instance of the spiritual reverence, we find ourselves, with Wilhelm, on the problematic edge of comprehensibility. Indeed, her spiritual discourse, which is neither exclusively serious or humorous, seems calculated to keep the teleological aspiration

Deference and the Deferral of Aspiration

in view, while situating it out of reach. From the standpoint of human achievement, Makarie's capacity to reach beyond the temporal flux to essences and to reveal all human things in their eternal grandeur is Goethean nonsense: "Sie scheint nur geboren, um sich von dem Irdischen zu entbinden, um die nachsten und fernsten Raume des Daseins zu durchdringen" (p. 449). But even those readers who are properly sceptical about her antigravitational substance and therefore refuse to follow her cosmic trajectory too closely cannot ignore the effects of Makarie's spiritual dominion on all who enter her orbit. For as a category in the service of understanding, she operates (like the Goethean "Urphanomen") by first engaging the observing mind only to deflect its attention from a receding center of significance and turn it toward more productive and modest activities. Makarie's powers, then, are serious as well, because they facilitate a discursive approach to self-worth. They compel recognition of a teleological aspiration, but caution against doctrinaire definitions of human autonomy and purposefulness. Wilhelm's deference toward Makarie, like that of her associate, the astronomer, involves him in such a discursive effort. However, he does not experience her special powers first-hand, through some mystical journey "nach den auReren Regionen" (p. 449), but rather in her role as family confidante. Makarie's aim in this wordly endeavor, he learns, is to promote among family and friends a pure sense of self. By holding before them a "sittlich-magischer Spiegel" (p. 223), she can raise each from his daily involvements and highlight "sein rein schones Innere" (p. 223), a law of personal autonomy that becomes the indisputable foundation of self-worth: Makarie sprach zu Wilhelm als einem Vertrauten, sie schien sich in geistreicher Schilderung ihrer Verwandten zu erfreuen; es war, als wenn sie die innere Natur eines jeden durch die ihn umgebende individuelle Maske durchschaute. Die Personen, welche Wilhelm kannte, standen wie verklart vor seiner Seele, das einsichtige Wohlwollen der unschatzbaren Frau hatte die Schale losgelijst und den gesunden Kern veredelt und belebt. (p.116).

What appears to evolve in these encounters are experiences of purposefulness that resemble Makarie's experience of herself as an integral part of the universe, a substance drawn likewise from an imperfect world, it is said, by the magic pull of the sun. Nonetheless, the quasi-mystical character of the editor's report, and its interest in a substantive center of human autonomy, should

not obscure the derivative nature of the images produced in Makarie's "characterological" looking-glass (or their resolution as signifiers rather than signifieds). For like the paintings in the uncle's gallery of contemporary portraits, her images work only reflexively, through the play of other similarly constituted images. They are not substantive themselves, but have been "losgelost," or abstracted from inessential backgrounds (the "Schale" or "die ihn umgebende Ma~ke").'~ Consequently, these projections acquire lives independent of the sources that produced them and stand hauntingly for a destiny (telos) that cannot be achieved. In this, the effects of Makarie's mirror, its "Wirkungen," resemble the "work" of all Goethean mirrors, or for that matter, of all human representations: Nichts wird leicht ganz unparteiisch wieder dargestellt. Man konnte sagen, hievon rnache der Spiegel eine Ausnahme, und doch sehen wir unser Angesicht niemals ganz richtig darin; ja der Spiegel kehrt unsre Gestalt um und macht unsre linke Hand zur rechten. Dies mag ein Bild sein fur alle Betrachtungen uber uns selbst. (p. 486)

For the self to be scrutinized, it must be abstracted. Self-definition can constitute the individual only as a re-presentation, an image both eternally derivative ("wieder") and palpably independent ("dargestellt"). And in tacit approval of the claim that all observations concerning the self, including Makarie's, paradoxically involve both self-presence and self-denial, the editor characteristically distances himself from a vocabulary of substantive forms ("rein schones Innere," "die innere Natur," "gesunden Kern," "verklart," "veredelt," "belebt") through the strategic qualifiers "es war, als wenn" and "wie" (p. 116). Makarie's stargazing, which locates the self in a discourse of teleological aspiration, is complemented by a discourse of arche-logical preoccupation in the novel's Jarno-Montan strand, which highlights the second of the three portraits in its triptychon of reverences. Montan, whom Wilhelm happens on early in book 1 and finds again at Makarie's estate in book 3, has dedicated himself to the study of the earth's secrets, and so, both in name and profession, he brings to mind the reverence for that which is under us. Like the stars of his celestial counterpart, Montan's privileged stones are on the edge of discourse. They are "stumme Lehrer." Hence, the companion of his investigations, an odd person of indeterminable sex

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(like Ottilie, with powers of tellurian intuition), seems appropriate. This individual, we learn, enjoys a relationship to the earth that parallels Makarie's to the heavens. Moreover, she has motivated the normally reticent geologist to invent a special language-"eine zwar wunderliche, aber doch auslangende Sprache" (p. 444)through which he communicates with his medium to facilitate his scientific pursuits. Montan's relationship to his companion, "welche . . . einen ganz eigenen Bezug auf alles habe, was man Gestein, Mineral, ja sogar was man iiberhaupt Element nennen konne" (p. 443), is not unlike the astronomer's to Makarie, and in an important sense the discourses each supervises-the "terrestrische Marchen" of the first and the "atherische Dichtung" of the second (p. 452)-are, as the editor notes, structurally identical: Bewundern wir indessen die ~hnlichkeitder hier eintretenden Falle bei der groRten Verschiedenheit. Der eine Freund . . . hatte sich in die tiefsten Kliifte der Erde versenkt, und auch dort ward er gewahr, daR in der Menschennatur etwas Analoges zum Starrsten und Rohsten vorhanden sei; dem andern gab von der Gegenseite der Geist Makariens ein Beispiel, daR, wie dort das Verbleiben, hier das Entfernen wohlbegabten Naturen eigen sei, daR man weder notig habe, bis zum Mittelpunkt der Erde zu dringen, noch sich iiber die Grenzen unsers Sonnensystems hinaus zu entfernen, sondern schon geniiglich beschaftigt und vorziiglich auf Tat aufmerksam gemacht und zu ihr berufen werde. (p. 444) Notably, the two friends, through analogous points of reference, have dedicated themselves to discursive strategies that renounce the occupation of centers of absolute significance. Thus, the astronomer observes the limits of Makarie's teleological projection, and Montan remains on the border of the arche-logical realm that his tellurian associate claims to ~ e n e t r a t e .In ' ~ response to the challenge of either spiritual or elemental primacy, each of these investigators offers a deferential glance toward the center of either origins or ends. But each also turns from this determining locus to the indirections and infinite postponements of figurative play ("Beispiel" and "Analogie"). Montan summarizes this movement himself when, near the start of book 1, he elaborates his life in the labyrinthian landscape of the world's most ancient stone. At first glance, the reader of the Lehrjahre might be puzzled to find so impressive and irrepressible a rationalist as Jarno, whose cynicism was often a source of discom-

fort to Wilhelm, in these elemental surroundings. His earlier portrait, though, had its share of incongruities. After all, the rationalist revered Shakespeare, and the man of exaggerated self-control, reputedly the illegitimate offspring of some great prince, owed his birth to a moment of illicit passion. From the standpoint of such unresolved details, then, Jarno-Montan's arche-logical aspiration is consistent with an aspect of his being that he once denied, but at a cost. In geology, though, he has found his way back to certain tellurian interests that now offer him an appealing and comfortable orientation. He therefore explains his vocation to Wilhelm, in the deferential manner of the renunciant, by highlighting the need to cultivate a narrow personal style: Mein Freund . . . , wir muaten uns resignieren, wo nicht fur immer, doch fur eine gute Zeit. Das erste, was einern tuchtigen Menschen unter solchen Urnstanden einfallt, ist, ein neues Leben zu beginnen. Neue Gegenstande sind ihrn nicht genug: diese taugen nur zur Zerstreuung; er fordert ein neues Ganze und stellt sich gleich in dessen Mitte. (p. 33) Apparently, since no single center can claim absolute validity any more, each person is free to choose his own. Montan, for example, has oriented his life toward originating powers that have challenged a response. And he has done this, Wilhelm learns, like Makarie's astronomer, by walking a discursive path. To resist the lure of arche-logical significance, though, his path has been traced along the enigmatic geological formations of the earth's surface. Indeed, Montan's "starre Felsen" (p. 34) engage his attention precisely because they resist comprehension: "Diese sind wenigstens nicht zu begreifen" (p. 34). Their cracks and crevices must be treated as letters, or "Buchstaben," he asserts, and nature's final secrets as an irrecuperable primary text. Furthermore, while Montan believes that this text is singular-"Die Natur hat nur eine SchriftW-he also knows he must be content with its derivative versions, or "Lesearten" (p. 34). Hence, the letters of his tellurian discourse are analogous to the images thrown back at the observer in Makarie's characterological looking-glass: "Buchstaben mogen eine schone Sache sein, und doch sind sie unzulanglich, die Tone auszudriicken; Tone konnen wir nicht entbehren, und doch sind sie bei weitem nicht hinreichend, den eigentlichen Sinn verlauten zu lassen" (p. 34, emphasis mine). In neither case does "truth" emerge other than through derivative forms. As authentic investiga-

Deference and the Deferral of Aspiration tors, both the astronomer and Montan must turn from frontal assaults on meaning. Indeed, as renunciants, they must forgo nature's literal, or "eigentlichen Sinn," in its most vulgar form, "das schlechte Zeug von oden W ~ r t e n , "and ~ ~ learn to speak "uneigentlich," or figuratively instead. For neither the heavens above nor the earth below is an attainable goal of human aspiring. Rather, as a point of reference, each is an occasion to define the self discursively, as constructed truth. In the Wanderjahre, as in Faust, then, salvation lies more in the endless play of man's limited representations than in the presence of absolute origins or ends.77 Central to Montan's view of scientific investigation as self-limitation is the need for fresh starts. According to Goethe, we discover continually, from a physical and social standpoint, "dah wir entsagen sollen," only by reaching for the new upon recognizing the limits of human achievement: "Hiedurch wird er fahig, dem Einzelnen in jedem Augenblick zu entsagen, wenn er nur in dem andern nach etwas Neuem greifen darf; und so stellen wir uns unbewuht unser ganzes Leben immer wieder her."78 Hence, the Goethean act of renunciation has a dual aspect.79It includes a gain as well as a loss. But its recuperative phase, as exemplified in the Wanderjahre's interest in narrowly defined personal goals, depends on acknowledging limitation as the condition of self-fulfillment: "In der Beschrankung zeigt sich erst der Mei~ter."~'Like craftsman and artist, the renunciant must be content in his narrow endeavor: "Wenn er eins tut, tut er alles . . . , in dem einem, was er recht tut, sieht er das Gleichnis von allem, was recht getan wird" (p. 37). Since the "Gleichnis" of his work, as dynamic analogy, can never rest, repeated efforts at consolidation, eternal fresh starts, become his standard of authenticity. The actual product of human work, "was der Mensch leisten soll" (p. 37), emerges as the visible equivalent of the self.81In fact, it presents itself to the individual, like the portrait in the uncle's gallery, "als ein zweites Selbst" (p. 37). From Montan's standpoint of an ethos of productivity, then, work, which requires specialization, produces a derivative or second self, and this abstraction in turn depends on further work for its survival. By laying hand on the world and thus dedicating himself to its reformation, indeed, by embracing a limited standpoint to faciliate the world's techn6logical reproduction, the renunciant can also guarantee his own life.82 As analytical conseqences of renunciation, the fresh start, work as techne, and mobility all figure in the story of Lenardo, who (with

Makarie and Montan) completes the novel's triptychon of reverences. In this particular narrative strand, which counts among its motifs the settlement of the New World, the rise of industrialization, and the virtues of wandering, we find highlighted the attitude of deference for "was neben uns ist." However, even in its prosaic aspects Lenardo's discourse is not primarily a sociological exposition. Nor is it meant to describe the perils and hopes for Germany during the early part of the nineteenth-century. Rather, like Makarie and Montan in their respective spiritual and elemental realms, Lenardo and his band of emigrants approach the edge of the possible in their utopian plans. Accordingly, when Lenardo outlines these plans as leader in his great oration near the end of book 3, the challenge is to read them with the same interpretive tact as required by Makarie's "atherische Dichtung" and Montan's "terrestrische Marchen" (p. 452). Wilhelm first hears about Makarie's eccentric nephew while visiting his cousins Hersilie and Juliette at their uncle's estate. In conversations there, and subsequently at Makarie's estate, as well as through family correspondence, Wilhelm discovers two decisive things about his future associate: first, Lenardo's "angeborne Gewissenhaftigkeit" (p. 127) has produced an obsessive guilt in him toward the daughter of one of his uncle's tenants (presumably expelled from his home for having failed to provide payments required to finance Lenardo's travels); and second, Lenardo's technological skills, "eine gewisse muntere, technische Fertigkeit," have evolved since his youth "zu mancher Kenntnis und Meisterschaft" (p.127). Upon first consideration, these needs to avoid personal indebtedness and to develop a native technical inclination appear entirely unrelated. Nonetheless, as Lenardo's story unfolds, it becomes clear that this is not so. We learn, for example, that Lenardo's fear of debt is based on an unfailing respect for his fellow man. The bond of a promise, he tells Wilhelm, and by implication, the trust it requires, are sacred matters: "Von jeher hielt ich ein Versprechen hochheilig. Wer etwas von mir verlangte, setzte mich in Verlegenheit. Ich hatte mir es so angewohnt abzuschlagen, da8 ich sogar das nicht versprach, was ich zu halten gedachte" (p. 131).8"he promise, as an alluring sign of the capacity to realize a vision of social harmony within the imperfect world, represents a deceptive possibility. Its fulfillment lies on the other side of human experience, with Makarie's stars and Montan's stones. Accordingly, the social reverence that propels Lenardo to embark with the settlers for the New World

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must be realized through a second course of action that is less direct than the promise, but less presumptuous as well. Hence, as he explains in a letter to Wilhelm, this unattainable goal of his social aspiring must be subsumed in actual deeds: "Tun ohne Reden muR jetzt unsre Losung sein" (p. 241). An ethic of deeds based upon silence would be incongruous for the charismatic orator of book 3, though, were Lenardo not to suggest that the deeds he has in mind, while inimical to chatter, retain a communicative interest: "Die Sehnsucht verschwindet im Tun und Wirken" (p. 241). Lenardo's doing ("Tun"), which would see desire transformed into productive activity, casts work ("Wirken") as both effectiveness and significant pattern. The kind of activity that he envisions, then, involves more than an ethical stance, and work in the Wanderjahre comes to stand for any effort that deflects useless attention from a background of inscrutable aims to a foreground of attainable results. Lenardo's redemptive strategy would raise signifying structures in order to postpone the need for attaining a single center of social significance. Through the creative effects it produces, his doing would harness the longing ("Sehnsucht") that once threatened him with a sense of personal inadequacy. In this regard, the well-wrought deed for Goethe, like the scientific phenomenon in an experimental series, is a piece of technB logically rendered It is, in effect, another instance, "wo wir jene allgemeinen kosmischen Phanomene mit eigner Hand technisch hervorbringen und also ihre Natur und Eigenschaft naher einzusehen glauben diirfen."85 In the context of other similarly produced deeds, such techn8-logical work offers an adequate response to the challenge of pure communality. Unlike the promise, which in Lenardo's view enjoins the individual to struggle toward an unattainable center of social harmony, "doing" remains content to preserve the social ideal through an effort that acknowledges the significance of human bonding while renouncing its realization: "Die letzten Handgriffe haben immer etwas Geistiges, wodurch alles korperlich Greifbare eigentlich belebt und zum Unbegreiflichen erhoben ~ i r d . " ' This ~ ultimate techn8-ology partakes of a putative order of things only by paradoxically transforming the circumspect products of work into symbolic testimonies of non-attainment. In this spirit, then, and in marked contrast to the social engineers of the Lehrjahre, the social technicians of the Wanderjahre supervise a discourse under Lenardo's leadership that, like its spiritual and elemental counterparts, substitutes a posture of defer-

ence and postponement for the occupation of a pure center of social significance. As the hour of departure approaches for Lenardo and his band of renunciants, he outlines in enthusiastic detail the reasons and consequences of this posture as it relates to the social vision of the novel's concluding book. His oration begins, not surprisingly, with a respectful turn toward the realm of significance that he and his companions have elected to forgo: Betrachten wir, meine Freunde, des festen Landes bewohnteste Provinzen und Reiche, so finden wir iiberall, wo sich nutzbarer Boden hervortut, denselben bebaut, bepflanzt, geregelt, verschont und in gleichem Verhaltnis gewiinscht, in Besitz genommen, befestigt und verteidigt. (p. 384)

In a turn that both the Abbe and Eduard would appreciate, Lenardo first claims that land, appropriated in the hope of exploiting its usefulness, is worthy of human attention and respect. Man must strive not only to control it as his own; he must secure and protect it as well. After all, real property is "die Grundfeste alles Daseins," he continues, "das Erste, das Beste, . . . was dem Menschen werden konne." It enjoys natural legitimacy-"fa, so hat es die Natur gewollt!"-and as such, fosters the primal forms of communal association-"Eltern- und Kinderliebe, innige Verbindung der Flur- und Stadtgenossen, somit auch das allgemeine patriotische Gefiihl." Accordingly, the need to possess the land-"jenes Ergreifen und Behaupten des Raums"--appears "im groBen und kleinen, immer bedeutender und ehrwiirdiger." Indeed, who could deny the "Wert und Wiirde so schoner, einziger Himmelsgabe"? (p. 384). Nonetheless, no sooner does Lenardo conclude his encomium, than he shifts the attention of his listeners from this presumed center of social significance to another realm, less alluring, perhaps, but of still greater importance to the individual: "Und doch darf man sagen: Wenn das, was der Mensch besitzt, von grooem Wert ist, so muB man demjenigen, was er tut und leistet, noch einen gronern zuschreiben" (p. 385). Notably, in his constructive ability to extract from the flux of life indications, if not guarantees, of enduring significance, man can correct the misplaced hope to occupy a realm of pure social forms: "Wir mogen daher bei volligem ~ b e r s c h a u e nden Grundbesitz als einen kleineren Teil der uns verliehenen Giiter betrachten. Die meisten und hochsten derselben bestehen aber eigentlich im Beweglichen und in demjenigen, was durchs bewegte Leben gewonnen wird" (p. 385).

