Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman: Rethinking the Wilhelm Meister Novels 1108477682, 9781108477680

Citation preview

GOET H E A ND T H E M Y T H OF T H E BILDU NGSROM A N

Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister novels, widely held to be the most significant and influential in all of German literature, have traditionally been classed as bildungsroman, or “novels of formation.” In Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman, Frederick Amrine offers a unique reading of Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre and Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, which posits the second novel as a sequel to the first. Deconstructing and jettisoning the notion of the bildungsroman, the features of the novels that have historically proved p ­ roblematic for critics, seeming to testify to the novels’ disunity, become instead the articulation points of a subtle concord between thematic and formal elements. Reading the novels in light of the eminent criticism of Northrop Frye, this book productively shifts away from social commentary toward the archetypal and symbolic, showing Goethe not to be an exception within world literature; rather, that he p ­ articipates deeply in its overarching structures. frederick amrine is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor in German Studies at the University of Michigan. He has published more than a hundred books on topics ranging from Goethe’s scientific work to Rudolf Steiner. Recent publications include a collection of essays entitled Thresholds (2017) and Kicking Away the Ladder (2019).

Published online by Cambridge University Press

Published online by Cambridge University Press

G OE T H E A N D T H E M Y T H OF T H E BI L DU NG SROM A N Rethinking the Wilhelm Meister Novels FR EDER ICK A M R I N E University of Michigan

Published online by Cambridge University Press

University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, ny 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, vic 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06-04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108477680 doi: 10.1017/9781108774468 © Frederick Amrine 2020 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2020 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A. A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Amrine, Frederick, 1952- author. Title: Goethe and the myth of the Bildungsroman : rethinking the Wilhelm Meister novels / Frederick Amrine. Description: Cambridge ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019059890 | isbn 9781108477680 (hardback) | isbn 9781108702522 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832. Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. | Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832. Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre. | Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832--Criticism and interpretation. | Bildungsromans, German--History and criticism. Classification: LCC PT1982 .A83 2020 | DDC 833/.6--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019059890 isbn 978-1-108-47768-0 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Published online by Cambridge University Press

GOET H E A ND T H E M Y T H OF T H E BILDU NGSROM A N

Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister novels, widely held to be the most significant and influential in all of German literature, have traditionally been classed as bildungsroman, or “novels of formation.” In Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman, Frederick Amrine offers a unique reading of Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre and Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, which posits the second novel as a sequel to the first. Deconstructing and jettisoning the notion of the bildungsroman, the features of the novels that have historically proved p ­ roblematic for critics, seeming to testify to the novels’ disunity, become instead the articulation points of a subtle concord between thematic and formal elements. Reading the novels in light of the eminent criticism of Northrop Frye, this book productively shifts away from social commentary toward the archetypal and symbolic, showing Goethe not to be an exception within world literature; rather, that he p ­ articipates deeply in its overarching structures. frederick amrine is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor in German Studies at the University of Michigan. He has published more than a hundred books on topics ranging from Goethe’s scientific work to Rudolf Steiner. Recent publications include a collection of essays entitled Thresholds (2017) and Kicking Away the Ladder (2019).

Published online by Cambridge University Press

Published online by Cambridge University Press

G OE T H E A N D T H E M Y T H OF T H E BI L DU NG SROM A N Rethinking the Wilhelm Meister Novels FR EDER ICK A M R I N E University of Michigan

Published online by Cambridge University Press

University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, ny 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, vic 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06-04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108477680 doi: 10.1017/9781108774468 © Frederick Amrine 2020 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2020 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A. A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Amrine, Frederick, 1952- author. Title: Goethe and the myth of the Bildungsroman : rethinking the Wilhelm Meister novels / Frederick Amrine. Description: Cambridge ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019059890 | isbn 9781108477680 (hardback) | isbn 9781108702522 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832. Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. | Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832. Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre. | Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832--Criticism and interpretation. | Bildungsromans, German--History and criticism. Classification: LCC PT1982 .A83 2020 | DDC 833/.6--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019059890 isbn 978-1-108-47768-0 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Published online by Cambridge University Press

GOET H E A ND T H E M Y T H OF T H E BILDU NGSROM A N

Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister novels, widely held to be the most significant and influential in all of German literature, have traditionally been classed as bildungsroman, or “novels of formation.” In Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman, Frederick Amrine offers a unique reading of Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre and Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, which posits the second novel as a sequel to the first. Deconstructing and jettisoning the notion of the bildungsroman, the features of the novels that have historically proved p ­ roblematic for critics, seeming to testify to the novels’ disunity, become instead the articulation points of a subtle concord between thematic and formal elements. Reading the novels in light of the eminent criticism of Northrop Frye, this book productively shifts away from social commentary toward the archetypal and symbolic, showing Goethe not to be an exception within world literature; rather, that he p ­ articipates deeply in its overarching structures. frederick amrine is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor in German Studies at the University of Michigan. He has published more than a hundred books on topics ranging from Goethe’s scientific work to Rudolf Steiner. Recent publications include a collection of essays entitled Thresholds (2017) and Kicking Away the Ladder (2019).

Published online by Cambridge University Press

Published online by Cambridge University Press

G OE T H E A N D T H E M Y T H OF T H E BI L DU NG SROM A N Rethinking the Wilhelm Meister Novels FR EDER ICK A M R I N E University of Michigan

Published online by Cambridge University Press

University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, ny 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, vic 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06-04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108477680 doi: 10.1017/9781108774468 © Frederick Amrine 2020 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2020 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A. A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Amrine, Frederick, 1952- author. Title: Goethe and the myth of the Bildungsroman : rethinking the Wilhelm Meister novels / Frederick Amrine. Description: Cambridge ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019059890 | isbn 9781108477680 (hardback) | isbn 9781108702522 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832. Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. | Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832. Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre. | Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832--Criticism and interpretation. | Bildungsromans, German--History and criticism. Classification: LCC PT1982 .A83 2020 | DDC 833/.6--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019059890 isbn 978-1-108-47768-0 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Published online by Cambridge University Press

In loving memory of Alan P. Cottrell

Published online by Cambridge University Press

Published online by Cambridge University Press

Contents

1 Rethinking the Bildungsroman

page 1

2 The Picaresque Novel: Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship II–VI

24

3 The Comic Novel: Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship I, VII, and VIII

53

4 Interlude: The “Sick Prince”

77

5 The Romance: Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years 95 Conclusion

135

Notes 138 Bibliography 173 Index 209

vii

Published online by Cambridge University Press

Published online by Cambridge University Press

chapter 1

Rethinking the Bildungsroman

For precisely where a concept’s missing, There a word presents itself in a timely way.1

1.1 The original impetus to the following study was threefold. First, I felt uneasy with a prevailing critical attitude toward Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister novels: namely, that the Apprenticeship and the Journeyman Years remain ultimately irreconcilable with each other, and disunified and disjointed in themselves. Even though it exhibits outwardly all the features usually associated with a sequel – a parallel title, the reappearance of major characters, similar themes, and a continuous plot – Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years has not been considered a true sequel to the Apprenticeship. The unity of the first and second parts of Faust has long since ceased to be questioned, yet critics who accept the unity of these “most incalculable productions”2 as established are not prepared to grant the unity of the Apprenticeship and the Journeyman Years, even though the genesis of the latter pair is interrupted by a shorter hiatus than the genesis of Faust. Moreover, it was difficult to accept the critical consensus that a novel as profoundly influential as the Apprenticeship, the model for so many later writers, ultimately lacks unity, whereas Schiller and the Romantics, though finding much to criticize in the novel, did not doubt its aesthetic integrity. The Journeyman Years, on the other hand, has long been seen as a formless grab bag,3 leading to the accusation that Goethe in his old age lacked the strength to unify the novel’s disparate concerns – even though, again, an even later creation, the second part of Faust, has long since been cleared of the same charge. The second impetus had to do with the conventional generic classification of the Apprenticeship as a bildungsroman. Here one is faced, first of all, with a direct corollary of the initial difficulty: the Journeyman Years, 1

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press

2

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

an apparent sequel to the novel long felt to be the archetypal bildungsroman, has virtually never been viewed as an exemplar of that same genre. Moreover, taking Bildung as the structuring principle of the Apprenticeship proves exceedingly problematic: Wilhelm does not undergo Bildung in any clearly defined or programmatic sense of the term (e.g. the “aesthetic education” leading to a harmonious development and integration of all his powers asserted by earlier interpreters of the novel),4 while if one understands Bildung as mere unspecified development, the notion becomes so vague that few novels would not qualify as bildungsromane. One wonders whether the generic term “bildungsroman” has come to have very much meaning at all when applied to the Apprenticeship. And the third impetus was perplexity regarding Goethe’s place within the history of the novel. How can one account for the nearly universal neglect of these masterpieces outside of degree programs in German literature? Goethe’s honorific assignment to the vanguard of a uniquely German novelistic tradition of the bildungsroman simultaneously places him outside the mainstream of the development of the novel. So strong is this tendency that even those who set out to bridge the gap end up widening it further. Marianne Hirsch’s study of the “Novel of Formation” (as she calls it) is a good example: in it she seeks to counter the tendency of the term “bildungsroman” by widening its definition to that of a “European, rather than a purely German genre” only to end, however, by sharply distinguishing the German novels from their French and English counterparts on the basis of their different orientations (p. 294). Even more disturbing in this regard is Jeffrey Sammons’s “Mystery of the Missing Bildungsroman,” which ends with the recommendation “when one encounters the assertion that the Bildungsroman is the characteristic and nationally peculiar genre of the nineteenth-century German novel … one should recognize the presence of a myth and assume the appropriate posture of reverence and skepticism” (p. 245), whereby one watches as the bildungsroman disappears from the central tradition of the German novel as well.

1.2 Few literary notions are as widely employed and at the same time as deeply problematic as the term “bildungsroman.” Thus, I propose to reexamine the status of the bildungsroman as a generic category by first tracing its historical reception and then submitting it to the litmus test of recent genre theory. Such an undertaking deserves a book-length study of its

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Rethinking the Bildungsroman

3

own, but it seems to me that something of value can be accomplished even within the confines of a brief chapter. Genre theory is of course an extremely vexed topic: as Fowler has well noted, “[m]uch genre criticism … has failed to describe individual works even plausibly” (p. 25), and from the outset one must face the possibility that such an attempt will manage only to shed dark upon the dark. Recent criticism has questioned many received notions regarding genre and even the validity of the concept as such. Yet, even if the genre bildungsroman is more problematic than most and the theoretical problems surrounding genre are generally intractable, I would argue that the interpretive process is inherently “generic” in and of itself5 and that the problems of genre are thus unavoidable. Before proceeding, however, we must face and dispatch four possible objections to the approach I shall take that arise out of genre theory. The first is the most fundamental, namely, the deep skepticism as regards the concept expressed by Derrida in his essay “La Loi du genre” (“The Law of Genre”). Derrida’s argument can be resolved into two main concerns, the first having to do with the aura of “authoritarianism” that surrounds the concept: “the elliptical reminder, yet all the more authoritative, of a law of ‘you must’ or ‘you must not.’ Of which everyone knows that the concept of genre resides or its value is constituted” (p. 177). The second stems from what Derrida sees as an inherent self-contradiction, a perverse dialectic of inclusion via a demarcation that amounts to exclusion, whereby genre becomes “a principle of contamination, a law of impurity, a parasitic economy” (pp. 179–181). For anyone adopting such a position, the difficulties Derrida’s essay seeks to address are not surprising, since they are inherent in the concept of genre as such. However, one does not need to subscribe to a quasiplatonic notion of hypostatized categories, nor to equate genre with biological genus in order to resist such skepticism. Among others, Fowler has argued convincingly that genre is properly a matter of interpretation, not quasibiological taxonomy: “At any rate there is no doubt that genre primarily has to do with communication. It is an instrument not of classification or prescription, but of meaning” (p. 22). “We identify the genre to interpret the exemplar” (p. 38). Genre’s proper function is not prescriptive, but rather heuristic. The same argument will serve to answer Derrida’s second contention as well. Genre conventions are not an alien power that invades, pollutes, or preys upon the text: rather, they are the necessary precondition for any understanding; they are the informing “langue” that makes “parole” possible in the “radically de-contextualized commerce” of literature (Fowler, p. 22).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press

4

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

The second possible objection is the converse of the first: a claim (such as Croce’s) that there are no “genres,” but only individual works. The approximate response to this second objection would again be the same: although its relationship to the texts themselves is merely heuristic, genre is nevertheless constitutive of our interpretive understanding and thus an essential moment in the hermeneutic process.6 The third potential objection represents a variation on the second – Todorov’s claim that the “literary” is precisely that which breaks with conventions: We don’t recognize a text’s right to count in history of literature, or that of science, unless it brings a change in the idea that we had up to now of one or the other activity. Texts that don’t fulfill this condition pass automatically into another category: that of literature which is called “popular,” “for the masses,” something for school textbooks.7

But as Todorov is well aware, this is true only in a limited sense. Shakespeare’s sonnets do not break the convention outright; they explore all its possibilities, thereby expanding it. If they merely broke the convention, they would not have been recognized as sonnets in the first place. Clearly there must be a recognizable norm before there can be innovation within a genre, which Todorov again admits.8 The fourth objection is the pragmatic argument that it does not matter how we define or use a literary term, so long as we all know roughly what we mean. In the case of the bildungsroman, such a pragmatic definition would amount to something like: “The late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German novel, and imitations thereof.” The first problem with such an approach, in which literary terms function essentially as ostensive gestures, is that such an initial gesture would be impossible to make in the absence of clear criteria for selection. The second is that such gestures remain incapable of resolving disagreements. And this is precisely what has bedeviled the bildungsroman: Even a cursory glance at the state of the scholarship reveals a striking – perhaps even an unprecedented – lack of clarity and agreement as to both appropriate criteria and unambiguous exemplars. A different approach is needed.

1.3 Among recent studies on genre, I find that Klaus Hempfer’s recommends itself most highly for its rigorous and thorough treatment of the theoretical problems attendant upon the determination of genre (Fowler’s more empirical treatment, which can only be called magisterial, will prove equally valuable in Section 1.4). Therefore, I propose that we follow

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Rethinking the Bildungsroman

5

Hempfer’s judicious prescription for a three-stage progression from “formation of a canon” to “structuring” to “differentiating” in our own recapitulation of attempts to define the bildungsroman.9 We cannot confront an unstructured list of potential texts “innocently” because, as Hempfer writes, “every new attempt at structuring and grouping [relies], besides the texts themselves, on the previously undertaken groupings as a reference point.” Thus, it is necessary to begin with the historical reception of the genre: “Therefore the textual basis itself, the canon, can be best established through the aesthetics of reception” (p. 135). I would propose, moreover, that we extend this historical treatment initially to all three stages, thereby viewing the progression of scholarship on the bildungsroman as itself a kind of large metasubjective hermeneutical process. Only in this way can we gain a clear view of the problem in all of its ramifications. Our first task is to establish a minimal consensual canon on the basis of the history of reception of our putative genre (“formation of the canon”).10 However, the term “bildungsroman,” as it is widely understood, is so vague that one is immediately confronted with enormous problems. Michael Beddow begins his perceptive study by noting – rightly I think – that “[t]he term ‘Bildungsroman’ is often used to describe any novel which depicts the development of a single hero or heroine” (p. 1); the catch resulting from this nigh all-inclusive operational definition has been predictably immense. Applying this single criterion, precious few novels would not qualify as bildungsromane, and indeed few have escaped the assignation at one time or another. However, the situation is even worse than Beddow concedes, for several important and influential studies of the genre (e.g. Gerhard and Stahl) have refused to respect even the initial qualifier (“novel”) and thus trace the ancestry of the bildungsroman all the way back to Wolfram’s Parsifal! Lothar Köhn (author of the standard report on research) begins with Grimmelshausen’s Simplicissimus (usually included, of course, among the “canonical” picaresque novels). At the same time, the term is widely employed in describing even the latest contemporary fiction (e.g. the socialist bildungsroman). Thus, one is immediately defeated by the lack of clear differential criteria and distinct historical delimiters in the conventional understanding of the term. Moreover, even if one chooses to dismiss these semantic and historical extrapolations as unfortunate and uncharacteristic excesses – insisting that Bildung be interpreted in strictly historical terms and one’s investigation be limited to the eighteenth, nineteenth, and perhaps early twentieth centuries – overwhelming difficulties remain. In a recent study thus

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press

6

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

limited, and meant to update Lothar Köhn’s standard report on research, Rolf Selbmann begins with the striking admission that he was unable to find any consensual “canon” at all: Already in the first go at setting the themes, a remarkable observation had to be dealt with when applying the concept of the Bildungsroman, namely the fact that the term is established and universally accepted, although at the same time just about every Bildungsroman of the 18th and 19th century is controversial as to this generic description. Even worse: what’s supposed to be a “proper” Bildungsroman is a question that has been answered totally differently for every novel and in every epoch.

If Selbmann’s conclusions are true (and I think they are), such a paradox might give one pause. Conceded that all genres are inherently “metastable” (Colie, p. 30), that they “are continually undergoing metamorphosis” (Fowler, p. 23), and even, as Todorov has written, that every exemplar modifies the species (Introduction, p. 10), still, metamorphosis is not pure “Wechsel” (change); it requires some “Dauer” (continuity) as well. It takes at least two texts to make a genre. Thus, I would submit that no consensus actually exists regarding even a minimal canon of the bildungsroman. But lest our investigation grind to an immediate halt, we must suspend our disbelief and assume a consensus that does not in fact obtain. In order to progress from “formation of a canon” to “structuring,” let us adopt the short list of Wieland’s Agathon, Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, Stifter’s Indian Summer, Keller’s Green Henry, and Mann’s The Magic Mountain proposed by Beddow, who argues that “any account of what a Bildungsroman is that failed to encompass those five works as a very minimum would simply not be about the Bildungsroman at all.”11 Moreover, Beddow has prepared a fallback from even that minimal position: if nothing else, all critics must surely agree that Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship exemplifies the genre.12 However, if we review scholars’ attempts to determine the elements that these texts share, what we find, again, is that the process simply breaks down. Instead of a clear list of criteria, what has gradually emerged is widespread skepticism regarding the very existence of the genre itself.13 In place of the full rehearsal that is of course precluded by lack of space, let us continue our historical hermeneutic by considering a number of symptomatic studies and conclusions drawn by important scholars who have undertaken such a full review. The earliest attempts at a definition of the bildungsroman already yield striking paradoxes and deep self-contradictions.14 In his Essay on the Novel of 1774, Blanckenburg describes a kind of fiction that might be construed

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Rethinking the Bildungsroman

7

as a bildungsroman, arguing that “the education, the forming of a character” must be the “established purpose” of every good novel (p. 321). Yet he confesses in the same breath, as it were, “Of such novels we have perhaps not more than two or three – perhaps even only one” (p. vii), by which he means Wieland’s Agathon, but only insofar as it successfully imitates Richardson and Fielding (neither of whom wrote bildungsromane) and Selbmann has rightly pointed out that the ideal novel Blanckenburg describes “does not exist yet at all” (p. 9). First to coin the term “bildungsroman” was Karl Morgenstern, in 1819; however, Morgenstern now argues that every good novel is a “bildungsroman.” This disturbing dialectic of everything and nothing is one we shall meet again. More confusing yet, Morgenstern puts forth as his prime exemplars the novels of Klinger, which nobody would now consider bildungsromane, but fails even to mention Wilhelm Meister! Thus, the early reception of the bildungsroman is more than a little confused. The history of the genre in the nineteenth century has been summarized in a fine and widely noted article by Jeffrey Sammons, who arrives at a conclusion as striking as Selbmann’s confession quoted earlier: “I am obliged to report that, after what I regard as some reasonably conscientious inquiry and research, I have been unable to locate this celebrated genre in the nineteenth century” (p. 230), although he later allows one might be able, at the outside, to admit “Wilhelm Meister and maybe two and a half other examples” (p. 237). One is Indian Summer, yet its inclusion is immediately retracted by the qualification that “it is a very eccentric novel; there is perhaps nothing else resembling it in European literature” (p. 236) – i.e. it is sui generis. Even a quick review of the scholarship on Indian Summer reveals an ongoing reticence to term it a “bildungsroman”: Neither Krüger’s study of 1906 nor Lukács’s of 1916 mentions the novel, Victor Lange dismisses the appellation, Rehm avoids it, and Emil Staiger has called for its exclusion from the “canon.”15 Sammons dispatches Green Henry with similar ease, calling it “a chronicle of wasted time,” asserting that “if ever a novel was marked by the absence of effective Bildung, it is this” and reminding us that a contemporary critic had written “perceptively” to Keller that it was a tragic Bildung (Sammons, pp. 236–237). Selbmann interprets the novel as a “Bildungsroman … ex negativo” (p. 134) with a “pedagogical conception formulated as a subjunctive” (p. 136) unfolding “in negativity” (p. 139). Jacobs terms it an “anti-developmental novel” (p. 181), a “Bildungsroman that stops short of its goal” (p. 182). Miles reads both Indian Summer and Green Henry as anti-bildungsromane.16

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press

8

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

As for The Magic Mountain, Köhn’s review of research barely mentions the novel, while Selbmann interprets it as the archetypal antibildungsroman (p. 157).17 The conclusion of Jacobs’s study provides telling, if unwilling, evidence that there is something profoundly wrong with our understanding of the genre, although Jacobs prefers to blame it on the novels themselves: having failed to find a group of novels that fit his criteria for Bildung, he declares the genre to be incomplete and unfulfilled!18 Still, it would seem that one final anchor to windward remained: Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship. But even this ultimate certitude has steadily eroded, beginning with the faint questions posed by Jürgen Rausch’s article of 1942.19 Schlechta’s argument of 1953 totally denying any development on Wilhelm’s part Recalling to mind in broad strokes the progress of the novel, and especially Wilhelm’s development, then we can hardly resist the impression that both on the whole and also in countless details a kind of hidden mockery is being undertaken. He develops – that is for sure. But in a mysterious way he also becomes less and less: he loses color and contour, and every kind of definiteness. He also loses warmth and the ability to persuade. His form, his ability to sense and to express himself gets lost – we noticed that especially when here and there he falls back into his old tone. Out of a vital, unmistakable person we get almost a concept, an “ideal.” (p. 203)

was shrill enough to ignore perhaps, but Kurt May’s blunt question of 1957 (“‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre,’ ein Bildungsroman?”) had to be faced, and his answer was equally blunt: “Countless interpreters have recognized in good faith a harmonic Bildung at the end of the Apprenticeship – but not Goethe himself” (p. 34). Hans Eichner’s article of 1966 sought to chart the ironic undercurrents of the novel, and particularly its ending, again casting doubt upon the Apprenticeship’s conventional generic classification: Wilhelm is not merely, and perhaps not even principally, the hero of a Bildungsroman. He is also the hero of a picaresque novel and the hero, if one may dare so extreme a characterization, of a realistic fairytale: he is Fortunate Hans. … It’s perhaps not the right conclusion for a Bildungsroman in the sense of the usual definitions, but it is the right conclusion for the novel that Goethe actually wrote. (pp. 195–196)

By the time we reach Klaus Gille’s standard Rezeptionsgeschichte of 1971, Eichner’s skeptical relativization has become emphatic denial: If we consider both of the last books of the novel, then we see that Wilhelm is still very far from Schiller’s theoretically postulated “beautiful moral freedom.” To be sure, on entering the world of the Tower, Wilhelm gains insight into the senselessness of his theatrical career. He is declared saved

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Rethinking the Bildungsroman

9

by the Society of the Tower, and he is released from his apprenticeship. And yet the work ends with Wilhelm’s total resignation and insight into the meaninglessness of every attempt at Bildung. Two attempts to shape his life individually, the union with Theresa and his attempt to flee the realm of the Tower come to nothing, and at the end Wilhelm has gained nothing more for his Bildung than the knowledge: “I surrender completely to my friends and their guidance. … It is pointless to strive with one’s own will in this world.” (pp. 17–18)

Blessin notes in 1974 the deep contradictions of a bildungsroman “whose hero learns nothing” (p. 208), of a “novel of development, without in the end a cognitively comprehensible development taking place in the sense of a rising biography” (p. 209). Recently, Hartmut Steinecke has argued that we must view Wilhelm Meister as the prototype of a kind of novel “whose essential elements are conceived too narrowly with the designation ‘Bildungsroman.’”20 The upshot of this history of reception in outline is, I believe, abundantly clear: within German scholarship at least (more on English scholarship later), all the supposedly indisputable exemplars of the genre, the traditional classification of Wilhelm Meister as a “bildungsroman,” and indeed even the very existence of the genre itself have become the objects of widespread skepticism. Steinecke again puts it briefly and well: “The concept ‘Bildungsroman’ has its historical justification, but it does not characterize the phenomenon, but rather the interpretation of the phenomenon”21 – i.e. it is a critical fiction. The third and final stage in our historical hermeneutic would be to develop clear differential criteria on the basis of our restructured “canon.” However, the textual basis has simply evaporated. Having come full circle in our historical hermeneutic, we have arrived precisely nowhere and can only extend to the genre as a whole Jeffrey Sammons’s sardonic conclusion regarding its existence in the nineteenth century: “Doubtless there are many legends in literary history. I wonder, however, if there is another one so lacking in foundation and so misleading as the phantom of the nineteenth-century Bildungsroman” (p. 243). Our historical review of the scholarship on the German “canon” has led not to a refined definition of the bildungsroman but rather to its dissolution, to a “phantom genre” (Sammons, p. 239). Interpreters of English literature have meanwhile taken up the notion of the bildungsroman with a vengeance. I find this ironic, first of all, in that the historical evidence runs strongly against the German bildungsroman having been the direct inspiration for the nineteenth-century

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press

10

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

English novel, as e.g. David DeLaura’s study of “Goethe and the Fortunes of Bildung in Victorian England” has convincingly argued. Moreover, Jerome Buckley’s “broad outlines of a typical Bildungsroman plot” (pp. 17–18) simply do not fit even the novels of our “minimal” German “canon.”22 Heather Dubrow has chosen the bildungsroman as one of the prime paradigm cases (indeed the very first example) in her book on genre, but again the specific criteria she offers fail to fit a single one of our “canonical” German novels: none “begins with the birth of the hero” (p. 2) and none “leaves a provincial town or the countryside for the city” (p. 112) – if anything, the progression is decidedly the reverse.23 Furthermore, if there is one thing on which recent studies of the German bildungsroman seem to agree, it is that they are not realistic in the way e.g. the great nineteenth-century English novels are. One might well suspect that the current use of the term “bildungsroman” in English criticism is not based upon a careful consideration either of the lines of actual historical influence or of the German novels that have been imported into the genealogy. Both can be termed “bildungsromane” only in a sense so vague as to be useless for interpretation, if not downright misleading. In the case of genres at a further remove, defined either in accordance with or in opposition to the bildungsroman, English or German, the same scruples apply of course a fortiori.24 And there we have the problem: if one takes Bildung in its strict and limited historical sense, then nothing is a bildungsroman – not even Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship; however, if one takes it in the loose sense, something like “development of the protagonist,” then everything is a bildungsroman. Either horn of this dilemma alone would be sharp enough, but we have arrived at an even worse impasse and must face both: German departments having effectively rejected the strict definition and English departments having sallied forth to champion the vague. Can a critical term that applies simultaneously to everything and nothing have any explanatory value whatsoever?