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Thus committed to an ethos of doing and mobility, the emigrants formulate their challenge in terms of the diverse paths to be cut through the world rather than the goals to be reached. As their valedictory song suggests in its final lines, the world's grandeur lies more in its possibility for infinite dispersion than in its promise of stability: "DaR wir uns in ihr zerstreuen, / Darum ist die Welt so gro8" (p. 392). In a sense, then, the paths of these wanderers come to stand as a goal in themselves: a sign of the mind's infinite aspirations and its discursive response to significance, which values more the effort to construct limited figurations of truth than the presumption to reach it in a single assault. The diversity of desire, in fact, and the multiple languages it implies, appear to sanction the postponement of community that Lenardo's "utopia" has evoked: "Hiezu hat Gott der Herr selbst AnlaR gegeben, indem er, den babylonischen Turmbau verhindernd, das Menschengeschlecht in alle Welt zerstreute" (p. 386). The Lehrjahre's Tower of discrete human functions in the service of a greater social whole has become in its sequel a Tower of Babel, a language edifice built upon the extended reach of aspiration and its acknowledged limitations. Within such a world divided in itself, man can no longer aspire to external points of eternal fulfillment: "Der Mensch, so sagen wir, lerne sich ohne dauernden auReren Bezug zu denken" (p. 391). Instead, he must turn to himself, and in particular, to his unique constructive powers, which offer a different sort of contentment: "Er suche das Folgerechte nicht an den Umstanden, sondern in sich selbst, dort wird er's finden, mit Liebe hegen und pflegen. Er wird sich ausbilden und einrichten, da8 er iiberall zu Hause sei" (p. 391). In making his way, though, man must accept that no single path broken by him, no isolated perspective he erects, is sufficient in itself to complete the textual structure that preserves significance as endless postponement: "Doch, was der Mensch auch ergreife und handhabe, der einzelne ist sich nicht hinreichend, Gesellschaft bleibt eines wackern Mannes hochstes Bediirfnis" (p. 391). Only the aggregate of all perspectival figurations, and the limited work of all individuals in mutual referentiality (the technE), will keep erect man's constructed world, a final refuge from the wounds of his own unlimited aspirations.

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Hope's Elusive Chest Figurative Play and Goethe's Enigmatic Self

Elpis Doch solcher Grenze, solcher ehrnen Mauer Hochst widerwart'ge Pforte wird entriegelt; Sie stehe nur mit alter Felsendauer! Ein Wesen regt sich leicht und ungezugelt: Aus Wolkendecke, Nebel, Regenschauer Erhebt sie uns, mit ihr, durch sie beflugelt; Ihr kennt sie wohl, sie schwarmt nach allen ZonenEin Flugelschlag-und hinter uns Aonen.

In its structuring function, the Goethean self is, like the life-form it duplicates, "das Hochste, was wir von Gott und der Natur erhalten haben."' Within the human sphere it shares the same purposeful dynamism and harmonious plenitude and generative power as the defining center of nature. The self is, quite simply, one of Goethe's supreme postulates-in his four novels, the motivational point of its own critical elaboration. However, like the "rotierende Bewegung der Monas um sich selbst, welche weder Rast noch Ruhe kennt,"* it is also an enigma. In its "Eigentiimlichkeit" as definitive substance, it remains a Goethean "Geheimni~,"~ without definitive interpretation.

This enigmatic center within the individual, in accord with the "Faustian" version of the human monad "als innerlich Grenzenlose^,"^ propels Goethe's successive protagonists, from Werther to Eduard, through their at times exhilarating, at times frustrating searches. Accordingly, whether a teleological, ideological, or archelogical goal surfaces in their quests, and they aspire to purposefulness (as in Werther), to participation (as in the Lehrjahre), or to power (as in the Wahlverwandtschaften), no single achievement of theirs is ever secure. Indeed, their projects of self-definition consistently offer solutions that are themselves problematic. We are left, therefore, with a series of intertextual accounts. The four novels are finally discursive documents that preserve the endless aspirations of their respective protagonists by questioning the substantive nature of their goals and highlighting their efficacy as signifying abstractions. While the notion of self is retained in these works, it emerges, ultimately, as a fictional structure, as figuration. Unable to occupy a compelling center, the mind produces successive peripheral resolutions that together record the defining pattern of its driving aspirations. This is not to say that, as implied in Goethe's novels, the self has no characteristic features. Rather, like the unity of nature it resembles, the human monad is typically distinguished through any of a number of productive tensions that testify to an underlying structure of p ~ l a r i t y Chief .~ among these contradictions, moreover, are not just "Entstehen und Vergehen, Schaffen und Vernichten, Geburt und Tod, Freud und Leid,"6 but the primary opposition of the self and the non-self as well. As the center of endless internal aspiration, the human monad finally makes sense for Goethe only in relation to an equally necessary non-center, a periphery through which the aspiring individual recognizes himself "als aunerlich Begrenztes,"' the fragmented supplement of a postulated whole. Furthermore, all such tentative bits and pieces of self combine to produce indirect (figurative) rather than direct (literal) accounts of what each monad hopes to become. Apparently, the telos, the idea, and the arche can be represented as motivational signifiers; but no center of existential longing can be authentically captured as an ultimate or supreme significance. In his autobiography Goethe establishes the foundation of a figurative approach to the self-productive monad by explaining genetic processes through a "cosmological myth" that emphasizes the centripetal force of unconditional aspiring and the centrifugal counterforce of self-abandonment. The myth begins, appropriately, by im-

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agining a prime mover-"eine Gottheit . . . , die sich von Ewigkeit her selbst produziert."' But because the process of divine productivity further assumes the variety and expansiveness of creation, God had to be seen through supplementary beings as well, emanations from an original unity that contradict His self-contained essence. Though a perfect center of purpose, order, and power, He could guarantee His creative effectiveness only by extending the splendor of His divine presence to beings that similarly enjoyed His infinite aspirations while existing, paradoxically, apart from Him. Hence the Trinity, and hence an additional derivative in the servant Lucifer, who (like Mephistopheles in Faust) was intended to promote God's creative-redemptive plan. The Devil and his followers, the myth continues, and after them man, exhibited the same internal split ("Widerspruch") as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Only, in their separation from the governing center of things, in their fall from divine presence, the demons forgot the innate polarity of the creative process. They ignored that God's center, as an absolute standard of autonomy, order, and generative force, makes sense only in relation to an equally compelling non-center, a periphery, which stands alone as the perceptible consequence of the ineffable Word. These abstractions from an infinite and self-contained creative substance thought of themselves as pure "Konzentration." Suppressing their true condition of "Expansion," they allowed a centripetal urge to supplant in their thoughts the centrifugal urge of authentic existence. Lucifer, so entirely absorbed by his perception of an "innerlich Grenzenloses," tragically ignored what even God had earlier acknowledged: that all coming into being involves a separation from a center of plenitude. Disregarding his peripheral location as an abstraction from the remote divinity, he forgot that, like his creative predecessors, the Son and the Holy Ghost, he was not really "unbedingt," but rather "in ihnen enthalten," and so "durch sie begrenzt."' Goethe's myth next characterizes this "devilish" confusion of a presumed center and its periphery, of an absolute origin and its manifestation, as "Undank"l0 and bases both the angelic and the human falls on it. For Lucifer's earthly counterpart, as "das gliicklichste und ungliicklichste Geschopf,"" also ignored his relationship of filiation to the divinity. Like Faust in his unconditional striving, he typically suppressed his translated condition as an abstraction of an originary presence and concentrated on his own infinite aspiring.

As Goethe's cosmogony concludes, though, man's painful separation from the Godhead was part of the creative plan. It does not, therefore, represent an irredeemable loss. By assuming a posture of deference toward the goals of his endless desires, indeed, by turning from them reverentially and taking comfort in the limited effects of his re-creative work, man transcends Lucifer's primal ingratitude and avoids its destructive consequences. Through a readiness to regard his own accomplishments as tentative re-presentations of a creative capacity finally unknowable, he affirms all re-creative efforts as the basis of human satisfaction. Though he must renounce as illusory the realization of a substantive self, man can keep its center alive, if not as a point of attainment, then as a point of reference through and around which a series of indirect textual accounts evolves. In accord with this version of the self-productive human monad, the pull on the protagonists of Goethe's novels is two-fold. Purposefulness, participation, and power appear respectively as their motivations. But as the naive goals of their self-attainment, these motivations prove to be dangerous drives as well. Hence the need for the antidote of self-denial. In the matter of self-definition, the fully aware individual must come to balance what Goethe curiously calls "sich verselbsten" and "sich entselbstigen"I2 at the end of his cosmological myth.13 Authentic self-understanding, or individual "Erl~sung,"'~ will occur only when human action is equally determined by egotistical and ascetic attitudes: Genug, wenn nur anerkannt wird, da8 wir uns in einem Zustande befinden, der, wenn er uns auch niederzuziehen und zu driicken scheint, dennoch Gelegenheit gibt, ja zur Pflicht rnacht, uns zu erheben und die Absichten der Gottheit dadurch zu erfiillen, da8 wir, indem wir von einer Seite uns zu verselbsten genijtiget sind, von der andern in regelmanigen Pulsen uns zu entselbstigen nicht ver~aumen.'~

Over the years Goethe appears to have defined the enigmatic structure of the self in his four novels with an implicit understanding of this cosmological principle. Hence, in Werther, the Lehrjahre, and the Wahlverwandtschaften, he elaborates the genesis and nature of three directions of self-involvement ("sich verselbsten"), and in the Wanderjahre, he summarizes them in his doctrine of reverences and its narrative depiction in the spiritual, tellurian, and social discourses of Makarie, Montan, and Lenardo. These dis-

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courses, then, establish Goethe's last novel as a culmination, because each turns from a presumed center of self-presence to an abstract and tentative re-presentation of existential significance. Indeed, through its formal playfulness and dominant theme of selfdenial, or "Ent~agung,"'~the Wanderjahre provides a countermovement ("sich entselbstigen") to the earlier texts. By explicitly highlighting discourses of problematic deferral, it implicitly creates a superior standpoint from where the defining aspirations of the protagonists in all of Goethe's novels can be evaluated. Within the Wanderjahre, the fourth narrative strand, which traces the relationships between and among Felix, Hersilie, and Wilhelm," duplicates the pattern of "sich verselbsten" and "sich entselbstigen," and it therefore summarizes the governing structure of Goethe's entire novelistic project." The characteristic hopes that first propel the star-bound, earth-bound, or community-bound individual on his various quests are located, in their most basic forms, in Felix, while Wilhelm exemplifies the posture of renunciation that alone preserves such quests as productive human possibilities. And Hersilie, the link between the son's egotistical disposition and the father's ascetic one, reveals the self in its enigmatic structure and emerges as a key to the problem of identity first formulated in Werther nearly sixty years earlier. As an embodiment of man's inchoate hopes, Wilhelm's spirited son has, by the start of the sequel, become an "older" child. Indeed, by its conclusion several years later, he already displays the egotism of emerging adolescence. His evolving relationship to the youthful though somewhat older Hersilie not only permits him to express himself sexually for the first time; his clumsy affair also casts her as an object of the kind of boundless aspiring that, in its dangerously nascent state, can propel the individual on his problematic quest for self-attainment. In Felix, then, with his concentrated self-involvement and his impetuous assaults on any glimmer of hope, we have more Goethe's typical depiction of a genial spirit (like the "Knabe Wagenlenker" and "Euphorion" of Faust) than a study in pubescent motivation.lg It is not incidental, for example, that he first appears at play with fool's gold (p. 7), or that he childishly inquires of his father and other adults the primary "whence's" and "wherefore's" (p. 32). Felix's actions characteristically suggest a mind in search of itself and some fixed point of reference through which it can pass on its way to true self-fulfillment. Nor is it accidental that Felix aspires to be a huntsman (p. 8), or that he is frequently associated with

horses, or finally, that he locates "hope's elusive chest," the mysterious "Kastchen" (p. 43), which comes to reify man's endless aspiring and therefore stands as the novel's chief image of Goethe's "innerlich Grenzenloses." The chest, which passes from son to father and comes to Hersilie with its curious key2' for safekeeping, contains the "secret" of the Wanderjahre and of its fourth and most basic "Ehrfurcht," the reverence for the self. Appropriately, it is discovered in book 1 by Felix, within a subterranean chamber or "Hohle" (p. 43)," beneath the so-called "Riesenschlol3" (p. 43). Warning the two pilgrims, "sich nicht hineinzuverlieren" (p. 43), Wilhelm's guide refuses to enter the cavity. But Felix does not heed the "Bote," and WilhelmTheseus must cautiously follow him into the labyrinthian region after securing a string "an dem er seinen Sohn hineinzufuhren schon die Absicht gehabt hatte" (p. 43). Then, upon meeting, son and father raise the captivating container to the surface. As the guide's hesitation suggests, the region where the chest is found is at once extraordinary and threatening. Apparently, the "Bote" feels attracted and repelled by its many portals and blind passages, its "Wande" and "Saulen" and "Pforten" and "Gange" (p. 43), because through them he feels himself confronted by an alien and impenetrable code. Felix, though, as "der Verwegene" (p. 43), is blessed with the grace of the young. He therefore not only accepts the challenge of the maze; intuitively-"aus innerem geheimem Antrieb" (p. 43)-he finds his way through its "communicative" channels to an even more puzzling point, where its nervecenter, the "Kastchen," lies. Described as no larger than "ein kleiner Oktavband" and "von prachtigem altem Ansehn" (p. 43, emphasis mine), the chest is introduced, significantly, in linguistic terms. Furthermore, as implied by its indigenous surroundings, the language invoked through this reference more likely involves the play of supplementary approaches to meaning than any definitive or recuperable message. As the novel progresses, however, and the "bold" finder of the chest becomes aware of his most intimate hopes through his relationship with Hersilie, he is typically more interested in discovering what his "Prachtbuchlein" (p. 44) contains than in resolving the "secret" of its visible "textual" wrappings. He is cautiously "unruhig" (p. 44) only at first, therefore, and the thought of leaving the place of his discovery (a place which towered more ominously and plunged more deeply than before) is unchara~teristic.~~ Indeed, the unfamiliar existential motivation to which the enigmatic pos-

Hope's Elusive Chest

session has alerted Felix-"Ein Geheimnis war ihm aufgeladen, ein Besitz, rechtmaoig oder unrechtmaoig? sicher oder unsicher?" (p. 44)-takes hold of him so firmly that, on meeting the human object of his barely conscious hopes, he forgets all such cautionary questions. With his initial agitation in decline, he henceforth behaves as though the "treasure" of the chest, like the goals of his emerging aspirations, were his for the asking. If Hersilie would only be his, he appears to assume, then the chest's "key" would also fall into his rightful and certain possession. In line with an image of the incipient self as forceful and mysterious aspiring, Goethe presents the first erotic encounter between Felix and Hersilie in terms suggestive of the Fall. Father and son, as guests at the uncle's estate, have joined the niece Hersilie, her sister Juliette, and various family friends for an evening of stories and conversation. Felix's fiery gaze is immediately noted by Hersilie, who, both surprised and charmed, attends to her young admirer and sees that he is served the most delectable of the sweets. When he glances at her from over a plate of apples, however, glaubte sie, in den reizenden Fruchten ebenso vie1 Rivale zu erblicken. Gedacht, getan, sie faBte einen Apfel und reichte ihn dem heranwachsenden Abenteurer uber den Tisch hinuber; dieser, hastig zugreifend, fing sogleich zu schalen an; unverwandt aber nach der reizenden Nachbarin hinblickend, schnitt er sich tief in den Daumen. (pp. 50-51)

In very quick succession Felix has found the mysteriously locked chest, focused his intimate and inarticulate hopes for himself on a responsive young woman whose additional years suggest a greater familiarity than his own with the chest's secrets, and injured himself while reaching for its forbidden "contents" in the form of the fabled fruit of the "felix culpa." Perhaps his wounded thumb, like the original Fall, will one day serve a redemptive purpose that he cannot recognize at his tender age. His presumptive and injurious lunge, which will recur in more dangerous and critical circums t a n c e ~ might , ~ ~ yet figure, in accord with Goethe's cosmological myth, as only the first (egotistical) phase of two in the eternally recuperative process of self-production. For this process to end satisfactorily, though, Felix must learn to handle his boundless energy productively. If he is to recover from the critical falls he will suffer and the wounds they inflict, his hopes must express themselves in association with the second (ascetic) phase, which even by the novel's conclusion he never quite

masters. The positive (or hopeful) and negative (or painful) dimensions of his concentrated self-involvement must be balanced by the negative (or resigned) and positive (or recuperative) dimensions of his father's self-denial. The alluring possibility of an attainable center of purposefulness, participation, and power (the chest from within) must give way to the disillusionment of renunciation (the chest as locked) and, finally, to the affirming play of abstract signification (the chest, as "Prachtbiichlein," from without). Hersilie's ambivalent position between the father and his son, her simultaneous interest in Wilhelm as protector and confidant and Felix as charming and amorous sprite, is central in this regard, because through this curious triangle Goethe establishes the authentic self as eternally deferred in discourse. Thus Felix, who hopes to find himself through Hersilie (the ultimate guardian of both "Kastchen" and key) literally thrusts himself on her, while she attends largely to Wilhelm, who will guide her, she hopes, through the maze of unbridled aspiration that his son-"im jugendlichsten Glanze wie ein kleiner Abgott" (p. 456)-has recklessly erected. Apparently, Hersilie is willing to acknowledge the indomitable force of the chest and its rightful ownership in Felix.24But she is also reluctant to have him open it and thereby be forced through his egotism to satisfy its compelling claim. After all, were the youthful horseman actually to seize the contents of the chest, Hersilie, paradoxically, would come under his control. And the playful triangle that produced a first awareness in her of life as postponed gratification would tragically collapse. Still, unable to reject out of hand the human necessity of Felix's aspirations, Hersilie must look beyond his attitude of naive self-attainment to an alternative mode that would protect her. Hence her association with Wilhelm, the "ascetic surgeon." Hope must be kept alive, the motivations of those like Felix must be valued, Hersilie's situation between father and son suggests. But the occupation of the meaningful centers toward which the youthful so often aspire must be renounced. The key, then, to Goethe's enigmatic self, like the "broken" magnetic key to Felix's " K a s t ~ h e n , "is~ ~its hidden polarity. Whether configured as a teleological, ideological, or arche-logical aspiration, this self assumes a center of existential significance only to suggest further the eternal supplementation of that point as substantive achievement. Neither purposefulness, nor participation, nor power is an attainable goal in the the process of self-definition. They are not resolutions that would actually end aspiration by eliminating

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the gap between the hopeful mind and its permanently displaced standards of self-presence. Rather, these standards, like all primal structures in Goethean epistemology, are postulated to facilitate their discursive elaboration. As the work ethos of the Wanderjahre suggests, a "technE-logical" awareness must be the culmination of the search for the self. Only its reproduction in a record of signifiers can fix its three underlying aspirations. Were it not for their textual and figurative presence as supplemental signs of constitutive human desires, they would remain obscured as basic motivations. Aspiration finally generates its objects as derivative re-presentations that fall eternally short of its intended (primary) goals of purposefulness, participation, and power. From Goethe's techne-logical standpoint the narrative intelligence at work in his novels acts much like his ideal scientist, who assumes things beyond comprehension ("ein Unerfors~hliches")~~ to facilitate investigation. Hence, in the matter of self-definition, a strategy that assumes an ineffable self in order to portray it as a series of fictional accounts. Both efforts tactfully approach their respective "Urphanomene" by acknowledging the impenetrable grandeur of an original form ("das Ur~priingliche")~' and the " U n ~ u l a n g l i c h k e i t ~ of human pursuit. Consequently, both also render their primary objects of interest in significant bits and pieces. Rather than offer a key to the enigmas of nature or human nature, they effect an "ewige[s] Spiel der Em~irie."~' Goethe's scientific and fictional projects alike renounce as illusory the realization of absolute knowledge and produce symbolic texts in its stead that have been constituted, clarifed, and maintained by the searching mind. As a presumed center of existential significance, the Goethean individual must exist, paradoxically, apart from his most intimate hopes. Hence fictional protagonists in Goethe's four novels who are constituted through primary orientations of purposefulness, participation, and power that are of a clearly limited effectiveness as loci of existential completion. Indeed, through the Wanderjahre, in particular, Goethe appears to renounce the mastery of all such determining points. What the individual must master, he suggests, are not the substantive forms of the self, but their abstract supplements, not its imagined centers, but their peripheries. The mind's self-defining goals are properly preserved within these boundary regions by their articulation as necessary impossibilities. Felix's indomitable aspiring thus evolves emblematically as the dangerous source of the limited effects that must be produced to redeem the self as a series of interrelated figurations: strategic turnings (tropes) that pro-

duce indirect characterizations of goals imaginable only as problems, and therefore inaccessible as literal descriptions. Within the Wanderjahre the tragic consequence of the refusal to turn in this way is elaborated in many of its interlocuted stories. These narrative insertions not only serve as a contrast to the spiritual discourse of purposefulness in the Makarie strand, or the social discourse of participation in the Lenardo strand, or the tellurian one of power in the Montan strand; they also highlight, as negative instances of egotistical aspiring ("sich verselbsten"), the dangers that Felix dramatizes in his pursuit of the "Kastchen" and its keeper Hersilie. In the story "Nicht zu weit," for example, we find Odoard-"den SproBling eines alten Hauses . . . , auf welchen durch eine Folge von Generationen die edelsten Vorziige vererbt worden" (p. 396)-excluded (like Werther) from his rightful destiny (telos), the Princess Aurora, and banished to a purposeless exile by an unbridled hope for universal recognition. Or similarly, in "Die pilgernde Torin," we find a heroine whose faithless lover now drives her to seek the kind of loyalty and social harmony (idea) that emerges as a central interest in the Lehrjahre. And, to complete a list of only some more obvious contrasts, we have in the Major of "Der Mann von funfzig Jahren" another Eduard who, like his predecessor, hopes for eternally youthful powers of generation (arche) and becomes a rival in love to his own son (p. 182). Each of these wounds, then, like Felix's fall from his horse (pp. 458-60) after an aggressive assault on the "Kastchen" and Hersilie (pp. 456-58) at the conclusion of the Wanderjahre, offers an image of devastation that recalls the wounds of Werther's, Wilhelm's, and Eduard's unbridled hopes. Apparently, the egotistical phase, while necessary to the process of self-production, is fraught with danger when its ascetic counterpart has been ignored. As Felix's near drowning in the river's whirlpool ("Strudel") suggests, in pursuing as substantive centers the goals of purposefulness, participation, and power, the individual can suffer fatal injury. He can fall victim to the centripetal force of his self-involved energy and be consumed by desires that life cannot accommodate. Or, he can choose instead to capture the aims of desire technblogically-in the supplementary forms of circumscribed achievements. Through the quintessentially human need to "work" upon the world, he can point out the hopelessness of endless aspiring while keeping its aims obliquely in view through symbolic "deeds": "Wenn er eins tut, tut er alles . . . , in dem einen, was er recht tut, sieht er das Gleichnis von allem, was recht getan ~ i r d . " ~ '

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The lives of all the renunciants in the Wanderjahre, and Wilhelm's life as an ascetic surgeon in particular, are characterized by this capacity to preserve some hopefulness in the face of self-imposed limits that reject self-presence as a delusion. Accordingly, like Faust upon his awakening in part 2 of the tragedy, Felix's father, at the conclusion of his journey, embodies the uniquely human strength to accept and even to welcome the recuperative turn from the dangerous light of endless a~piration.~' He saves his son, and through him, his own best hope, by exemplifying the attitude of self-denial, which must perpetually balance self-pursuit in all of its forms. Hence Wilhelm becomes the Castor to Felix's Pollux: "So standen sie fest umschlungen, wie Kastor und Pollux, Briider, die sich auf dem Wechselwege vom Orkus zum Lichte begegnen" (p. 459).32And joined in this way-as eternal striving and turning-father and son together exemplify the Goethean process of self-definition, which also oscillates between the egotistical pole of "sich verselbsten" (life) and the ascetic one of "sich entselbstigen" (death). Wilhelm summarizes the ambivalence of Goethe's enigmatic self in a final meditation over the peacefully sleeping Felix, whom his surgical attentions have revived. "Wirst du doch immer aufs neue hervorgebracht, herrlich Ebenbild Gottes!" he exclaims, "und wirst sogleich wieder beschadigt, verletzt von innen oder von auBen" (p. 460). Notably, the Wanderjahre concludes with a suggestion that self-definition involves recognizing the derivative nature of man, who was, after all, not made as a god, but in God's image, as an "Abgott" (p. 456).33Furthermore, in his essence as an infinitely reproducible form, man is grander than his presumed divine source.34Hence in the final pages of the novel a maxim that reads, "das Gezeugte ist nicht geringer als das Zeugende. Ja es ist der Vorteil lebendiger Zeugung, daB das Gezeugte vortrefflicher sein kann als das Zeugende" (p. 464).35 The dual emphasis of this assertion neatly parallels the polarity of the Goethean self: The aspiring individual, in his orientation toward substantive centers, first establishes himself in relation to infinite hopes. But he must also recognize these centers as possibilities of the imagination. We therefore find the dominance of figurations in Goethe's novels that, in accord with the culminating standpoint of the Wanderjahre, renounce as naive the prospect of self-attainment through the realization of purposefulness, participation, or power. Clearly, only the playful repetition of these hopes in the form of their tentative and limited derivatives is humanly possi-

ble. Furthermore, as repeated mirror reflections, these derivatives stand in relation to one another to constitute the self as the series of its own endless supplements. The existential quest ends, then, not with a primary, but with a duplicate image of divine completion, an image that, in Wilhelm's words, is "immer aufs neue hervorgebracht" (p. 460). One aspect of the training offered in the pedagogical province is especially revealing in this connection because it summarizes the intermediate position between self-presence and self-denial at the heart of the identity issue as it shapes Goethe's project as a novelist. As Wilhelm hears upon seeing Felix several years after having deposited him at the school, his son has not only become a confident horseman in the intervening period; he has also learned the care of these noble creatures-"solcher edlen Tiere" (p. 245)-and, rather curiously, the rudiments of language instruction, and foreign languages in particular. To counter the dangers of the pupils' natural interest in these powerful animals, their teachers apparently have introduced "Zucht und Ordnung" (p. 246) surreptitiously into their lives. So that the passionately self-involved youth does not himself become a creature of unbridled desires-"da8 bei so wilder, gewissermaBen roher Beschaftigung, Tiere nahrend und erziehend, der Jiingling nicht selbst zum Tiere verwildere" (p. 246)-the most refined of human pursuits-"Sprachiibung und Sprachbildung" (p. 246)-is included in the curriculum from the start. Thus, Wilhelm finds Felix upon his return in book 2 with certain "bearded and unbearded centaurs" (p. 247), who count in their number "unsere reitenden Grammatiker, unter welchen sogar einige Pedanten sind" (p. 247). As a young centaur himself, possibly an equestrian grammarian some day, Felix is pictured here, in accord with Goethean iconography, as the quintessential human being in his earliest phase of completion. Recalling Faust upon the back of the loquacious centaur Chiron as he nears in Helena the goal of his endless self-striving, Wilhelm's son, too, portrays man's dual condition. Defined exclusively through neither absolute hope (the horse as motivational energy) nor unending despair (the mind painfully recognizing its limits), he must learn to acknowledge both dispositions simultaneously. Felix must strive to become a brother of sorts to his ascetic father and learn, finally, to bridle his egotistical hopes by renouncing the teleological, ideological, or arche-logical centers of self-attainment. To manage the crucial turn from his most cherished goals without suffering a fatal fall, he must learn the gram-

Hope's Elusive Chest

mar, or the constructive "logic" of the self (as techne). He must willingly submit his first written message, "Felix liebt Hersilien. Der Stallmeister kommt bald" (p. 265), to revisions and accept that writing excludes willful self-presence. Indeed, as implied in Goethe's novels and explicitly represented in the enigmatic "Kbtchen-Prachtbiichlein" of the Wanderjahre, such writing signals the deferral of gratification and not its realization. Accordingly, the message of presumptive assault on Felix's slate is eventually erased, and a second, derivative message that keeps the first in mind as a tender rebuke supplements it: "Hersiliens GruR an Felix. Der Stallmeister halte sich gut" (p. 266). As a proficient equestrian grammarian (able to write in accord with the discursive narration of Goethe's four novels) Felix would accept a logic of self-definition that substitutes the figural for the literal self. The techne-logical, as a strategy of derivation and reproduction, would succeed and transform the teleological, ideological, and arche-logical standards as his expressive means. For this standpoint finally subsumes the three others by casting each as a supplementary phase in an endless series of signifying abstractions. By retaining the drive toward purposefulness, participation, or power, and hence toward the self only indirectly (through unattainable points of reference), the techne-logical approach facilitates the re-presentation of basic human aspirations without egotistical delusion. Having reached a point where Goethe's achievement as a novelist appears to rest on his view of the self as techne, or constructed entity, I would like to propose in conclusion a textual taxonomy that reflects this strategy.36 As presented in the preceding discussion, each of his novels involves a characteristic motivation on the part of its protagonist, and this aim emerges, in turn, as the dominant orientation of the text. None of the orientations, though, prescribes by itself an entirely acceptable path of self-realization. Indeed, each one raises further problems in the matter of self-definition and thereby suggests the need to turn from its underlying goal. Hence the structural similarity of all four orientations with rhetorical tropes, which also veer from direct (literal) to indirect (figurative) accounts of the meanings they would capture. In Werther, for instance, where an individual telos is at stake, Goethe defines his protagonist in relation to a destiny of independent purposefulness. But he does not have Werther realize his aim as such. Instead, it is presented only indirectly, as if Werther's story were identical to Christ's. Werther finally substitutes himself for an exemplary embodiment of autonomous

purposefulness to leave us, not with a study of megalomaniac delusion, but rather with a teleological figuration of the self. And, since its effectiveness specifically requires the reader to recognize and accept the similarities Werther has chosen to highlight between himself and Christ, its tropological classification as metaphor appears appropriate. In analogous fashion, Wilhelm, as protagonist of the Lehrjahre, aspires not so much toward a destiny of purposefulness independent of the world as toward a sense of personal well-being within it. In contrast to Werther, he defines desire in social terms and so aspires toward participation in a rational order of things. For Wilhelm, merely recognizing an essential similarity above or beyond his actual experiences will no longer produce a satisfying figure of self. Indeed, only what has touched him personally comes to count in the chain of encounters that is the sum of his life. And he comes to count as a part of the social whole only by touching others as well. Hence the Lehrjahre supplements the teleological figuration of Werther with an ideological figuration of the self. In his second novel, Goethe manages an interpretive turn that assumes a perfect "fit" among all the discrete events in the life of an individual and among all individuals in a given society. Contiguity therefore replaces similarity as its defining mode, and its tropological strategy recalls metonymy rather than metaphor. By contrast, neither the telos alone (defined through a relationship of similarity) nor just the idea (defined through contiguity) emerges in the Wahlverwandtschaften as the goal of Eduard's aspiration, which would see him finally situated within the world as a determining power himself. The arche-logical orientation thus involves more than the Lehrjahre's order of metonymy, with its interest in the self as a functional part of some rational whole. And it involves more than Werther's order of metaphor, with its interest in the self as autonomous substance. Rather, by locating Eduard within a clearly circumscribed world and portraying that world as an extension of his personal power, Goethe suggests through yet another self-defining orientation that, as arche, the mind is configured within a microcosm/macrocosm relationship. Along these lines, the participatory urge of the Wahlverwandtschaften, in contrast to the Lehrjahre's, is necessary and formative rather than contingent and contributory. Eduard hopes to guarantee an overall progression of things in which he, as paternal successor, can both determine and enjoy the essential forms of his environment. Hence, as "lord" of this realm, he defines himself as part of a generational whole through a relationship of

Hope's Elusive Chest

succession and analogy and recalls in this strategy the third of the so-called master tropes, synecdoche. From the standpoint of traditional rhetoric, the last of the organizing figures, irony, undercuts the implicit goals of the three others through a strategy of negation. In preserving the distinction of figurative language between oblique, or supplemental meanings, on the one hand, and the plenitude of the signified, on the other, irony remains fundamental to all of the novels under consideration. But it becomes dominant, as the master orientation in the process of self-definition, only as Goethe's narrative technique becomes increasingly experimental and more explicitly concerned with the nature of figurative language itself. Irony, therefore, counts in a protagonist's perceptions only in the Wanderjahre, which challenges us retrospectively to view the successive figurations of Werther (as telos), Wilhelm (as idea), and Eduard (as arche) as textual strategies in the process of self-definition. Rather than actual goals of self-attainment, the centers through which Goethe's protagonists orient themselves are hypothetical constructs. As such, they constitute problems as much as solutions. "Handle besonnen, ist die praktische Seite von: Erkenne dich selbst," Goethe writes in a letter to Friedrich von Rochlitz: Beides darf weder als Gesetz noch als Forderung betrachtet werden; es ist aufgestellt wie das Schwarze der Scheibe, das man immer auf dem Korn haben mul3 wenn man es auch nicht immer trifft. Die Menschen wiirden verstandiger und gliicklicher sein wenn sie zwischen dem unendlichen Ziel und dem bedingten Zweck den Unterschied zu finden wiil3ten. . . .37

Like a target, with an impossible black center that challenges the marksman's aim, each of Goethe's novels takes aim at an impossible self. Each seductively defines a direction to human aspiration, but the goals of desire remain obscure. Here, as in Faust, the self can never be literally achieved. Ultimately an edifice of interpretation rather than an essential substance, it owes its vitality, as techne, to a process of striving and turning and to the textual patterns raised by interpretive work. The mind's access to its imagined centers depends, for Goethe, on a creative resolve to re-produce the self as a text of endless derivations-like his privileged symbol, "selbst in allen Sprachen ausgesprochen," but ineffable at that.38

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Notes Introduction 1. During the last twenty years, only three critics have attempted comprehensive treatments of Goethe's four novels, and of these critics only Blackall and Blessin offer sustained analytical positions. See Reiss, Goethes Romane and Goethe's Novels, which is not a translation of the German study. Blackall's Goethe and the Novel examines all versions of each text, provides detailed plot summaries, and reviews the considerable critical literature. It also devotes c h a ~ t e r sto Goethe's theoretical pronouncements on narrative fiction and his extensive observations on contemporary practitioners. Blessin's Die Romane Goethes is the most ambitious and disappointing of the comprehensive studies in its use of Hegel, Marx, and Freud to delineate a Goethean phenomenology of nature and society. For more limited formal and thematic approaches see Riemann, Goethes Romantechnik, and Lili Simon, Verantwortung und Schuld. Among briefer studies, Lange, "Goethe's Craft of Fiction," is the most penetrating. See also Spranger, "Der psychologische Perspektivismus im Roman," in his Goethe, pp. 207-32, and Dieckmann, "Repeated Mirror Reflections." 2. Unless otherwise noted, Goethe's works are quoted according to the Hamburger Ausgabe, edited by Trunz. For citations from works other than the novels I shall use the abbreviation HA and follow it with the appropriate volume and page numbers: HA 7:254. Those works not included in the HA will be cited according to the so-called Artemis Ausgabe, edited by Beutler and abbreviated AA. 3. See especially Blackall's and Blessin's extensive bibliographies. In addition to the overall picture of the critical landscape offered in Blackall's notes, I shall occasionally refer to other recent studies that provide similar overviews for the individual novels. 4. HA 7:254. 5. See Reiss, Goethes Romane, especially pp. 276-93. The author consistently highlights thematic variations, which he portrays as a consequence of the changing world in which Goethe found himself over the years (pp. 284-85).

6. Blackall, Goethe and the Novel, p. 276. 7. Blackall, Goethe and the Novel, derives his notion of order largely from the dynamics of plot: ". . . the interpenetration of sentiments and events in a Goethe novel parallels the interaction of daimon and tyche." Blackall concludes that this interpenetration was "for Goethe the basic fact of all human progression" (p. 276). The question remains, though, how the characteristic shaping of chance occurrences involves a progressive movement. And toward what ultimate standpoint, other than a vague "Humanitat." do the novels move? Unfortunately, Blackall does not specify or elaborate his version of Goethe's global order, which therefore suggests more questions than it answers. 8. See Blessin, Die Romane Goethes, pp. 1-9 , where the aim is to establish for the older Goethe an ontologically secure notion of historical development, "eine eigenstandig materialistische und dialektische Geschichtskonzeption" (p. 7). 9. Some of Blessin's more tendentious results include the interpretation of Ottilie in the Wahlverwandtschaften as an anorexic and scattered suggestions that Goethe anticipates in the Wanderjahre such late twentieth-century issues as the shortage of raw materials, the need for a global order, the protection of the environment, and feminism. A more serious reservation about Blessin's book, however, concerns its implicit understanding of the Goethean self as substantive. I shall try to demonstrate, especially in my discussion of the Wanderjahre, that this self gradually emerges in the four novels as a constructed entity and as such, it figures centrally in Goethe's overall strategy to articulate a symbolic order of things. 10. Blackall, Goethe and the Novel, p. 276. 11. HA 7:307. For more on Goethe's sources for this term and its place in his search for an adequate definition of the novel, see Blackall's extensive discussion in Goethe and the Novel, pp. 76-110. 12. In a conversation on June 8, 1821. AA 23:129. 13. Blackall, Goethe and the Novel, pp. 276-77. also identifies the open-endedness typical for the conclusion of each of the novels. In what follows. I hope to demonstrate the epistemological and aesthetic significance of this formal feature.