1.4 We have seen that both the vague and the specific stalwarts of the interpretive tradition (“development” and Bildung) have led to insuperable problems when taken as the defining criteria. Admittedly this does not prove the nonexistence of the bildungsroman, but only that adequate criteria for its definition have yet to be found. Thus, we need somehow to

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Rethinking the Bildungsroman

11

survey “structuring processes” that are possible but might not have been tried in the case of the bildungsroman. In Section 1.5, I shall attempt just that by considering the full list of potential generic criteria uncovered by the extraordinary empirical work of Fowler (and occasionally augmented by Dubrow).25 Of course such an undertaking can be managed in such a short space only “generically,” that is, by running through a list of potential kinds of criteria that have been successfully employed to define other distinct genres. I suggest that we again employ the minimal canon suggested by Beddow as our test cases. Surely the most unambiguous criterion for determining a genre is the existence of what Dubrow calls “codified prescriptions and restrictions” (p. 9). Our earlier consideration of Blanckenburg and Morgenstern has already alluded to the problematic inadequacies of these earliest attempts to define the genre. In the case of the bildungsroman, descriptive criticism (let alone prescriptive) limps along even further behind literature than usual: scholars long thought that the term was coined by Dilthey at the turn of the century, and its invention by Morgenstern in 1819 was brought to light only by Martini’s study of 1961! Another possibility would be what Fowler calls “generic signals”: “The generic markers that cluster at the beginning of the work have a strategic role in guiding the reader. They help to establish, as soon as possible, an appropriate mental ‘set’ that allows the work’s generic ‘codes’ to be read” (p. 88). Fowler identifies three types: “allusions,” “titles,” and “opening formulas and topics.” However, none of the five novels in our “canon” begins by referring to another work. Only Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship might be considered a “generic” title (but note that hardly anybody has ever termed Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years a “bildungsroman”); the only “opening formula” or “topic” I can recall ever having been suggested as characteristic of the genre is the hero’s birth (Dubrow), but of course none of the five begins in this way, either. Lacking a codified poetics or clear generic signals in the title or the opening, we must turn to consider overarching formal or structural features, hoping – since genres cannot be identified through isolating individual elements but rather only by the relationships among these elements (Hempfer, p. 140f.) – to find what Tynjanov has called “the dominant,” one element that “deforms” those beneath it in the structural hierarchy. Many genres are defined in terms of a distinct “external structure” (such as the Petrarchan sonnet’s articulation into octave and sestet and characteristic rhyme scheme or the five acts of a classical tragedy) or by a distinct “representational aspect” (such as drama and lyric). Günther

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press

12

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

Müller has proposed such a structure as the defining characteristic of the “novel of development,” of which his two prime examples are our bildungsromane, Indian Summer and Green Henry: Such a conception of an individual biography brings a definite structure of narration with it, that is first of all definitely differentiated from concentrating on a short-term crisis, for example Father Goriot, in Moby Dick, but also in Fontane’s social novels. We term this structuring principle as the form of the simple biographical curve. That means, this form runs its course temporally in the sense of a clock through the years, indeed even decades, and it brings thereby the environments together with the progression of the self in its becoming. It is moreover determined by a fundamentally unified sense of becoming, and it represents a curved unfolding that can be viewed from outside in its unity. (p. 561)

Unfortunately, this “simple biographical curve” is to be found neither in Agathon, which begins in medias res and thus transposes significant blocks of time (as does Wilhelm Meister), nor in The Magic Mountain, which surely narrates a “short-term crisis.” As we have seen in Section 1.1, widespread skepticism has arisen regarding any real progress (“progression of the self”) on the part of these protagonists. Moreover, even if this structure were clearly present in all, the bildungsroman would share this same structure with the biography, the autobiography, the eighteenth-century “history” (such as the comic novel Tom Jones), and any number of other subgenres. Another possible criterion would be size: our bildungsromane are all long, but this hardly distinguishes them from other subgenres of the novel, and “long novel” would hardly qualify as a satisfying definition. Scale (e.g. the picaresque novel’s frequent changes of setting) can also be determinative, but scale varies greatly among our five exemplars (compare, e.g., Wilhelm’s early picaresque adventures with the nunc stans experienced by Hans Castorp) and scale even modulates significantly within individual novels. Our bildungsromane share the same “large-scale narrative structure,” in that they display “epic” unity of action as opposed to “romance” entrelacement, but again this hardly differentiates them from the vast majority of novels. Clearly none of these is of any help with regard to the bildungsroman. Two ambitious studies that attempt to define the bildungsroman in purely formal terms reveal, I think, only the futility of such an approach. Susan Suleiman’s study – in many ways an elegant attempt to reduce the bildungsroman to two syntagmatic transformations that can end either positively or negatively and are focused paradigmatically in a single

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Rethinking the Bildungsroman

13

hero – ultimately accomplishes little more than dressing the critical commonplaces we have already found to be problematic (“development,” “antibildungsroman,” and “simple biographical curve”) in a more fashionable structuralist garb.26 Tiefenbacher makes a valiant effort to articulate the plot of the typical bildungsroman, after a manner reminiscent of Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale, into an ideal sequence of three “plot branches,” subdivided into “macro- and partial sequences.” However, besides not fitting the “canonical” bildungsromane (a problem he both confesses and addresses), his archetypal plot structure turns out to be precisely the inverse of Suleiman’s, with the hero moving from activity to passivity. Thus, the two most fully developed attempts to understand the bildungsroman in structural terms arrive in the end at mutually contradictory positions. Another whole set of possibilities falls under the general rubric of “theme” or “content”: many genres, such as the epithalamium, the funeral elegy, or the aube, are defined partially in this way, although of course the presence of a theme is never sufficient in itself to define a genre – a qualification that can stand simultaneously as an immediate and important objection to any purely “thematic” definition of the bildungsroman. A number of thematic subcategories suggested by Fowler can be quickly considered and dispatched. Our five bildungsromane are of course motivated by no specific occasion. Nor are they characterized by a distinct mood (as is, e.g., the Gothic romance), but instead span a range from extreme optimism (Indian Summer) to deep pessimism (Green Henry and, in a different way, The Magic Mountain) – although some critics have attempted, mistakenly I think, to define the genre in terms of an innate optimistic attitude. Some genres can be characterized at least in part by a set of shared values (such as the ethos of medieval romance) and the bildungsroman has often been discussed in terms of bourgeois ideology, but it would be extremely difficult, I think, to describe the values implicit in Agathon or The Magic Mountain as essentially “bourgeois,” and in any case this would hardly distinguish the bildungsroman from any number of other subgenres of the novel. The same applies to what Fowler calls “character,” by which he means both “social rank” and “the personal form of values,” and “subject” (e.g. “decorum”), for although the typical hero of a bildungsroman is not particularly noble, again this might be put forward as one of the defining characteristics of the modern novel as such, beginning with Don Quixote and Lazarillo de Tormes. The most widely employed defining characteristic of the bildungsroman is the theme of “personal development,” “formation,” or “acculturation” (Bildung), with its thematic corollary of “the individual and society.”

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press

14

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

The problems that attend such an approach are numerous and severe. First, how strictly are we to define the term “Bildung”? Here lurks the disedifying dialectic of “everything and nothing” noted earlier, but let us nevertheless reconsider the merits of the strict definition in its own right. Even when the investigation is limited to this one pole, one is immediately faced with the same question again: how strictly am I to define the term “Bildung” – and indeed, can it be defined in any universally shared sense at all? The dimensions of this problem become immediately apparent if one considers even the single decade spanning the publication of Wilhelm Meister and Hegel’s Phenomenology of the Spirit. That Schiller’s notion of Bildung differed in important ways from Goethe’s is clear from their correspondence, in which Schiller tactfully yet insistently reiterates his dissatisfaction with the philosophical underpinnings of the novel; Schlegel and Novalis remained ambivalent at best – but this is all a well-known story that hardly needs to be rehearsed. As for Hegel, the reader is referred to John Smith, who has argued that Bildung in the Phenomenology of the Spirit is interpreted not as the gradual achievement of harmonious balance, but rather something profoundly divisive (on which more later). If the concept of Bildung reveals itself to be so discontinuous in German thought over these ten years, then how can one speak of it as the defining principle of a genre that supposedly spans centuries and national cultures? Even more disturbing, this approach strongly suggests that bildungsromane are typically rather straightforward “program pieces,” which both denies their subtlety and blinds one to the penetrating critique of just such presuppositions offered by nearly all of these novels. One thematic possibility that seems more promising should be mentioned before moving on, however: this is what Fowler calls mise-en-scène (an example would be the typical setting of the Gothic short story). Bildungsromane typically exhibit something analogous in that the hero ultimately enters a kind of utopian society (with Green Henry constituting an important exception). Although the vast majority of interpreters have entirely missed the point that it is not the original society into which the hero typically enters at the end, the utopian aspects of these novels have recently begun to receive overdue attention.27 I shall have more to say on this later as well. More than one critic has attempted to define the bildungsroman as a national genre, usually intending either praise (e.g. Borcherdt and Gerhart) or blame (e.g. Bruford) thereby. That the notion of national genres and national literatures as such can be seen as falling within the same period

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Rethinking the Bildungsroman

15

as the rise of the bildungsroman might seem to corroborate the aptness of such an approach.28 On the whole, recent scholarship has tended to shy away from this notion. A telling objection to this view is of course immediately available, namely the relative ease with which critics have sought to extend the term to other national literatures. A more important objection, though, is that a long-standing tacit acceptance of this argument has severely distorted the facts of literary history. Jeffrey Sammons has put it well: “an essentially German tradition was distinguished from the literature that the Germans had actually written and read, with the effect of imposing upon literary history a notion of nineteenth-century Germany as an alien literary landscape, distinct from the rest of the Western world” (p. 240) – and not just the nineteenth. Most important of all, though, insistence on the bildungsroman as an archetypal “German” form must be recognized as part and parcel of the litany of conservative apologetics seeking “a defense against the infiltration of the social and political novel.”29 This is a saga with many episodes, but one is particularly dark: Borcherdt’s influential entry sub Bildungsroman in the Reallexikon is but an abbreviation of a much longer piece that originally appeared in a multivolume collection of 1941. Of this collection the editor, Franz Koch, writes in his preface: The total war, as we experience it, is not just a military, but also at the same time a spiritual-cultural argument on the greatest possible scale. … Thus research bearing the cultural and political ethos of National Socialism will attempt to deliver academically secure facts in a feeling way and close to the experiences of non-scholarly circles as well. Not least will be [to] show foreigners how the German comes to terms with his own cultural past, and how much of a transformation in the realm of academic questioning and methods has taken place and will continue to take place. (pp. vi–ix)

Viewed within its context, Borcherdt’s characterization of the bildungsroman as “the proper form of the German novel,” the “incorporation of the German novel as such … in which ‘the unconscious’ is bound together with ‘the reflective,’ the irrational, the ‘incalculable’ is joined with the highest will to art” (p. 3) loses any residual ambiguity, and looks downright sinister.30 Three remaining possibilities raised by Dubrow can be quickly considered and dismissed. Some genres have been defined in terms of their effect on the audience: examples would be Aristotle’s definition of tragedy or Todorov’s definition of the fantastic (Dubrow, p. 5). Others, as for example the detective story or the riddle, distinguish themselves by presenting the reader with a specific task to perform. Clearly neither applies to the bildungsroman. One final possibility, that the genre might be defined, like

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press

16

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

the ode, by some combination of the categories discussed earlier (Dubrow, pp. 5–6), can be ruled out as well: If no single criterion is shared, a fortiori the defining criterion cannot be any combination thereof. We have come full circle in our investigation of potential criteria, but the bildungsroman fails to meet any of them, and one is thus hard-pressed to defend terming it a genre unto itself. At issue here is more than mere taxonomy: it may be well to begin with an indistinct, purely heuristic notion of genre, but one cannot end there without abrogating the interpretive process itself. I would submit that this has been the case with regard to the bildungsroman: too often a vague label has been offered in place of real interpretation. This has proved damaging not only in that it has “decanonized” a vast range of nineteenth-century German novels and thus falsified literary history in the way Sammons has argued (p. 238), but also in that it has skewed and limited our understanding of the putative “canon” itself by leading us to ignore important dimensions and further falsified literary history by making these novels seem anomalous within the European literary tradition as a whole. In face of the difficulties we have encountered, we can hardly continue pretending that the generic term “bildungsroman” has some interpretive purchase on the sequence of novels it purports to describe. However, even the failures we have noted are not sufficient reason for abandoning the search for continuities: as I have argued earlier, the interpretive process is by its very nature inescapably “generic.” Rather, our difficulties should encourage us to bracket the conventional definition of the term and try other, unexplored avenues that might yield new connections.

1.5 Uneasiness with this overall situation led me to seek something other than the vague notion of Bildung which would clarify and define the unity I apprehended in each novel separately and in the two taken together, in the hope that this would shed light in turn upon Goethe’s place within the development of the novel. The logical first step seemed a closer look at critical charges that had been leveled against Wilhelm Meister’s (both novels’) aesthetic integrity. Of all the “dead ends, halts, turnings back and changes of direction”31 detected in the Meister novels, two have been the object of nearly universal critical complaint: the severe disjunction between the two novels and that created within the Apprenticeship by interpolated Book VI, the “Confessions of a Beautiful Soul.” Jürgen Jacobs’s clear and forceful description of the former is typical:

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Rethinking the Bildungsroman

17

The work of Goethe’s old age, Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years, does not allow itself – as will soon be apparent to the unprejudiced reader – to be understood simply as a continuation, as the second volume of the Apprenticeship … the two Wilhelm Meister novels are structured completely differently, and they also are different in theme.32

The Journeyman Years’s narrative mode, structure, and ethos are for Jacobs fundamentally different from those of the Apprenticeship.33 In his highly representative study of Goethe’s novels, Hans Reiss is unwilling to accept the Journeyman Years as a sequel to the Apprenticeship in the way that the second part of Faust constitutes a continuous sequel to the first: With regard to these questions we are thus justified in separating the Journeyman Years sharply from the Apprenticeship. Each of these novels offers a separate world unto itself in form and content. We have to recognize first of all the differences. The close conjunction of both parts of Faust, which is given through the preludes, and especially through the Prologue [in Heaven], does not exist here. One cannot speak about a novel in two parts as with Faust. There the first part would be incomplete without the second. In the Wilhelm Meister novels, one can view the Apprenticeship as a complete work: but the Journeyman Years are unthinkable without the Apprenticeship. It’s characteristic that Goethe talks of two parts of Faust, while he distinguishes the Wilhelm Meister novels with two independent titles.34

Emil Staiger has seen the Journeyman Years not as a conscious continuation of the Apprenticeship, but rather as a catch-all, as a “vessel into which the poet thought to combine everything possible, which would otherwise be lost in his papers or be fragmented in unfortunate details.”35 Interpretations as early as Friedrich Gundolf’s and as recent as Jane Brown’s (1975) have resisted viewing the Meister novels as organically connected. Gundolf sees the remnants of the Apprenticeship in the Journeyman Years as inessential to the latter novel, a mere pretext for raising certain issues: “Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years or the Renunciants is much more a wisdom book than a fiction, and it is to be seen only in a very limited sense as a continuation of the Apprenticeship, at least in another sense that the second part of Faust is a continuation of the first part” (1975, p. 714). He answers his own question by arguing that the main purpose of the Journeyman Years is “not the continuation of the Apprenticeship, but rather the writing up of his educational wisdom” (p. 720). Jane Brown sees the original formal impetus to the Journeyman Years not in the Apprenticeship, but rather in Goethe’s earlier cycle of novellas, the Conversations of German Refugees (1975).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press

18

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

Critics approaching the Apprenticeship from the most diverse angles tend all to stumble in the same place, finding a sharp break between the first five and the last two books. D. J. Enright puts the problem in clear focus: “The work gives the impression of falling into two pieces, as clearly as if its binding were broken. The first five books constitute a Theaterroman [novel of the theater]. … And the seventh and eighth books are sheer Lebensroman [novel of life]” (pp. 90–91). W. H. Bruford contrasts the “essentially realistic” tenor of the first five books with the “largely utopian” character of the last three,36 and H. A. Korff underscores this same distinction with a strong value judgment: “It is a simple fact, that can in no way be taken out of the world, that it is not the last three, but rather the first five books of the novel wherein its genuine beauty resides, and what lends to the eye of every reader its poetic value.”37 For Emil Staiger, the “Confessions” constitute a kind of Lethean drink that leads both Wilhelm and the reader, “dignified by a merciful forgetting,” into the “nobler” realms of the Society of the Tower.38 And David Miles, taking Book VI separately as a “second part,” finds the structure of the Apprenticeship to be tripartite: Goethe’s novel falls, stylistically as well as thematically, into three parts. The first five books … are written in a lively and objective style, one approaching Auerbach’s “extensive, foreground” style. The second part, comprising Book VI (“The Confessions of a Beautiful Soul”), plunges the reader into the subjective and introspective world of the Pietist confession, depicted, in Auerbach’s terms, in an “intensive, background” style. … Books VII and VIII bring us yet a third style: “intensive” as well as “extensive,” featuring “background” as well as “foreground,” at the same time meditative and descriptive, generalizing and realistic.39

Book VI supposedly marks a radical break and shift in the style, level of mimesis and thematics of the Apprenticeship. Examples of these virtually universal critical perceptions could be multiplied, but the sample is representative and should be sufficient to establish a consistent pattern. The continuity of the Wilhelm Meister novels taken together seems sharply broken in two places: at the end of the Apprenticeship and within the Apprenticeship itself at the end of Book V. Any argument for the unity of the novels taken together must somehow account for these two seeming disjunctions. To my surprise, I discovered that pursuit of the critics’ complaints about the “pathological” disjunction of the Wilhelm Meister novels into three distinct yet somehow related parts eventually uncovered a most important key to the understanding of their unity.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Rethinking the Bildungsroman

19

1.6 In deliberating on the nature of aesthetic unity, it gradually became clear to me that one simply could not rely upon extra-textual or thematic elements alone – as has so often been done in discussions of these novels – when seeking to establish the unity of literary text (or pair of texts). Yet an approach that attempted to establish unity upon narrowly conceived formal principles alone would prove equally unsatisfactory, if not impossible. Strictly formal features such as a typical narrative “curve” (e.g. the “simple biographical curve” Günther Müller finds typical of the bildungsroman) or a “tension between the synchronic and the diachronic” (which Martin Swales sees as the essence of the same genre) are not differentiated enough to describe the complex web of interrelationships that constitute the essence of a distinct historical genre, let alone the particulars of an individual text. The basis of a text’s aesthetic unity must be sought at the intersection of its form and its thematic content, rather than on merely formal or thematic grounds. Such an approach would be in line with modern criticism which, since the Formalists, has moved away from the older notion of a dichotomy between thematic content and form toward the notion of integral structure: The Russian formalists most vigorously objected to the old dichotomy of “content versus form,” which cuts a work of art into two halves: a crude content and a superimposed, purely external form. Clearly, the aesthetic effect of a work of art does not reside in what is commonly called its content. There are few works of art which are not ridiculous or meaningless in synopsis (which can be justified only as a pedagogical device). But a distinction between form as the factor aesthetically active and a content aesthetically indifferent meets with insuperable difficulties. … It would be better to rechristen all the aesthetically indifferent elements “materials,” while the manner in which they acquire aesthetic efficacy may be called “structure.” This distinction is by no means a simple renaming of the old pair, content and form. It cuts right across the old boundary lines. “Materials” include elements formerly considered formal. “Structure” is a concept including both content and form so far as they are organized for aesthetic purposes. The work of art is, then, considered as a whole system of signs, serving a specific aesthetic purpose.40

Aesthetic unity would have to have its basis in such a structural coherence of form and theme. With this in mind, it dawned on me that Northrop Frye’s theory of literary modes offered an intriguing entrée into this problem. And indeed, the greatest critic who ever lived should offer insights into so great a novelist as Goethe. On reflection, it seemed exceedingly odd that this approach had not been tried before.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press

20

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

First of all, Frye’s notion of structure refuses to distinguish rigidly between theme and form but rather sees the two as integrally related. When looking back over a work that we have been able to experience in its entirety, we see it as a simultaneous unity, something that has not so much a beginning and a middle and an end as a center and a periphery. Criticism deals entirely with literature in this frozen or spatial way, and a distinction between criticism proper and the direct experience of literature which precedes it is fundamental to any coherent act of criticism. The point at which direct experience and criticism begin to come into alignment, in a work of fiction at least, is the point known as recognition or discovery, when some turn in the plot arrests the linear movement and enables us for the first time to see the story as a total shape, or what is usually called a theme.41

The formal analysis of a literary work of art need not exclude thematic considerations: the critic must look to the place where themes reveal their own inner “logic” and are thereby transformed into structural elements. And it was here that I made a sudden “recognition” of my own: that the structure of the Wilhelm Meister novels taken together was homologous to that of Frye’s Comic42 modality. But Frye’s interpretive insights apply much more deeply. One must begin with two of Frye’s most central principles: the centrality of myth in the literary universe and the device of “displacement,” which might be termed a kind of “reality principle” that functions to render the mythical world probable or more like our everyday world. “Myth” can take many forms and is not restricted to the biblical/Christian or Greek/pagan varieties. In essence, it is a picture of the world as humans would wish it to be, “an abstract or purely literary world of fictional and thematic design, unaffected by canons of plausible adaptation to familiar experience. In terms of narrative, myth is the imitation of actions near or at the conceivable limits of desire.”43 This mythic world is then translated by displacement down through the progressively more probable and thus realistic mimetic levels of romance, symbolism, etc., to realism as such and finally to naturalism, where, at the limit, the total displacement of the mythic world is attained. Narrative no longer imitates the objects of human desire, but only the givens of the real world: In myth we see the structural principles of literature isolated; in realism we see the same structural principles (not similar ones) fitting into a context of plausibility. … The presence of a mythical structure in realistic fiction, however, poses certain technical problems for making it plausible, and the devices used in solving these problems may be given the general name of displacement.44

Across the spectrum between pure myth and pure naturalism, literary narrative works simultaneously “to displace myth in a human direction” and

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Rethinking the Bildungsroman

21

“to conventionalize content in an idealized direction.”45 The “downward” mimetic movement is accompanied by “displacement”; the corresponding upward movement is accompanied by irony. These two movements together constitute the “vertical dimension” of the narrative universe, and what follows cannot be understood apart from these principles. The principle of mimetic displacement contributes the vertical dimension to Frye’s aforementioned fourfold scheme of narrative modes. These four modes or, as Frye also terms them, “mythoi,” are “narrative pregeneric elements of literature,” “generic (i.e. universal) plots,” narrative categories that are “broader than, or logically prior to, the ordinary literary genres.”46 In this they are analogous to tonalities in music (the circle of fifths comes immediately to mind): Any number of distinct musical forms (e.g. a sonata, symphony, an oratorio, or a mass) may be composed in the same key. These four pregeneric modes, or mythoi, are: Romance, Tragedy, Comedy, and Satire or Irony. Frye notes that two of the terms, “Tragedy” and “Comedy,” are commonly used in this modal sense already: “Tragedy and Comedy may have been originally names for two species of drama, but we also employ the terms to describe general characteristics of literary fictions, without regard to genre.”47 The same could be argued for “Romance” and for the two terms Frye adopts in place of realism, “Satire or Irony.” Narrative moves in a “natural cycle”48 from one literary mode to the next, and the four modes, or mythoi, are in fact defined in terms of the following movements: The top half of the natural cycle is the world of romance and the analogy of innocence; the lower half is the world of “realism” and the analogy of experience. Thus there are four main types of mythical movement: within romance, within experience, down and up. The downward movement is the tragic movement, the wheel of fortune falling from innocence toward hamartia, and from hamartia to catastrophe. The upward movement is the comic movement, from threatening complications to a happy ending and a general assumption of post-dated innocence in which everyone lives happily ever after.49

Certain pairs of modes naturally stand opposed (this is clearest with Tragedy and Comedy), while others naturally flow into one another on a continuum: If we think of our experience of these mythoi, we shall realize that they form two opposed pairs. Tragedy and comedy contrast rather than blend, and so do romance and irony, the champions respectively of the ideal and the actual. On the other hand, comedy blends insensibly into satire at the one extreme and into romance at the other; romance may be comic or tragic; tragic extends from high romance to bitter and ironic realism.50

Viewed schematically, the modes constitute the four points of a compass defining the “space” of narrative movement, which can be represented as follows.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press

22

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman Romance

Tragedy

Comedy

Satire or Irony

Romance is closest to pure myth or human desire; Satire or Irony represents the pole of maximal displacement or greatest realism. In this bald scheme one very important formal corollary of the modal cycle becomes clear: each mode is a semi-circular movement that shares one quadrant of the circle with each adjacent mode and is thus essentially tripartite. The second half of Satire or Irony, for example, is coextensive with the first half of Comedy, and the second half of Comedy is coextensive with Romance. Thus, according to Frye’s scheme the full development of Comedy entails a progression through three distinct evolutionary phases: from Satire or Irony, through a phase of Comedy proper, into Romance. In this study I shall attempt to show that the formal development of the Wilhelm Meister novels reflects the three phases of the Comic dialectic, or, to change the metaphor, that the Wilhelm Meister novels modulate through the three distinct yet structurally related tonalities of Comedy. Their tripartite structure corresponds precisely to that yielded by the two disjunctions uncovered by the critics of the novels. I shall argue that Books II through VI of the Apprenticeship are written “in the key of” Satire or Irony; Books I, VII, and VIII “in the key of” Comedy proper; and the Journeyman Years “in the key of” Romance.51 This undertaking would be facilitated considerably if the terminology referring to Comic genres were commonly applied with any degree of unanimity. Unfortunately, there is far less unanimity with regard to Comedy than Tragedy. In his book The Picaresque Novel, Stuart Miller offers an interesting theory to account for the greater unanimity in critical understanding of Tragedy:

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Rethinking the Bildungsroman

23

It may be that tragedy is relatively easy to define, but more likely we should attribute the relative coherence in our discussions of tragedy to Aristotle’s having treated the subject so early in the history of criticism. No one will say that Aristotle had the last word on tragedy, but his systematic discussion of the subject served as a model and a point of departure for all later criticism. The relative lack of clarity in discussions of comedy proves how much we have lost in not having had a clear and systematic foundation. (pp. 3–4)

Whether or not his theory is correct, Miller has discerned an important area of critical confusion. I believe that, of all critics, Northrop Frye has done most to establish such a “clear and systematic foundation” for an understanding of the various literary forms of Comedy. If his chapters on Comedy in Anatomy of Criticism are read in conjunction with his book on Shakespearean comedy (A Natural Perspective) and especially with his Norton lectures on the structure of Romance (The Secular Scripture), a consistent theory of Comic forms emerges. These three works together will provide the main foundation for my analysis of the Meister novels. At the same time, Frye’s foundation proves to be sturdy enough to support the great majority of insights into the nature of Comedy proposed by other critics. Frye’s modal scheme is not a single theory that must be asserted to the exclusion of all others: rather, it is a blueprint that reveals the interrelatedness of a large number of seemingly contradictory views on Comic form and the nature of humor; it shows each its place within the completed edifice. Stuart Miller’s, for example, attempts to construct an “ideal genre type” of the picaresque52 from the Comic novel and the romance,53 and his insights shall prove invaluable. Beyond this, I shall look to many studies of the picaresque (both as a historical genre and in a larger sense, as a kind of submode of Satire or Irony), as well as studies on comedy and romance. The problem of differentiating these Comic phases is complicated by the fact that they overlap (as is clear from Frye’s scheme), so that one is apt to find in any one phase both anticipations of and retroactions from the next. It becomes difficult in such a continuum to make sharp divisions, although it is usually possible to make distinctions within areas of overlap. The movement of this “logical development” of Comedy that is reflected in the Wilhelm Meister novels is not linear, but dialectical,54 with all the skips, starts, overlaps, inner contradictions, and polarities that implies. Tracing this dialectal movement can yield a “phenomenology of Comedy”: just as Hegel followed the “embryological development” of “the Spirit in its formation,”55 we shall follow “the form in process of formation” of the Comic mode from Satire or Irony through Comedy proper into Romance as it progresses.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press

chapter 2

The Picaresque Novel

Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship II–VI

2.1 Although the relationship between the Apprenticeship and the tradition of the picaresque novel has never been studied in depth, numerous critics have nonetheless recognized picaresque elements in the Apprenticeship. Hans Reiss, for example, notes while discussing the characters of Goethe’s novel that “most … do not substantially differ from those of the conventional picaresque novel to which they originally belonged,”1 and Enright sees picaresque elements of plot besides: The novel appears to be firmly set upon its picaresque path: the company moves from theatre to theatre (instead of from inn to inn), it meets with successes and failures, new people join it from time to time and we are regaled with their biographies, and the actors are even attacked by highwaymen and robbed of their clothes, like Joseph Andrews. All the ingredients of the once popular novel are there: even those characters of mysterious origin and gloomy past who are to struggle under a load of obscure guilt and painful eccentricity right up to the last chapter.2

It has been noticed that Wilhelm has many of the characteristics of the picaresque hero (or non-hero): David Miles asserts that “Wilhelm himself does not develop psychologically, being closely related to the picaresque hero,”3 that the central tenet of whatever “education” Wilhelm receives is a “picaresque carpe diem,”4 and even that Books I through V of the Apprenticeship are “extensive-picaresque.”5 Wolfgang Kayser’s only mention of Wilhelm Meister in The Linguistic Work of Art falls in his section on the novel of space, where Wilhelm is placed at the end of a long line of picaresque non-heroes (p. 364). Hans Eichner argues that Wilhelm is not merely, perhaps not even principally, the hero of a bildungsroman, but “also the hero of a picaresque novel and the hero, if one might dare so extreme a characterization, of a realistic fairy tale: he is a Lucky Hans.”6 Yet despite these claims, the voluminous critical literature on Goethe’s novel does not 24

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Picaresque Novel

25

include a single study on these picaresque elements as such, nor do any of the major comparative studies (Alter, Guillén, Miller, Parker) of the picaresque novel devote space to a discussion of the Apprenticeship. Thus, the present chapter will serve not only to elucidate the formal integrity of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister novels, but also to explore important parallels with the early history of the novel.

2.2 The theoretical locus of the picaresque novel within the “low mimetic” or realistic Comic forms, which correspond to Satire or Irony within Frye’s fourfold modal cycle, can be corroborated by tracing the history of the genre. As Mikhail Bakhtin has shown in his important study Rabelais and His World, the “lower canonical genres” have their roots in the medieval tradition of grotesque folk humor and ritual laughter: they arise as the “process of laughter’s degradation” (p. 101) begins in the seventeenth century, when, according to Bakhtin, the stabilization of absolute monarchy with its authoritarian seriousness and “universally historic form” (p. 101) defeats popular utopianism and with it the ambiguity and ambivalence of grotesque humor. Art moves in the direction of “one single meaning, one single tone of seriousness,” with the result that “the exalted genres of classicism are freed from the influence of the grotesque tradition of laughter” (p. 101). The grotesque, “carnivalesque” elements that have no place within the classical genres precipitate into “lower” (i.e. mimetically more realistic) Comic forms: However, the tradition of the grotesque is not entirely extinct; it continues to live and to struggle for its existence in the lower canonical genres (comedy, satire, fable) and especially in non-canonical genres (in the novel, in a special form of popular dialogue, in burlesque). Humor also goes on living on the popular stage (Tabarins, Turlupins and others). All these genres had a more or less oppositional character that permitted the grotesque to enter their sphere, while still remaining within the limits of official culture; therefore the nature of laughter and of the grotesque was transformed and degraded. (pp. 101–102)

Another “bourgeois line of development” of the once-popular tradition is the comic novel exemplified by Sorel and Scarron (p. 103). Despite Sorel’s “bourgeois and limited” theoretical pronouncements, his works themselves are rich in ambivalence and ambiguity; they contain “a whole series of carnival crownings and uncrownings, of travesties and mystifications” (p. 104), and thus “still preserve the smouldering fires of popular

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

26

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

festive laughter” (p. 104). Scarron’s Comic Novel is filled with “popular festive images”: the itinerant band of actors “is an almost unreal microcosm removed from the sphere of conventions and binding rules and enjoying certain rights and freedoms of carnival” (p. 106). Significantly, Bakhtin notes in passing that “such was also Wilhelm Meister’s conception of the theatre.”7 A third outgrowth of the tradition of festive humor, or an immediate development from the initial low Comic outgrowths, is the picaresque novel, which is often difficult to distinguish from early versions of the Comic novel. The pervasive influence of low mimetic Comic models upon the picaresque novel is clearly evident in the earliest exemplar of the genre, Lazarillo de Tormes: The type of the rogue is encountered in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance also in rogues’ and fools’ satires … What is certain is that Lazarillo owes much of its material to the reception of farces, faceties, and fabliaux. Researchers meanwhile been able to demonstrate predecessors or parallels of this kind for almost all the episodes of the book.8

The main difference between the new novelistic form and the older comic genres is a change to first-person narration, which might be explained as a manifestation of the new bourgeois self-consciousness, or as a parody of hagiography and “confessional” forms.9 Whether Lazarillo de Tormes (1554) is the prototype of the picaresque novel or merely a precursor is still an object of critical debate. All agree, however, that the more influential and typically “picaresque” novel is Guzman de Alfarache (Part I, 1599; Part II, 1604), with which the flourishing of the picaresque novel as a historical genre can be said to begin.10 Together with Cervantes’ contemporary Don Quixote, it firmly established the predominance of realism in the Spanish novel, although Don Quixote never rivaled Guzman in popularity, and the picaresque became the ruling novelistic tradition in Spain for half a century.11 Thereafter, the genre’s main development took place abroad.12 By critical consent, the picaresque novel as a continuous historical genre can be said to expire with Smollett. If one wished to restrict the list to purely, as opposed to predominantly or partially, picaresque novels, the tradition’s continuity would end earlier, perhaps already with Grimmelshausen, Scarron, or Sorel. Even though the continuity of the picaresque novel as a pure historical genre was broken by the middle of the seventeenth century, it remained an extremely important influence into the eighteenth century – so much so that many of the most important eighteenth-century novels (e.g. Gil Blas, Moll Flanders, and even Tom Jones) have often been classified as picaresque. In the nineteenth century, the genre virtually disappears, yet

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Picaresque Novel

27

despite this near-total break, it revives in the twentieth century to such an extent that it again becomes one of the predominant forms. In order to account for the persistence of picaresque fictions apart from the direct transmission of a continuous historical tradition, critics have begun to speak of the picaresque as a mode; Robert Alter terms this “a broad ahistorical category … which is applicable to works of literature of all ages.”13 Thus Claudio Guillén has sought to define “a picaresque myth: an essential situation or significant structure derived from the novels themselves”;14 Ulrich Wicks follows Robert Scholes (and thus ultimately Frye) in trying to establish “a picaresque mode concept” that “begins beyond and above historical considerations and moves gradually toward the more specific and particular problems of historical context, tradition and so on”;15 and Stuart Miller has sought to delineate an “ideal genre type” of the picaresque novel. As a result, picaresque narrative has come to be defined more and more precisely, and novels once included in a vague, catch-all category are now seen as complex integrations of various narrative modalities. At a certain point, surely by the time of Gil Blas, “it begins to be useful to talk, not about the picaresque novel, but about the transformations of the picaresque novel, or about picaresque elements in other kinds of novels.”16 Jurij Striedter has described this modulation in the case of Gil Blas with great precision: the first three books remain entirely within the style of the picaresque novel, while in the fourth book the “heroic-gallant” element comes into its own, and from the eighth book onwards the narrative exhibits features characteristic of the memoir. Yet in each case the stylistic modulation is not abrupt, but gradual.17 The situation is similar in Tom Jones. Here, too, picaresque elements have been subsumed under a larger form, the neoclassical “comic epic.”18 Alter, for example, concludes that Tom Jones, like Gil Blas, is “not a picaresque novel, but a novel where important picaresque elements have been assimilated by a different tradition,” and that Fielding’s use of the picaresque here “represents a characteristically neoclassical enterprise of transformation” (p. 103). Scarron’s Comic Novel exhibits many essential picaresque elements, including the life of the open road, the realistic depiction of materialistic necessity, and the satirical gallery of social types; yet here, too, picaresque narrative modulates into romantic comedy in its reliance on both a hero and a heroine, “the thread of the ever-thwarted relationship between two young lovers.”19 And The Vicar of Wakefield contains one chapter (XXI) which constitutes a perfect picaresque “inlay” within an otherwise comic novel replete with multiple marriages at the end. Such juxtaposition and modulation of fictional modes is ubiquitous in the eighteenth-century novel.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

28

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

We know that Goethe read The Comic Novel, and that Gil Blas, Tom Jones, and The Vicar of Wakefield must be accounted three of the most important models for his own novelistic productions. Scarron’s Comic Novel seems to have influenced many details of plot and characterization in the Apprenticeship,20 and Foltinek, among others, has pointed out the profound influence of Tom Jones (p. 35). Goethe admired Gil Blas, and read it at least three times: it seems to have been a particular favorite that influenced him deeply.21 And of course Schiller’s keen eye did not fail to discern the profound influence of Lesage’s novel upon the Apprenticeship, which he went so far as to term “a German Gil Blas.”22 Thus, we should not be surprised to find picaresque and Comic features together in Goethe’s novel. For, as in The Comic Novel, Tom Jones, and Gil Blas, the form of the Apprenticeship modulates from the picaresque-Satiric to the Comic tonality. Or rather, the picaresque books (II through VI) are framed by the comic novel constituted by Books I, VII, and VIII). Only in the Comic segment does Wilhelm exhibit real development (as I shall argue below). Robert Alter finds a structural metamorphosis similar to this in Gil Blas: Such a process [a movement from a non-developing hero to “a creature susceptible of serious development”] is clearly at work in Gil Blas. The picaresque novel of 1715 has become, in its 1724 sequel, a kind of narrative that is only residually picaresque and that is already close to the Bildungsroman. (p. 32)

In the Apprenticeship, this movement is more clearly articulated: the text is more “transparent” to the inner formal dialectic. Although Goethe did read many important works within the picaresque tradition, his theoretical pronouncements upon the novel are so few that they offer little or no insight into how he defined the picaresque novel to himself, if indeed he ever did so consciously. Thus, it is necessary to conduct our study “over Goethe’s head,” as it were, imitating thereby with full consciousness a process that may or may not occur consciously when an artist sits down to write and musters the traditions and conventions available to him.

2.3 The most essential formal feature of the picaresque novel is an “archetypal plot,” which begins with an expulsion of some kind: the picáro is a complete orphan, or a partial orphan in that his father is unknown (e.g. Lazarillo, Tom Jones, Simplicissimus), or made an orphan at the beginning of the story (e.g. Simplicissimus), or made a virtual orphan in that he is

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Picaresque Novel

29

sent forth by his parent(s) to make his way in the world (e.g. Lazarillo, Moll Flanders, and Gil Blas).23 Ejection constitutes a kind of “second birth” into the world, this time without protecting parents. It is particularly the lack of a father that is cruel, for the father’s place is taken by a series of hard masters. Lazarillo, for example, is given over by his mother to the tutelage of a blind beggar, who promptly tricks him into running head-on into a stone bull. Stuart Miller interprets this initial episode as a further ejection from the family, a symbolic “breaking of the promise of paternal love” (p. 78). As he progresses through the world, the picáro becomes totally isolated in a loveless environment. He sacrifices “family, homeland, wealth and honor” to a “would-be freedom … thwarted by fact.”24 This initial ejection from the protection of home proves to be but the first in a long series. While the picaresque novel characteristically begins with an expulsion of some kind, the central section usually is composed of a series of episodes, entirely disjointed or strung together only by the most tenuous of threads.25 Wolfgang Kayser adduces the picaresque novel as a prime example of his narrative category “spatial novel” (p. 363), and Ulrich Wicks echoes Kayser in emphasizing “panoramic structure” as the most characteristic feature of the picaresque mode (p. 243). The picáro’s world is “the landscape of the discontinuous”;26 chance, rather than causality, rules the picaresque universe. Stuart Miller goes so far as to claim that “in a sense, every event in the picaresque novel is an accident since the episodic plot does not emphasize causality” (p. 36). If the movement of picaresque narrative reveals any discernable pattern at all, that pattern is circular27 – i.e. a movement that goes nowhere; an “eternal recurrence of the same”; an absurd torment. Recalling a passage in Guzmán de Alfarache, Wicks terms this “the Sisyphus rhythm.”28 The picáro continually finds himself back at the beginning despite all his efforts. The picaresque novel exhibits one of the least complex narrative forms, yet this form nevertheless yields very great expressive possibilities: “Since there are no limitations of probability, the door is left open to the fantastic, the improbable and even the weird.”29 The episodic and undirected quality of the archetypal picaresque plot inevitably presents its author with a difficult problem: how is a picaresque novel to end? Three possible endings are available. The first is for the novelist merely to stop writing after what he intends to be the final episode, without trying to establish the sense of closure that most endings bring. Obviously, novels that “end” in this way can be taken up again at will, and often have been – even by other authors (the German translator of the First Part of Guzmán, for example, supplied his own Second Part).30 Another is to modulate into a different formal “tonality.” This is by far the favorite

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

30

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

solution of the authors later in the historical tradition. Examples would be Roderick Random or Tom Jones, both of which modulate into romantic comedy at the end. Such a development usually includes marriage and entry into bourgeois society, which can, as in the aforementioned novels, truly indicate a new stature for the picaresque hero/heroine, or be suffused with irony, as in the case of Moll Flanders and Lazarillo. A third possibility is not a mere halting of the freight train, as it were, but a stepping-off the train entirely. A logical response to having experienced a chaotic and evil world (as the picaresque novel invariably depicts it) is escape, withdrawal into monastic isolation. In Guzmán and Simplicissimus the hero actually does withdraw into a monastic retreat – although this ending can easily be undone, as Grimmelshausen has also shown.31 Stuart Miller has termed this altogether characteristic picaresque form the “adventure-retirement schism” (p. 88). Like the typical picaresque novel, the Apprenticeship begins with a separation of the protagonist form his parental home. Yet in keeping with the Apprenticeship’s very different “teleology” – the later books in the Comic modality working backwards to transform the earlier – the beginning of Goethe’s novel is more complex and ambivalent than is usually the case in purely picaresque fictions. Although the picáro is usually forced out into the world very much against his will, in some picaresque novels he is not expelled from his home environment, but rather actively flees it in search of adventure. Wilhelm is very much a picáro in that the final break with his parental home is more inadvertent than intentional, and the divorce is later transformed into an irrevocable “expulsion” by forces beyond his control; yet it is in keeping with his Comic “calling” that in leaving home Wilhelm actively seeks not mere adventure, but rather a higher level of individual and social existence than his bourgeois home can offer. The complexity and ambiguity of Book I result from intertwining narrative threads that later separate within the novel: Wilhelm’s initial departure from his parental home inaugurates the picaresque phase of the Apprenticeship (Books II through VI), while the story of Wilhelm’s love for Mariane and her apparent infidelity, which occupies the imaginative center of Book I, constitutes the first phase of the novel’s Comic plot (Books I, VII, and VIII). At the very beginning of Book I, the two separate plot strands are spun out successively: chapter one of the novel introduces the comic attraction between Wilhelm and Mariane; chapter two the more picaresque conflict between Wilhelm and his father, which has, however, pure Comic variants as well. In chapters three through nine, the separate threads

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Picaresque Novel

31

become intertwined: Wilhelm’s recollections of the puppet theater that occupied him as a child establish in his own mind a transition from his past attempts to burst the narrow confines of his bourgeois upbringing to his dreams of a glorious future as an actor and as founder of a national theater together with Mariane. Yet this easy transition proves illusory on a number of levels, and the threads unravel again in the remaining chapters. Chapter ten revives the conflict between art and commerce (this time Wilhelm’s antagonist is Werner, who stands squarely within the “paternal” realm of bourgeois society), and chapters eleven through fifteen (excepting twelve) find Wilhelm upon his first business trip, where he meets his future picaresque companions. Returning from his journey, Wilhelm hastens to Mariane, but is led through an unfortunate chain of circumstances to assume, falsely, that Mariane has been unfaithful to him. Wilhelm finds that there is no shortcut to the higher mode of life he had sought: instead, the Comic plot is suspended while Wilhelm travels the rough road of the picáro. For Wilhelm, “the promise of paternal love” is broken neither by a lack of a father, nor by paternal cruelty or abuse, but rather by his father’s inability to supply him with that which he most needs, and by his father’s active opposition to Wilhelm’s seeking such fulfillment in the life of the theater. This opposition is made clear in chapter two. Wilhelm is anxious to flee the bourgeois realm of his home and family in search of the imagined freedom of an actor’s life together with Mariane. In chapter three, Wilhelm even recounts to Mariane the allegory he had composed in which “the Muse of Tragedy” vies with another female figure symbolizing trade. The son of a businessman dreams of becoming a “prince” for while the muse of business speaks like the allegorical figure that she is, the other muse speaks “as though she were distributing kingdoms” (WMA, 15).32 It is clear that the tragic muse represents more than glory to Wilhelm: she represents his long-standing desire to escape the stifling bourgeois existence of his paternal home, and it is thus no accident that of all his childhood experiences he chooses to relate this one to Mariane. He apostrophizes the tragic muse as a “daughter of freedom” (WMA, 15; MA V, 32), and he is more than willing to abandon “family, wealth and [bourgeois] honor” to gain her favors: “The warning and threats of the old woman were treated with scorn; I turned my back on the riches she promised me, and, naked and disinherited, I gave myself to the muse who lent me her golden veil to cover my nakedness” (WMA, 15).33 Wilhelm wants to make himself an orphan, to cut himself off from the world of his father; significantly, it is Wilhelm’s father who is opposed to

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

32

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

his artistic inclinations from the earliest age, who sells the grandfather’s magnificent art collection to increase his capital, and who even refuses to enjoy the fruits of it in the way that Werner’s father can. Wilhelm’s experiences during his first business trip only increase his alienation from bourgeois society. His first business contact is a man whose daughter has just run off with an actor, and Wilhelm is forced to witness their torments. The daughter and actor, Melina, acquit themselves nobly in the face of their bourgeois accusers, and Wilhelm strikes up a friendship with Melina. The groundwork for Wilhelm’s later entry into Melina’s troupe of actors is thus laid. Later in the novel, Wilhelm will of course become a true orphan in a way he had not desired. In place of his actual father, Wilhelm is given a new, dramatic father: the Elder Hamlet, who is said to have been played in the first performances of Hamlet by Shakespeare himself, Wilhelm’s namesake. Yet not only does Wilhelm lose his father; he is disinherited by Werner, who marries Wilhelm’s sister and expropriates the paternal home. Thus, the break with the world of the father is made final: Wilhelm can never go home again. After this generically ambiguous beginning in Book I, the following Books (II through V) clearly exhibit the episodic structure typical of the picaresque novel.34 Though Wilhelm sets out on his second journey with an itinerary and goal clearly determined by his father’s business, his fate is before long determined solely by whatever group (the actors) or individuals (Mignon and the Harper) he chances to meet. Mignon and the Harper represent elements of “the fantastic, the improbable, and even the weird” that sometimes find their way into picaresque fiction.35 No one episode in this segment of the Apprenticeship is the prerequisite to any other; after each of his frequent defeats, disappointments, and “expulsions” Wilhelm finds that his Sisyphean stone has rolled to the very bottom of the mountain again.36 The plot of these four books is too well known to need detailed recounting. Yet it is fascinating to observe how the basic picaresque narrative structure penetrates down even into the style and syntax of Goethe’s sentences. Building in part upon Jacob Steiner’s stylistic analysis of the Apprenticeship,37 Volker Dürr has shown in his study “‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’: Hypotaxis, Abstraction and the Realistic Symbol’” how the style of these early books differs substantially from that of the later. The syntax of Books VII and VIII is dominated by hypotaxis – the stylistic equivalent of the “pure architectonic relationships” and “harmonious regularity” of those books’ dominant symbol, the “Hall of the Past.”38

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Picaresque Novel

33

Hypotaxis – the preponderance of subordinate clauses and complex dependent constructions – here “subordinates the single object and its various aspects to the requirements of the entire syntactical structure,” with the result that “all representational elements are charged with a significance transcending that of individual circumstance.”39 By contrast, the early books are dominated by parataxis – the syntactical equivalent of the picaresque episodic plot, Guillén’s “freight train.”40 There is a corresponding lack of subordination and complex structure. Lists, catalogues, and simple assertions predominate: Then they began to search through the house. The doors of all the rooms were standing open. There were massive stoves, tapestry wallcoverings and inlaid floors as reminders of past splendor, but no ordinary household furniture, no tables, no chairs, no mirrors, just a few huge empty bedsteads, stripped of necessities as well as decoration. So they used their wet boxes and knapsacks as seats; some of our tired wanderers even stretched out on the floor. Wilhelm seated himself on some steps, with Mignon’s head on his knees. She was restless, and when he asked her what was wrong, she said, “I’m hungry!” (WMA, 92)41

The representation of objects and events does not immediately subsume them as a function within the order of a larger whole, with the result that they “enjoy almost epic self-sufficiency.”42 The minimally structured paratactic style of the earlier books mirrors the basic organizing principle of picaresque narrative: chance. The style of these early books reflects Wilhelm’s confused and inchoate perception of his world and himself: Throughout the first five books, the correctness of the world of objects and the life-like uniqueness of the characters resist Wilhelm and frustrate him in his quest to realize himself. Although the individual figures, objects and events are not overtly complex, their sheer number and conflicting claims disorient Wilhelm and prevent him from perceiving order and meaning.43

In these books, Wilhelm is like the typical picáro in that his passive experience of the world leaves him at the mercy of its seeming chaos. Dürr sees the transition from predominance of parataxis to predominance of hypotaxis as a stylistic modulation from realistic mimesis to symbolism in the Apprenticeship. Realistic mimesis and paratactic, episodic narrative are, of course, the most distinctive features of picaresque narrative. Finally, two of the three possible picaresque endings can be discerned within the Apprenticeship. One possible ending, the withdrawal of the picáro into some kind of monastic isolation, is intimated by Book VI, the interpolated “Confessions of a Beautiful Soul.” The function of the

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

34

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

canoness’s autobiography within the Apprenticeship is ambiguous: it represents a possible resolution of Wilhelm’s wanderings, yet one that must be rejected as unsatisfactory. Because the Beautiful Soul does not attempt to resolve the tension between the inner life and the practical demands of living in the world, but rather asserts the former and totally rejects the latter, the example offered by the “Confessions” would prove a false ending to Wilhelm’s picaresque wanderings. Thus Book VI serves, paradoxically, as a transition to the very different form of life represented by the Society of the Tower. With this movement into the province of the Society of the Tower, the Apprenticeship modulates into a new formal “tonality”: that of the Comic mode. Goethe thus chooses the second of the three possible endings enumerated above: the picaresque novel represented by Books II through VI resolves itself by metamorphosing into a comic novel. Since Comedy is the mode of synthesis and reconciliation of opposites, it is to Comedy Goethe turns in order to find the formal possibilities needed to enable Wilhelm, the erstwhile picáro, to achieve a measure of self-awareness and eventually to be integrated into a symbolic society mimetically higher than the one from which he “fell.”