Chapter 1 1. For a detailed presentation of the major directions of Werther criticism, see Blackall, Goethe and the Novel, pp. 280-83, as well as Assling, Werthers Leiden, pp. 7-18. Blackall correctly identifies three groups of studies: those attributing Werther's failures to his disengaged inwardness, those blaming society for his tragic fall, and those interested in Goethe's fictional interplay of inner and outer realities. In the course of this chapter, I shall have occasion to refer to adherents of each critical direction, though my focus will not be the cause of Werther's critical failures so much as the role that failure plays in the evolving reflexivity of the aspiring mind and its culmination in an autonomous sense of self-worth. 2. Thus, Goethe mentions in a letter to Schi'nbronn a story "darinn ich einen iungen Menschen darstelle, der mit einer tiefen reinen Empfindung und wahrer Penetration begabt, . . . sich eine Kugel vor den Kopf schiesst" (AA 18:227). For more on the novel's Sentimentalist origins and interests, see Lange. "Die Sprache als Erzahlform." 261-72; Norbert Miller. Der empfindsame Erzahler, pp. 146-57; Hohendahl, "Empfindsamkeit und gesellschaftliches BewuRtsein"; and Kuhn, The Demon of Noontide, pp. 167ff. For extensive philosophical and sociological accounts of

Notes Sentimentalism and of melancholy, see Sauder, Empfindsamkeit, and Lepenies, Melancholie und Gesellschaft, pp. 76-114. 3. Citations from Werther are noted in the text by page number according to HA, 6. 4. For only a few of the more notable studies that attribute Werther's defeats to the outside world, see Lukacs. "Goethe und seine Zeit," in his Faust und Faustus, pp. 17-29; Hirsch, " 'Die Leiden des jungen Werthers' "; Peter Muller, Zeitkritik und Utopie: and Scherpe, Werther und Wertherwirkung. Among the more significant critiques of Werther's mental life are Feise, "Goethes Werther"; Storz, Goethe-Vigilien, p. 40; and Graham, Goethe and Lessing, pp. 115-36. See also Blackall, Goethe and the Novel, pp. 21-27, in this regard. 5. "Und du gute Seele, die du eben den Drang fuhlst wie er, schopfe Trost aus seinem Leiden, und la0 das Biichlein deinen Freund sein, wenn du aus Geschick oder eigener Schuld keinen nahern finden kannst" (p. 7). 6. The word "Herz" occurs some 125 times in the novel. For more on its use see Schumann, "Some Notes on Werther," 533-39. For a lexical treatment of Sentimentalist language, see Lappe, "Studien zum Wortschatz," 30-140. Indispensable to any word study of the novel is Merker, Worterbuch. 7. See Lange, "Die Sprache als Erzahlform," 263, for more on the novel's exposition and Goethe's use of motivational fragments of Sentimental culture that he revises and transcends. 8. Lepenies, Melancholie und Gesellschaft, pp. gaff., offers a detailed discussion of the characteristic anxieties of the eighteenth-century middle-class, which cultivated inwardness in response to an acute awareness of its own political impotence. 9. See Lepenies, Melancholie und Gesellschaft, p. 108; Kuhn, The Demon ofNoontide; and Weiskel, The Romantic Sublime, pp. 17-18, for more on these affective states and their relation to the mental life of the late eighteenth-century individual. 10. A typical document in this regard is Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry. 11. HA 9:578. 12. Lepenies discusses the productive relationship between isolation and inwardness that was typical for the aspiring mind of the eigthteenth-century individual in Melancholie und Gesellschaft, pp. 96-101. For the "reflections" of empirical psychology as a source of awareness, see Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, book 2, ch. 1, p. 1. 13. "Die griine Farbe der Wiesen gehort zur objektiven Empfindung, als Wahrnehmung eines Gegenstandes des Sinnes; die Annehmlichkeit derselben aber zur subjektiven Empfindung, wodurch kein Gegenstand vorgestellt wird: d.i. zum Gefuhl, wodurch der Gegenstand als Objekt des Wohlgefallens (welches kein Erkenntnis desselben ist) betrachtet wird." Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, p. 119. 14. As Graham argues in Goethe and Lessing, pp. 115-36, and Blackall in Goethe and the Novel, pp. 21-27. 15. Lepenies, Melancholie und Gesellschaft, describes the crucial split in eighteenth-century German cultural perceptions between power (or accomplishment) on the one hand, and status (or aspiration) on the other: "Wichtig in dern hier interessierenden Zusammenhang wird die Untersuchung des Verhaltens einer SchichtBurgertum-die, von politischer Aktion abgedrangt, gezwungen wird, sich u.a, in die Literatur zu fluchten" (p. 78). 16. In his "Confinement and Containment," von Molnar distinguishes two kinds of limitation in the novel: the negative order of confinement, which Werther characterizes in the letter of May 22, and its positive counterpart, containment, which

recognizes "a state of balance between the finite and the unlimited" (231)and which is achieved only through the attitude of renunciation. I shall argue that Werther's intuitive recognition of personal autonomy through his death is an example of the positive aesthetic order in von Molnar's analysis. 17. In the opening lines of his essay "Zum Shakespeares-Tag" (1773). Goethe similarly establishes worldly failure as the final standard of human self-worth: "Mir kommt vor, das sei die edelste von unsern Empfindungen, die Hoffnung, auch dann zu bleiben, wenn das Schicksal uns zur allgemeinen Nonexistenz zuruckgefuhrt zu haben scheint. Dieses Leben, meine Herren, ist fur unsre Seele vie1 zu kurz, Zeuge, daR . . . keiner sein Ziel erreicht, wornach er so sehnlich ausging . . ." (HA 12:224). See in this connection Staroste, "Werthers Krankheit zum Tode," in his Raurn und Realitat, pp. 73-88. Staroste characterizes Werther in death-correctly, I b e l i e v e a s "das gehorsame Opfer seines eigenen Dairnon" (p. 87). 18. See Herder's contemporary prize-essay, "Uebers Erkennen und Empfinden in der menschlichen Seele" (1774). in his Samtliche Werke, 8: 236-62. Herder's analysis of the cognitive and moral aspects of reflexivity parallels my discussion of Werther. Peter Miiller also treats Goethe's novel in relation to Herder's essay in Zeitkritik und Utopie, pp. 78ff., as does Clark in "The Psychological Framework." 19. Thus, Kant in his Kritik der Urteilskraft: "Urn zu unterscheiden, ob etwas schon sei oder nicht, beziehen wir die Vorstellung nicht durch den Verstand auf das Objekt zum Erkenntnisse, sondern durch die Einbildungskraft (vielleicht mit dem Verstande verbunden) auf das Subjekt und das Gefuhl der Lust oder Unlust desselben. Das Geschmacksurteil ist also kein Erkenntnisurteil, mithin nicht logisch, sondern asthetisch . . ." (p. 115). 20. See his letter of May 24. 1772 (p. 14). 21. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, 1202. 22. As in Storz, Goethe-Vigilien: "Was Werther darstellt, ist also die tragische Krisis des autonomen, bindungslosen, prometheischen Menschen, genauer gesagt, der Einbildungskraft, die sich isoliert und sich absolut setzt" (p. 40). or in Graham, Goethe and Lessing: "For all his desperate attempts to get across the gulf of his selfhood and to reach Lotte, Nature, or God, Werther is alone-inward, alienated and barren" (p. 124). 23. As in Lukacs, Faust und Faustus: "Werthers Konflikt-seine Tragodie ist bereits die des burgerlichen Humanismus-zeigt schon den unlosbaren Gegensatz der freien und allseitigen Entwicklung der Personlichkeit mit der burgerlichen Gesellschaft selbst" (p. 26). or in Muller, Zeitkritik und Utopie: "Das Bezeichnende fur die Begegung Werthers mit Lotte liegt darin, daR hier der Durchbruch zur Selbstverwirklichung Ausgangspunkt eines, wenn auch nur auf die burgerliche Huttenwelt beschrankten, prometheischen Tatigkeitsdranges wird" (p. 116). 24. Herder, "Uebers Erkennen und Empfinden," p. 242. 25. The sensation of pleasure ("Wohlgefallen"), according to Kant in his Kritik der Urteilskraft, concentrates the mind's attention "ganzlich auf das Subjekt, und zwar auf das Lebensgefiihl desselben, unter dem Namen des Gefuhls der Lust oder Unlust. . ." (p. 115). 26. Graham. Goethe and Lessing, pp. 237 ff. 27. See Wilkinson, "The Blind Man and the Poet," for a penetrating analysis of the powers and dangers of inner vision in the thought of Lessing, Herder, and Goethe. 28. The authentic "Genie." Goethe implies in "Von deutscher Baukunst" (1772), creates a standard of personal nobility precisely in those projects that, like the cathedral at Stranbourg, remain unfinished. The mind's unlimited aspiring, com-

Notes memorated in the incomplete towers of the cathedral, and not its meagre accomplishments, becomes the artist's measure of self-worth (HA 12:ll-12). Clearly, Werther will not appreciate this kind of argument until shortly before his death. 29. "Ich habe mir schon manchmal vorgenommen, sie nicht so oft zu sehen. Ja wer das halten konnte! Alle Tage unterlieg' ich der Versuchung und verspreche mir heilig: morgen willst du einmal wegbleiben. Und wenn der Morgen kommt, finde ich doch wieder eine unwiderstehliche Ursache, und ehe ich mich's versehe, bin ich bei ihr" (p. 41). 30. Hegel describes the inherent poverty of this kind of sense certainty in his Phanomenologie des Geistes: "Ich ist nur allgemeines, wie Jetzt. Hier oder Dieses uberhaupt; ich meine wohl einen einzelnen Ich, aber sowenig ich das, was ich bei Jetzt, Hier meine, sagen kann, sowenig bei Ich. Indem ich sage: dieses Hier, jetzt oder ein Einzelnes, sage ich alle Diese, alle Hier, Jetzt, Einzelne . . ." (p. 87). 31. See the letter of May 22, 1771 (p. 13). 32. See the letter of May 30, 1771 (pp. 17-19). 33. Schiller. "Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung" (1795-96), in his Werke 2:582. 34. Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, p. 147 and pp. 149 ff. 35. ". . . ich ging auf das jungste 10s. das ein Kind von der glucklichsten Gesichtsbildung war. Es zog sich zuruck, als eben Lotte zur Ture herauskam . . ." (p. 21). 36. Cf. the use of words like "versunken," or "rings in der dammernden Welt" in both of these letters. 37. See Bennett, "Goethe's Werther," 65-67, for a similar observation. 38. See Scherpe, Werther und Wertherwirkung, for more on Nicolai and Goethe's novel. 39. "Meine GroRmutter hatte ein Marchen vom Magnetenberg: die Schiffe, die zu nahe kamen, wurden auf einmal alles Eisenwerks beraubt, die Nagel flogen dem Berge zu, und die armen Elenden scheiterten zwischen den ubereinandersturzenden Brettern" (p. 41). 40. HA 3:22-24. 41. See in this connection Schiller's accounts of tragedy and recuperation in "Uber den Grund des Vergnugens an tragischen Gegenstanden" (1792), " ~ b e rdas Pathetische" (1801), and " ~ b e das r Erhabene" (1801) in his Werke 2:341-51; 42544; and 607-18. 42. Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, p. 115. 43. Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, p. 167. 44. Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, p. 132. 45. The beautiful in Kant's aesthetics, like the sublime, involves a "Reflexionsurteil," for which "das Wohlgefallen an der bloRen Darstellung oder dem Vermogen derselben geknupft ist, wodurch das Vermogen der Darstellung, oder die Einbildungskraft, bei einer gegebenen Anschauung mit dem Vermogen der Begriffe des Verstandes oder der Vernunft, als Beforderung der letztern, in Einstimmung betrachtet wird" (pp. 164-65). See also in this connection the discussion on "Zweckmabigkeit" in para. 10, pp. 134-35, and "Vollkommenheit" in para. 15, pp. 14246. 46. Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, p. 165. 47. Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, p. 165. 48. "Also ist das Gefuhl des Erhabenen in der Natur Achtung fiir unsere eigene Bestimmung, die wir einem Objekte der Natur durch eine ,gewisse Subreption (Verwechselung einer Achtung fur das Objekt statt der fur die Idee der Menschheit in

unserem Subjekte) beweisen, welches uns die ijberlegenheit der Vernunftbestimmung unserer Erkenntnisvermogen uber das groBte Vermogen der Sinnlichkeit gleichsam anschaulich macht." Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, p. 180. 49. In this spirit the editor of Werther's correspondence urges the reader's "Bewunderung" in his prefatory note (p. 7). 50. Werther's suicide is, in this regard, not the consequence of his mind's final collapse, but an intermediate phase in his movement toward recognizing an independent purposefulness as the basis of self-definition. As such, it remains on at least one level of interpretation a signal of redemption rather than a testimony of defeat. This standpoint agrees only in part with the sensitive reading of Goethe's novel in Bennett, "Goethe's Werther," which properly identifies the text's thematic interest in the self as the locus of a collision between subjective aspirations and their necessary disruption by the world (67-70), and then concludes that Werther's suicide is motivated by the desire to overcome the internal split of consciousness (70). 1argue, by contrast, that Werther stages his death as the last and most critical in a series of significant disruptions in order to establish a sense of self-worth as the basis of self-definition and not, as in Bennett (79), its consequence. 51. Staroste, Raum und Realitat, argues similarly: "Der EntschluB zum Sich-opfern ist allerdings insofern nur eine letzte Stufe in Werthers Lebensvollzug, als er ein nowendiger Ausdruck von Werthers Damon ist. Das Opfer ist fur Werther, dem die Selbstaufgabe im Sinne der Entsagung noch nicht gelingt, die einzige Moglichkeit, sich treu zu bleiben, sich nicht ins Pathologishe des Wahnsinns (Schreiber) oder ins Kriminelle (Knecht) zu verlieren" (p. 87). 52. Wordsworth, "The Prelude," in his Complete Poetical Works, p. 166. 53. Thus, in the letter of November 26, 1772: "Manchmal sag' ich mir: Dein Schicksal ist einzig; preise die ubrigen gliicklich-so ist noch keiner gequalt worden.-Dann lese ich einen Dichter der Vorzeit, und es ist mir, als sah' ich in mein eignes Herz" (p. 88). 54. In this spirit Goethe's friend Lenz appropriately described Werther's self-inspired transformation into "ein Bild, welchem vollkommen nachzuahmen eine physische und metaphysische Unmoglichkeit ist." Lenz's essay, which sharply distinguishes the larger moral issues of human nobility and self-esteem from the more narrow one of Werther's "immoral" suicide, offers the earliest formulation of my final position. See Lenz, "Briefe iiber die Moralitat der Leiden des jungen Werthers," in his Werke und Schriften 2:397. 55. Herbert Schoffler, "Die Leiden des jungen Werther": Ihr geistesgeschichtlicher Hintergrund, was the first to treat at length the novel's secularization of the Passion and related motifs. 56. Ryder, "Season, Day, and Hour." points out that Werther freely chooses to die not on the eve of Christ's birth, as we might expect, but rather a few days earlier. The proximity of dates, he concludes, "is advanced in a verisimilar combination of extravagance and tentativeness" (392). 57. Educated by Freud, we may assume that Werther's experience of the uncanny involves a sudden recognition of hitherto suppressed materials: in this case, his own relationship to the empirically impossible. 58. In his review of Sulzer's Die schonen Kiinste (1771). Goethe similarly offers art as man's best hope for salvation in his confrontation with nature as a destructive and overwhelming force: "Was wir von Natur sehn, ist Kraft, die Kraft verschlingt; nichts gegenwartig, alles vorubergehend, tausend Keime zertreten, jeden Augenblick tausend geboren, groR und bedeutend, mannigfaltig ins Unendliche; schon und haBlich,

Notes gut und bos, alles mit gleichem Rechte nebeneinander existierend. Und die Kunst (emphasis Goethe's) ist gerade das Widerspiel; sie entspringt aus den Bemiihungen des Individuums, sich gegen die zerstorende Kraft des Ganzen zu erhalten" (emphasis mine), HA 12:18. 59. "In diesen Kleidern, Lotte, will ich begraben sein. . . . Man sol1 meine Taschen nicht aussuchen. Diese blahrote Schleife, die du am Busen hattest, als ich dich zum ersten Male unter den Kindern fand-0 kiisse sie tausendmal und erzahle ihnen das Schicksal ihres ungliicklichen Freundes. . . . Diese Schleife sol1 mit rnir begraben werden" (p. 123). 60. Similarly, Werther's suicide is, on a realistic level, like all his wordly efforts, remarkably clumsy. On the symbolic level, though, it helps to establish his story as a sign of the mind's infinite hopes. 61. Ryder, "Season, Day, and Hour," has pointed out the significance of the solstice in the timing of Werther's death: "Here we have reached again a point of sustained ambivalence, an ambivalence in full harmony with that which characterizes the symbolic value of the date in the religious context. The literal situation has two components: Werther is going to shoot himself; he hopes for a life beyond. On this level there is no doubt which is reality, which illusion. But the literal situation is under pressure from the metaphoric one. The sun (=life) is gone, but the sun will in fact return, and the timing, so close to the solstice, is such as to justify both aspects as basis for the figurative background" (399). The underlying structure of failure and recuperation in Ryder's interpretation parallels the structure of the novel that Kant's discussion of sublimity helps reveal. 62. He also completes at this point the return to the Father that is lyrically portrayed in Goethe's "Ganymed," HA 1:46-47. 63. Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, p. 167.

Chapter 2 l.'Blackall, Goethe and the Novel, sees otherwise and portrays Werther as secure, Wilhelm as uncertain: "For Wilhelm Meister the realization of self involves the discovery of self-something that Werther had never contemplated as necessry, so sure was his sense of self-awareness. Wilhelm Meister has no such self-awareness: he is bewildered and a seeker from the beginning. . ." (p. 62). As I have argued, Werther's spiritual odyssey involves his movement to the recognition of self-worthprecisely that form of self-awareness that his anxious heart precludes at the start of the novel. 2. "Ja, wenn ein Beruf, eine Sendung deutlich und ausdriicklich war, so ist es diese. Alles geschiet gleichsam bloR zufallig und ohne mein Zutun, und doch alles, wie ich mir es ehemals ausgedacht, wie ich mir's vorgesetzt." Wilhelm Meisters theatralische Sendung, AA 8:877. 3. For more on the genesis of the Lehrjahre and its relation to the Theatralische Sendung, see the notes in the HA 7:611 ff. (The pages for these notes will be cited throughout according to the sixth printing of the first edition.) See also in this regard Blackall, Goethe and the Novel, pp. 56-75, as well as his review of the critical literature (pp. 287 ff.), and Fritz Martini, "Ebenbild, Gegenbild." 4. AA 8:876. 5. AA 8376. 6. AA 8:876-77.