2.4 Another essential formal characteristic of the picaresque narrative is a complex of elements one might term “dualism.” If the Comic mode is characterized by synthesis and reconciliation of opposites, the picaresqueSatiric mode is characterized by warring antitheses and the tension of irony.  True to its Baroque origins, picaresque narrative tends toward ­systematic oxymoron: it is forever juxtaposing depiction of a chaotic, ­God-forsaken world and pious moral commentary. The fundamental antitheses of real and ideal, outer and inner, sacred and profane, and individual and society are never dialectically resolved, but rather remain dualistically opposed. The most obvious manifestation of this dualism is the picáro’s condemnation of the world and withdrawal into the life of a hermit.44 So strong is this tendency within the inner logic of the picaresque mode that the German translator of Part One of Guzmán wrote his own Second Part in which Guzmán withdraws from the world while, unbeknownst to him, Mateo Aleman was writing his own Second Part with the same ending. Thus, critics have gone so far as to characterize the ethos of the picaresque as “ascetic” (“That shows itself most concretely in the ascetic ethos of the

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Picaresque Novel

35

picaresque novel … In a compromise with the corrupt world, in the adoption of its evil customs he saw the reason for the corruption of his hero, which is overcome only at the end by the turn toward pious isolation.”45) which startles until one realizes that such a statement is merely emphasizing one half of the ever-present dualism. This fundamental dualism can also take the form of purely didactic material either appended to the picáro’s biography or interspersed throughout the text. An example of the former is Book Five, chapter 24 of Grimmelshausen’s Simplicissimus, which is almost entirely a quotation from the Menosprechio de corte of the Spanish moralist Guevara, while Guzmán, in which an entire sequence of didactic digressions is interpolated into the narrative, exemplifies the latter.46 A. A. Parker sees this latter development as fundamental to the origin and later development of the main picaresque tradition, which begins for him with Guzmán rather than Lazarillo. Parker adduces the moralistic interpolations as evidence for his theory that the picaresque novel must be seen “not as satire or parody, but as a deliberate alternative, a ‘truthful’ literature in response to the explicit demands of the Counter-Reformation” (p. 22). Moreover, he argues that the picaresque structure of quasi-autobiographical narration interrupted by moralistic commentary mirrors the form of the contemporary saint’s life (p. 23). Yet it has been argued convincingly that the progenitor of the satirical and parodistic vein of picaresque narrative, the anonymous Lazarillo de Tormes, is also modeled after a saint’s life, Saint Augustine’s, as presented in his Confessions. From the Augustinian confession, Lazarillo and its progeny inherit a dual perspective, a tension between the narrating self and the experiencing self. This is the third important way in which the essential duality of picaresque form finds expression. In a stimulating article, Hans Robert Jauß has argued that Lazarillo exhibits “the first person form of the Christian confession,” which is characterized by the “remarkable refraction in which the episodes of the previous life … appear in Augustine, i.e. one the one hand in the teleological context of the awakening of the new self” (p. 298). According to Jauß, a similar distance between the “newly awakened” narrating self and the past, “narrated” self accounts for the work’s peculiar tone, a mixture of naiveté and irony (p. 294). Peter Baumanns has recapitulated and extended Jauß’s argument, claiming that Lazarillo can be viewed as a systematic parody, even a travesty of Augustine’s Confessions.47 Striedter also emphasizes the “dual function of the self” (p. 15), the “thoroughgoing tension between the self as an amorally acting rogue and as a morally reflective narrator”48 as central to the form of the picaresque,

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

36

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

whether in the religious ascetic manner of Guzmán or in the more ironic manner of Lazarillo. Claudio Guillén describes the same situation as a tension between a “homo interior” and a “homo exterior.”49 In fact, the essential duality of the picaresque self is perhaps the most universal critical perception of the genre. Every major study of the genre pursues it, as do many important studies of individual novels.50 It is important to note that this typically picaresque tension between “old” and “new” self remains dualistic. In purely picaresque narrative, the career of the picáro is never depicted as a gradual moral education or transformation of the old self into a new. The picáro’s world is black and white: the new self is born suddenly and the old self totally rejected. Thus picaresque irony is retrospective, a view from the present of a rejected past. The picáro’s biography is not presented as a path that has led to a goal, but rather as the antithesis of another, entirely inward path. In the dualistic world of the picaro, there is no evolution – only the total uprootings that follow upon radical choices. This dualistic structure so typical of picaresque narrative – a guiltincurring immersion in the flux of life followed by religious retreat into a cultivated inwardness – can be discerned in the Apprenticeship as well. I refer, of course, to the notorious disjunction between Books II through V and Book VI, the “Confessions of a Beautiful Soul” – of course with the important difference that the canoness is not the protagonist of the novel.51 By the end of Book V, Wilhelm’s disillusionment and disgust with the world are at their peak. Although Wilhelm ultimately does not himself retreat inward like the Beautiful Soul, Book VI does represent a real alternative for Wilhelm at that point, and functions, like the interpolated picaresque didactic treatise, or the picáro’s own withdrawal from the world, as a moral commentary upon the less-than-holy happenings in Books II through V. Moreover, Book VI of the Apprenticeship reflects in its own internal structure the same dualism it functions to create within the picaresque segment of the novel as a whole. The canoness’s moralizing relates to her own earlier life as Book VI relates to Books II through V of the Apprenticeship. Books II through VI thus inherit the dualistic structure of the Christian confession via the narrative traditions of the picaresque novel, whereas Book VI reflects the structure of the Christian confession itself. The title of Book VI tells all, but one could deduce its confessional features even without Goethe’s hint.52 The “Confessions” begin with a rebirth, the “awakening” of a new self that Jauß finds typical of the Christian “confessional biography.”53 The Beautiful Soul’s new, “higher”

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Picaresque Novel

37

self undergoes, appropriately, a nine-month embryological development: “During the nine months of convalescence which I bore patiently, the foundations of my present way of thinking were laid – or so it seems to me now. For during that time my mind received various impulses that helped in the shaping of a specific character” (WMA, 217).54 As in the saint’s life, the temporal flow of “historical” narration is frequently interrupted by didactic interpolations on the part of the converted self: May I interrupt my narration at this point and offer some observations on what was going on inside me? What could have affected my taste and my whole temperament at the age of twenty-two, nay, even earlier, so that I felt no pleasure in things which provide most people of my age with harmless entertainment? Why weren’t they harmless to me? My answer had to be that these things were not harmless to me because I was not, like others of my age, unaware of my own soul. Indeed I knew from experiences which had come to me unsought, that there are higher emotions which guarantee is a pleasure not to be gained in idle entertainments, and that these higher pleasures provide a source of strength when misfortune overtakes us. (WMA, 229–230)55

I quote here at length so that one can follow the subtle and entirely characteristic modulation from contingent narrated biography to the gnomic present of “eternal truths.” Her autobiography has the duel intent of the traditional Christian confession:56 having begun with a confessio peccati, she gradually moves toward a confessio laudis, a testimonial to God’s grace, of which the book’s final paragraph is a perfect example: “… Thanks be to God that I am fully aware to whom I owe my happiness …” (WMA, 256).57 A third form of dualism typical of the picaresque is also present in these early books of the Apprenticeship: this manifests as a tension between the narrator and the protagonist. The simplest form of this narrative dualism is exemplified by Grimmelshausen’s Simplicissimus, in which two different selves narrate alternately without being clearly distinguished. Often it is difficult to discern immediately which narrative perspective has been adopted.58 A more refined and coherent form of this dualistic narration is one in which an “earlier” and “later” self are clearly distinguished and distanced by the later self’s ironization of the earlier. This is the most typical form of picaresque narration, the form that has been discussed earlier at some length. When the author wishes – usually for satirical purposes – to employ an even more extreme type of irony, this most common picaresque form can give way to third person narration.59 In this form, the narrator is

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

38

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

no longer identical with the protagonist, but rather has adopted the viewpoint of an “objective” spectator. Even predominantly first-person fictions can slip into the third person in moments of extreme irony, as is the case in Lazarillo, where the narrating “later” self is at pains to separate himself as much as possible from his earlier career: If one follows the narrating self through the whole text, one is struck that the narrator never identifies completely with his history … The narrator, who lets his classical education be known in the prologue and apologizes for the “grossero estilo” (S. 63) of his story, takes this up expressly at a lower level that fundamentally has nothing more in common with it. That is shown also in the cases in which the narration leaps out of the first into the third person, and the object defying form of his chapter titles has the name “Lazáro” in place of the first person, e.g.: Cuenta Lázaro su vida y cúyo hijo fué (S. 65). Thereby the exemplary meaning of the vita, separable from the person of the narrator, is underscored.60

This pattern represents the extreme of ironic dualism: the “old” self is distanced and “objectified” by irony to such a degree that it is described in the third person. Autobiography becomes virtual biography; the protagonist appears to be a person different from the narrator.61 When picaresque novels are cast in third-person form in their entirety, irony can function not to widen the gap between narrator and protagonist, but to narrow it. Ironic structure and ironic commentary become mirrors in which the protagonist (and, to the extent that he identifies with the protagonist, the reader) gains increasing self-awareness; they become continual measures of the protagonist’s development. As the protagonist approximates the narrator’s perspective, ironic commentary decreases proportionately; the narrator recedes as the protagonist gradually becomes capable of self-irony, as he gradually learns to look at himself (and those around him) with the independent narrator’s degree of objectivity. Irony no longer delineates irreconcilable opposites, but rather it marks the path between them: it becomes an educative device. It awakens in the reader an awareness not of the distance between narrator and protagonist, but of their eventual affinity. In satiric irony the reader identifies with the narrator, distancing himself from the protagonist. It creates an expectation that the protagonist will be able to evolve beyond his present stage. The narrator is seen as the potential, the “higher self” of his protagonist. Picaresque irony is typically dualistic and non-developmental; this “evolutionary” irony is more typical of the educative thrust of Comedy. However one might feel about the existence of the genre, Thomas Mann has nevertheless described the bildungsroman (of which the Apprenticeship has

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Picaresque Novel

39

long been felt to be the progenitor) in terms of just such an identification between narrator and protagonist: “The sensation of one’s own self as a task objectifies itself in the hero of the autobiographical Bildungsroman and the novel of development, objectifies itself into a Thou, of which the poetic self is the guide, the shaper, the educator – identical with him and at the same time superior to him.”62 Likewise, Martin Swales argues in a similar vein that the bildungsroman arises when “the traditional episodic and providential plot” is wedded to “a thoroughgoing concern for the experiential potentiality of the central character.”63 The narrative structure of the Apprenticeship remains third-person throughout, alternating between omniscient “authorial” and a limited “figural” perspective.64 Yet the quality of irony generated within the same narrative structure undergoes a transformation as the Apprenticeship gradually modulates from the modal tonality of Satire or Irony into Comedy. In the picaresque books of the novel, the narrator often satirizes Wilhelm overtly, distancing himself from his protagonist and addressing his audience directly, as he does at the end of Wilhelm’s long-winded reminiscences that have put Mariane to sleep: His voice was so loud and his grasp so tight that Mariane suddenly woke up. She tried to conceal her embarrassment by caressing him, for she had not heard one single word of the last part of his narration; it is to be hoped that in the future our hero will find more attentive listeners for his favorite stories. (WMA, 15)65

Again, when Wilhelm masquerades as Prince Harry, the narrator is quick to point out Wilhelm’s self-delusion: “he welcomed this as an ideal against which to measure his present state; this made it much easier for him to indulge in a self-deception that have an almost irresistible appeal” (WMA, 123).66 Later, when Wilhelm writes home promising a travel diary with “geographical, statistical and mercantilistic observations,” the narrator again reveals what Wilhelm is unable himself to see: “He did not notice that he was in almost the same situation as when he had set up the lights and summoned the audience for a play that was not memorized, indeed not even written” (WMA, 159).67 In Book V, the narrator unmasks Wilhelm’s pretended outrage at Philine’s prank as disappointment: But to his great astonishment he found his bed empty, the pillows and covers blissfully undisturbed. He looked around, but could not find a trace of the little minx. Nothing behind the bed, nothing behind the stove,

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

40

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman nothing behind the closets. He searched and searched. Indeed a malicious observer might have thought that he was hoping to find something. (WMA, 193)68

Similar instances abound in the earlier books.69 Yet even within the picaresque books of the Apprenticeship, the close identification of narrator and protagonist that is achieved in the later, Comic segment is anticipated. The “authorial” narration does occasionally report the thoughts of characters other than Wilhelm, and Wilhelm is not present in every scene. Yet, for the most part, the narrator focuses on Wilhelm’s thoughts and perceptions alone. We know Wilhelm’s mind from within, but experience other characters from without. This stress of “figural” perspective creates an identification between narrator and protagonist greater than is possible in purely “authorial” fiction. In this way, the Comic phase of the Apprenticeship is anticipated within the picaresque. The narrator appears, in a sense, as Wilhelm’s “alter ego.” Wilhelm gradually gains an objective perspective upon his own life: more and more he becomes capable of acting as a “self-narrator.” The distance between narrator and protagonist is gradually lessened until the narrator can, in a sense, “withdraw.” Although one can locate the beginnings of this process within the picaresque books of the Apprenticeship,70 it is completed only in the Comic concluding books of the novel. As the gap between narrator and protagonist gradually closes, “satiric” irony becomes “educative.” Goethe’s irony reveals itself to be ultimately constructive and “pedagogical” as the novel progresses.71 It presupposes a shared norm or group of norms – an integral “society” of readers seeking to bring an errant individual into its circle. Thus, the ultimate function of the irony in the Apprenticeship is “teleological”: it works backward from the later, Comic segment of the novel.72 This process will be given detailed consideration later.

2.5 A further important characteristic of picaresque fiction is a lack of any real development on the part of its protagonist. This feature is a necessary corollary of the dualistic structure of picaresque narrative, which precludes any meaningful interaction with the world. Robert Alter argues in his study of the genre that “it is part of the picaresque convention that experience should never substantially alter the given character of the hero” (p. 69). David Miles defines the picáro as “the non-developing hero, the

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Picaresque Novel

41

unselfconscious adventurer or man of action,”73 while Erich Jenisch underscores the picáro’s inability to grow through experience: “His life falls apart into pieces, it is without any inner connectedness; for the adventures are self-contained, none extends into the other. They remained without resonance in his being, they call forth nothing in him. The picáro is the same at the beginning and the end of the novel” (p. 339). The moment that the protagonist does begin to develop, the moment that outer events begin to inscribe themselves upon and transform him, the picaresque novel begins to transform itself into a comic novel, with its emphasis on self-awareness and revelation through anagnorisis. Since the picáro undergoes no real growth through experience, his psyche remains unstructured and infinitely changeable. His career is less a development than a series of roles to be played, masks to be donned and doffed: There is no part that the picáro will not play. Typically, he can turn his hand to anything, assume the social disguise of every profession and vocation. Lazarillo, for example, is a servant, an altar boy, a constable’s man, a water-seller, a wine-seller, a town crier, and so forth … In his protean guises, the picáro’s character becomes, once more, radically undefined. He assumes whatever appearance the world forces upon him, and this a-personality is typical of the picaresque world, in which appearance and reality constantly mingle, making definition and order disappear.74

The masks of the picáro do not represent a variety of real experience, but actually insulate him from experience; his various “careers” are not ways of transforming and being transformed by the world, but rather roles to be acted. The picáro acts many roles, but never attains wholeness. In this, the picáro represents a parody of the Comic hero who has overcome onesidedness (the dangers of the Comic humor) and integrated himself into a meaningful social order; the picáro’s career, a parody of Comic education. In the early, picaresque books of the Apprenticeship, Wilhelm experiences a broad spectrum of German society, from the lowly actors to the Duke who visits the Count in Book III. Goethe fulfills the demand of picaresque form that the picáro play numerous roles in society by making Wilhelm an actor. Late versions of the picaresque novel (for example Scarron’s Comic Novel, Gil Blas, and even the picaresque “inlay” of The Vicar of Wakefield) frequently adopted this solution. Not only is acting Wilhelm’s ticket to social milieux that would otherwise remain inaccessible (as has been argued, notably by Bruford); the actors’ troupe itself represents a kind of microcosmic society. Wilhelm decides in Book V that acting is the one profession that will enable him to explore many others vicariously,

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

42

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

and thus lead to a development of all his powers (WMA, 174–176; MA V, 288–292). Yet by the end of Book V, Wilhelm has come to see that his picture of the theater has been an illusion (WMA, 209f.; MA V, 345f.). When the futility of such endless role-playing finally dawns upon the picáro, one obvious response is to tear off all masks, to break radically with the world and try to live according to the demands of the homo interior alone. In the picaresque phase of the Apprenticeship, Wilhelm – and the reader – experience this alternative vicariously through the “Confessions of a Beautiful Soul.” The canoness’s conversion begins with a realization that the tension between the public and the private self, between the homo exterior and the homo interior, has become intolerable: It would be hard for me to describe without tiresome repetition and undue wordiness the efforts I made to pursue these activities which diverted me but disturbed my inner peace, without closing my hearts to the influence of the Invisible Being, and how painful it was to realize that the conflict was not to be resolved in this way. For as soon as I donned the robe of folly, this did not remain a mask but enveloped my whole being. (WMA, 229)75

She breaks out of her self-imposed “imprisonment” by tearing away the mask, by resolving to live only out of the impulses of her higher self: “No sooner thought, than done. I removed my mask and began to act always according to the dictates of my heart” (WMA, 230).76 The alternative to picaresque role-playing is equally non-developmental: if anything, it represents a more radical break with the world and insulation of the inner self from the possibilities of interaction and experience that bring real growth. The Beautiful Soul chooses what one might term a tragic resolution of the moral dilemma of acting in a world in which one cannot avoid incurring guilt: she annihilates her lower self, repudiates her past, and withdraws from society.77 At this point her interpolated autobiography represents both a temptation for Wilhelm, whose disgust with the world and sense of moral outrage reaches a climax at the end of Book V, and an anticipation of the self-knowledge he gains in the books that follow. The Beautiful Soul does not herself represent the ideal Wilhelm is to learn, but Wilhelm must traverse her path vicariously in order to progress along his own.78 Lukács may be right in his assessment of Book VI: But it would be a failure to recognize Goethe’s intentions, a mishearing of his delicately ironic modulations, if one were to view in the canoness of these confessions the Goethean ideal of the “beautiful soul” … The turn in the narration of Wilhelm Meister consists precisely in a turning away from

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Picaresque Novel

43

this pure inwardness, which Goethe, like Hegel in The Phenomenology of the Spirit, condemns as empty and abstract.79

Nonetheless, Book VI has a positive function, even in Hegelian terms, within the Apprenticeship: it functions like the Negative in Hegelian dialectic, negating the original state, but in negating it also inaugurating the Becoming that evolves into a new unity. Out of the tension between these two antithetical forms of non-development arises the dialectical development that represents positive growth. As I shall argue further in the following chapters, true self-development consists neither in the “splintered practicality”80 of the earlier books, nor in pure inwardness, but rather in a harmonization of the two, the creation of a “self-within-society.” Thus, the path of the Beautiful Soul must be avoided just like all the other paths previously taken. The possibility of real development is not available to Wilhelm before he enters the Society of the Tower. Virtually all interpreters of the novel are agreed on this point. Schlechta is most extreme in his denial, for not only does he deny Wilhelm any positive selfdevelopment: he even claims that Wilhelm is progressively broken down, that “step by step his native forces are broken” (p. 89). Hans Eichner also denies self-development of Bildung in the novel as a whole, arguing that Wilhelm is first a picaresque hero and then perhaps at the end of the hero of a “realistic fairy-tale.”81 Kurt May points to Book V as the stage at which the novel of the theater (which, as I have sought to show above, has its roots in the Renaissance tradition of folk humor by way of the picaresque novel) passes over into the bildungsroman (p. 5). Later in the same central study, May characterizes Wilhelm’s earlier experiences as the polar opposite of his assimilation into the Society of the Tower (p. 13). Thus, in the major studies of Wilhelm’s development, one finds fundamental critical agreement (to the extent that this ever exists) that one cannot speak of real development in the first six books of the Apprenticeship. Such a finding would be entirely in keeping with the picaresque-Satiric modality of these early books’ structure. Only within the Comic mode does real development become possible.