7. "Und keine Zeit und keine Macht zerstiickelt 1 Gepragte Form, die lebend sich entwickelt" (HA 1:403). 8. Trunz describes the changes wrought in Goethe by the intervening years: "17 Jahre waren vergangen, seit er den Roman begonnen. Damals ergriff er das von den Zeitgenossen lebhaft erorterte Thema der asthetischen Erziehung des Volkes durch das Theater; jetzt lebte er in allgemeinen Fragen, wie der neuzeitliche Mensch leben und denken solle. . . . Der alte Stoff konnte nun von hoherem Standpunkt aus zu Ende gefiihrt und der ganze Roman neu durchdacht und neu aufgebaut werden. . . . Die Lehrjahre sind kein Kiinstlerroman mehr; die Kunst erscheint in ihnen nur als Bildungselement, und das Ganze zielt von Anbeginn auf Lebensform und Weltanschauung" (HA 7:611-12 in the sixth printing of the first edition). 9. Hass, "Goethe. 'Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre,' " emphasizes at length the structural role of irony in Goethe's novel and its motivational use in humanizing Wilhelm's notion of destiny (pp. 135 ff.). The gradual redeployment of the protagonist's teleological aspirations as a sign of natural beneficence, or "Gliick." is treated with particular care in two excellent studies by Roder, Gliick und gliickliches Ende, pp. 87-172, and Berger, Asthetik und Bildungsroman. For well-balanced presentations of the extensive critical literature on the Lehrjahre, see Blackall, Goethe and the Novel, pp. 297 ff.; Berger, Asthetik und Bildungsroman, pp. 1-11 and pp. 20-26; as well as Kohn, Entwicklungs- und Bildungsroman. As all demonstrate, the critics have traditionally differed on the issue of Wilhelm's "development": some hold that he develops into an harmonious personality, others that he learns the ways of the world and its need for specialization, while still others feel that his socialization implies-either positively or negatively-the recognition of self-limitation. Likewise, both the reader's and Wilhelm's "aesthetic" education have been cited as the goal of narrative development. For a survey of the reception of the Theatralische Sendung and the Lehrjahre, as well as a sampling of studies from three centuries, see Gille, Goethes "Wilhelm Meister." 10. What Goethe calls "Gesinnungen" through Wilhelm, HA 7:307. See Blackall, Goethe and the Novel, pp. 76-110. 11. Among the novel's readers who, like Novalis (HA 8:569-71). view Wilhelm's socialization negatively and thus implicitly valorize its use of "poetic motifs," the most important is Schlechta, Goethes "Wilhelm Meister." More recently, critics have been inclined to portray Wilhelm's development as a necessary, and hence positive turn of events. See the pioneering position of May, " 'Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre,' " as well as Janz, "Zum sozialen Gehalt." and Fink, "Die Bildung des Burgers." Still others have related the novel's conclusion to any of a number of progressive orders-either natural, social, economic, or aesthetic-that systematically resolve the dichotomy of "poetry" and "prose." See Berger, ~ s t h e t i kund Bildungsroman; Blessin, Die Romane Goethes; Eichner, "Zur Deutung von 'Wilhelm Meisters Lehrr Meisters 'Bildung.' " jahren,' " and Saine, " ~ b e Wilhelm 12. Tower=lat., speculum. 13. "Falsche Tendenzen sind eine Art realer Sehnsucht, immer noch vorteilhafter als die falsche Tendenz, die sich als ideelle Sehnsucht ausdriickt" (HA 12:439). Presumably, realistic longing is preferable to Goethe because it must involve encounters between self and world, whereas its idealistic counterpart encourages temporal flight. 14. Schlechta. Goethes "Wilhelm Meister," pp. 105 ff., presents the Mariane episode as a point of irretrievable happiness in Wilhelm's life that must therefore figure as a tragic measure of his subsequent accommodations. By contrast, first Roder,

Notes Gluck und gluckliches Ende, pp. 267 ff., and then Berger, ~ s t h e t i kund Bildungsroman, pp. 121 ff., view Wilhelm's union with Natalie as a token of ultimate good fortune and s o a qualitative enhancement of his first experience in love. 15. "Das Gewebe dieser Welt ist aus Notwendigkeit und Zufall gebildet; die Vernunft des Menschen stellt sich zwischen beide und weiR sie zu beherrschen; sie behandelt das Notwendige als den Grund ihres Daseins; das Zufallige weiR sie zu lenken, zu leiten und zu nutzen, und nur, indem sie fest und unerschiitterlich steht, verdient der Mensch ein Gott der Erde genannt zu werden" (p. 71). 16. HA 12:441. 17. HA 12:406. 18. HA 12:382. 19. HA 12:439. 20. For Schlegel's essay see HA 8:554-68 (in the sixth printing of the first edition). Hass. "Goethe. 'Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre,' " treats the narrator's irony, as does Schlechta, Goethes "Wilhelm Meister," pp. 153-69 and pp. 203-20; Reiss, Goethes Romane, pp. 90-97; and Blackall, Goethe a n d the Novel, p. 136. 21. Wilhelm's allegorical figure recalls in a n ironic light Werther's earlier tragic recognition of autonomous self-worth. 22. HA 12:398. 23. As Blessin, Die Romane Goethes, pp. 11-58, has convincingly argued. 24. As Roberts, The Indirections of Desire, pp. 18-19, has suggested. 25. For more o n Wilhelm's repossession of his patrimony, see Schweitzer, "Wilhelm Meister und das Bild vom kranken Konigssohn"; Saine, "Wilhelm Meister's Homecoming"; Ammerlahn, "Goethe und Wilhelm Meister"; and Nolan, "Wilhelm Meisters Lieblingsbild." 26. The following "financial" episodes all contribute, either directly or indirectly, to Wilhelm's development: the sale of his grandfather's art collection to Natalie's uncle, his first short business trip (book 1 ) and his longer trip to collect outstanding accounts (book 2), his decision to finance Melina's troupe (book 2), his monetary gift from the Count (book 4). his promise to make good the losses suffered by his friends in the marauders' attack (book 4 ) , the death of his father and the resulting inheritance (book 5). the unexpected partnership between his family's firm and the Tower Society (book 7). 27. For Wilhelm's most significant observations on his developmental ideal, see pp. 80, 82, 106, 120, 122, 131, 150, 154, 166, 179, 212, and 214. 28. For more o n Wilhelm's cult of the public personality, see Clark, "Personality and Society," and Wilkinson, "Having and Being." For the historical and sociological background to this ideal, see Burger, "Europaisches Adelsideal und deutsche Klassik," in his "Dasein heifit eine Rolle spielen," pp. 211-32, and Habermas, Strukturwandel, pp. 25-28. 29. As portrayed in "Tyche," the second poem of the "Urworte. Orphisch" cycle: "Im Leben ist's bald hin- bald widerfallig. / Es ist ein Tand und wird so durchgetandelt" (HA 1:404). 30. "Sie ist mir die wahre E v a . . ." (p. 100). 31. Thus Goethe suggests to Schiller in his letter of March 18, 1795, that book 6 of the Lehrjahre is a n outgrowth of "der zartesten Verwechslung des Subjektiven und Objektiven." See Der Briefwechsel zwischen Schiller und Goethe, 1:61. 32. Berger, ~ s t h e t i kund Bildungsroman, contrasts two possible developmental goals: the "universelle Bildung" of the Lehrjahre's traditional critics and his own version of "intensive Totalitat" (pp. 126-321).

33. Blessin, Die Romane Goethes, pp. 20 ff., concludes that the novel's utlimate insights into the progressive market system are the reader's and not Wilhelm's, while Berger, ~ s t h e t i kund Bildungsroman, pp. 60, 93, and 135, ascribes final selfunderstanding to the protagonist and then locates it in his capacity to reinterpret his own life in its temporal aspect. 34. See book 3, chapter 10 (pp. 187-91). where Wilhelm, disguised as the count, is mistaken by his host for an omen of death. The tragic consequence of this practical joke for both the count and the countess is subsequently revealed in book 8. 35. Roder, Gliick und gluckliches Ende, pp. 172-82, portrays the result of Wilhelm's education as "theodicy," while Berger, ~ s t h e t i kund Bildungsroman, pp. 94134, in accord with my own view, describes the conclusion to Wilhelm's apprenticeship as the supplementation of the telos in an ideology of immanence. Through the aesthetic mode, Wilhelm comes to see his personal history as an instance of nature's life-enhancing "good fortune." 36. Roberts, The Indirections of Desire, offers the most exhaustive treatment of the Hamlet theme. See also Blackall, Goethe and the Novel, pp. 121 ff.; Ammerlahn, "Goethe und Wilhelm Meister"; Blessin, Die Romane Goethes, pp. 20 ff.; and Bonds. "Die Funktion des Hamlet-Motivs." 37. HA 7:551. 38. Saine, "Wilhelm Meister's Homecoming," summarizes this moment: "Wilhelm's metamorphosis takes place only after he has accepted Felix as his own son. left the theater for good and returned with Felix to Lothario's castle" (p. 459). 39. Berger, ~ s t h e t i kund Bildungsroman, pp. 64-70; Roberts, The Indirections of Desire; and Bonds, "Die Funktion des Hamlet-Motivs," all relate the successful completion of Wilhelm's education to his implicit understanding of the formal organization of Shakespeare's play. For Eichner, "Zur Deutung von 'Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahren,' " the goal of that process is further reflected in Goethe's morphological principle of compensation. 40. For more on the Tower Society's objectification of "fate" in its modern versions as reasod, nature, society, or history, see Berger, ~ s t h e t i kund Bildungsroman, pp. 134-62, and Citati, Goethe, pp. 80-90. 41. See Schiller's letter to Goethe of July 8, 1796, Der Briefwechsel zwischen Schiller und Goethe, 1:191-96, where he recalls the epic poem in its similarity with the novel, which likewise presents "Maschinen. . . , die in gewissem Sinne die Gotter oder das regierende Schicksal . . . vorstellen." This hidden mechanism, "ein vorborgen wirkender hoherer Verstand," accompanies Wilhelm throughout his adventures, Schiller notes, but its precise purpose is too obscure and should be specified in greater detail. Berger, Asthetik und Bildungsroman, pp. 20-26, evaluates Schiller's discussion in the correspondence of the evolving novel. 42. For more on the political and social context of the Lehrjahre see Janz, "Zum sozialen Gehalt"; Fink, "Die Bildung des Burgers"; Pfaff, "Playdoyer"; and Vaget, "Liebe und Grundeigentum." 43. Thus, Lothario justifies his economic and political projects by recalling his brother-in-law, the count of book 3, and promising, "das aus ijberzeugung zu tun, wozu ihn ein angstlicher Wahn treibt" (p. 432). 44. Wilhelm's encounters with these emissaries take place in book 1,chapter 17; book 2, chapter 9; book 3, chapter 11; book 4, chapter 6; book 5, chapters 6 and 11; and book 7, chapter 1. 45. The appropriateness of this particular card-game is suggested in Goethe's "Shakespeare und kein Ende" (1813; 1816). where it is portrayed as typically mod-

Notes ern in its speculative disposition: "Hier sind meinem Wollen und Wagen gar viele Turen gelassen; ich kann die Karten, die mir zufallen, verleugnen, in verschiedenem Sinne gelten lassen, halb oder ganz verwerfen, vom Gluck Hilfe rufen, ja durch ein umgekehrtes Verfahren aus den schlechtesten Blattern den groRten Vorteil ziehen" (HA 12:292). 46. In this quality, the Abbe anticipates the watchman Lynkeus in Faust, who announces himself as "Zum Sehen geboren, / Zum Schauen bestellt, 1 Dem Turme geschworen, / Gefallt mir die Welt" (HA 3:341). Unlike Lynkeus, though, the Abbe does not permit his serene view of things to be threatened or obscured by such dark figures as Augustin and Mignon. 47. Berger, Asthetik und Bildungsroman, pp. 64 ff., calls this experience aesthetic and traces its genesis through Wilhelm's reception of Hamlet and the "Bekenntnisse" of book 6, as well as through his association with the Tower Society and Natalie. My own views are in fundamental agreement with Berger's, though I emphasize more sharply the line dividing the Tower Society's ideological orientation from Natalie's arch8-logical interests. 48. In analogy to the "arche," as the goal of man's generative aspiration, I shall use the adjectival form "arch&logical." 49. As noted earlier, this distinction occupied Goethe as early as the time of the "Sulzer-review" and Werther. In the Wahlverwandtschaften he performs a sustained critique of man's inclination to assert creative rights as if they had the unconditional sanction of nature. The power of the creative individual remains productive for Goethe only when tactfully applied. The ironic or tragic implications of the lack of such tact emerge in Mignon's funeral and Augustin's death and become a major theme in the two last novels. 50. See Saine, "Wilhelm Meister's Homecoming." 51. For more on Natalie and the role of nature in her portrayal, see Eichner, "Zur Deutung von 'Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahren,' " 187 ff., which specifies her through Goethe's theory of compensation; Saine, " ~ b e Wilhelm r Meisters Bildung," 70 ff., which highlights his notion of metamorphosis; Ammerlahn, "Goethe und Wilhelm Meister," which offers Natalie as a dynamic Goethean form ("Gestalt"); and Graham, "An Eye for the World: Stages of Realisation in 'Wilhelm Meister,' " in her Goethe: Portrait of an Artist, pp. 182-226, which also describes Natalie as the embodiment of the morphological law of "Gestalten-Umgestalten." 52. See "Die vergleichende Anatomie," AA 17:237 ff., as well as Eichner, "Zur Deutung von 'Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahren,' " 187. 53. See Citati, Goethe, p. 119, and Larrett, "Wilhelm Meister and the Amazons." 54. This demonstration is also performed in the Wahlverwandtschaften. where Goethe similarly links tragedy with the false indentification of nature and human nature. 55. As Wilhelm suggests: "Nur uns Armen, die wir wenig oder nichts besitzen, ist es gegonnt, das Gluck der Freundschaft in reichem MaRe zu geniehen. . . . Wir haben nichts als uns selbst. Dieses ganze Selbst miissen wir hingeben und, wenn es einigen Wert haben soll, dem Freunde das Gut auf ewig versichern . . . . In welchen seligen Zustand versetzt uns die Treue! sie gibt dem vorubergehenden Menschenleben eine himmlische GewiRheit; sie macht das Hauptkapital unsers Reichtums aus" (p. 212). 56. This agrees with Blackall, Goethe and the Novel, p. 132. For a different view, see Ammerlahn, "Wilhelm Meisters Mignon," and most recently Gilby, "The Structural Significance of Mignon." both of which interpret the Mignon-episode with reference to Goethe's morphological theories.

57. In his letter of July 9, 1796, Goethe describes for Schiller a certain "realistischen Tic" and his inclination, after inscribing long columns of figures, to make "Additionsfehler . . . , um die letzte Summe . . zu verringern." Der Briefwechsel zwischen Schiller und Goethe, 1:196-98. This inscrutable, or unaccountable number, which is called "das eigentliche Fazit des Lebens" (p. 37) by Wilhelm and "ein wunderlicher Bruch" (p. 270) by Serlo, precisely describes the place of Wilhelm's two mysterious friends in his life and in the novel. 58. "Sein Charakter war edel und gerade, seine Ideen weit, und man darf sagen groR: er war streng gegen sich selbst; in allen seinen Planen fand man eine unbestechliche Folge, an allen seinen Handlungen eine ununterbrochene SchrittmaRigkeit" (pp. 579-80). 59. My reading of Augustin's father, suggesting that his shame was a consequence of his rigid notions of the natural, or correct, and the unnatural, or unbecoming, differs from the conventional view, which criticizes as "unnatural" the decision to hide his paternity. That decision in fact grew directly out of his original belief that the pregnancy was "unnatural" and hence "illicit." 60. The Harpist sets the fire in book 5, chapter 14, that nearly takes the life of Wilhelm's son. 61. Again in contrast to Ammerlahn, "Wilhelm Meisters Mignon," as well as Gilby, "The Structural Significance of Mignon," 138, who sees Mignon as a protest against the unnatural forces of socialization. 62. For more on Mignon's song, see Seidlin, "Zur Mignon-Ballade," and Meyer, "Mignons Italienlied." 63. "Begegnet uns unter jenen Zypressen, die ihre ernsthaften Gipfel gen Himmel wenden," he chides the world, "besucht uns an jenen Spalieren, wo die Zitronen und Pomeranzen neben uns bliihn, wo die zierliche Myrte uns ihre zarten Blumen darreicht" (p. 583). 64. See Seidlin, "Zur Mignon-Ballade," 93. 65. From the time of the Lehrjahre's completion, according to Lange, "Goethe's Craft of Fiction," 49-50, " 'novel' and 'tragedy' are two terms that he uses almost synonymously."

.

Chapter 3 1. Die Wahlverwandtschaften will be cited according to HA 6:242-490. Again. the critical literature is extensive. For a brief summary see Blackall, Goethe and the Novel, pp. 308-9. A more thorough review, as well as a bibliography of the most important studies on the novel, including nineteenth-century sources, can be found in Rosch, Goethes Roman "Die Wahlverwandtschaften." For its relation to the English novel of manners, see Brown, "Die Wahlverwandtschaften and the English Novel." 2. Many critics have interpreted this novel in light of Goethe's notion of the demonic. See von Wiese's notes to the fifth printing of the first edition of the HA 6:662; Hankamer, Das Spiel der Machte; and Blackall, Goethe and the Novel, p. 183, for readings of the substantive role that numinous forces play, as well Benjamin, Goethes "Wahlverwandtschaften," for a discussion of nature as an atavistic threat. For readings that undercut the novel's demonic motifs and highlight the tragic dynamics of erroneous perceptions, see especially Stopp, " 'Ein wahrer NarziR,' " and Nisbet. " 'Die Wahlverwandtschaften': Explanation and its Limits." Among the

Notes studies treating the novel's setting are Killy, Wirklichkeit und Kunstcharakter, pp. 17-35; Dickson, "Spatial Concentration"; Mannack, Raumgestaltung und Realitatsbezug, pp. 163-94; Nemec, Die Okonomie; Staroste, "Raumgestaltung und Raumsymbolik in Goethes 'Wahlverwandtschaften,' " in his Raum und Realitat, pp. 89103; and Mehra, "The Art of Landscape Gardening." 3. See Nemec, Die Okonomie, for a series of maps depicting the history of the changes in Eduard's estate. 4. Thus Friedrich to Wilhelm, "Du kommst mir vor wie Saul, der Sohn Kis, der ausging seines Vaters Eselinnen zu suchen, und ein Konigreich fand" (p. 610). 5. Wilhelm "freute sich um des Knaben willen recht lebhaft des Besitzes, dem man entgegensah," and he recalled "die vielfache Pflicht des Vaters, den Seinigen den GenuR vorzubereiten, zu verschaffen und zu erhalten" (pp. 501-2). 6. HA 13:35. 7. In Goethe's "Betrachtung iiber Morphologie" (written around 1794). HA 13:121. 8. Euphorion in Faust and Phileros in the "Festspiel" Pandora provide additional instances of the dangerously genial youth. For more on this motif as it concerns Felix in the Wanderjahre, see the concluding chapter. 9. In a sense Eduard and Charlotte's marriage, which is a second one for both and which Eduard portrays as a commemoration of their youthful attraction for each other (p. 246), is just another of his recuperative projects that must fail. See Hess, "Die Wahlverwandtschaften." 10. In a conversation with Eckermann on January 21, 1827, during which Goethe justifies his portrayal of Eduard on realistic grounds: "Man findet in den hoheren Standen Leute genug, bei denen, ganz wie bei ihm, der Eigensinn an die Stelle des Charakters tritt" (AA 24919). 11. As Eduard describes himself to Mittler at the conclusion of part 1 (p. 355). 12. In recent years critics have begun to identify and examine the constructive role that Eduard's erotic projects play in the novel, their final shortcomings and destructive consequences notwithstanding. See in this connection Stopp, " 'Ein wahrer NarziR' "; Reiss, "Mehrdeutigkeit"; Fries, "Die Reflexion der 'Gleichnisrede' in Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften," in his Die Wirklichkeit der Literatur, pp. 90-130; Atkins, "Die Wahlverwandtschaften: Novel of German Classicism," and Muenzer, "Eduard and Rhetoric." 13. AA 24:219. 14. See n. 2. 15. For more on the tentative nature of causation in the novel, see Nisbet, " 'Die Wahlverwandtschaften': Explanation and its Limits," which juxtaposes the credible actions of the characters and their ambiguous motivations throughout. What Nisbet fails to identifv, and what I wish to emphasize, is the aesthetic necessity of such actions. Eduard's "Eigensinn," in particular, his appropriative behavior, enables Goethe to examine the treacherous dynamics of signification. For diverse accounts of the extensive semiotic prospect in the Wahlverwandtschaften, see especially Fries, Die Wirklichkeit der Literatur; Muenzer, "Eduard and Rhetoric"; Turk, "Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften: 'der doppelte Ehebruch durch Phantasie,' " in Kittler, Urszenen, pp. 202-22; J. Hillis Miller. "A 'Buchstabliches' Reading"; Bolz, Goethes "Wahlverwandtschaften"; and most recently Wietholter, "Legenden zur Mythologie." 16. See von Wiese, HA 6:678-708, for a running commentary on the many "things" in the novel that the characters invest with significance.

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17. In addition to the recent theoretical discussions of linguistic signification in the Wahlverwandtschaften that are documented in note 15, see the following for treatments of the narrative complexities of the novel and the productive role that Goethe assigns in it to ambiguity: Reiss, "Mehrdeutigekeit"; Barnes, "Ambiguity in Die Wahlverwandtschaften"; Maharens, "Narrator and Narrative"; Allemann, "Zur Funktion der chemischen Gleichnisrede"; Blessin, Erzahlstruktur und Leserhandlung; and Kahn, "Erlebte Rede." 18. As will become apparent in my readings of first the Wahlverwandtschaften and then the Wanderjahre, the dynamics of figurative signification-what Goethe calls "SymbolikM-is increasingly addressed in these works through motifs that are typically explicit about their status as signs. My last three chapters extensively draw on the terminology of recent critical theory in order to present a coherent interpretation of the self in Goethe's four novels that is, in accord with their focus on the textual nature of Goethean self-definition, remarkably modern. In this regard, my own study has especially benefited from the work of Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida, and Hayden White. Among the relatively few critics who refer in their analyses of Goethe's novels to current semiotic issues are Fries, Die Wirklichkeit der Literatur; Turk, "Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften," in Bolz, Goethes "Wahlver~~andtschaften"; Wietholter, "Legenden zur Mythologie"; and J. Hillis Miller, "A 'Buchstabliches' Reading." 19. See Muenzer, "Eduard and Rhetoric," 494-97. 20. The higher elevation will, Eduard notes, offer an extended view of the surrounding country: "Der Blick wird oben freier und die Brust erweitert sich" (p. 259). 21. The most informative interpretation of this episode is found in Allemann, "Zur Funktion der chemischen Gleichnisrede," which lucidly argues (well in advance of J. Hillis Miller. "A 'Buchstabliches' Reading") that "eine buchstabliche Ubersetzung des chemischen Schemas in den Bereich zwischenmenschlicher Beziehungen prinzipiell scheitern muR. Das lieR sich schon aus dem faktischen Gang der Romanhandlung ablesen" (p. 216). See also Muenzer, "Eduard and Rhetoric," 502 ff. 22. From the linguistic standpoint that is developed in the novel's analysis of the chemical analogy. Eduard's desire to occupy and manage a center of personal power as though this were his natural right is, I shall argue, regressive. Blessin, Die Romane Goethes, pp. 59-109, offers a similar argument in psychological terms, as does Vaget, "Ein reicher Baron," in socio-historical terms. 23. For more on Eduard's own narcissism, see Stopp, " 'Ein wahrer NarziR.' " 24. Having noted in the announcement "daR man in der Naturlehre sich sehr oft ethischer Gleichnisse bedient, um etwas von dem Kreise menschlichen Wissens weit Entferntes naher heranzubringen," the anonymous "Verfasser" suggests that in his forthcoming novel, "einem sittlichen Falle," he will trace a chemical formula back to its "geistigen Ursprunge" (p. 621). In this regard I shall argue, along with Allemann, "Zur Funktion der chemischen Gleichnisrede," pp. 208 ff., that the presumed arch6-logical aim of Goethe's narration, which his announcement ironically cloaks in anonymity, was intended all along to fail. 25. " 'Verzeihen Sie mir,' sagte Charlotte, 'wie ich dem Naturforscher verzeihe; aber ich wiirde hier niemals eine Wahl, eher eine Naturnotwendigkeit erblicken, und diese kaum; denn es ist am Ende vielleicht gar nur die Sache der Gelegenheit. Gelegenheit macht Verhaltnisse, wie sie Diebe macht; und wenn von Ihren Naturkorpern die Rede ist, so scheint mir die Wahl bloR in den Handen des Chemikers zu liegen, der diese Wesen zusammenbringt. Sind sie aber einmal beisammen, dann gnade ihnen Gott!' " (p. 274).

Notes 26. This distinction lies at the heart of de Man's critical project, no less than White's. See de Man, Allegories of Reading, and White, Tropics of Discourse. 27. Aristotle, Rhetoric and Poetics, p. 24. 28. See Muenzer, "Eduard and Rhetoric," as well as Fries, Die Wirklichkeit der Literatur, p. 96, for numerous examples of Eduard's intentional, and finally misguided, use of speech. 29. Eduard's gardener, who claims that a plant "gleicht den eigensinnigen Menschen" (p. 423), provides an additional example of the ironic use of a human term to describe a nonhuman phenomenon. As in the case of the "Gleichnisrede," the irony here lies in Eduard's reverse inclination to justify his arche-logical aspiration as a natural right. 30. Eduard's real name, we learn, is (like the Captain's and his son's) Otto. For more on names in the novel, see Heinz Schlaffer, "Namen und Buchstaben"; Wietholter, "Legenden zur Mythologie," 31 ff.; and Wolf Kittler, "Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften: Sociale Verhaltnisse symbolisch dargestellt," in Bolz, Goethes ''Wahlverwandtschaften," pp. 230 ff. Kittler also relates Eduard's two names to what I call his arche-logical aspiration. 31. "Was er wunschte, suchte sie zu befordern, was ihn ungeduldig machen konnte, zu verhuten, dergestalt dab sie in kurzem wie ein freundlicher Schutzgeist ihm unentbehrlich ward . . ." (p. 289). 32. Benjamin, Goethes "Wahlverwandtschaften," pp. 15 ff., set the stage for much subsequent criticism in his analysis of the novel's death symbolism and its interest in tellurian threats to human freedom and responsibility. 33. Thus Goethe asserts in his prose "explication" to the "Eros" poem of the "Urworte. Orphisch" cycle that the individual, in the erotic phase of development, realizes "daR er sich selbst bestimmen konne, daR er den durchs Geschick ihm zugefiihrten Gegenstand nicht nur gewaltsam ergreifen, sondern auch sich aneignen . . . konne" (HA 1:406). 34. "Das Schone ist eine Manifestation geheimer Naturgesetze, die uns ohne dessen ~ G c h e i n u newig ~ waren verborgen geblieben" (AA 17:704). 35. Barnes, Goethe's "Die Wahlverwandtschaften," refers to Eduard's assertiveness as "the instrument of Ottilie's sanctification, the felix culpa that permits the development of Ottilie's love into something 'incomparable,' something holy" (p. 119). His mystifying reading ignores that the fall in question is fortunate, not on quasi-religious grounds, but because it motivates the problematic relationship between Eduard and Ottilie and thereby shapes the novel's discourse as a tragic one of possessive presumption. 36. AA 17:700. 37. For Goethe the human tragedy is, in a sense, the tragedy of life apart from a primal center of significance and hence limited to eternal derivations: "Wir leben innerhalb der abgeleiteten Erscheinungen und wissen keineswegs, wie wir zur Urfrage kommen sollen" (AA 17:700). For a detailed account of this inalterable deficiency in human experience, including the basic experience of the self, see Schmitz, Goethes Altersdenken. In my concluding chapters on the Wanderjahre, I shall analyze Goethe's enigmatic self with reference to what Schmitz calls the "Bedrangnis der Idee in der Erscheinung" (pp. 50 ff.). 38. For more on time and temporality in the novel, see Dickson, "The Temporal Structure." 39. Von Wiese suggests in his "Anmerkungen," p. 692, that this scene illustrates an alliance of the chance and the demonic. More recently Tanner, "Goethe's Die

Wahlverwandtschaften: The Monstrous Rights of the Present," in his Adultery and the Novel, describes it as "a promiscuous confusion" (p. 191), "the undeniable promptings of physical desire. . . , which do not recognize the kind of respect for past and obligation to the future that, preeminently, a wife and husband do" (p. 192). By contrast. I argue that the confusion here, which only Eduard fails to correct, is a consequence of his presumptively asserting (as fully present) rights of origination that belong, irredeemably, to the past. 40. See J. Hillis Miller, "A Buchstabliches Reading." which argues that Goethe's novel "presents" and "unravels" "the fabric of Western metaphysics" by dramatizing the "distinction between metaphorical and literal uses of language" (22 ff.). Through an entirely different interpretive route, Wietholter, "Legenden zur Mythologie," concludes that the Wahlverwandtschaften, in accord with Goethean science and epistemology, is about nothing less than the "Sundenfall des Begriffs und des absoluten Wissens" (61). In this regard, the frequency of words like "eigen," "eigentlich," "zueignen," and "Eigensinn" in the novel serve to underscore its thematic interest in the difference between language applications that are figurative ("uneigentlich") on the one hand, and literal ("eigentlich") on the other. 41. Nisbet, "Explanation and its Limits." 472 ff., discusses the psychological origin of the numinous in the novel and thus undercuts critics who, like Eduard, are inclined to view the perception of natural mysteries as a statement on the destructive powers of the demonic. 42. See Ottilie's reluctance to "appropriate" the content of the hope chest that is given to her as a birthday present by her beloved: "Es war aber alles so kostbar und fremd, daR sie sichs in Gedanken nicht zuzueignen getraute" (p. 340). For more on a similar container, see my discussion in the concluding chapter on the "Kastchen" belonging to Felix. 43. Along these lines the "fatal" flaw in Eduard's late marriage to Charlotte would be his arche-logical aspiration to retrieve through it a primary, and hence unrepeatable, passion of his youth. 44. In a sense, Eduard would not feel as distraught as he does if he could view the glass as an enabling device, like the ring in Lessing's parable in Nathan der Weise (1779), a fictional structure that would require him to act as if his love for Ottilie were truly possible, without his knowing so in fact. Ottilie's startled response upon seeing her own likeness in the architect's chapel paintings-"es schien ihr . . . , als wenn sie ware und nicht ware" (p. 374)-describes precisely the kind of fictional experience of which Eduard is incapable. 45. See part 2, chapter 11 (p. 442). 46. HA 6:421. 47. "Die Hoffnung fuhr wie ein Stern, der vom Himmel fallt, iiber ihre Haupter weg. Sie wahnten, sie glaubten einander anzugehoren; sie wechselten zum erstenmal entschiedene, freie Kusse und trennten sich gewaltsam und schmerzlich" (p. 456). 48. In this, Ottilie's entries anticipate Goethe's use of maxims in the Wanderjahre. 49. See part 2, chapter 16 (p. 470). 50. For a similar view on Ottilie's silence, see J. Hillis Miller, "A 'Buchstabliches' Reading," 22.

Chapter 4 1. All citations are from HA, 8, in the sixth printing of the first edition. For more

on the novel's first and second versions, see Blackall, Goethe and the Novel, pp.

Notes 224-69; Reiss, " 'Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre' "; Lange, "Zur Entstehungsgeschichte." For orientations in the burgeoning Wanderjahre criticism, see Blackall, Goethe and the Novel, pp. 320 ff., as well as Peschken, Entsagung, pp. 1-11; and Speer, Goethe's Science, pp. 1-8. Goethe's polyperspectivist mode of narration and related thematic issues are treated by Trunz in his "Ammerkungen," HA 8:572-725; Blackall, Goethe and the Novel, pp. 23-69; Fischer-Hartmann. Goethes Altersroman; Karnick, "Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre"; Gidion, Zur Darstellungsweise; Bahr, Die Ironie im Spatwerk Goethes; Brown, Goethe's Cyclical Narratives; and Klaus-Detlef Miiller, "Lenardos Tagebuch." 2. Brown, Goethe's Cyclical Narratives, pp. 33-78, illuminates this technique at length in light of Goethe's theory of repeated mirror-reflections, which figures not only as a central motif in the novel, but also as a formal and epistemological principle. For more on the Joseph-Marie and Wilhelm-Natalie reflection, see Bahr, Die Ironie im Spatwerk Goethes, pp. 90 ff., and Speer, Goethe's Science, pp. 24-33. 3. Bahr, Die Ironie im Spatwerk Goethes, pp. 92-93; Brown, Goethe's Cyclical Narratives, p. 38; and Steer, Goethe's Science, p. 254, all list the numerous points of divergence between Wilhelm and Joseph. 4. In this regard Blessin, Die Romane Goethes, pp. 116-22. argues that Joseph's imitatio is politically and socially regressive, while Speer, Goethe's Science, pp. 2433, argues that it is a Goethean ideal. No single reading of this, or of similar "symbolic" insertions in the Wanderjahre, however, adequately captures Goethe's interest in deferring all final meanings, as Karnick, "Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre," suggests in his discussion of such concepts as "Mitteilen," "das Analoge," "Bedeuten," and "Symbolik." While I find myself in basic agreement with much of Karnick's analysis, I differ on his occasional conclusion that Goethe's symbolic discourse. which is linked with reticence or silence, therefore implies an experience of an authentic center of "divine" significance from within the world (p. 155). The ultimate human experience for Goethe, in the context of the mind's limited cognitive achievements, is, I shall argue, not of some noumenal signified, but rather of the discursive record of its own infinite aspiring. 5. For more on the father-son relationship and the relationship between Goethe's two Wilhelm Meister novels, see Hannelore Schlaffer, "Wilhelm Meister": Das Ende der Kunst. The use of myth, Schlaffer argues, enables Goethe to progress in the Wonderjahre from the demise of poetry (as portrayed in the Lehrjahre through the deaths of Mignon and Augustin) to an objective and universal, rather than subjective and lyrical, language of suffering, an aesthetic form "ohne Melancholic und Sentimentalitat" (p. 7). My reading of the sequel, in contrast to Schlaffer's, questions the dominance of the arche-logical standpoint (as only one of several approaches to significance) and rejects the need to find in it a visionary or magical point of final determination (p. 187). 6. Neither Goethe's categorical "Urform," for instance, as in Steer, Goethe's Science, p. 30, nor a socio-psychological framework that sees in the St. Joseph episode feudal practices and fetishism, as in Blessin. Die Romane Goethes, p. 119, is adequate to Goethe's interest in problematizing the notion of family. 7. "Wilhelm sah aufwarts, und hatten ihn die Kinder in Verwunderung gesetzt, so erfiillte ihn das, was ihm jetzt zu Augen kam, mit Erstaunen" (p. 8). 8. In contrast to Eduard's presumptive rule over his property, Joseph's attachment to the ancient monastery remains tactful, and so it suggests his derivative rather than primary situation. 9. HA 6:403. For more on the "Marienleben" in Goethe's symbolic discourse and

especially in the Wahlverwandtschaften, see Wietholter, "Legenden zur Mythologie," 21-37. 10. Among the more significant female figures in the pantheon of Goethean "Gestalten" are Natalie (the Lehrjahre), Pandora (Pandora), Helena (Faust), Eugenie (Die natiirliche Tochter), and the poet's beloved ("Elegie"). For more on "Gestalt" as a central aesthetic and scientific concept in Goethe's thought, see Graham. Goethe: Portrait of an Artist, pp. 351-72. 11. HA 8:23. 12. See the Wahlverwandtschaften, part 1, chapters 6 and 7. 13. See Schmitz, Goethes Altersdenken, pp. 233-364 ("Die Problematik des Lebens"), for a wealth of documentary material and an extensive discussion of the cognitive limitations that Goethean epistemology recognizes: "Die bewundernde Scheu vor dem in bedeutender Absonderung und eindrucksvoller Gestalt auftretenden Vergangenen hangt . . . wohl zusammen mit der 'Scheu bis zur Angst' vor den 'Urphanomenen, wenn sie unseren Sinnen enthiillt erscheinen' " (p. 319). 14. HA 13:35. 15. Nature, according to Goethe in "Probleme" (1823), is not systematic per se: "Die Natur hat kein System, sie hat, sie ist Leben und Folge aus einem unbekannten Zentrum, zu einer nicht erkennbaren Grenze" (HA 13:35). As such, scientific investigation is "endlos," and our observations must be content with after-images-"die Spur zu verfolgen." In this regard, see also "Bildungstrieb" (1820),which postulates a generative source as a heuristic necessity, but recognizes its tentativeness (HA 13~32-34). 16. Steer, Goethe's Science, pp. 119-26, attempts a "systematic" summary of the Wanderjahre's narrative insertions as a Goethean "series," but he elaborates his organization only in brief thematic terms and does nothing to demonstrate its basis in Goethe's epistemology. See the "Einleitung" to the Farbenlehre (1810) for Goethe's review of his own experimental methodology-his presentation of the three major classes of colors "in einer stetigen Folge" (HA 13:325). 17. See Goethe's letter to Schiller on August 17, 1797, in Der Briefwechsel zwischen Schiller und Goethe, 1:380. 18. See "Der Versuch als Vermittler von Objekt und Subjekt" (1793) and "Erfahrung und Wissenschaft" (1798) in HA 13:lO-20 and 23-25. 19. HA 13:23. 20. Fries, Die Wirklichkeit der Literatur, pp. 47-89, offers a detailed analysis of the implicit linguistic and semiotic parameters of Goethean epistemology as they occur in his scientific essays and especially in the introductory statements to the Farbenlehre. 21. Thus in the forward to the Farbenlehre Goethe suggests, ". . . und so entsteht eine Sprache, eine Symbolik, die man auf ahnliche Falle als Gleichnis, als nahverwandten Ausdruck, als unmittelbar passendes Wort anwenden und benutzen mag" (HA 13:316). 22. HA 13:24. 23. HA 13:25. 24. HA 13:24. 25. HA 13:321. 26. HA 13:25. 27. See "Bedenken und Ergebung" (1820). in HA 13:31-32. 28. Thus Fries, Die Wirklichkeit der Literatur, in his presentation of the textual basis of Goethean epistemology, offers an alternative interpretive standpoint to Bles-