2.6 The protean quality of the picáro’s personality necessarily bears consequences for his experience of time. For Jenisch, the picáro’s life is “formless,” and thus “focused only on the reality of the moment and infinite change” (p. 340). He sees Simplicissimus as a “hero of Bildung” rather

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

44

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

than a mere picáro precisely because Simplicissimus gains a different relationship to time: he retains the content of the moment and internalizes it (p. 345). One could also say, the picáro is thus transformed when he gains a memory. This changing relationship to time is one of the most significant and precise ways of determining just when the picaresque narrative passes over into Comedy proper. Thus it is upon this basis that David Miles distinguishes the picáro, who is an unselfconscious non-developer, from the “confessor,” “the hero of personality growth, the introspective hero, the protagonist of consciousness, memory and guilt.”82 There can be little doubt that Wilhelm’s experience of time in Books Two through Five of the Apprenticeship corresponds to that of the picáro. His break with home is so complete that he must constantly admonish himself to correspond, and never does really manage it until after his father’s death. Only in Books Seven and Eight does Wilhelm turn to confront his own past. The necessary mediating experience comes to Wilhelm in his vicarious encounter with the Beautiful Soul. Time as experienced by the canoness is closer to the “confessor’s time” described by Miles. Time is for her psychological rather than chronological: the assurance of God’s grace can at any moment unmask and obliterate the past, transforming it into a kind of eternal “present tense.” In her two streams meet, the stream of memory from the past, of merely chronological and therefore profane time, that necessitates the confessio peccati; and the stream from her future life, beyond conversion, that prompts her confessio laudis. The Beautiful Soul thus imports two new possibilities into the domain of Wilhelm’s experience: a new self-awareness resulting from confrontation with one’s own past, and an awareness of potentiality streaming in from the future. However, the canoness’s experience of the past is not yet that which Wilhelm must learn. The past she recollects is dis-edifying: the events that she recollects constitute a catalogue of mistakes that have kept her from a timeless reality that had been possible at every moment, but remained unrealized. Her past is totally rejected along with its “old” self. Thus, her biography recounts not an evolution through time, but again, a tragic stepping-out-of-time. For her, the past is only a succession of mistakes to be regretted. How different is the view of the Society of the Tower, in which mistakes are not to be regretted and the errors that inevitably result from remaining within the world are seen as a necessary part of growth. The antithesis of the Beautiful Soul within the Society of the Tower is Therese, who claims that “the history of every human lies in his character”

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Picaresque Novel

45

(WMA, 271): she tells Wilhelm her life history to explain who she is, while the canoness relates hers to explain who she is not, or is no longer. Just as true self-development requires a “self-within-society,” so also does it imply a self-understanding that includes both past and future within the present. In Books II through V, the time flows resolutely forward – and not just for Wilhelm. Philine is also presented as though she had no past, as are the other actors and actresses.83 To a great extent the mysteriousness of Mignon and the Harfner in these early books results from the shrouding of their past. It is also significant in this regard that their histories must await Books VII and VIII to be revealed. The backward flow of time begins in Book V with Aurelie’s autobiography and is firmly established in Book VI – although, again, personal history is not yet constructive, as it is in the Society of the Tower. Gerhard Storz has described this doubling-back upon itself of narrative time: What appears at first to be a dubious interruption of the narration, namely Book Six, reveals itself to be the source of a composition that is both unusual and ingenious. The return of certain things and their emanations belong to it: the red officer’s uniform, in which Mariane first appears to the reader, the surgeon’s pouch of instruments, which treats the wounded Wilhelm, and above all the painting of the Sick Prince … There are signs enough that the transformation of the Theatrical Mission and its completion in the Apprenticeship was undertaken so to speak backwards, from Book Six.84

In the picaresque books of the Apprenticeship (Books II through V), the narrative progresses according to “picáro’s time,” “in the direction and sequence of natural narration from episode to episode,”85 whereas the books in the Comic mode (I, VII, and VIII) are characterized by the reverse, something Storz terms a “recursion of the end to the beginning.”86 Book VI, pointing both forward and backward, is the crossing-point where the two narrative streams meet. The structure of the picaresque-Satiric experience of time is a kind of demonic present tense, an “eternal recurrence of the same.” Comic time, on the other hand, is structured in terms of recollection, recognition, and resolution: it reflects back upon, and in this way transforms, its own beginnings. It is this mode of temporal existence Wilhelm attains when he is released from nature in Book VII by a question about his own past. Memory and recognition restructure his experience of his own history, chance adventures become biography, and Wilhelm is released from the Sisyphus rhythm of picaresque time.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

46

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

2.7 Our consideration of picaresque form as such in the Apprenticeship is now concluded, and I turn to consider thematics. As emphasized earlier, formal analysis must precede thematic considerations, since the latter remain inconclusive outside their formal context. Once this formal context has been established, however, it becomes evident that certain themes are integral to picaresque form – necessary corollaries, as it were. In discussing the archetypal picaresque themes in the Apprenticeship, I shall again follow closely certain major studies of the picaresque novel. My intent is not to assemble an exhaustive catalogue but rather to pursue only the most telling and essential themes. Perhaps the most salient and important thematic preoccupation of the picaresque is realistic description of the material exigencies of everyday life. Food, drink, shelter, and clothing project themselves into the foreground of the narrative. The lowest human drives and desires are represented in an entirely unidealized fashion. For Frye this constitutes the essence of the mode of the Satiric or Ironic, which he also terms “the literature of experience” and explicitly equates with “realism.”87 Clearly this type of realism lies at the pole opposite Romance: it is part of the latter’s convention that neither the author nor the reader need ask when Lancelot had his last square meal. If such matters do figure in the narrative at all, then their significance is symbolic rather than mundane, like the feast prepared by the Holy Grail in Parzifal. Realism, by contrast, is absolutely essential to picaresque narrative, where one finds “a general stress on the material level of existence or subsistence, on sordid facts, hunger, money” and “hence a profusion of objects and details.”88 Predictably, such realism predominates in the picaresque books of the Apprenticeship, but disappears when the final books of the Apprenticeship and the Journeyman Years modulates into different formal “tonalities.” Bruford notices this clear thematic split, arguing that “the first five books of the Apprenticeship are essentially realistic,” while “the last three books, on the other hand, are largely utopian.”89 In true picaresque fashion, the members of the troupe are most concerned, whether traveling between inns or arriving at the Count’s castle, with the food and lodging they will receive. Philine scares off two would-be suitors by ordering a vast meal; Melina argues with the innkeeper to obtain better food, lodging and service; and the troupe are often seen eating and drinking together – for example during their reading of Götz and after their successful first performance of Hamlet. Such scenes would be totally alien within the

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Picaresque Novel

47

mimetically elevated provinces of the Society of the Tower, and unthinkable in The Journeyman Years, where passions and drives are ruled by renunciation and nature becomes an object of reverent study.

2.8 After realism, the most essential picaresque theme is that of fortune. This thematic complex can be described in many ways: Alter sees it as a working through in literary terms of the classic philosophical problem of free will and determinism (p. 72), and Miller sees it as a further elaboration of an important classical and Renaissance motif (p. 28). The heroes of the picaresque, the Comedy, and Romance are, according to Miller, all pitted against fortune, but differ in their ability to overcome it: In comedy – the comic tales in Boccaccio’s Decameron are an example – the central image of life is man pitted against Fortune. The astute bend it to their will; the dull fall to Fortune, and to the astute. In the picaresque novel, all are caught in a whirl of events that constantly works on their weaknesses whenever they have asserted their strength, that senselessly raises them up only to strike them down. In comedy and the romance, the hero is usually able to reconcile himself with Fortune in a stable marriage. Fortune is shown conquered at last. But in the true picaresque novel there is no escape. (pp. 29–30)

The Comic and Romance heroes master fortune: the picáro is mastered by it. The Apprenticeship takes up this central picaresque theme in the form of Wilhelm’s grappling with fate and chance, and in various characters’ responses to the accidents of external occurrence. Eric Blackall sees this as the most important of a number of thematic polarities that inform the Apprenticeship,90 and even entitles the corresponding chapter in his book on Goethe’s novels “Fate and Chance.” The actors Wilhelm joins in Book II are typically picaresque in that they confront life passively, allowing their destinies to be shaped entirely by outer events: Quite opposed to Werner’s secure domesticity, which Wilhelm initially feels to be restrictive, stands the players’ way of life. For them also fortune and money are intimately connected; they only lack the intentionality that signifies the businessman. Philine would have easily won her fortune at the castle of the count if she had been able to proceed intentionally. Just this ability of the businessman to draw advantage out of every chance is lacking among the players. For that reason there always delivered over to chance,

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

48

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman so to speak a new kind of fortune-hunter, who is incapable of providing for misfortune when fortunate, nor is capable in a crisis of saving themselves.91

They remain the playthings of fortune, tossed hither and thither by every chance occurrence. Yet in this, as in so many other matters, Wilhelm stands somewhat apart. He differs from the actors in his response to life in that he sees something higher than mere chance at work shaping his experiences.92 From the first, Wilhelm is inclined to view life as ruled by fate: he sees the guiding hand of destiny in being sent by his father on a journey, in meeting Mariane and thereby entering the world of the theater, in the sale of his grandfather’s paintings, and in the availability of a puppet theater in his youth. Later, he asserts that his break with Mariane was arranged to his advantage by fate, and ascribes the poet’s special powers to the intervention of destiny. Wilhelm’s belief in fate is further strengthened by his encounter with Shakespeare, and he consoles himself against self-reproach for inactivity by identifying himself with Hamlet, whom he sees as the archetypal sensitive soul overwhelmed and undone by fatal occurrences beyond his control. In revising Shakespeare’s text, Wilhelm underscores this interpretation by cutting precisely the passages in which Hamlet seeks actively to take his own destiny in hand (Blackall argues this with great subtlety). Wilhelm’s belief in fate as an ordering principle is more highly evolved than the picáro’s submission to what he views as pure chance, but it is still more picaresque than Comic, in that it remains passive. Like the picáro, Wilhelm blames his fortunes and misfortunes upon an external agency. Two mysterious figures – later revealed both to have been the Abbé from the Society of the Tower – are the first to oppose both the picaresque view of life as controlled externally by chance and Wilhelm’s belief in the rule of fate. These early meetings anticipate in turn the Comic mastery of chance, the active shaping of one’s own destiny out of self-awareness that Wilhelm is to learn in Books VII and VIII.93 Near the end of Book I, just before learning of Mariane’s supposed infidelity, Wilhelm wanders through the streets and meets a stranger who recognizes him. A conversation ensues, in which the stranger reminds Wilhelm of an art collection, and one painting in particular, that had been the joy of Wilhelm’s youth. Eventually, the collection had been sold, and Wilhelm now ascribes its sale to the guidance of destiny – a view the stranger derides. “But don‘t you believe in fate, some power which rules over us and guide to everything to our advantage?,” asks Wilhelm, to which the stranger replies:

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Picaresque Novel

49

“The texture of this world is made up of necessity and chance. Human reason holds the balance between them, treating necessity as the basis of existence, but manipulating and directing chance, and using it. … Everyone holds his fortune in his own hands, like a sculptor the raw material he will fashion into the figure.” (WMA, 38–39)94

Later, in Book II, the troupe of actors are joined on their journey on the water by another mysterious stranger, whom all take to be a priest. He, too, engages Wilhelm in a conversation about fate and chance, deriding both notions and recommending rather “the reason of a human tutor” (WMA, 68). These two early conversations foreshadow Wilhelm’s later entry into the Society of the Tower, and are thus also effects working backward from the Comic Apprenticeship into the picaresque. Both strangers argue – appropriately – for a Comic response to fortune. They enjoin Wilhelm to become one of Miller’s “astute” who bend fortune to their own will. Moreover, it is in the province of the Society of the Tower that Wilhelm finds the stability and socializing order of marriage that transforms him from a picáro into a Comic hero.

2.9 Most picaresque novels are pervaded by what Parker has termed an “atmosphere of delinquency.” Indeed, he chooses “delinquent” as the best translation of picáro, meaning thereby “an offender against the moral and civil laws; not a vicious criminal such as a gangster or murderer, but someone who is dishonourable and anti-social in a much less violent way” (p. 4). The picáro is someone who has been ejected from society, Guillén’s “halfoutsider,”95 someone continually attempting, yet continually failing, to gain entrance into society: “Each incident of picaresque fiction moves from exclusion to attempted inclusion and back to exclusion: outside – inside – outside.”96 The picáro himself is seldom a hardened criminal, although he may have run-ins with robbers or highwaymen (as in, for example, The Comic Novel and Joseph Andrews), be forced to join them for a while (like Gil Blas), or even join them of his own will (like Simplicissimus), although always only temporarily. More often he moves among groups of social outcasts (beggars or petty thieves), or virtual outcasts, such as servants and actors. Wandering troupes of actors and the life of the theater are especially prominent in the picaresque novel as another “delinquent” or “semicriminal” milieu: examples would be Gil Blas, El Buscón, The Comic Novel, and the picaresque chapter of The Vicar of Wakefield.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

50

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

Actors were felt to be the dregs of society in the seventeenth, and even the eighteenth century.97 The bohemian life of actors stands in stark opposition to the ordered existence of the bourgeoisie. The opposition between the official order and picaresque society can become so strong that a kind of “anti-society” is formed, which functions then to parody the existing society.98 Parker describes at some length the “anti-societies” and “antiguilds” of thieves and rogues that populate various picaresque novels (pp. 10–11). The wandering troupe of actors usually has a similar function: it serves as a microcosmic society in which the larger society is parodistically reflected. This typically picaresque opposition between society and “anti-society” is omnipresent in the early books of Apprenticeship. The comedians Wilhelm eventually joins oppose the “official” order that comes down from above with a new order, or positive dis-order, rising up from below. Bakhtin calls this pervading spirit “the carnivalesque”:99 “As opposed to the official feast, one might say that carnival celebrated temporary liberation from the prevailing truth and from the established order; it marked the suspension of all hierarchical rank, privileges, norms, and prohibitions.”100 The carnivalesque spirit is strong in the picaresque books of the Apprenticeship:101 for Wilhelm it represents an “transvaluation of all values,”102 a complete overthrow of bourgeois values (one remembers that Wilhelm’s bourgeois father felt even the puppet-theater to be a threat). Upon departing from his bourgeois home, Wilhelm is immediately immersed in the carnivalesque atmosphere of naïve folk-comedy (WMA, 48), of jugglers, acrobats, magicians, tightrope-walkers and of Pagliasso, Landrinette and Narziss (WMA, 49f.). He experiences “the primitive forms of drama” (WMA, 48) in the rude show of the workers, and then in ever more complex comic forms as he encounters Philine, Laertes, and other actors and actresses: pantomime, simple satire, extemporized comedy, a romantic comedy, and even complex social comedy. It is as though the Apprenticeship were here laying bare the roots of its picaresque phase in the carnivalesque and the lower Comic genres, deliberately exhibiting a formal self-consciousness. The actors’ troupe in the early books constitutes an archetypally picaresque “anti-society.” Its parodistic opposition to the official order is revealed when Melina and the other actors try to establish their own little society – a “little police state” – within the Count’s castle: The actors now all had their separate quarters in the castle, and Melina gave strict orders that they should behave properly, the women keep to themselves, and everybody apply themselves to their roles and concentrate

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Picaresque Novel

51

their thoughts on art. He posted rules and regulations, each consisting of several points, on all the doors. Fines were fixed and had to be deposited in a communal box. (WMA, 94)103

Later, they imagine themselves as a “republican administration” replete with Senate, and finally a “wandering colony” and a “migratory Empire” (WMA, 127). A typically picaresque kind of “utopian solidarity” is achieved, but then typically also revealed to be illusory and ill-founded. In the process, all strata of existing society are parodied. There are many instances of “carnivalesque” reversals in social standing – “crownings and uncrownings,” as Bakhtin terms them (p. 10 ff.): like Quevedo’s Buscón, Wilhelm masquerades as “clown-king” in dressing-up as the heir to the English throne, Prince Hal (WMA, 124); and, like el Buscon, he is “uncrowned” quite unceremoniously.104 There is even an anticipation of Hegel’s dialectic of Master and Slave: “by attachment and love, a servant becomes the equal of his master who is otherwise justified in considering him a paid slave” (WMA, 125).105 Thereby a profound reversal of social standing, a radical and utopian restructuring of society is intimated. Carnival is the temporary reversal or suspension of social hierarchy, but only temporary. Picaresque society thus remains ambiguous – a negative anti-society and utopia simultaneously.106 The more radical and truly utopian restructuring of society that is possible within the realm of the Comic proper is in a way foreshadowed, but must remain unfulfilled.

2.10 Further picaresque themes can be quickly enumerated. Disguise and impersonation are among the picáro’s most important gambits, and important corollaries to his protean nature: “Metamorphoses and changing roles are part of the picáro’s survival kit: since the world is in flux, he can change roles to face it. Picaresque life is a constant change of masks on the world-as-stage.”107 The picáro is “a quick-change artist with a large and varied wardrobe.”108 Guzman and Simplicissimus are actors temporarily; the latter masquerades as a jester and as “Beau Alman” in Paris. Wicks points out that Pablos is constantly playing roles, and at one point even “impersonates” himself (p. 247). Gil Blas poses as a doctor and, while a servant, as an aristocrat in order to win the hand of a “lady” who turns out also to be a servant in disguise. Such examples could easily be multiplied. Wilhelm is true to the picaresque convention in disguising himself as the Graf, and, in a more limited sense, as Prince Harry and Hamlet when he carries the self-identification beyond the stage.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

52

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

Wicks also emphasizes the grotesque or horrible incident as an important theme, whereby the mimetically “lower” picaresque represents “a decidedly blacker world than the disrupted norm of comedy” (p. 247): his catalogue includes Pablos’ eating a pie likely filled with the flesh of his recently killed father (El Buscón), the picára Justina’s mother choking to death on a gargantuan black sausage, mutilation of corpses, grave robbery and sleeping with the dead. Gil Blas also is forced to sleep on a slab in a burial-vault; Simplicissimus is witness to the cruelest torture of his family; general thievery abounds. While there is nothing in the Apprenticeship quite so grotesque or horrific as this, it is easy to forget that there is nevertheless much that is horrible in the earlier, picaresque books: Mignon being cruelly beaten by her father, the robbers’ attack that nearly kills Wilhelm and is directly responsible for a stillbirth, Philine’s unseemly stratagem to save her own possessions, and the fire in Book Five, which includes a near suicide and infanticide. Other picaresque themes are frequently present, although not essential. Miller notes that almost every picaresque novel contains a “vision of paradise” (p. 97), which might be represented in the Apprenticeship by the appearance of the Beautiful Amazon foreshadowing the “earthly paradise” (as critics often term it) of the Society of the Tower. To Wilhelm she seems a vision, surrounded, he believes, by an aura – it is a kind of religious experience for him. Both Wicks and Miller stress the theme of the “unusual birth or childhood.”109 Such an unusual childhood frequently contains omens of the picáro’s later entry into the picaresque world. An instance of this in the Apprenticeship would seem to be Wilhelm’s preoccupation with puppets, which presages his later attraction to the theater. Finally, there is what Miller terms “the madness scene” (p. 97), real in the Apprenticeship for Aurelie and the Harper, but vicarious for Wilhelm in his portrayal of Hamlet. The list of picaresque themes in the Apprenticeship could of course be expanded, yet these would seem to be the most important. Together, these formal and thematic elements make possible an interpretation that is much more concrete, much fuller, and much more precise than any categorization of the novel as a bildungsroman. Any historical concept of Bildung pales in comparison.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

chapter 3

The Comic Novel

Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship I, VII, and VIII

3.1 As noted in Chapter 2, the author of a picaresque novel has at his disposal three possible endings: He may either simply cease writing, “halting the train” of his narrative; have his protagonist withdraw from the world; or modulate from picaresque satire into the tonality of Comedy. Confronted with this choice at the end of the picaresque portion of the Apprenticeship, Goethe allows his protagonist (and reader) to experience vicariously the second of these possible endings in the “Confessions of a Beautiful Soul,” and then pursues the third, a modulation into the Comic mode. Goethe thereby follows the example of many major eighteenth-century novels, including Gil Blas, Tom Jones, Roderick Random, and even Moll Flanders.1 Yet to term the final books of the Apprenticeship “Comic” may sound surprising, or even startling. For these books relate several tragic events: It is here that Wilhelm learns of Mariane’s tragic death, watches Mignon die, and experiences the Harper’s suicide after learning the horrible truth of his own history. Mignon’s funeral remains without doubt one of the strongest – although also one of the strangest – impressions the reader retains from the end of the novel. Tragedy is woven inextricably into the fabric of the narrative. The mood seems, in many ways, too somber and serious for comedy. If the Comic mode were defined in terms of mood and absence of tragedy, the final books of the Apprenticeship could hardly be termed “Comic.” Yet few comedies of any stature are devoid of potential or actual tragic elements, and the same work can of course evoke antithetical responses in different readers. Thus, the only reliable touchstone of literary classification would seem to be analysis of a work’s underlying structure.

53

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

54

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

Northrop Frye makes just this point in the face of some equally disturbing and seemingly “uncomical” turns in Shakespearean comedy: The real critical question involved here is: Does anything that exhibits the structure of a comedy have to be taken as a comedy, regardless of its content or of our attitude to that content? The answer is clearly yes. A comedy is not a play which ends happily; it is a play in which a certain structure is present and works through to its own logical end, whether we or the cast or the author feel happy about it or not. The logical end is festive, but anyone’s attitude to the festivity may be that of Orlando or of Jacques.2

To be sure, the final books of the Apprenticeship have had many a Jacques among their readers. Yet that does not make those final books any less Comic. Moreover, it is not modal purity that one should expect from great literature, but rather just such an ambivalent and subtle modal counterpoint as one finds in Goethe’s novel. It is through such modal polarities that the great writer renders the tension, complexity, and ambiguity of life. Modal purity can in fact easily fall into vapidity – w ­ itness the unrelieved and unambiguous comic ending of the trivial novel. Shakespeare’s “problem” comedies offer fine examples of subtle modal counterpoint and polarity; the final books of the Apprenticeship are an equally “problematical” – and equally subtle – Comic achievement. Perhaps for this reason the Comic nature of this segment of the Apprenticeship has been noted even less than the picaresque-Satiric nature of the earlier segment. What has been noticed most frequently is what can hardly be missed: the “Comic” (sometimes termed “Romance”) ending that includes three marriages. Yet the ending is rarely thought to be organically related to the remainder of the novel. Rather, it is felt to be an addendum, something merely tacked on at the end. Emil Staiger’s reaction is typical: “With the marriages that are impending at the end, we fall completely into the paradigm of the novel of pre-classical literature. Goethe wanted to finish and make do with a fable that shows all to clearly the marks of a clever disposition” (p. 172). Gerda Röder also notes the comic “happy ending” of the Apprenticeship but claims to discern a tragic ending as well – leaving the reader to wonder how one novel can end twice (pp. 147–161). Peter Pfaff sees the ending’s “resolution of the conflict” as “comedy,” but fails to elaborate (p. 52). Horst Thomé finds comic elements in the novel’s conclusion, specifically elements of the commedia dell’ arte, which Goethe felt to be “an art of totality” and a “paradigm of the unity of art, science, and society” (p. 481). According to Thomé, Goethe turned to comedy at the end of

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Comic Novel

55

the Apprenticeship in order to guarantee the kind of synthesis and harmony he had sought, unsuccessfully, in his scientific studies: “The point becomes visible where we depart from all science, because it alone is incapable of guaranteeing the synthesis of the ‘happy ending.’ In its place steps literature proper. As with Wieland. These are principally elements of comedy” (p. 482). Yet Thomé quickly retreats from the full implications of this insight: “but of course the Apprenticeship are hardly a ‘narrated comedy.’ Such a profound mixing of the genres emerges only in the 19th century” (p. 482).3 Frye’s notion of a pregeneric Comic mode removes Thomé’s imagined obstacle, allowing one to explore fully the Comic nature of Books I, VII, and VIII. Such an exploration finds more than just a tacked-on happy ending: it reveals the structural core of these books to be profoundly Comic. In seeking to locate the formal dialectic of these three books within the Comic modality proper, I shall again consider (as though they were distinguishable) first formal, then thematic elements.

3.2 According to Frye, the Comic mode exhibits a triadic structure, all three phases of which are always implicitly present, if not explicitly narrated: The total mythos of comedy, only a small part of which is ordinarily presented, has regularly what in music is called a ternary form: the hero’s society rebels against the society of the senex and triumphs, but the hero’s society is a Saturnalia, a reversal of social standards which recalls a golden age in the past before the main action of the play begins. Thus we have a stable and harmonious order disrupted by folly, obsession, forgetfulness, “pride and prejudice,” or events that are not understood by the characters themselves, and then restored.4

In his other writings on comedy, Frye fleshes out this bare scheme from the Anatomy. The movement of Comedy begins with a temporary thwarting or “blocking” of the comic drive, which is essentially that of the two striving to become one. The most common form of the Comic drive is that of two lovers seeking to become united. Yet Comedy need not be romantic in this way: The basic Comic drive is toward union and socialization in the broadest sense, and anything that seeks to thwart this movement (for example a “humor” in a comedy of manners) can fulfill the blocking function. The tension of comedy often results from competition between two different societies, one entrenched and the other trying to take form: “This structure, then, normally begins with an anti-comic society, a societal organization blocking and opposed to the Comic drive,

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

56

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

which the action of comedy ends or overcomes.”5 The most common form of this struggle is a conflict between the society identified with the father and that of the son, with a romantic attachment usually the bone of contention. In Greek New Comedy, the son’s romantic drive is directly opposed by the father figure termed the senex (the senex need not be the actual father); often the father and son are direct romantic rivals.6 The action of Comedy thus represents a societal – and psychic – revolution: “The drive toward a festive conclusion, then, is the creation of a new reality out of something impossible but desirable. The action of comedy is intensely Freudian in shape: the erotic pleasure principle explodes underneath the social anxieties sitting on top of it and blows them sky-high.”7 We shall return to this Freudian element in the Comic structure of the Apprenticeship later. The second phase is characterized by “confusion and sexual license”; Frye also termed it “the phase of temporarily lost identity.”8 The Comic action descends into a world of personal, sexual, and social ambiguity, a carnivalesque “transvaluation of all values” where “illusions caused by disguise, obsession, hypocrisy, or unknown parentage”9 abound. Clearly, the first two phases of the Comic mode overlap the mode of Satire or Irony, and the picaresque novel can thus be viewed as truncated Comedy. Only in its third phase does the Comic exhibit structures that transcend the possibilities of picaresque narrative; thus, I shall focus in this chapter almost exclusively upon the third phase, in which the Comic dialect evolves from picaresque “chaos” into new kinds of individual and social order, and new individual and social identities: The third and final phase is the phase of the discovery of identity. This may take many forms, but we may generalize them as social (A identified with B) and individual (A identified as himself). The identity at the end of a comedy may be social, the new group to which most of the characters are attached, or individual, the enlightenment that changes the mind or purpose of one character; or, as usually happens in Shakespeare, both. To this singular and plural identity we may add a dual form: the identity of the two lovers who are finally united. When there are three of four marriages at the end of a comedy this identity obviously coincides with a social one. Singular identity occurs when an individual comes to know himself in a way that he did not before.10

The new social identity achieved in the third phase of Comedy has two major components: a reversal of social standing and utopianism. In Greek Old Comedy, which is for Frye mimetically the highest or least “displaced” of the Comic forms, one finds an actual battle between competing

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Comic Novel

57

societies, with the new society of the hero eventually “achieving a heroic triumph, complete with mistresses in which he is sometimes assigned the honors of a reborn god.”11 In New Comedy (and the long Comic tradition that inherits its formulas) this process is much less mythic or ritualistic: The hero’s romantic or erotic drive is initially blocked by the old society controlled by the senex, but in the course of the Comic action a discovery changes the social status of either the hero or heroine, enabling a new society to form around the hero and his bride.12 The establishment of a new, “dual” identity in the third phase of the Comic mode depends upon a dispelling of the illusions created in the second. The shattering of illusions in the third phase is inaugurated by a sudden turn of plot, a revelation of new information that Frye terms “the comic discovery, anagnorisis or cognitio.”13 Usually the anagnorisis has to do with a revelation concerning the social status of the hero or the parentage of the heroine, or both, which render either or both suddenly marriageable. New singular or personal identity is given birth in the third phase by the Comic anagnorisis. A new self-consciousness is made possible by a change in the hero or heroine’s relationship to time in the form of his or her own biography. The place where the self and time meet is the faculty of memory, and therefore the new, Comic personal identity most often takes the form of memory’s creation, restoration, or restructuring. Thus, Frye likens the “ternary action” of Comedy to “the removal of a neurosis or blocking point and the restoration of an unbroken current of energy and memory.”14 Our next task is to consider in some detail the new forms of social, dual, and personal identity that emerge in the Comic phase of the Apprenticeship.