Notes sin's purely phenomenological or materialistic approach to self and world in Die Romane Goethes. My own understanding of the order of self in the four novels supports his contention that Goethe's idea of nature assumes "ein semiologisches Konzept, . . . das offensichtlich nicht mit der ausgesprochenen Selbstreflexion Hegels ins Spiel gebracht wird . . . Jedenfalls werden die Naturphanomene also Offenbarung (und das heiRt also Zeichen) der Natur verstanden: sie bediirfen der Interpretation, damit die Natur als tranzendentales Subjekt sichtbar werde" (p. 65). Similarly, the self can be experienced for Goethe only textually, or as interpretation. 29. Lange, "Goethe's Craft of Fiction," 61. 30. AA 17:733. 31. "Folgt man der Analogie zu sehr, so fallt alles identisch zusammen; meidet man sie, so zerstreut sich alles ins Unendliche. In beiden Fallen stagniert die Betrachtung, einmal als iiberlebendig, das andere Ma1 als getotet." (AA 17:733). 32. AA 17:733. 33. See the discussion of Eduard's glass goblet in chapter 3. 34. Thus Lanee. - . "Goethe's Craft of Fiction." claims of the narration that "the intention behind it foreshadows something of the experimental and philosophical fiction of our own time" (60). For a more extensive discussion of this view, see Bahr, "Goethe's Wanderjahre." 35. Peschken, Entsagung, treats the novel's deployment of the renunciation theme through five major narrative stands: Wilhelm's, Montan's, Lenardo's, Odoard's, and Makarie's. By contrast, Schadel, Metamorphose und Erscheinungsform, highlights in conclusion the Makarie, Montan, Lenardo, and Wilhelm strands as examples of the four existential attitudes basic to a Goethean morphology of human life. My interpretation shares Schadel's interest in these nodal figures, but it does not similarly view them as substantive forms, "metamorphosische Erscheinungsstufen der ideellen Einheit des urbildlichen Menschen" (p. 109). As demonstrated in the preceding two chapters, Goethe questioned such facile identification of nature and human nature. 36. By these I mean the reverences that are treated at length in book 2 of the Wanderjahre. 37. HA 13:315. 38. See Karnick, "Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre," pp. 73-93 and pp. 158-91, for more on communicative limitation and silence in the novel. 39. As Trunz states in his "Anmerkungen." "Die Bilder stehen nicht zeitlich nacheinander, sondern raumlich nebeneinander. Sie sollen alle zugleich dasein und miteinander verglichen werden" (p. 581). See aiso Brown, Goethe's Cyclical Narratives, where we are paradigmatically shown for the St. Joseph episode how the Wanderjahre's reader is forced through the "doubling of perspectives" to broaden the focus on the family: "Joseph's imitation, a matter of content, is thus matched by Goethe's, a matter of technique" (p. 37). Goethe describes this technique in a letter to Karl Iken on September 27, 1827: "Da sich gar manches unserer Erfahrungen nicht rund aussprechen und direkt mitteilen IaRt, so habe ich seit langem das Mittel gewahlt, durch einander gegeniiber gestellte und sich gleichsam ineinander abspiegelnde Gebilde den geheimeren Sinn dem Aufmerkenden zu offenbaren" (AA 21:763). 40. June 8, 1821 (AA 23:129). 41. AA 17:640. 42. Hofmannsthal, in his Aufzeichnungen, notes of the Wanderjahre that its fascinations are "von der abstraktesten ('entsagenden') Art" (p. 179). I argue that the underlying connection in Goethe's last novel between abstraction and renuncia-

tion-which Hofmannsthal does not further specify-concerns a recognition that no substantive center of significance can actually be occupied. Man must content himself with his partial accomplishments, which point abstractly to goals permanently in sight and permanently out of reach. 43. Such examples of "failed" renunciation populate the interlocuted novellas, as both Trunz, in his "Anmerkungen," pp. 600 ff., and Brown, in Goethe's Cyclical Narratives, pp. 51-52, point out. 44. As in Karnick, "Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre," pp. 23-24 and p. 132; Trunz. "Anmerkungen," pp. 632-34; Jaszi, Entzweiung und Vereinigung, pp. 134-35; Strelka, Esoterik bei Goethe, p. 85; and most recently Hannelore Schlaffer, "Wilhelm Meister": Das Ende der Kunst, p. 188. 45. This mildly deconstructionist view of the Goethean self is already anticipated by Schmitz, Goethes Altersdenken, to which my presentation is indebted. Schmitz extensively elaborates the refraction and infinite dispersion of all ideational structures, including the self, in Goethe's thought. See in particular pp. 236-53, and his treatment, on pp. 54-104, of the Wanderjahre's Plotinus-aphorisms. 46. Instances of the sibling motif occur in Die Geschwister, Iphigenie auf Tauris, Tasso, Pandora, Die natiirliche Tochter, the Lehrjahre and the Wanderjahre, as well as in poems such as "Warum gabst du uns die tiefen Blicke" and "Elegie." In the novels the typical shift from parents to aunts and uncles suggests a shift in interest from the generative center of things to lateral, or derivative, relationships. For more on this topic in Goethe, see Dhrgaard, Die Genesung des Narcissus, pp. 232-47, which finds in this motif a suggestion of Goethean tact and "Humanitat" (p. 234). 47. In Dichtung und Wahrheit, HA 9:228. 48. In "Elegie," HA 1:382. 49. HA 1:382. 50. HA 1:385. 51. HA 1 3 3 3 . 52. HA 2:83. 53. HA 2:385. 54. Blackall, Goethe and the Novel, pp. 318-19, quotes this passage in full. It can also be found in Goethes Werke. Festausgabe: "Und wie die Erfahrung gibt, dab ferne Gegenstande, die wir durch ein Sehrohr deutlich erkannt, auch nachher dem bloRen Auee als in deutlicher Nahe bestimmt offenbaren. . . . die Teure sah ich so genau und deutlich als zu erreichen . . . . Indem ich mich nun auch hierum bemiihte und mich nach ihr um desto mehr bestrebte, da drohte der Abgrund mich zu verschlingen, hatte nicht eine hiilfreiche Hand mich ergriffen und zugleich der Gefahr wie dem schonsten Gliick entrissen" (12:454-55). 55. In this regard, Wilhelm's visit to the outer gallery, his concluding observation on twins, and the Wanderjahre's culminating image of Castor and Pollux together suggest a process of playful figurative signification at the heart of the Derridean project. The various symbols of self-presence in Goethe's last novel, like Derrida's "trace," exist exclusively through a point of reference that is primordially split. The eternally distant origin ("die groRe Mutter der Gotter und Menschen") can be known only through its endless re-duplications (for Wilhelm, the mutually defining images of self in the portrait gallery). See Derrida, "Differance," in his Speech and Phenomena, p. 142 ff. 56. Gidion, Zur Darstellungsweise, interprets Wilhelm's gallery visit and his reference to twins in an entirely different spirit, as a moment of complete self-presence that duplicates in the human sphere the assumption in nature of a "makro-mikrome-

-

Notes gischen Verfahrens" (p. 134). By contrast, Hannelore Schlaffer, "Wilhelm Meister": Das Ende der Kunst, suggests more subtly that self-awareness in the Wanderjahre means abandoning the illusion of "einer vollstandigen Gegenwart" (p. 212). and recognizing instead the fictional basis of identity. Like Schlaffer, I also see in this novel the loss of self-presence. However, I question the conclusion that Goethe's numerous narrative fictions, his novel's mythical configurations, together facilitate the recuperation of a full authorial self (p. 213). The life that Goethe's signifying abstractions promote is not his own, but the life of the text. 57. Both Brown, Goethe's Cyclical Narratives, pp. 79-87, and Hannelore Schlaffer, "Wilhelm Meister": Das Ende der Kunst, consider the relationship between the two Wilhelm Meister novels. 58. The literature on the pedagogical province is extensive. Both Peschken, Entsagung, pp. 6-7 and pp. 92 ff., and Blackall, Goethe and the Novel, pp. 317-18, provide summaries. For Goethe's use of irony in this episode, see Bahr. Die Ironie im Spatwerk Goethes, pp. 126 ff.; for its parodistic elements see Brown, Goethe's Cyclical Narratives, pp. 87-97. For detailed studies of the school's system of reverences, see Trunz, "Anmerkungen," pp. 650-63; Schadel. Metamorphose und Erscheinungsform, pp. 76-95; Krause, Goethes Lehre; Franz, Goethe als religioser Denker. pp. 109-23; Jantz, "Die Ehrfurchten"; and Ohly, "Goethes Ehrfurchten." 59. The children's motley costumes bring to mind Goethe's Farbenlehre, where colors are the temporal specifications, or derivatives ("Wirkungen"), of the unknowable light. See HA 8:315. 60. AA 13:129. 61. The novel's aphorisms, like the entries in Ottilie's diary, work similarly: they can be attributed to individuals.. but (like the editor's summarv of Wilhelm's conversation with the Three) they stand independent of their various sources. Accordingly, they are not true points of narrative integration. Detached from an authoritative presence, the aphorisms emerge as signifying elements that defer final meanings by referring to each other as similar abstractions. 62. Trunz provides a chart of these symbolic elements to show their imperfect correspondence to one another (HA 8:654). Apparently, their proliferation is not the consequence of the signified's plenitude, but rather of its eternal postponement. 63. In these characteristics, the pagan faiths recall the "Damon" poem of Goethe's "Urworte. Orphisch" cycle. They, too, express "die Unveranderlichkeit des Individuums" (HA 1:404). 64. "Das israelitische Volk hat niemals vie1 getaugt, wie es ihm seine Anfiihrer, Richter, Vorsteher, Propheten tausendmal vorgeworfen haben; es besitzt wenig Tugenden und die meisten Fehler anderer Volker" (pp. 159-60). In this regard the collective failures of the ancient Hebrews become--as in Werther-a sign of that nation's pure worth. 65. This danger is described in the prose explication to the "Eros" poem in the "Urworte. Orphisch" cycle (HA 1:405-06). 66. Trunz. "Anmerkungen," p. 654. notes that the order of reverences and faiths differs. This difference arises because neither grows logically from a substantive form, but rather each provides life to the other through referential play. 67. The pedagogical principle that Wilhelm learns at this point in his tour mirrors the Wanderjahre's narrative strategy of abstraction: " 'Wir sondern,' versetzte der iilteste, 'bei jedem Unterricht, bei aller ijberlieferung sehr gerne, was nur moglich zu sondern ist; denn dadurch allein kann der Begriff des Bedeutenden bei der Jugend entspringen' "(p. 163). \

68. Brown, Goethe's Cyclical Narratives, p. 88. 69. As he leads Felix from the cavern where the mysterious chest, or "Prachtbiichlein," lies in book 1, chapter 4 (pp. 43-44), Wilhelm is explicitly associated

with Theseus. I discuss this episode in my concluding chapter. Lentricchia, After the New Criticism, pp. 166-67, presents the labyrinth as a central metaphor for the figurative discourse of contemporary criticism, which elaborates a process of endless textual deferral such as Goethe's Wanderjahre involves. 70. Like Wilhelm's tour through the sanctified galleries of the province, Goethe's journey through the realm of the self is-as implied here and expressed in his novels-labyrinthian: in both cases the individual is led from a supposed origin (the fourth reverence as the source of the three others) through a series of passage-ways (the three other reverences) to find himself not at an ultimate goal (the fourth reverence as the consequence of the three others), but astonishingly, at a beginning: "Mit diesen Worten eroffnete der ~ l t e s t eeine Pforte, und Wilhelm stutzte, als er sich wieder in der ersteren Halle des Eingangs fand. Sie hatten, wie er wohl merkte, indessen den ganzen Umkreis des Hofes zuriickgelegt. 'lch hoffte,' sagte Wilhelm, 'Ihr wiirdet mich ans Ende fiihren, und bringt mich wieder zum Anfang' " (p. 163). 71. HA 12:470. This reading of the province's doctrine of reverences contrasts sharply with Schadel, Metamorphose und Erscheinungsforrn, pp. 76-95, which relates them likewise to the Montan, Makarie, Lenardo, and Wilhelm strands of narration. However, Schadel too blithely presents the reverences as primal existential forms, and hence substantive, rather than as Goethean abstractions. By contrast, I suggest that their significance is symbolic and textual and not, as in Schadel, morphological. 72. Among the serious appraisals of Makarie's characterization are Trunz, "Anmerkungen," pp. 630 ff., and pp. 710 ff.; Karnick, "Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre," p. 114; and Blackall, Goethe and the Novel, p. 242. For more critical readings see Bahr. Die lronie im Spatwerk Goethes, p. 113; and Brown, Goethe's Cyclical Narratives, pp. 69-75. 73. See Trunz, "Anmerkungen," pp. 635-36, and Schmitz, Goethes Altersdenken, pp. 54-104, which offers an extensive account of the Wanderjahre's Plotinus-critique and rejects the suggestion in Trunz of Makarie as a Platonic Idea. 74. Brown, Goethe's Cyclical Narratives, pp. 45-46, offers an excellent discussion of the novella "Wer ist der Verrater" in light of Goethe's principle of "wiederholte Spiegelungen" and correctly implies that Goethe's 1823 essay of the same name (HA 12:322-23) provides an interpretive model for the novel as a whole. In that essay, Goethe relates the optical phenomenon of repeated mirror reflections to the human sphere, where an experience reproduced in the imagination many years after the fact results in a heightened perception of reality, "eine zweite Gegenwart" that is superior to the first. The recuperative effort thus produces something "new." constituted in the ruins of "Dasein" and " ~ b e r l i e f e r u n ~ And . " the priority of this derivation, its "higher life," is appropriately related not to the vitality of its source, but to the totality of intensified mirror-images that refer to each other ad infiniturn. Brown recognizes the shift from object to image in Goethe's use of the mirror-motif, but then strikes an unsatisfactory compromise by suggesting that "complete perception and understanding becomes a process of considering something from many different perspectives," as both object and image. The intent of Goethe's analogy appears slightly different to me, since Goethe does not highlight the oscillation between object and image, but rather the infinite movement between the images themselves. See Goethe's essay "Entoptische Farben" (1820), which Brown also treats (AA

Notes 16:777-820). For other discussions of the mirror-motif in the Wanderjahre, see Bahr, Die Ironie im Spatwerk Goethes, pp. 108 ff.; and Hannelore Schlaffer, "Wilhem Meister": Das Ende der Kunst, pp. 202 ff. 75. The reversal of foregrounding and backgrounding in Goethe's presentation of these analogous pairs typifies the ironic mode of the Wanderjahre. Thus, Montan is more prominent than his point of arche-logical reference, while his friend the astronomer, who is similarly oriented toward a teleological point in Makarie, recedes into the background. Hannelore Schlaffer, "Wilhelm Meister": Das Ende der Kunst, also notes this perspectival shift (p. 184). 76. As Goethe also demonstrates through his implicit critique of Eduard's presumptive speaking in the Wahlverwandtschaften. 77. See Faust's resolved turn from the sun at the start of part 2 (HA 3:149). See also Montan's provocative posturing at the mountain festival, through which he facilitates a discursive approach to the problem of the origin of the earth (pp. 259 ff.). 78. HA 10:77. 79. Peschken, Entsagung, shows that renunciation in the Wanderjahre typically produces "Erhebung." 80. HA 1:245. 81. This view anticipates Marx's theory of human work in the manuscripts of 1844. 82. This kind of work differs from Eduard's presumptive projects in the Wahlver-

wandtschaften, because it does not assume to capture through its product some eternally distant significance. It does not hold forth, as in the case of Eduard's pursuit, the illusory promise of authorial presence and power. 83. The role of the promise in human affairs is especially important in Goethe's "classical" works like Iphigenie and the Lehrjahre. 84. Blessin, Die Romane Goethes, pp. 169-80, discusses in great detail the positive implications of the novel's technological themes. 85. AA 16:810. 86. AA 16:810.

Chapter 5 1. AA 17:687. 2. AA 17:687. 3. AA 17:687. 4. AA 17:687. 5 . See the aphorism selections in the Wanderjahre. "Betrachtungen im Sinne der Wanderer" (p. 303). 6 . HA 8:303. 7. AA 17:687. 8 . HA 9:351. 9 . HA 9:351. 10. HA 9:351. 11. HA 9:352. 12. HA 9:353. 13. See Wachsmuth, " 'Sich verselbsten' und 'entse1bstigen'-Goethes Altersforme1 fur die rechte Lebensfuhrung," in his Geeinte Zwienatur, pp. 113-39, for an

alternative, more traditional reading of the self's polarity in which the second phase is interpreted as an orientation toward the world. In contrast. I view "sich entselbstigen" as a complementary turning from any of three egotistical goals, one of which is social, one spiritual, and one material. 14. HA 9:353. 15. HA 9:353. 16. In addition to Peschken, Entsagung, see Henkel's pioneering Entsagung for the religious and existential implications of this theme in the Wanderjahre and in Goethe's thought. 17. For more on the Felix-Hersilie episode, see Derre, "Die Beziehungen zwischen Felix, Hersilie und Wilhelm Meister," and Jabs-Kriegsmann, "Felix und Hersilie." 18. Trunz, in his "Anmerkungen," pp. 618-19, provides a convenient list of the scattered episodes in this narrative strand. 19. Emrich, Die Symbolik von "Faust 11," pp. 348-56, treats this ubiquitous figure in Goethe's works in detail. 20. The most penetrating discussion of the "Kastchen" remains Emrich's "Das Problem der Symbolinterpretation," which interprets it as an archetypical image of the Goethean symbol per se, an "offenbares Geheimnis" that conceals as much as it reveals. Emrich judiciously rejects any reading of chest and key that would-like Speer. Goethe's Science, pp. 126-40-presume to locate its significance within a single context. Notably, the "Kastchen's" key, which the novel portrays in a sketch (p. 321). is a magnet. Hence, I argue that the key to the Goethean self lies in its polarity. It is situated where an egotistical and ascetic urge converge. For a recent interpretation suggesting that the chest is empty, and so a symbol of the "Substanzverlust einer Welt, in der das Wahre aufgehort hat 'eine aus dem Innern am AuRern sich entwickelnde Offenbarung,' " see Diirr, "Geheimnis und Aufklarung," (17). Diirr's reading, like my own and in contrast to Emrich's, sees in this central symbol a hint of loss rather than of plenitude. 21. In Faust, "Wald und Hohle" (HA 3:103-7), Faust reflects on his own internal split in a similar setting. He feels drawn, on the one hand, to a substantive center within himself and attached, on the other, to Mephist+his companion spirit of negation. 22. "Die Saulen kamen ihm schwarzer, die Hohlen tiefer vor" (p. 44). 23. Felix falls from his horse in book 1. chapter 7 (p. 72). he lunges at Hersilie and the "Kastchen" in book 3, chapter 17 (p. 457). and he falls from his horse into the river in book 3, chapter 18 (p. 459). 24. "Es gehort Felix," she writes Wilhelm, "der hat's entdeckt, hat sich's zugeeignet, den miissen wir herbeiholen, ohne seine Gegenwart sollen wir's nicht offnen" ( p 321). 25. HA 8:458. 26. AA 17:694. 27. AA 17:694. 28. AA 17:694. 29. AA 17:694. 30. HA 8:37. 31. Trunz. "Anmerkungen." p. 718, sees this differently and identifies Faust with Felix. 32. Bahr, Die Ironie im Spatwerk Goethes, pp. 129-30; Brown, Goethe's Cyclical Narratives, pp. 133-34: and Hannelore Schlaffer, "Wilhelm Meister": Das Ende der Kunst, pp. 166-74, all treat this concluding figuration, which Goethe used many

Notes years before to describe the relationship between Gotz and Weislingen in Gotz von Berlichingen. 33. Wilhelm's peculiar expertise in the manufacture of artificial cadavers meant for anatomical study parallels an emerging view of the self in the novels that similarly features a derivative, eternally reproducible product. All natural objects for Goethe can be examined only if they are experimentally reconstituted as artificial events. See book 3, chapter 3 (pp. 331-32) for more on the need to study the unfathomable through aids that can be infinitely reproduced. 34. In this he is similar to the spectrum of colors, or "Abglanz," that is the only authentic manner of experiencing light. 35. Schmitz, Goethes Altersdenken, pp. 54-104, discusses this series of maxims at length. 36. The tropological classification that follows is indebted to the work of Hayden White. See in particular his Metahistory, pp. 1-42. 37. AA 21:881. 38. HA 12:470.