3.3 Viewed in terms of the individual’s relationship to society, the ternary structure of Comedy takes the form of an original union followed by a “fall” into alienation, which is followed in turn by reintegration into a new, “higher” society. The first two phases Comedy shares with picaresque narratives, but the third phase, that of a new social identity, is possible only in the Comic mode.15 One finds precisely this tripartite structure in Wilhelm’s relationship to society in the Apprenticeship. In the picaresque earlier books, Wilhelm first suffers “ejection” from the itinerate actors. Only in the final two books of the novel, within the Apprenticeship’s Comic tonality, is Wilhelm able to integrate himself into the new social identity represented by the Society

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

58

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

of the Tower. In this sense Wilhelm’s journey can be seen to have come full circle. Certain critics have argued that Wilhelm’s progress is strictly linear, that he attains no goal, if indeed he progresses at all.16 Yet the circuitousness of Wilhelm’s journey is underscored in many ways, chiefly by his rediscovery of “The Sick Prince”:17 the painting connects Natalie with Mariane and the Society of the Tower with Wilhelm’s parental home. Jarno pronounces his blessing upon Wilhelm’s arrival and in so doing recounts the three phases of Wilhelm’s circuitous journey: One evening Jarno said to him: “We can now justly consider you as one of us, and therefore it would be unreasonable not to introduce you further into our mysteries. When a man makes his first entry into the world, it is good that he have a high opinion of himself, believes he can acquire many excellent qualities, and therefore endeavors to do everything; that when his development has reached a certain stage, it is advantageous for him to lose himself in a larger whole, learn to live for others, and forget himself in dutiful activity for others. Only then will he come to know himself, for activity makes us compare ourselves with others. You will soon come to know the small world that exists right here, and how well known you are in it. Be dressed and ready tomorrow morning before sunrise.” (WMA, 301)18

According to Jarno, it was necessary for Wilhelm to undergo the painful, individuating experience of expulsion and alienation, but then to enter into a new social milieu in which his experiences can bear fruit. But what is the precise nature of this new society Wilhelm is to join? One passage in particular would seem to offer important evidence. At the beginning of Book VIII, Wilhelm unexpectedly encounters his former friend and new brother-in-law, Werner; their meeting serves as an occasion for Wilhelm to review his entire past. Walking through the garden with Felix afterwards, it dawns upon Wilhelm that his whole relationship to the world has changed since his association with the Society of the Tower: He examined the plantings and buildings with great attention, actively considering how to restore and rebuild. He surveyed the world around him, but not like a bird of passage; a rebuilding was for him no longer a rapidly assembled shelter that would wither away before one left. Everything he planned was now to mature for the boy, and everything he built was to last for several generations. His apprenticeship was therefore completed in one sense, for along with the feeling of a father he had acquired the virtues of a solid citizen. (WMA, 307)19

Many interpreters of the Apprenticeship have taken this passage to mean that Wilhelm, in becoming part of the Society of the Tower, has returned to the haven of the bourgeois society from whence he came and readopted

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Comic Novel

59

its dubious ethos. Thus, Hegel’s ridicule of the typical hero of the bildungsroman (“in the end he finally does get his girl and some kind of a position, marries, and becomes a Philistine just like the others”),20 which was almost certainly inspired by Wilhelm Meister. Hegel’s interpretation is echoed by Lukács in his early Theorie des Romans, where Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship is analyzed as the archetypal bildungsroman: The pedagogical nature that remains with this form and differentiates it sharply from the novel of disillusionment is that the eventual arrival of the hero at a resigned loneliness doesn’t mean a complete collapse or tarnishing of all ideals. Rather, insight into the discrepancy between inwardness and the world yields an active realization of insight into this duality. It means coming to terms in a resigned assimilation of its forms of life, and a closing off and maintaining of inwardness that is attainable only in the soul. The gesture of arrival expresses the contemporary status of the world, but it is neither a protest against it nor an affirmation. It is only an understanding experience … (p. 121)

Following Hegel, Lukács interprets the Society of the Tower as “the contemporary status of the world,” as the same realistically depicted bourgeois society that Wilhelm originally rejected.21 Karl Schlechta reiterates this view that Wilhelm’s point of arrival is the same as his point of departure: “One cannot even say that the novel develops in the sense of a spiral, because when altitude is attained, depth is lost. If one takes the whole into view – and not just Wilhelm’s exemplary biography – then this returns in a great movement to its own beginning” (p. 220). All three critics see Wilhelm’s journey as a circle that returns to his bourgeois beginnings rather than a spiral leading him higher. Yet surely the Society of the Tower is not the same bourgeois society Wilhelm left behind in Book I. Werner’s appearance in the Province of the Society of the Tower underscores the vast difference between the two societies: Goethe’s irony here insures that Werner – and the bourgeois society he represents – suffer greatly in comparison. The differences between Wilhelm and his erstwhile companion are the measure of Wilhelm’s progress: in comparison, Werner seems even to have regressed. The leader of the Society of the Tower, Lothario, is hardly governed by the selfish acquisitiveness that epitomizes Werner and Wilhelm’s father: It is quite apparent to me that, in many matters concerning the management of my estates, I cannot do without the services of my farmhands, and also that I must rigidly insist on certain rights; but it is also clear to me that certain dispositions, though advantageous to me, are not absolutely essential, and some of them could be changed for the benefit of my workers. One doesn’t always lose by giving up something. Am I making better

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

60

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman use of my estates then my father? Will I be able to increase my revenues? And should I alone derive all the extra profit from this? Should I not grant vantages to those who work with me and for me, from the greater knowledge that our progressive era has provided us with? (WMA, 263)22

“Doing without” is a verb not found in the bourgeois vocabulary. Moreover, Lothario, Theresa, and Natalie – the core of the Society of the Tower – are clearly portrayed as nobility, although of a kind very different from the rococo nobility of the earlier books. Like Werner, the Count makes an appearance in the last book that serves to underscore the difference. Thus, it would seem that when Wilhelm is said to have become a “solid citizen” [Bürger], the word must be taken not in the sense of “bourgeois,” but in a different, higher sense. Once this is realized, Wilhelm’s journey assumes the shape of a return at a higher level, a spiral or a helix rather than a mere circle.23 Other interpreters of the Apprenticeship have recognized that Wilhelm arrives at a higher social stratum than that of his origins, and take the Society of the Tower to be a realistic depiction of the nobility of the period. Thus Novalis’ lampooning of the novel as a pilgrimage toward the patent of nobility. More recently, Rolf-Peter Janz has argued that the Society of the Tower represents a group of reformist noblemen depicted “according to the measure of the historical constellation of the 90s” (p. 321). Yet surely the Society of the Tower is not a realistic mimesis of any existing social group. Lothario dissolves the feudal tenure system on his estates, prepares to sell them to freeholders, and then to submit them to taxation – radically progressive steps anticipating social forms that would arise only in the nineteenth century.24 The old, feudal estates are undermined by the Society of the Tower’s economic innovations, and dissolved by the three marriages – all mésalliances – with which the novel ends. Theresa states their view of class distinctions succinctly: As far as social status is concerned, you know what my opinions have always been. Some persons suffer acutely from disparity and external conditions and cannot adjust to this. I never tried to convince anybody, but I act according to my own convictions. I never try to send an example, though I do myself act according to an example. It is only disparities in inner conditions that trouble me, vessels unsuited to what they are to contain, external show without inner satisfaction, riches combined with miserliness, nobility with vulgarity, youth with pedantry, neediness with ceremoniousness. Such combinations are enough to destroy me completely, no matter what the world calls them or how it values them. (WMA, 325)25

Schiller singled out this aspect of the Apprenticeship for special praise,26 and Lukács has – understandably – placed it at the center of his interpretation

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Comic Novel

61

of the novel.27 Both Schiller and Lukács underscore the utopian quality of this society in which birth and class are “rejected in their total nullity.”28 This utopian “new social identity” is entirely consonant with the final books’ Comic formal context. Like Comedy, which proceeds “on two social planes, of which one is preferred and consequently in some measure idealized,”29 Books VII and VIII of the Apprenticeship present an idealized and clearly preferred social form that is sharply distinguished from all existing forms Wilhelm had previously experienced. The Society of the Tower exhibits precisely the features most characteristic of Comedy’s new society: utopianism and an undermining of social hierarchy. That Goethe’s utopia is depicted in part ironically, as many commentators suggest,30 does not cast doubt upon its validity as such, but shows only that it is an ideal relatively less perfect than an even higher ideal; that it is not ultimate, but capable of the further development Goethe later pursues in the Journeyman Years. Mimetically higher and more encompassing forms of union and identity are available within the mode of Romance.

3.4 The new, dual identity is established in the Apprenticeship, as in all Comedy, by marriage. That the Apprenticeship ends with the standard convention of romantic comedy has been duly noted by many critics, often with impatience and undisguised disappointment. Karl Schlechta refers to “the old methods of closure” of comedy and tragedy “conjured at the end” (p. 68). Friedenthal derogatorily terms the ending an “operatic finale” (p. 440) – which is interesting for our purposes, in that Frye points to opera as the last bastion of romantic comedy.31 Moreover, as one would expect from the ternary form of comedy, the new, dual identity of the ending is preceded by a phase of lost identity and sexual confusion one might term a series of failed marriages. Marriage is symbolic of higher and more encompassing modes of integration; thus, each of Wilhelm’s steps in life, each of his attempts to integrate himself into a specific profession or social milieu, is represented by a relationship to a particular woman.32 Wilhelm proposes outright to Mariane and Therese, but his relationships to Mignon, Philine, the Countess, and Aurelie can also be seen as attempted “marriages,” attempts at establishing a new, dual identity that fail. In the phase of confused personal and sexual identity, Wilhelm’s relationship to Mignon is appropriately ambiguous. Her sex long remains unclear: The narrator refers to her with pronouns of all three genders, she

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

62

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

wears men’s clothing, and her name is grammatically masculine. Wilhelm is simultaneously her “father,” “friend,” “protector,” and “beloved.” Twice Wilhelm acts the role of Philine’s husband: once as they sit together on the open street (“At that moment some people passed by, and she caressed him so tenderly that he was obliged, in order to avoid a scandal, to play the role of the patient husband” [WMA, 75–76]),33 and again while she tends his wounds after the robbers’ attack (WMA, 139). They even enjoy a night of “nuptial bliss” – although afterwards Wilhelm remains uncertain (or refuses to admit to himself) to whom he had been espoused. Dressed as the Gräf, Wilhelm again plays the role of the Countess’s husband: The Countess, she said, would be told that the count has returned unexpectedly and was in a bad mood. She would then come in, walk up and down, seat herself on the arm of the chair and say a few words. He should continue playing the role of the husband as long and as well as he possibly could … (WMA, 111)34

Later, Wilhelm acts the role of the Prince to Aurelie’s Gräfin Orsina. Yet all are illusions, mere roles being played, as befits the second phase of Comedy. Only within the third phase, only within the Comic mode proper, is it possible to establish a valid dual identity – actually three new dual identities in the Apprenticeship – which are enough to define a new social identity as well.35 The turning point or anagnorisis that dispels the illusions created in the second phase has been made exceedingly complex in the Apprenticeship. Here the main Comic discovery is clearly presented as such, with Jarno’s dramatic entrance and announcement: Jarno paced back and forth in the room. “What am I to say?” he exclaimed. “Shall I tell them? It can’t remain a secret, and some confusion is unavoidable. All right: a secret in exchange for a secret! Surprise for surprise! Therese is not her mother’s daughter! The obstacle is removed. I have come here to ask you to prepare her for union with Lothario.” (WMA, 327)36

This does indeed remove the obstacle for Lothario, who feared he might be marrying his own daughter, but it also brings to light that Wilhelm and Therese are engaged – a second block that can be removed only when a further discovery, that of Natalie’s love for Wilhelm, comes to light. Earlier, it had been necessary for Wilhelm to discover that Mariane had actually died, and that Felix was indeed his child, while Wilhelm’s learning the identity of the Beautiful Amazon also has the quality of a Comic anagnorisis.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Comic Novel

63

3.5 In addition to the new social and dual identities, the third phase of Comedy’s ternary form represents the achievement of a new personal identity by the hero or heroine. This new identity becomes possible when the hero or heroine gains a new relationship to time in the form of his or her own biography. Comic time is time that turns upon itself, comes full circle, and returns as memory. This reflexivity of experience in memory becomes the basis for the heightening of self-consciousness, the educative process that is so essential to Comedy. The Comic hero differs from the picáro in the greater complexity of his psychic structure: it is multilayered, created in its own recollection and thus capable of transformation.37 The complexity of the Comic self is a function of its more complicated experience of time. David Miles terms this more complicated protagonist (what I describe as a “Comic protagonist”) “the confessor”: The phenomenon of time, for the picáro, is essentially a linear, episodic, and chronological one; his “history,” accumulating mechanically, is capable of infinite expansions and “continuations.” The confessor, on the other hand, experiences time in a radically different manner: as being complex, multi-layered, and psychological (in the sense of being nonchronological); the self of the confessor does not exist a priori, but must be recollected, summoned up out of the remembrance of things past – a process usually launched by crisis and ending in a “conversion” to a new self.38

The picáro remains incapable of learning and developing through experience: He is either all change, a purely protean self – which in its inconstancy is a kind of nonself – or a pure self isolated from the life that threatens change (the picáro becomes the hermit). The Comic hero fuses both. He comes to terms with his own previous experience in the form of memory: one part of the psyche becomes the spectator of the other, and the Comic hero plays through an “internal comedy” upon the stage of his own consciousness.39 There is a narrative counterpart to personal memory in the Apprenticeship as well: the narrative turns upon itself and flows “backwards,” as it were, into recollection and recognition. As the narration of the Apprenticeship progresses, the inchoate episodic plot of the picaresque early books gradually metamorphoses itself into a recurrent pattern with a recognizable shape and significance. Stuart Miller notes a similar movement within the evolution of the picaresque genre: in certain later picaresque novels (e.g. in Simplicissimus and in Gil Blas), the episodic plot gradually gives way to

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

64

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

what he calls “the dance pattern.” According to Miller, while “most of the major picaresque novels are episodic with a vengeance,” certain “countervailing plot patterns” occasionally “tease us with the hope of finding structure within the picaresque world” (p. 13). In the early picaresque novel (Miller gives El Buscón as a prime example [pp. 14–15]), the dance pattern functions ironically to limit, rather than to order the picáro’s experience, thus underscoring the fundamentally chaotic nature of his existence. Yet when this dance pattern is allowed to develop, and is not merely intimated in order to be ironically undermined,40 picaresque narration shifts in the direction of romance. Miller detects just such a movement in Gil Blas: In Gil Blas, however, scarcely a character is introduced who does not, more or less unexpectedly, turn up later. This controlling form gives the reader a definite sense of stability … When character after character disappears and reappears in Gil Blas, the reader is forced continually to remember earlier parts of the novel in order to place the reappearing character. The all-­pervasive dance-pattern forces the reader to pull the narrative together in his mind, much as a reader is forced to see a poem as a pattern of images … The dance pattern, when fully developed as it is here, is of course similar to the pattern of romance … The dance pattern stands between the typical picaresque and romance plots, giving a feeling of greater order in action than does the picaresque but less order than does the tightly fated design of the romance.41

It was Gil Blas, of course, that was to become one of the most important models for the putative bildungsroman: Wieland refers to it often in Don Sylvio, and it exerted a profound influence on Goethe,42 who seems to have emulated, and even carried further, the formal modulation from the picaresque into the mimetically higher forms of the Comic found in Lesage.43 Such a dance pattern, when it is not undercut by irony, is typical of Comedy in that it stands between picaresque disorder and the symbolic, even allegorical structure of Romance, which cares little for realistic displacement toward the probable. The Comic dance pattern coalesces gradually as the narrative progresses and becomes completely visible only at the end. Much of the tension and aesthetic pleasure of the comic novel derives from anagnorisis, from the ability to watch order emerge – or suddenly reveal itself – within the seeming chaos of a complicated plot. A splendid example would be Tom Jones. In a sense, the completed dance pattern, the fully coalesced plot structure as telos, works backward – a retroaction – redefining and ordering the previously narrated events. Gerhard Storz sees just such a “recursion of the end to the beginning” as the essence of final books of the Apprenticeship44 and a sharp contrast to the earlier, picaresque books based upon the Mission:

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Comic Novel

65

The continual meeting of new figures by Wilhelm and the reader becomes, however, as the novel progresses more and more a re-encounter. Time and again it passes over into the recognition of people already seen, but heretofore unknown. In this way, then narration leads forwards, towards what is coming, but at the same time backwards toward that which has already happened and in the interim has already been half forgotten. Thus the progression secretly becomes a recursion, and it presents itself with abundant clarity at the end of Wilhelm’s biography.45

These re-encounters are so numerous in Books VII and VIII that hardly a single important character or incident from the earlier books remains unaltered. Wilhelm returns to Serlo’s acting troupe, and reencounters Jarno, Friedrich, the Harper, and the Gräf. He learns the identity of the Ghost in Hamlet, as well as that of the supposed cleric who had joined Melina’s troupe on their boat journey. The tragic histories of Mignon and the Harper are unveiled. And, of course, Wilhelm learns the identity of his Beautiful Amazon.

3.6 The retroactions from the Apprenticeship’s Comic conclusion project themselves, however, even farther back into the narrative. They reinterpret and restructure not only Wilhelm’s career as an actor in Books II through V, but also his experiences in Book I. Indeed, so closely knit are the first and last two books of the Apprenticeship that one must include Book I as part of the novel’s Comic “tonality.”46 The beginning and end of the Apprenticeship are joined by three important links. The first is created by the novel’s controlling symbol: the painting entitled “The Sick Prince.” This all-important theme will be discussed at length in Chapter 4. The second link is the way in which Wilhelm’s description of the puppet theater foreshadows his later “initiation” into the Society of the Tower:47 … we were told to sit down in front of the door to an adjacent room, which then opened, not just to let us in or out, but for some unexpected festive event, with a great gate closed by a mystic curtain. We watched this from a distance and then, as we were dying to know what was twinkling and rattling behind the half-transparent curtain, we were told to drop our chairs and to wait. (WMA, 3)48

Later in Book I the puppet theater is described as a “mystery” into which Wilhelm is “initiated” (MA V, 21). Wilhelm’s initiation into the Society of the Tower also finds Wilhelm finding a seat for a kind of play in which

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

66

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

a “mystic curtain” opens and closes upon symbolic reenactments of his past. One might even want to see the workings of puppeteers as an analogy to the Society of the Tower’s guidance (or manipulation) of Wilhelm’s destiny: like the puppets, only at times does Wilhelm seem to move and speak on his own, and the Society also has its hands secretly in the play. The most important link, however, is Wilhelm’s encounter with Barbara, from whom he learns of Mariane’s fidelity and tragic death. Barbara impresses upon Wilhelm that Felix is his son, and the Society of the Tower later confirms her assertion. This news constitutes the profoundest retroaction in the entire novel, for it fundamentally reinterprets the episode of Mariane, which is not confined merely to Book I. Just as the novel’s concluding books send retroactions through the narrative, the Mariane episode reverberates long after the close of Book I. Since they echo the comic retroactions, one might want to term these reverberations “aftereffects.” The Apprenticeship opens like a comic novel and Book I exhibits some markedly Comic features. The very beginning of Book I employs one of the most common devices of dramatic comedy: the three main characters, Barbara, Mariane, and Wilhelm, enter in order of importance, which is strongly reminiscent of stage comedy’s “opening with the servant.”49 Barbara, the “trusty servant, companion, adviser, go-between and house-keeper” (WMA, 1) is a stock comic character descended from the witty slave of New Comedy. Moreover, Book I contains a typically Comic blocking action on the part of Wilhelm’s father and Norberg that serves to thwart the lovers’ comic drive. A typical Comic plot would conclude with the reunion of the lovers separated by the blocking action: in the middle books of the Apprenticeship, the possibility of such a simple or pure comic conclusion is intimated over and over by the many scenes in which Wilhelm believes – falsely – that he has glimpsed, or is about to meet, Mariane. Indeed, this possibility is kept alive right up until the end of Book VII, when Wilhelm initially refuses to believe Barbara, and decides that Mariane must be waiting in the adjoining room. This is not the case: Wilhelm is to be united with another woman. The retroactions prove prophetic, the aftereffects illusory. Thus, a strong element of tragedy (underscored by the deaths of Mignon and the Harper) enters the Apprenticeship. Yet the continuity of the Comic plot is not broken by this Tragic incursion. The beginning and ending of the novel are discontinuous, in that Wilhelm is not reunited with Mariane, but rather united with Natalie. However, this transition is smoothed by the subtle interweaving of the retroactions and aftereffects. The beginning and end of the novel are sewn

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Comic Novel

67

together, as it were, by these narrative threads. Events in the novel have “insufficient causes”50: the logic of the narrative is revealed to be a dialectical movement motivated by Comic-Ironic discrepancy. The final books of the novel double back to stand above and reinterpret Book I. The end is shown, improbably, to have been implicit in the beginning; and the plot reassembles itself, coalescing around a matrix of symbols. The horizontal narrative gains a vertical dimension, resulting in a kind of oscillation moving in both directions simultaneously – the “magical hovering between forwards and backwards” that Schlegel describes in his review. The mimetically realistic is transformed into the symbolic, tending even toward the mythical. The narrative logic of the Apprenticeship becomes unrealistic and like fairy-tale.

3.7 Another salient formal feature of the final books of the Apprenticeship is a movement away from the mimetic realism of the earlier books toward symbolism, idealization, and convention.51 Many critics have noted this shift toward a higher level of mimesis, and sought to account for it in various ways.52 The most common view is that Wilhelm, as Hans Eichner and others have noted, is “the hero … Of a realistic fairytale.”53 For the most part, however, this new element has been the cause of much dissatisfaction for critics who miss, in the later books, the vibrant realism of the earlier books.54 Other critics, more charitable to Goethe, excuse what they feel to be a disappointing ending by blaming the “flight into the utopian”55 on unfavorable social circumstances. Yet this movement away from realistic mimesis toward symbolism and conventional plot forms looks very different when viewed within the formal context of a modal dialectic. Then the movement need not be criticized as unrealized sociology or a victory of convenience over art but can be understood as a logical development entirely consistent with the inherent laws of the work’s unfolding. The ending is an organic development of the formal movement implicit in the earlier books. In the Journeyman Years, this return of mimetic realism to myth is carried even further, as the formal dialectic progresses from Comedy into Romance. The Comic mode tends away from realism: in Comedy and Romance “the story seeks its own end instead of holding up the mirror to nature.”56 Convention predominates in the mimetically “higher” forms: Frye argues that in Shakespearean romantic comedy, for example, the audience is asked not to accept an illusion, but rather “to listen to the story.”57

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

68

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

One must also distinguish between satirical and romantic comedy in terms of the audience’s interest: There are two ways of developing the form of comedy: one is to throw the main emphasis on the blocking characters; the other is to throw it forward on the scenes of discovery and reconciliation. One is the tendency of comic irony, satire, realism, and studies of manners; the other is the tendency of Shakespearean and other types of romantic comedy.58

Again it is clear that the formal development of the Apprenticeship is from satiric to romantic comedy. Book I focuses upon the “blocking” action by Wilhelm’s father and the surrogate senex Norberg, while the books that follow constitute an ironic, mimetically realistic satire of the manners of each social class in turn. It is also typical of mimetically “lower” satirical comedy that the hero or heroine is a rather dull, uninteresting character – as countless critics (beginning with Schiller) have claimed of Wilhelm.59 Books VII and VIII, however, focus much more upon “recognition and reconciliation,” and Wilhelm is more nearly the center of attention. The most interesting characters in the final books may well remain Mignon and the Harper, but they stand opposed to the plot’s movement toward romantic union and the formation of the new Comic society and are thus “excluded.” It is easy enough to see why Goethe’s romantic critics were disappointed and sided with Mignon and the Harper against the novel. And it is easy enough to wonder, as many critics have, what Wilhelm has done to deserve Natalie at the end of the Apprenticeship. But these objections pale once one understands that the work’s final assertion of formula and convention against probability and interest are entirely consistent with the inherent nature of Comedy, which “regularly illustrates a victory of arbitrary plot over consistency of character.”60 Also entirely consistent with Comedy’s movement away from mimetic realism toward the “un-real” is the persistent suggestion that the realm of the Society of the Tower is a kind of dream world. A corollary of this is the aforementioned predominance of memory within the Comic mode: like the dream, memory stands at one remove from reality, works to transform our recollection of it, and even helps to uncover its true significance (as Wordsworth and Proust have shown). The predominance of the new modality is heralded already in the first chapter of Book VII by Wilhelm’s dream, which functions as a symbolic microcosm of the entire plot and foreshadows the novel’s resolution. Earlier, Wilhelm’s break with Mariane had also been foretold in a dream. In Book VIII, Wilhelm twice describes his passage through the process of comic resolution in terms of dream

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Comic Novel

69

experiences. Moreover, his climactic meeting at the beginning of Book VIII with Natalie, the long-sought Beautiful Amazon, exhibits a remarkably dreamlike quality: He had no time for more than a fleeting glance at it, because the serving man ushered them through a series of rooms into a small chamber where, beneath a lampshade and partly obscured, a woman sat reading. “If only it were she!” he said to himself in this decisive moment. He put down the child who seem to be waking up, and was about to move toward the woman, when, as the child sank back into sleep, she stood up and came toward him. It was the Amazon! He could not control himself, fell on his knees, and cried: “It is she!” He clasped her hand and kissed it with rapturous delight. The child lay between them both on the carpet, fast asleep. (WMA, 314)61

Natalie steps forth out of mysterious shadows and appears as a kind of mythic figure, the Beautiful Amazon. Felix, as though intoxicated by Natalie’s dreamy presence, immediately falls into a deep sleep, a detail which does much to give their meeting its peculiar tenor. The realm of the Society of the Tower bears more than a little resemblance to what Frye terms the “green world” of romantic comedy, where the plot undergoes a metamorphosis and achieves resolution. This green world is closely analogous to “the dream world that we create out of our own desires,”62 a world mimetically closer to myth than realism. As one would expect, this same dreamlike, fairy-tale quality is strongly suggested in the narrative retroactions of the Comic mode into the earlier, picaresque books, especially in Natalie’s initial apparition to Wilhelm as the Beautiful Amazon. Wilhelm’s recollection of this encounter releases a flood of childhood memories, dreams and almost mythical associations: He saw the coat falling from her shoulders, her face and figure disappearing in a blaze of light. All his youthful visions returned to his mind and associated themselves with this image. He now thought he had seen the heroic Clorinda with his own eyes; and he also remembered the sick prince with the beautiful loving princess approaching his bed. (WMA, 139)63

Later, after summoning-up the scene “a thousand times,” he becomes unsure whether he has experienced something real, a dream or a fairytale.64 When Wilhelm consults geographies and books of genealogy to locate the residence of the Beautiful Amazon’s noble family, it cannot be found anywhere in the real world, and he is left only in “a state of dreamy longing” (WMA, 142). Yet, as Hass has argued,65 it is characteristic of the

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

70

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

ironic dialectic of the novel that Wilhelm’s dreams prove more real than his assessments of each “real” situation. It is a fundamental law of the Comic mode that, as in dreams, desire prevails over the reality principle of probability.66

3.8 In keeping with Comic modality’s typical movement away from mimetic reality toward symbolism, idealization, and convention, comic fictions tend to replace individuals with easily recognizable, standard types. To a remarkable degree, the most important characters in the final books of the Apprenticeship correspond to traditional comic character types or functions. I have already discussed Wilhelm as a typical “dull or uninteresting hero,” and thus turn to consider the most important figure in the blocking action, the senex. The basic conflict in comedy is, socially, a conflict between competing generations and their societies, usually represented by a father and his son. The basic romantic conflict is a reflected comic Oedipus situation: Its main theme is the successful effort of a young man to outwit an opponent and possess the girl of his choice. The opponent is actually the father (senex), and the psychological descent of the heroine from the mother is also sometimes hinted at … Often the central Oedipus situation is thinly concealed by surrogates or doubles of the main characters …67

In the Apprenticeship this function is ambiguous and complex: Wilhelm is confronted by no less than three clearly identifiable senex figures. The first is Wilhelm’s own father, who opposes Wilhelm’s involvement in the theatrical life, and thus his romantic involvement with Mariane. Here the Oedipal situation is disguised but present by virtue of a symbol and a surrogate. The father fulfills his Oedipal function symbolically in two ways: by opposing the younger society of the theater and by selling the painting of “The Sick Prince” which depicts the classic Oedipal situation of the son desiring his father’s bride. In his conversation with the stranger in Book I, we learn that it had been Wilhelm’s favorite painting, and that he had identified intensely with the Sick Prince. The paternal surrogate, who opposes Wilhelm directly, is Norberg. He conforms perfectly to Frye’s description of the father’s surrogate fulfilling the senex role: “The opponent to the hero’s wishes, when not the father, is generally someone who partakes of the father’s close relation to established society: that is, a rival with less youth and more money.”68 The third senex, Lothario, also

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Comic Novel

71

rivals Wilhelm at one point for the same woman, although this desire on Wilhelm’s part is shown in the end to belong to the blocking complication rather than the resolution. Viewed from another angle, Lothario is also a romantic Comic hero freed by anagnorisis from the threat of incest that blocks his own desires. Perhaps one should term Lothario a “temporary senex” or “pseudo-senex” in his relationship to Wilhelm, for while he does not embody this function purely, he does stand in a fatherly relationship to Wilhelm, and seems, temporarily at least, to be a representative of the competing older society. Although Lothario is certainly a father figure to Wilhelm, he is more than just a senex: Lothario, as well as the Abbé and, to a lesser extent, Jarno, are in a way benevolent father figures who educate Wilhelm and thus help him toward the fulfillment of his desire. The point is not to make each character fit neatly into the pigeonhole of a prescribed Comic role, but rather to show that the roles are indeed present in the Apprenticeship as functions of plot, however varied, transformed, and symbolically removed. Another important function, particularly in Shakespearean comedy, is that of the “fool,” which Frye terms a “spectator role” because the fool stands outside, or is at least not fully identified with the society he mocks: “The fool, when technically so, is frequently (Lavache, Touchstone, Feste) said to belong to the older generation, his jokes in a different idiom from what the society of the comedy wants and expects. He is often … said to be lustful, more inclined to get girls into trouble than to take any responsibility for them afterward.”69 Frye’s description fits Friedrich (the Friedrich of Book VIII, that is) remarkably well. He, too, stands outside, mocks, and is an embarrassment to the Comic society of the Society of the Tower. While it is true that he is not chronologically a member of the older generation, his way of speaking certainly is, for he speaks in a witty Baroque idiom peppered with biblical and classical allusions – an idiom he happened to have learned while entertaining himself with a Baroque library 70 together with the girl has “got into trouble.” Friedrich also bears some resemblance to the character type of the “tricky slave” of Classical comedy, whose machinations – like Friedrich’s eavesdropping – usually constitute the “efficient cause” of the comic resolution.71 Another Comic character type who plays a central role in the consummation of the Comic drive toward erotic union is the “Eros figure.” The Eros figure is “in himself sexually self-contained, being in a sense both male and female, and needing no expression of love beyond himself.”72 In many Shakespearean comedies, this function is performed by the heroine

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

72

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

disguised as a boy.73 In the Apprenticeship, it is filled by Mignon. Again, Mignon is an exceedingly ambiguous figure, but as the novel progresses she becomes increasingly a symbolic presence and this becomes more and more clearly her function. In her study of Mignon and Balzac’s Seraphita, Marie Delcourt recalls the ancient myth of the “hermaphrodite,” whose function, like that of Frye’s comic Eros figure, is to bring about and oversee the erotic union: “Goethe has found an extremely old archetype of religious thought, that of the being endowed with two powers, of which it exercises none, but is invoked, just like the Greek hermaphrodite, as the tutelary daimon of sexual union” (p. 239). Mignon oversees Wilhelm’s night of love with Philine, and it is because of Mignon that Wilhelm travels to Natalie’s castle, initiating their comic union. Yet Mignon is beyond sexuality in the ways both Frye and Delcourt describe.74

3.9 Just as new light is shed upon such a mysterious figure as Mignon by viewing her as an archetypal Comic presence, new light can be shed upon some of the Apprenticeship’s most important themes, symbols, and plot devices by regarding them within the context of the Comic mode. Initially, these thematic elements seem unrelated, but when they are seen under the aspect of the Comic, there emerges a striking configuration of mutual illumination and interdependence. To a remarkable extent they correspond to Northrop Frye’s catalogue of recurrent themes and devices in Shakespearean romantic comedy: “Shakespeare imposes some likeness on his plays by repeating his devices. The storm at sea, the identical twins, the heroine disguised as a boy, the retreat into the forest, the heroine with the mysterious father, the disappearing ruler: these themes occur so often that in some plays – Twelfth Night, for example – a whole group of such formulas is restated.”75 Although the source of the list is Shakespearean, these devices or themes are far from unique to Shakespeare: they are recurrent archetypes within a long Comic tradition that Shakespeare assimilated and restated in essence. Goethe knew extremely well both Shakespeare and the Comic tradition that Shakespeare knew: thus, we need not be surprised that such themes surface in Goethe’s comic novel. One theme is not present in the Apprenticeship as such: “the storm at sea,” G. Wilson Knight’s Shakespearean “tempest” that symbolizes

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Comic Novel

73

social upheaval and individual passion. Symbolic drowning, neardrowning or actual drowning occur more frequently in Shakespeare’s romances (Pericles, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest) than in his comedies, although Viola and her twin brother survive a shipwreck in Twelfth Night, and Falstaff is ritually dunked in The Merry Wives. Similarly, the symbolic theme of drowning becomes central only in Goethe’s Romance Journeyman Years. Yet it is present at one place in the Apprenticeship: in Wilhelm’s dream at the beginning of Book VII, in which Felix falls into a pond and is in danger of drowning but is miraculously saved by Natalie. The closely related symbol of fire, however, is present in Book V, with the same import. The theme of “the disappearing ruler,” pure myth in its undisplaced form, is present in the Apprenticeship in the only way possible in the more realistic modes, as a significant image associated with the hero:76 I mean of course Wilhelm’s association with the Sick Prince. Not only does the painting disappear until Book VIII (and with it the Prince’s kingly father), but also Wilhelm’s kingly fathers disappear, both Wilhelm’s actual father, who dies but seems to play the Ghost, and his dramatic “father,” the man who really performs the role of the Elder Hamlet, mysteriously appearing and then disappearing again until Book VIII. Closely related to “the disappearing ruler” is the theme of “the heroine with the mysterious father.” A clear variant is again Wilhelm, who becomes “the hero with the mysterious father” when he plays Hamlet. His own father is quite the antithesis of “mysterious” – until Wilhelm believes that he has actually returned from the dead to play the Ghost. The novel does not have one clear heroine upon whom all might agree, but all the major candidates (I do not consider Philine or the Beautiful Soul serious contenders) have suitably “mysterious” fathers: Mariane is an orphan, and her parentage thus a total mystery; Mignon’s father is long thought to be “the great devil” (which is mysterious enough in itself), but is actually the mysterious Harper; Therese’s father dies unable to communicate to his daughter the mystery of her parentage; Natalie’s upbringing – the office of a father – is entrusted entirely to the Abbé, about whom nobody seems to know much of anything.77 The essence of the “retreat into the forest” is the establishment of a social utopia. The clear analogy to this Shakespearean theme in the Apprenticeship is the movement of the novel’s action into the province of the Society of the Tower. The Society of the Tower exhibits many of the most important characteristics of the “forest world” or “green world” as Frye describes it. We have already considered its utopian, even dreamlike quality in some detail.78

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

74

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

The “retreat into the forest” is a structural principle that can be found in some form in every one of Shakespeare’s comedies, a true Comic archetype. The forest utopia is “the place where the upper or purely human world toward which the comic action moves begins to take shape, and around which that world crystallizes”79; one might also say, as has often been said of the Society of the Tower, a world of enlightened “humanity.” Another theme that “runs through all the history of comedy,”80 the theme of “the identical twins” or doubled characters, is almost maddeningly ubiquitous in the Apprenticeship. It seems to be a disease with which the Society of the Tower and those around it are afflicted. Natalie, the Beautiful Amazon is hauntingly similar in appearance to her sister, the Countess, and their handwriting is so similar that Wilhelm mistakes Natalie’s for the Countess’s. Moreover, the Beautiful Amazon looks so much like the Beautiful Soul that Wilhelm takes a painting of the aunt for a bad portrait of Natalie. Lothario mistakes a cousin for the tenant’s daughter herself, the Abbé has a twin brother, and Mignon dresses as an angel to help celebrate the birthday of twin sisters. Philine doubles the Gräfin. Even those previously unconnected with the Society of the Tower become susceptible when they enter into its environs: in Wilhelm’s dream, Natalie even “doubles” Felix as a kind of magic trick. As Lieselotte Dieckmann has noted, these doublings usually have the effect of temporarily blurring or confusing the identity of certain characters.81 Yet this is but half the effect: the other is the powerful underscoring of identity that occurs when the ambiguities are clarified through Comic anagnorisis in the final two books. This change in function represents a movement away from phase two into phase three of Frye’s ternary Comic form, from ambiguity and alienation into the creation of new forms of personal, social, and “dual” identity.82 The confusion of identity that results from doubling can be harmless, as in for example in the Harlequin of the commedia dell’ arte, who among other things divides in two and holds dialogues with himself, or a sinister Doppelgänger-experience that can produce insanity83 – as happens when Wilhelm “doubles” as the Count. The theme of “the heroine disguised as a boy” or hermaphroditism, perhaps the most important Comic theme in the Apprenticeship, also has a dual function. In the second phase of the ternary Comic form, it contributes to the confusion of identity by creating sexual ambiguity, while in the third, it works as a symbol of union and psychic wholeness to establish new, higher forms of identity. In dramatic comedy, the movement toward resolution is often effected by the heroine disguising herself as a boy (Twelfth Night and As You Like It spring immediately to mind);84 in

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Comic Novel

75

the Apprenticeship, the comic movement is propelled by a whole series of hermaphroditic heroines. The only major female figure who exhibits no sexual ambiguity is Philine, whom Laertes calls “the real Eve, the progenitrix of the whole female race” (WMA, 55).85 All the other instances, beginning with Mariane’s entrance in officer’s dress on the second page of the novel, contribute either to the sexual ambiguity of the second phase the new, transsexual identity of the third, or both at different times. Of the last possibility, the prime example is Mignon. She is first introduced as “a young creature,” “the child,” “the figure” (WMA, 50), and the ambiguity of her sex is preserved throughout the picaresque books by pronomial sleight of hand, male clothing, and her constant assertion that she wants to be a lad (MA V, 122, 140, and 203–204). In this second phase, the ambiguity of her identity seems, as Staiger has argued, to be presexual;86 in the third phase, however, she too exhibits, like the “Amazon,” “a humanity beyond gender,”87 a new, “angelic” identity beyond sexuality adumbrated in her song: For all those glorious heavenly forms, They do not ask for man or wife, No garments long or draperies fine Surround the body now transformed. (MMA, 316)88

Mariane is also initially ambiguous, but shown in the final books to have been a “true hermaphrodite” when she again donned her officer’s uniform to assert both her individual and a new dual identity by remaining faithful to Wilhelm. Mignon’s initial ambiguity, as well as Landrinette’s and the Baronesse’s, are the basis of the carnivalesque sexual ambivalence of the second phase, although the picaresque books contain important retroactions from the third phase, anticipations of the higher form of identity revealed there. Most important is the apparition of the Beautiful Amazon, who reminds Wilhelm of the hermaphroditism of Tasso’s Chlorinde. Therese is a “true Amazon,” who wears male clothing and “can put a hundred men to shame” (WMA, 269, 273, and 278), while even the Beautiful Soul exhibits “manly defiance” by demanding complete freedom in the way she conducts her life (WMA, 230). There are even hints that Wilhelm is on his way to achieving hermaphroditism: his union with Natalie is symbolic rather than erotic, and Körner wrote of the novel: “Maleness and femaleness appear in their most important genres, and between the two we see Meister, as an intermediate nature – a kind of hermaphrodite.”89 In its highest form, the form in which it is presented in the final books

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

76

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

of the Apprenticeship, hermaphroditism represents a merger of comic personal and dual identity, a metaphor of psychic wholeness. Schiller’s only metaphor for the aesthetic condition of balance and inner harmony is Juno Ludovisi, whom he overtly terms a hermaphroditic “female god” and “divine woman.”90 In this highest manifestation, the theme of hermaphroditism is, like Comedy itself, a symbol of “man’s quest for wholeness,”91 a dream of some future time “when desire will have been abolished and with it the consequences of the Fall.”92 I contend that all this is a much richer, more universal, and hence more satisfying reading than simply interpreting the novel in light of the historically limited concept of Bildung.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

chapter 4

Interlude

The “Sick Prince”

Porphyrogeniti sumus.

Coleridge, Biographia Literaria

[M]an, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason, and finds himself a true prince. Emerson, “Self-Reliance”

4.1 In discussing the Apprenticeship with Eckermann in 1825, Goethe owned that he himself almost lacked the key to that “incalculable production.” It is difficult and perhaps inadvisable, he claimed, to seek such a ­midpoint, a “decided tendency” which would exist only conceptually. Yet interpreters were and are wont to do just this, and, after pronouncing this caveat, Goethe allowed that one might after all look to the end of the novel: [B]ut if one really wants such a thing, then one should cleave to the words of Friedrich, which he addresses at the end to our hero, by saying: you strike me like Saul, the son of Kis, who went out seeking his father’s ­she-asses, and found a kingdom. One should hold on to that.1

Critics have not failed to take up Goethe’s grudging hint, even if they have hardly accepted his own interpretation, however tentative.2 The image of Saul, who stumbles into kingship, is part of a thematic complex that has loomed large in the interpretation of Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship: that of the Sick Prince. For the very end of the novel is dominated not only by the analogy between Wilhelm and Saul but also by the reappearance of the painting entitled “The Sick Prince,” and the legend from Plutarch’s biography of Demetrius that inspired it.3 Goethe’s earliest critic – and still 77

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

78

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

among the very best – already admired the use Goethe had made of the grandfather’s art collection: You knew how to make charming use of the grandfather’s collection; it’s really a player in the fiction, and approaches something living.4

While Schiller refers to the collection as a whole, he must of course have in mind the painting of “The Sick Prince,” as it is the only painting in the collection of which the reader learns so much as the title. And ever since, critics have viewed the theme of the Sick Prince as central to the Apprenticeship. Other episodes, such as Wilhelm’s temporary identification with Hamlet and Prince Hal, have been noted as variations on the theme of the Sick Prince, but the vast proportion of critical labor has been expended in attempting to determine the symbolic significance of the painting.5 The painting is twice discussed, but actually appears only at the very end of the novel. We first hear of it when Wilhelm, wandering the streets after being unexpectedly sent away by Mariane, encounters a mysterious stranger who wonders whether Wilhelm is not the grandson of a collector of fine art. Wilhelm assents, and the two engage in conversation. It turns out that Wilhelm had a favorite picture, one that made an indelible impression upon him, despite its poor quality as a work of art: Yes, indeed. It was the picture of the sick prince consumed by passion for his father’s bride. It wasn’t exactly the best painting in the collection: the composition was not good, the colors were nothing special, and the execution was mannered. I didn’t understand that, and I still don’t understand it: The subject is what it feels to me in a painting, not the artistry. (WMA, 37)6

Wilhelm remains attracted not to its artistic excellence, but to its theme. At the moment when he is about to learn of Mariane’s infidelity, and his own “illness” is about to begin, he identifies himself profoundly with the Prince whose unrequited love is consuming him inwardly. The painting does not appear again until Book VIII – although one might say rather that, in its first reappearance, it is conspicuous in its absence. Wilhelm is led into the Hall of the Society of the Tower to be “initiated”; he sees what seems to be a painting behind the closed curtain. But when the curtain is drawn, there appears not a painting, but rather an empty frame. Within the frame appears the man with whom Wilhelm had earlier discussed “The Sick Prince”:

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Interlude

79

Don’t you recognize me? Don’t you, amongst all the other things you would like to know, wish to find out where your grandfather’s collection of works of art now is? Don’t you remember the painting that especially appealed to you? Where do you think the sick Prince is languishing at the moment? (WMA, 302)7

In this mysterious way, the Society of the Tower makes Wilhelm aware that his destiny is closely bound up with the painting. And indeed, the moment that Wilhelm finds Natalie – the woman he has sought constantly since her apparition to him as the Beautiful Amazon – he finds the painting again as well. Yet the web of interwoven destinies becomes increasingly tangled, and Wilhelm is finally driven into a desperate passion and illness. Friedrich – of all people – refers to the painting, setting into motion Wilhelm’s “cure”: He opened the doors and pointed to the large painting in the anteroom. “What’s the name of that old goatee with the crown, pining away at the foot of the bed of his sick son? What’s the name of the beauty who enters with poison and antidotes simultaneously in her demure, roguish eyes? Who is that botcher of a doctor who suddenly sees the light and for the first time in his life can prescribe a sensible remedy, give medication which is a complete cure and is as tasty as it is effective?” (WMA, 370–371)8

Wilhelm is to marry Natalie: like Antiochus, it would seem, he is healed by the union, and, as in Plutarch’s tale, receives a kingdom – that which Friedrich symbolically gives him at the end as “Saul.” Nearly all critical attempts to interpret the Sick Prince theme have revolved around the constellation of the painting and its reappearance within the environs of the Society of the Tower.

4.2 However, the theme of the Sick Prince is much more pervasive in both of the Wilhelm Meister novels than has been noticed heretofore, and it is impossible to subsume all its manifestations beneath the symbolic logic of one variant, as e.g. Schweizer and Ammerlahn have attempted. The theme presents a complex tapestry of interwoven allusions, an intricate mirroring of symbols. It is itself a kind of archetypal symbol that undergoes numerous metamorphoses within the novels. Some of these have not been noticed; some not in their full depth and extent. In this chapter, I shall attempt to trace these different manifestations and, more importantly, to

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

80

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

find a way of viewing the thematic complex that reveals the significance and unity of all its variants. However varied the forms in which the theme of the Sick Prince appears, they are all expressions of a central “myth” in the novels, which one might call a “myth of self-government.” Moreover, this myth will be shown to be in harmony with two important aspects of Wilhelm Meister: the fundamentally Comic form that constitutes the underlying structure of both novels, and, more specifically, the realization of self-consciousness and freedom, which will be further elaborated in the following chapter. It is strange that, while the reference to Saul that concludes the Apprenticeship has been duly noted and thoroughly examined as an important variant of the theme of the Sick Prince, the closely related story of David has not. Just as Friedrich’s comparison of Wilhelm to Saul becomes the imaginative focus of the ending, Wilhelm’s puppet play of David and Goliath forms the imaginative focus of the beginning and helps to unify the novel, giving the reader the impression that Wilhelm has indeed come full circle. The tone of the episode is ironic – and not only because Wilhelm’s enthusiastic recollection is putting Mariane to sleep the whole time. Wilhelm is still very much the “businessman’s son” playing at the Sick Prince, the bourgeois lad with grandiose dreams of heroism. He misses the heroic tone of tragedy in the most humorous way (“almightiest King and Lord Lord” [WMA, 3]9) and is guilty of hilarious breaks in style (“the Philistine vented his scorn, stamped both feet, then fell down like a log and put the matter to a glorious end” [WMA, 3]).10 Yet this irony is of the kind discussed already in Chapter 1: it discloses inner potential and sets the “dialectic of the self ” into motion. Wilhelm playing David is an intimation of the end of that process – Wilhelm’s realization of his higher self – yet it is also a prefiguration, through thematic allusion and mirroring, of certain intermediate stages of his later development. In his performances, Wilhelm immerses himself totally in the role of David: I absorbed the play by studying it where ever I could find a corner – in the attic, the stable, or the garden – I took each part and memorized it thoroughly, except I caught myself taking the parts of the main characters and imagining the others trotting along like attendants. The grandiose speeches of David, in which he challenged the boastful Goliath, filled my mind day and night. (WMA, 8)11

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Interlude

81

In this, Wilhelm’s later career upon the stage is prefigured, especially his performance of Hamlet. Moreover, the roles are related not just through Wilhelm’s having acted them. Both David and Hamlet are part of the imaginative complex of the Sick Prince theme. Both David and Hamlet are princes, Hamlet by right of hereditary succession and David by virtue of having defeated Goliath.12 Both are confronted with the hostility of a “false” king: Claudius is a usurper; Saul falls away from God, who decides that David shall replace him. Like Claudius, Saul welcomes David into his household, but then begins to fear him and finally to plot against his life. Like Hamlet, David resorts to feigned madness to save himself when he fears that King Achish will turn him over to Saul: And David laid up these words in his heart, and was sore afraid of Achish the King of Gath. And he changed his behaviour before them, and feigned himself mad in their hands, and scrabbled on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle fall down upon his beard. Then said Achish unto his servants, Lo ye see the man is mad: wherefore then have ye brought him to me? (1 Samuel 21; 12–14)

In playing David, Wilhelm’s later identification with the Sick Prince Hamlet is subtly prefigured. One finds, moreover, within the imaginative complex of the biblical story of David – which Goethe could assume his readers knew intimately – a story which represents yet another close parallel to the Sick Prince theme in Wilhelm Meister. It is the story of one of David’s own princely sons, Amnon. The tale is a striking reflection of the legend of Antiochus from Plutarch – but a reflection in the sense of a mirror image, a kind of ­“anti-legend” with the quality of an admonition. The “sick prince” of the painting is ill with love for his stepmother; the situation is made obvious when the stepmother visits him at his bedside. Amnon is David’s son and loves the “fair sister” of Absalom, also “the son of David” and thus his brother (2 Samuel 13; 1). Amnon’s incestuous love for his sister parallels the incest intimated in the Sick Prince’s love for his stepmother. Like the “sick prince,” he is ill with love for her: “And Amnon was so vexed that he fell sick for his sister Tamar …” (2 Samuel 13; 2). On the advice of a cousin, however, he feigns physical illness as a ploy to seduce his sister: “So Amnon lay down, and made himself sick: and when the king was come to see him, Amnon said unto the king, I pray thee, let Tamar my sister come, and make me a couple of cakes in my sight, that I may eat at her hand” (2 Samuel 13; 6). When she comes to attend him, he rapes her and then

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

82

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

despises her, sending her forth. Amnon fails utterly to attain self-mastery, to control his passions  – unlike David, who becomes first prince, then king, because his heart is pure.13 The Apprenticeship ends “comically” with Wilhelm’s betrothal to Natalie, the prince’s “fairy-tale” princess/queen. Yet in order for this to happen, the tragic element of the incest motif must be banished – in the Apprenticeship with the deaths of the Harper and Mignon. Amnon, guilty of incest, ends tragically as well – killed at the order of his father.