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Index Goethe's Works "Bedenken und Ergebung," 164n. 27 "Betrachtung iiber Morphologie," 15911. 7 "Bildungstrieb," 16411. 15 Dichtung und Wahrheit, 132-34 "Elegie," 109-10, 164n. 10, 166n. 46 "Entoptische Farben," 168n. 74 Faust, 1, 27, 125, 132, 133, 135, 141, 142, 145, 157n. 46, 159n. 8, 164n. 10, 16911. 77, 170x1. 21 "Ganymed," 15311. 62 Die Geschwister, 1661-1. 46 Gotz von Berlichingen, 171n. 32 "Idee und Erfahrung," 105 Iphigenie auf Tauris, 16611. 46, 169n. 83 Die Leiden des jungen Werther, 5-36 (chapter I ) , 37, 38, 39, 41, 42, 44, 5253, 56, 57, 74, 108, 132, 134, 135, 140, 143-44, 14811. 1,15311. 1,155n. 21, 1571-1. 49, 16711. 64 "Der Mann von funfzig Jahren," 140 Die natiirliche Tochter, 164n. 10, 166n. 46 "Nicht zu weit," 140 novels, 1-4 (Introduction), 72, 73, 7476, 96-97, 112, 115, 119, 131-32, 134-35.138-40.143-45. 147nn. 1, 5, 148nn. 7, 8, 9, 160n. 18, 16511. 35

Pandora, 15911. 8, 16411. 10, 16611. 46 "Die pilgernde Torin," 140 "Probleme," 16411. 15 "Die schonen Kiinste," 15211. 58, 157 Schriften zur Farbenlehre, 105, 16411. 10, 167n. 59 "Shakespeare und kein Ende," 1565711. 45 Tasso, 16611. 46 "Urworte. Orphisch," 5, 36, 37, 73, 101, 131, 155n. 29, 16111. 33, 167nn. 63, 65 "Die vergleichende Anatomie," 157% 52 "Der Versuch als Verrnittler von Objekt und Subjekt," 164n. 18 "Von deutscher Baukunst," 15011. 28 Die Wahlverwandtschaften, 73-100 (chapter 3), 102-4, 105, 123, 128, 132, 134, 140, 143, 148n. 9, 157nn. 49, 54, 163-6411. 9, 169nn. 76, 82 "Warurn gabst du uns die tiefen Blicke," 166n. 46 "Wer ist der Verrater." 168n. 74 Wilhelrn Meisters Lehrjahre, 37-72 (chapter 2), 74-75, 79, 102, 112, 113, 123-24.127, 129, 132, 134, 140, 144, 153n. 1, 163n. 5, 16411. 10, 16611. 46, 169

Wilhelm Meisters theatralische Sendung, 38-40, 56, 153n. 3, 154n. 9 Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, 97,

101-45 (chapters 4 and 5), 14811. 9, 159n. 8, 160n. 18, 16211. 48, 166n. 46 "Zum Shakespeares-Tag," 150n. 17

Names Aristotle, 84 Burke, Edmund, 149n. 10 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 12, 14, 27 Derrida, Jacques, 160n. 18, 166n. 55 Freud, Sigmund, 147n. 1, 15211. 57 GeDner, Salomon, 20 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 147n. 1, 151n. 30 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 11, 12, 150n. 18 Hofmannsthal, Hugo von, 165-66n. 42 Iken, Karl, 165n. 39 Kant, Immanuel, 8, 21, 29-33, 36, 47, 108, 149n. 13, 150n. 19, 151n. 45 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von, 11 Lenz, Jakob Michael Reinhold, 15211. 54 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 162n. 44 Locke, lohn, 14911. 12

Mann, Thomas, 73 Marx, Karl, 147n. 1, 169n. 81 Muller, Friedrich von, 4, 107 Nicolai, Friedrich, 24, 15111. 38 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 84 Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg), 15411. 11 Plato, 120 Plautus, 111 Plotinus, 120, 166n. 45, 16811. 73 Rochlitz, Friedrich von, 145 Schiller, Friedrich von, 20, 99, 151n. 41, 156n. 41 Schlegel, Friedrich, 45 Smith, Adam, 47 Solger, Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand, 78 Wordsworth, William, 33

Concepts, Characters, and Motifs Abb6, 41, 44, 47, 53, 58, 59, 63-64, 128, 157n. 46 abstraction, 107-12, 114-15, 118-19, 122, 132-33, 165-66n. 42,167nn. 61, 67,168n. 71 accounting, 47, 50, 56, 59, 61, 62, 6364, 68-69, 71 adultery, 91-92, 161-62n. 39 Albert, 18, 21, 23-24, 26, 30, 37 analogy, analogical, 81-84, 105-6, 109, 111. 123-25, 163n. 4, 165n. 31,168n. 74 appetites, 8, 10, 14, 29 appropriation, 74, 75, 76, 77-78, 8393, 96, 97, 99, 103-4, 109, 15911. 15, 162n. 42 arche, arch8-logical, 58, 66, 67, 70, 71, 75, 76-77, 79-80.84-92,94,97,99, 104,106, 117,122-25,138,140,142, 143, 144, 145,157nn. 47,48, 16111. 29, 162n. 43, 163n. 5

aristocrat, aristocratic, 40, 49-51, 53-54 aspiration, 3-4, 6, 10-11, 15, 18, 1920, 23, 27, 32, 35, 40, 42, 43-44, 4546, 57, 58, 64, 71, 75, 77, 84, 90, 99, 100,105, 106, 108, 119-29, 131-45 (chapter 5), 150-51n. 28 Astronom (the astronomer), 123, 124, 125,169n. 75 Augustin, 40, 64, 67, 68-70, 75, 157n. 46, 15811. 59 author, authorial, 16, 17, 20, 66, 76, 79, 80-81,84,85, 86, 91-92, 95-96, 169n. 82 autonomy, 10, 12, 15, 19-20, 23, 2526, 30, 34-36, 41, 45, 46, 52, 116, 117, 121-22 beauty, the beautiful, 21, 29, 88, 15011. 19, 15111. 45, 161n. 34 Bauerbursch (the peasant lad), 16-17, 21,33

Castor and Pollux, 141, 166n. 55, 17071n. 32 centaur, 142 chance, 44,47-48, 52, 58-59, 66, 88, 91, 92-93, 96, 161n. 39 Christ, 33, 35, 117, 118, 143-44, 152n. 56 clarification, clarity, 53, 56, 59-62, 63, 64 commerce, 40, 41, 44, 45-49, 54, 155n. 26 defer, 84, 95, 99, 100, 104, 106-7, 109, 114-15,118-19, 127-29, 134, 135, 138,143,163n. 4, 167n. 61 deference, 92, 99, 113-19, 121, 123, 127-28, 134 derivation, derivative, 10, 81, 99-100, 107-12, 115-16, 119, 121-22, 124, 125, 139, 141, 142, 145, 16111. 37, 166n. 46, 16711. 59, 16811. 74, 171n. 33 desire, 3, 6, 9, 21, 68-69, 78, 80, 91-92, 93, 94-98, 99 destiny, 20, 23, 24-26, 29, 32-33, 3536, 37-45,47, 57-58, 59, 156n. 40 Ehrfurcht (piety, reverence), 101-4, 106,113-19,120, 122,136, 167nn. 58, 66, 168n. 70 eidos (idea), 53, 106, 136, 140, 144, 145 enigma, enigmatic, 55-56, 62, 69, 7072, 102, 108, 124, 131-32, 134, 13539, 141 Entsagung (asceticism, renunciation, resignation), 27, 97, 98-100, 102, 107, 109-10, 123, 124, 125, 127, 134, 135, 138, 139, 141, 165-66nn. 35, 42, 16911. 79,170nn. 16, 20 eros, erotic, 75, 77-78, 84-85, 87-88, 9 2 , 9 6 , 116-17, 137,159n. 12,161n. 33,16711. 65 error, 43-44, 48, 60-61, 64, 70, 71 experiment, experimental, 104-6, 107, 118.127, 139, 1641-1. 16, 171n. 33

failure, 6, 9-15, 18, 24, 26, 29-33, 36, 38, 39, 14811. 1, 150n. 17, 153n. 61, 16711. 64 family, 65, 66, 70, 75, 101-2, 163n. 6 Felix, 40, 43, 49, 58, 59, 65, 70, 71-72, 74-75. 98, 102, 135-43,170nn. 17, 33 figure, figuration, figurative, 3-4, 3436, 37, 39, 44, 58, 74-75, 78, 80-84, 92,94-100,106-10, 112,114,119, 123,124-25.129, 132-34,139-40, 141,143-45, 16011. 18, 162n. 40 fortune, fortunate, 41, 44, 48-49, 52, 58, 59, 63, 67, 68, 71, 74, 76, 98, 154n. 9, 15511. 14, 156n. 35 garden, gardening, 62, 74-76, 84 generation, generational, generative, 19, 41, 58, 63, 65-67, 70-71, 75, 77.7980, 87, 89-90, 97, 99, 102-4, 105, 140,144 Genie (genius), 11, 15-16, 150-51n. 28 Gestalt (form), 103, 104, 157n. 51, 16411. 10 Grundstein (the cornerstone), 89-90 Hamlet (as motif), 40, 41, 55-59, 156nn. 36, 39, 15711. 47 Hauptrnann (the Captain), 77, 78, 85, 94,98 heart, 6-7, 11, 32, 149n. 6 Hersilie, 135-38, 140, 143, 170nn. 17, 23 Homer (as motif), 19-21, 24 human nature (in contrast to nature), 62, 66, 68-72, 80-83, 85, 90, 97, 98, 99,157n. 54,161n. 37, 165n. 35 hypothesis, hypothetical, 44 ideology, ideological, 43, 44, 46, 49-53, 54, 56, 58, 59-66, 69, 70, i38, 142, 143,144, 15711. 47 idyll, idyllic, 19-21, 24, 30, 32 imagination, 12-24, 26-27, 29-31 intuition, 10-24 inwardness, 5-7, 10, 15, 19, 53, 149nn. 8, 12, 150n. 22 irony, 39-40, 45, 48, 53, 54, 118, 145, 154n. 9, 155n. 20, 16711. 58, 169n. 75

Kastchen (the chest), 136-38, 140, 143, 162n. 42, 168n. 69, 170n. 20 Kelchglas (the glass goblet), 94-96, 97, 98, 16211. 44, 165n. 33 labyrinth, 107, 118, 123, 136, 168nn. 69, 70 Lenardo, 120, 125-29, 134-35 literal (in contrast to figural) 4, 68, 8283, 84, 92, 93-94, 95, 96, 97, 100, 124-25, 132, 140,143, 145, 153n. 61, 16211. 40 Lothario, 62-63, 156n. 43 Lotte, 16, 17, 18-19, 21-26, 3033 Lucifer, 133-34 Lustgebaude (the pavilion), 76, 88, 93 Makarie, 120-23, 124, 134-35, 16911. 75 Mariane, 40, 41, 42-43, 47, 52, 54, 59, 71, 154n. 14 Metamorphose (metamorphosis), 75, 79, 104, 108, 109, 15711. 51 metaphor, 143-44 metonymy, 144 Mignon, 40, 65, 67, 70-72, 75, 157n. 56, 15811. 61 mirror, mirror reflection, 14, 111, 12122, 124, 142, 16311. 2, 168-6911. 74 mobility, 125-26, 128-29 Montan, 120, 122-25, 134-35, 16911. 75 Mooshiitte (the moss hut), 76-77 Miihle (the mill), 86-88, 91 Natalie, 40, 43, 58, 59, 65, 67-68, 70, 79,101, 110, 154-5511. 14, 15511. 26, 157n. 51, 16411. 10 nature, the natural, 11, 38, 41, 43, 44, 48, 53, 55-58, 60-61, 63-72, 104-6, 157n. 54, 15811. 2, 16411. 15 novelty, 8, 10 Onkel (the uncle), 63, 64-66 Ossian (as motif), 6, 24-25, 28-29 Ottilie, 77-78, 79, 84-88, 91, 93-94, 96, 97-100, 103-5,123,148n. 9, 161n. 35, 162nn. 42.44 Otto (the baby), 98

Padagogische Provinz (the pedagogical province), 112-19, 142-43, 16711. 58 participation, 41, 43, 44, 45, 48, 132, 134,138, 139, 140, 141, 144 paternal, paternity, 58, 66-67, 68, 74, 85.87-88, 102, 144, 1561-1.38, 15811. 59,16311. 5 patriarchy, 19-20 patrimony, 56, 58, 67, 74, 75, 155n. 25 periphery, peripheral, 107-10, 119, 132-34 Philine, 52 Plautus (as motif), 111 poetry, the poetic, 40-41, 44, 47, 15411. 11, 163n. 5 Polaritat (polarity), 68, 132, 133, 138, 141-43,169-70n. 13 portrait, 99-100, 110-12, 122, 125, 166-67n. 56 power, 4, 21, 29, 30, 58, 66, 67, 71, 76, 83, 84, 85, 87, 88, 90, 97, 104, 117, 132,134, 138, 139, 140, 141, 144 problem, problematic, 4, 11, 23, 39-40, 66,83,95,1OO, 102-4, 106-7, 115, 120,131-32,143,145,163n. 6 promise, 126, 169n. 83 property, 76, 77, 79, 85, 128, 16311. 8 prose, the prosaic, 40-41, 44, 15411. 11 purposefulness, 4, 14, 18, 22-26, 29, 35-36, 37, 44, 60, 121-22, 132, 134, 138, 139,140,141,143-44, 152n. 50 reflexivity, 8-10, 11, 12-15, 21-23, 25, 28. 29-30, 36, 15011. 18 renewal, 62, 76-77, 79, 80, 84, 86, 91, 103 renunciation. See Entsagung reverence. See Ehrfurcht rhetoric, rhetorical, 83-84, 91-92, 95, 143-45 Saal der Vergangenheit (Hall of the Past), 65-66 Sankt Ioseph der Zweite (Saint Joseph the Second), 101-4, 163nn. 2, 3, 6, 165n. 39 schone Grafin (the beautiful countess), 54-55 schone Seele (the beautiful soul), 40, 52-53, 67

self-assertion, 74, 78, 79, 83-84, 87, 90-93,98, 116-17, 16111. 35 self-completion, 39, 49-51, 53, 63-64, 66, 77 self-definition, 3-4, 10-12. 15, 21, 2326, 33-36, 38, 39-40, 44, 56, 57, 67, 68, 78,84,85, 90, 96-97, 106, 10719, 122, 125, 131-45 (chapter 5), 15211. 50 self-denial. See Entsagung; sich entselbstigen self-display, 49-51, 55, 58, 61 self-presence, 50, 80-81, 84, 85, 86, 87, 9 0 , 9 2 , 9 4 , 9 5 , 9 6 , 9 7 , 100, 112-13, 122, 133, 135, 139, 141, 142, 143, 16611. 55, 169n. 82 self-worth, 7, 10, 12, 15, 24, 25-26, 27, 33, 36, 39-40, 42, 44, 47, 50, 54, 5657, 60, 74, 97, 121-22, 15011. 17, 153n. 1 sense-perception, 7-10, 11 Sentimentalism, 6, 7-10, 148n. 2, 14911. 6 Shakespeare (as motif), 1, 2, 55-59, 61, 124 sibling, 68-70, 109-10, 111-12, 141, 16611. 46 sich entselbstigen (self-denial), 119-29, 132,134-35, 137, 138, 140, 141, 169-70n. 13 sich verselbsten (self-involvement), 134-36,137, 138, 140,142,16970n. 1 3 sign, signification, 29, 34, 36, 78, 8084, 91-100, 104-7, 109-12, 114, 122, 126-27,128-29, 132,136, 138, 139, 143,159n. 15, 160nn. 17, 18 socialization, 39, 40, 41, 44, 47, 52, 54, 64, 117-18, 126-27, 154nn. 9, 11, 158n. 61 speculation, speculative, 41, 44, 45-49, 53, 56, 64, 156-57n. 45 subjective, subjectivity, 6-7, 8-11, 13, 29 sublime, 29-36, 38, 42, 108-9, 15111. 45, 153n. 61

supplement, supplementary, 114, 11519,132,133,136, 138, 139, 142 Symbolik (symbolism), 3-4, 64-65, 83, 97, 99, 105, 107, 119, 127, 139, 140, 145, 148n. 9, 160n. 18, 16311. 4, 16411. 21, 17011. 20 synecdoche, 144-45 Tagebuch (Ottilie's book of commonplaces), 99-100, 162n. 48, 167n. 61 techne, techne-logical, 125-29, 139, 140, 143, 145 telos, teleological, 12, 19, 21, 23-25, 29, 32, 36, 37-44, 52, 53, 56-58, 106, 116, 120-22, 123, 138, 140, 142, 143, 144, 145, 154n. 9 theater, 38, 39, 40, 41-43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 54-59, 60, 61, 64, 15411. theodicy, 39, 59, 64, 66 Therese, 63 Theseus, 118, 136, 16811. 69 tragedy, tragic, 28, 45-46, 59, 68-72, 78, 79, 82, 85, 88, 90, 92, 97, 98, 99, 140, 151n. 41, 157nn. 49, 54, 158nn. 65, 2, 16111. 37 Treue (trust), 68, 70, 72, 74, 126, 157n. 55 trope, 84, 139-40, 143-45, 171n. 36 Turmgesellschaft (the Tower Society), 40, 41, 43, 46, 49, 53, 58, 59-68, 113, 129, 155n. 26, 15611. 40 uneasiness, 7-11, 38 Urphanornen (the primal phenomenon), 106, 121, 139, 16411. 1 3 vision, visionary, 10-24 voice, 81, 95, 97, 100 Wahlverwandtschaft (the chemical process), 80-84, 16011. 24 Werner, 41-42, 45-49, 63 work, 106-7, 125-27, 129, 134, 139, 140, 169n. 81 writing, 80-81, 100, 143