4.3 Wandering blithely through the countryside with the troupe of actors, Wilhelm imagines himself as Shakespeare’s Prince Hal of the Henriad, dressing like Falstaff’s fellow-reveler and treating the others like Prince Hal: His good friend Shakespeare, who he very much liked to consider his ­godfather (after all, he too was named William) had acquainted him with a certain Prince Hal who had spent some time with base and dissolute companions and, despite his noble character, taking great pleasure in the rough, unseemly and foolish behavior of his earthly associates. (WMA, 123)14

As in the other variations on the theme, Wilhelm’s identification with Prince Hal is intimately related to the Comic dialectic whereby the lower self is progressively approximated through self-transformation to the higher. In Shakespeare’s play, Hal lets it be known early on that the self he presents to the world is not his true self: Prince. I know you all, and will awhile uphold The unyoked humor of your idleness Yet herein will I imitate the sun, Who doth permit the base contagious clouds To smother up his beauty from the world, That when he pleases again to be himself, Being wanted he may be more wond’red at By breaking through the foul and ugly mists Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.15

Harry has decided to consort for a while with Falstaff, to be “governed” by him, the passionate lower self incarnate. The lower self usurps the higher. In one scene (II.iv), Hal even invites Falstaff to act the part of himself and

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Interlude

83

his father – prince and king! – in turn. Falstaff brags of his band as “men of good government,” although they are governed by the changeable moon, and not Hal’s symbol of the higher self, the constant sun.16 Henry Percy, nicknamed “Hotspur,” is also a “false” prince and pretender to the throne: he even pretends to Hal and King Henry’s name (there is a play on this at 1 Henry IV, I.i.86–90). “Hotspur” is a false prince because he is all passion: it is significant that, before vanquishing Hotspur in battle, Prince Hal makes a speech evincing great humility. Harry regains his status as Sick Prince through the ritual slaying of the false kings and princes – literally in the case of Hotspur and the disguised warriors, symbolically in the case of Falstaff. This momentary usurpation on the part of the lower self in both the Henriad and the Apprenticeship takes the form of a disguise. Like Harry, Wilhelm is engaged in a masquerade which represents a kind of self-deception: He welcomed this as an ideal against which to measure his present state; this made it much easier for him to indulge in a self-deception that had an almost irresistible appeal. … The silk scarf, his one memento of Mariane, was loosely attached to the inside of his muslin ruff. A round hat with a brightly colored ribbon and a big feather completed the disguise. (WMA, 123–124)17

Wilhelm soon ends his masquerade, however: his identification with Prince Harry is but the prelude to his performing the part of Hamlet, which begins his healing. Through his first encounter with Natalie in the guise of the Beautiful Amazon, he begins to overcome the passion for Mariane that has made him ill. His “princely” potential is no longer disguised, and he is ready to play Hamlet, thereby taking a long step closer to the Society of the Tower, his “healing,” and the practical exercise of his newfound inner freedom in the Journeyman Years.

4.4 Wilhelm undertakes to play the role of Hamlet quite unconsciously: “We made the decision to perform it and, without knowing what I was doing, I  agreed to play the part of the prince” (WMA, 127).18 Yet soon he has identified himself totally with the character: I also believed that I was really getting into the spirit of the part by somehow myself assuming the weight of his profound melancholy and, beneath this burden, following my model through the strange labyrinth of so many different moods and peculiar experiences. I learnt the part and tried it out, feeling that I was becoming more and more identified with my hero. (WMA, 128)19

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

84

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

His identification with Hamlet is further underscored when, just before the first performance, news of the death of Wilhelm’s own, real father reaches him. Wilhelm’s portrayal of Hamlet represents an extremely important variant of the theme of the Sick Prince, yet it cannot be understood in terms of the legend of Antiochus represented in the painting, which has so often been taken to be the primary and controlling version. It might be objected that the legends from Plutarch and Hamlet share a hint of incest in Antiochus’ love for his stepmother and the love for his own mother interpreters have found in Hamlet. Yet this aspect of the play is entirely absent in the presentations and discussions of Hamlet in the Apprenticeship. The actress who plays Gertrude is never mentioned, and there is no hint of incest in Wilhelm’s pre-Freudian interpretation of Hamlet’s relationship to his mother. Claudius, who would be Hamlet’s rival in a doubling of the Antiochus legend, is mentioned only in passing. The emphasis is entirely upon Hamlet’s relationship to his deceased father, apart from any romantic rivalry. Wilhelm’s interpretation of Hamlet, and Goethe’s use of the drama within the thematic complex of the Sick Prince, is centered upon a deed which King Hamlet demands of his son: In these words [The time is out of joint; O cursed spite / that ever I was born to set it right!], so I believe, lies the key to Hamlet’s whole behavior; and it is clear to me what Shakespeare set out to portray: a heavy deed placed on a soul which is not adequate to cope with it. And it is in this sense that I find the whole play constructed. An oak tree planted in her precious pot which should only have held delicate flowers. The roots spread out, the vessel is shattered. (WMA, 146)20

The conflict is entirely internalized and represents Hamlet’s struggle to obey the commands and gain the crown of – Hamlet. Their names are, of course, the same. Are we not here, in Goethe’s strangely one-sided interpretation and selective presentation of Hamlet, confronted yet again with the drama of the higher self struggling to realize its commands, and the lower self striving to take the crown of its higher nature? Hamlet’s ego is weak, and is torn asunder by the sudden, excessive demand made upon it. The natural governance of the self is strained, and snaps: Hamlet’s thinking, feeling, and willing are cut from their moorings and err wildly. Hamlet becomes heartless enough to send Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to certain death without compunction, errant enough in his thinking to produce grotesque syllogisms,21 and wanton enough in

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Interlude

85

his will to engage Laertes in a “ranting match” in Ophelia’s grave – which finally proves his undoing. It is often argued that Wilhelm’s portrayal of Hamlet has a healing effect upon his “illness.” In what way is it healing? Certainly not Wilhelm’s immersing himself in the “labyrinth” of Hamlet’s every “mood and eccentricity” – which is exceedingly dangerous given the extent of Wilhelm’s sympathetic identification with the protagonist. Wilhelm himself rejects this expressly: “But the further I progressed in this, the more difficult it became for me to perceive the structure of the whole, and finally I found it almost impossible to acquire an overview” (WMA, 128).22 Wilhelm seeks not the pathological, but rather that which is “whole,” and thus healing. He attempts to form in his mind’s eye an image of the Dane before the advent of tragedy, a “healthy” – one might even say a “comic” – Hamlet (WMA, 128). This is an ideal that can ­contribute to Wilhelm’s Comic Bildung, and his healing as Sick Prince, a “kingly” Hamlet in perfect balance and control of all his emotions and faculties.

4.5 The centrality of the theme of the Sick Prince has never been at issue with regard to the Apprenticeship, even if the full wealth of this vein has not been mined and critics have usually sought, unsuccessfully, to interpret the theme in terms of one manifestation thought more “definitive” than the others. The problem is even greater with regard to the Journeyman Years, however: the persistence of the theme in the sequel has been overlooked by all but Schweitzer, who claims to see it principally in the plot of the narrative frame. I would like to argue, however, that it is to be found not primarily in the frame, but rather in the novellas themselves, and there it is very much in harmony with our interpretation of the theme as a “myth of self-government.”23 The thread of the Sick Prince theme is first picked up in the Journeyman Years in the novella that Hersilie gives to Wilhelm, “The Deranged Pilgrim.” It both reiterates the amatory triangle of the Antiochus legend, and anticipates the rivalry between Wilhelm and Felix for the love of Hersilie. Both father and son find themselves in a situation in which their self-mastery, their governance of their own passions, is severely tested. Yet it is clear that the father is central: Hersilie gives the story not to Felix, but to Wilhelm, whose position is analogous to that of Monsieur de Revanne.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

86

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

That the father has at least the potential for self-government is subtly ­intimated right at the outset: Monsieur de Revanne, a wealthy gentleman of private means, owns the finest states in his province. Together with his son and his sister, he occupies a château that would be worthy of a prince; and indeed, inasmuch as his park, his water, his tenantries, his manufactures, and his household nourish half the inhabitants for six miles around, by virtue of his good name and the benefits he confers, he is truly a prince. (WMJY, 128)24

Monsieur de Revanne is only “of private means,” not royalty; yet he is explicitly said to have “princely” potential. This detail fits well into the Sick Prince theme as we have sought to understand it: apart from this context, it loses its resonance and becomes entirely superfluous. In his “outer” governance, the government of his estate and of those who depend upon him, he has the makings of a “true prince.” But inwardly, when confronted by the charming young “pilgrim,” he proves unworthy. He fails, as do the other two “princes” in the Journeyman Years we shall discuss: the barber in “The New Melusine” and Odoard in “Not Too Far.” Lest this “princely” potential in Monsieur de Revanne appear coincidental, one should note that Odoardo in the frame plot (who has even better claim to the appellation Sick Prince as Odoard in the novella) describes his situation in remarkably similar terms: “for several years now I have governed the province in the name of my prince … I had unlimited authority to rule in this province” (WMJY, 381).25 He reigns as a virtual prince, and, like Monsieur de Revanne, has the “possibility” of becoming a “true prince” in using that power to do the good. Yet they both fail inwardly, and thus the amount of good they are able to perform remains limited. The situation is indeed similar to the Antiochus legend, yet there are important differences. The father fails to renounce, and the son, if cured of his passion at all, is cured only through losing the “deranged pilgrim,” who leaves him with the stern admonition: He who is not sensible of what an honorable maiden must feel when she is courted, does not deserve to receive her hand. He who defies all reason, all the passion deserves to be deprived of the fruits of his passion and to lose the respect of his family. (WMJY, 137)26

The speech is aimed, of course, at the father and her former lover “from the mill” as well. She had given both father and son one last chance to renounce gracefully by claiming that she bore the son’s child, yet they fail miserably to control their emotions out of any real love for each other. The father responds by reducing the son’s inheritance to a minimum, hoping

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Interlude

87

to pressure him into abandoning her; the son, knowing himself not to be the father, views it as their plot to disinherit him, and pitilessly sends her packing. The father and son are reconciled, but only after she has weighed them, found them wanting, and punished them like an avenging angel or demon (WMJY, 137). Here, as in the Apprenticeship, Goethe has chosen the imaginative framework of the Sick Prince theme to express the struggle – here the failure – to achieve self-mastery. In “The New Melusine” one finds the Sick Prince theme in its least “displaced” form. The barber tells what he claims is a tale of his youth, yet it is a fairy tale with hardly a stitch of realistic disguise. A beautiful young woman arrives, unattended, at an inn where the barber is staying. He is attracted to her immediately and offers his services. She allows him to bear her heavy casket to her room, they dine together, she appears ever more beautiful to him, and, after a fitful night, he rushes to embrace her passionately upon first seeing her in the morning. She wriggles free, admonishing: “Control such sudden bursts of passion,” she said, “if you do not want to forfeit a happiness that lies within your reach, but can be possessed only after several trials” (WMJY, 344)27

It is the conventional fairy-tale motif of the hero having to undergo trials in order to win the hand of a beautiful woman, usually a princess. And a princess she is, as he later learns. She is of regal family, her father Eckwald, king of the dwarves. She had been sent out to find an “honorable knight” to marry, in order that the royal line might be revitalized (WMJY, 353). We learn that she has selected the barber to marry her, and thereby become prince of the dwarves. Her casket proves to be, in reality, a royal palace. In this way, the barber is called upon to become a Sick Prince. Like the other Sick Princes in the Wilhelm Meister novels, he is called upon to learn self-government, to learn to master his passionate lower self. That he has no control of his passions at the outset is clear from his rash attempt to embrace the princess. Each of his three trials requires that he learn to overcome a specific passion: he fails all three. His first trial is simple enough: he is to tend the casket carefully for a number of days while his lady is absent, leaving it each night alone on a table in a room in which he is forbidden to sleep – a hint of the trial of chastity one often finds in fairy tales and romances. He is given a pouch of gold to sustain him, but that quickly disappears: “under these circumstances my money began to melt away and disappeared entirely from my purse one evening when I imprudently gave into passionate gambling” (WMJY, 345).28

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

88

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

He loses it in “passionate” gaming. Utterly destitute and faced with an enormous bill, he retires to his room, disconsolate. His lady appears, forgives him, and lays down the conditions of his second trial. His second trial demands that he learn to overcome the temptations of wine and women. He receives yet another purse of gold and sets forth, yet he soon fails again. Soon wine and jealous pride drive him to quarrel with one of his companions’ former lovers: he is carried home half dead. Yet his lady comes in the night like an apparition and heals him with her magic embrace. Again he is forgiven but must undergo yet another trial. His third trial is an even stronger injunction to avoid the temptations of wine and anger. For a long time the barber is able, but in company one evening the passion that he has subdued finally bursts forth in a drunken fit of jealousy and rage. He insults his lady (“Water is for nixies … What does the dwarf want?” [WMJY, 351]29) when she chides him for his immoderate drinking. Significantly, one of his female companions spurs him on to resist her by whispering in his ear: “You are not going to let yourself be ordered around” (WMJY, 351).30 For the third time he has failed to master the passions of his lower self. Yet in this anti-fairy tale, with its marvelous humor and self-irony,31 it is possible to fail thrice and still win the hand of the princess – only to reject her at the thought of marriage. However, it is not only the thought of marriage, but the constant playing of music that eventually drives the barber away from that marvelous, if diminutive, realm. Again and again his hatred of music is emphasized in the novella. It is part of the reason for his flying into a rage and thus failing his third trial: On the contrary, I became more spiteful when a lute was produced and my beauty played and sang, to the admiration of all the rest. Unfortunately, general silence was called for. So I was not even allowed to chatter anymore, and the chords set my teeth on edge. Was it any wonder, then, that finally the smallest spark ignited the powderkeg? (WMJY, 350)32

In explaining his rationale for fleeing, he compares marriage to music, which is otherwise “the most hateful thing on earth” (WMJY, 356). Marriage is for him a duet in which the husband and wife each try to sing higher than the other. “Harmonic music” suits him ill enough: he will have nothing of “the disharmonic variety” (WMJY, 356). This is a humorous detail, but also quite in keeping with the barber’s status as a “failed prince” when one remembers that music is the great symbol of order within the realm of Romance, and that its function in the Journeyman Years

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Interlude

89

is socialization. The barber fails to assert the higher self, the communal, “selfless” self, against the lower. Finally, the barber’s confrontation with the lower passions takes place within the imaginative context of one of the Journeyman Years’s other great, controlling symbols: that of the casket.33 In the frame plot, the casket seems to symbolize deep, unconscious drives: Felix discovers it in an iron box deep within a cave, and its contents remain a dark secret. It is clearly associated with Felix’s passionate love for Hersilie. She is the keeper of the chest, and – Freudian’s delight – Felix breaks his key in trying rashly to force it. Only after a mysterious goldsmith, who is able to control the opening and closing of the box, magically rejoins the severed halves of the key (WMJY, 416) does the healing of Felix’s passion – and, we assume, his betrothal to Hersilie – become possible. The barber’s ability to win the princess and participate in the world of her casket/palace depend initially upon his learning to control his passions: his inability to do so makes the failure of his attempt to become a Sick Prince a foregone conclusion.

4.6 The theme of the Sick Prince emerges for a third time in “Not Too Far,” a tale Odoardo recounts from his own past. Odoard, a rising young diplomat, marries the daughter of the “Prime Minister,” a beautiful young woman with every social grace. Yet Odoard falls in love with a princess and is sent with his wife to a remote province after he celebrates the princess as “Aurora” in an impassioned poem. Odoard renounces as best he can and seeks to fulfill himself through governing a remote province well. But all comes undone one evening when his wife, who makes no attempt to hide that she can barely suffer provincial life, returns home far too late for a surprise party her husband has planned. The children have retired to bed, their memorized poems unspoken. Desperately unhappy, Odoard flees the house, wandering aimlessly until he arrives at an inn. There he chances to meet “Aurora.” Meanwhile, Odoard’s wife, Albertine, has arrived home, delayed when her carriage overturned in the darkness. The aftermath of the accident reveals that Albertine’s lover has been unfaithful to her, news that leaves her inwardly devastated. One hardly knows how to interpret this enigmatic and problematic novella in which everything remains entirely unresolved. Trunz emphasizes the vitality of characterization and psychological subtlety that make the story so modern, and such a contrast to the theoretical and utopian chapters that surround it.34 Yet Trunz also notes rightly that the story must

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

90

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

be interpreted in terms of its frame, as a kind of pessimistic qualification of the enlightened optimism of Lenardo’s speech (HA VIII, 648). The ideal of the speech that the characters in “Nicht zu weit” fail to attain is the ­promotion of useful, enlightened activity through the overcoming of passion: And so you all know how and in what fashion our league was formed and founded. We have no one among us who cannot usefully practice his occupation at any moment, who is not assured that were ever chance, inclination, or even passion might bring him, he will find himself well recommended, received, and encouraged, indeed rescued from misfortunes as far as that is possible. (WMJY, 369)35

Odoardo will go on in his speech to make the same warning twice again.36 Here one confronts in conceptual terms the ideal otherwise symbolized in the Meister novels by the theme of the Sick Prince. Yet the theme of the Sick Prince is intimated in Lenardo’s speech as well. At the rhetorical climax of his long panegyric on “wandering,” in which he musters all the trades and professions that have grown and distinguished themselves through travel, Lenardo claims that the members of the league shall be as wandering kings: If up to now we have honored ourselves at every step by claiming the finest of the active people as our fellows and partners and fate, now, dear friends, in conclusion the greatest distinction still awaits you, that of finding yourselves in brotherhood with emperors, kings, and princes. (WMJY, 368)37

They shall be “kings” not only in their wandering, but also in the majesty of their self-government. “Not Too Far” seems in fact to be a pessimistic reply to Lenardo’s ideal of self-government: the young man has underestimated the power of the human passions he seeks to control. Despite the realism of the novella, the fairy-tale-like Sick Prince theme does shine through in certain allegorical elements, in the configuration of the personal relationships, and in certain subtle allusions to other manifestations of the theme. As was mentioned above, it is suggested in the frame plot that Odoardo is a virtual prince in his governance of the remote province to which he has been exiled (WMJY, 381). One could say that in the novella he aspires to become a “prince” in a different way: through his love for the princess. Yet in this he is a “pretender,” for it is his rival who is the “true” prince (“the crown prince”), and Odoard’s love for the princess represents not a striving for the ideal of self-mastery, but the sway of passion: his poem to “Aurora” is “too passionate [an] homage” (WMJY, 373). Again we find intimated the amatory triangle of the Sick Prince: an older man (Odoard) and a

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Interlude

91

younger (“… the crown prince, who, to be sure, was far younger than she” [WMJY, 373]) vying for the affection of a single woman. It is incumbent upon the older man – Odoard – to renounce: Odoard/Odoardo is truly princely only in the fruitful work (clearly one of the highest ideals in the Journeyman Years) he performs in his province, after renouncing. For years he succeeds, but he finally fails when his wife misses the birthday party he has so carefully planned. Years of pent-up emotion are suddenly unleashed, and his violent emotional agitation “magnetically” attracts “Aurora.” Goethe indicates subtly that it is an unresolved passion that brings them together. Thinking him their “uncle,”38 the princess and their traveling companions demand “passionately” to see him: “It’s the very devil of a mess,” the waiter continued. “I don’t understand why you hesitate to let yourself be seen they think you are an old uncle, whom they passionately long to embrace.” (WMJY, 375)39

This begets passion in Odoard as well: “Passion begets passion. Agitated as he was, he longed for something different, unfamiliar” (WMJY, 375).40 He finds the princess, whom he addresses not with her true name, Sophronie, but as “Aurora.” The princess’s names are clearly allegorical: “Sophronie” is a Greek word that translates roughly as “prudence,” or practical moral wisdom; “Aurora,” the mythological object of intense passion whose ­lovers end tragically, could hardly be more antithetical. Odoard is a kind of aging Tithonus or, in his desperate flight from home, a kind of wandering Cephalus who has “killed” his wife by mistake (for his wife is not entirely at fault in arriving so late). Just as Odoard is a kind of “false prince,” Sophronie is a “false princess” – false to her princely husband and to her own higher nature – when she takes the false name “Aurora.”

4.7 The theme of the man who must undergo difficult trials in order to gain the hand of a princess and thereby become a prince or even a king is reminiscent of the archetypal fairy-tale plot as defined by Vladimir Propp. The trials prove the hero’s worthiness and symbolize his inner struggles to attain self-conquest. Yet the theme of the Sick Prince as we have sought to interpret it is also very much in harmony with the Masonic symbolism that suffuses both novels. Freemasonry is known also as “the royal art” or “the royal guild”41 – terms supposed to have originated in 1693 when King William III was admitted to an English lodge. It was retained

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

92

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

in Anderson’s influential Constitutions, and later invested with another, higher significance.42 A lexicon of Freemasonry by one of Goethe’s ­contemporaries seeks to explain this higher significance by quoting the “Apprentices’ Catechism” from a work entitled “System of the Masonic Lodge Truth and Unity at the Three Crowned Columns in P***”: Question. What do the Freemasons build? “Answ. An invisible temple, of which Solomon’s Temple is the symbol.” Qu. How do they call the directive for erecting this mystical building? “A. The Royal Art; for it teaches mastery over oneself.”43 One is also reminded here of Goethe’s admonition in one of the “Reflections in the Spirit of the Wanderers”: “Everything that liberates the mind without giving us more self-mastery is harmful” (WMJY, 301).44 One might also be reminded of The Magic Flute, which Goethe admired enough to write a continuation: there, too, it is emphasized that Tamino, who must undergo the trials of fire and water, is a prince.45 Like Tamino, the “princes” in the Wilhelm Meister novels are subject to the trials of fire and water – Goethe’s symbols for the passions, as has been widely noted. Moreover, even the “sickness” of the Sick Prince is explicable in the context of the Masonic apprentice’s striving for self-mastery: in many lodges the neophyte went through a probationary period in which he was termed “a sufferer” or “a sick person.”46 It is only after his initiation into the Society of the Tower (however squalid and ironically portrayed) that Wilhelm, the Sick Prince, is “healed.” And it is entirely in keeping with the “symbolic logic” of the Meister novels that the aged goldsmith who is finally able to mend the key to the casket broken by Felix in a fit of passion – the man who is able to enter the dark recesses of the “chest” (sc. the unconscious) and close the lid again – should receive the Masonic appellation “initiate” (WMJY, 416). It remains only to interpret the variation of the Sick Prince theme most closely related to the Masonic symbolism of the Society of the Tower: Wilhelm’s identification with the painting “The Sick Prince.”

4.8 It is in the province of the Society of the Tower that Wilhelm finally learns the fate of Mariane, and also that Felix is his son. This leads to an initial “healing” of sorts: from the end of Book V he had been tormented by fleeting apparitions he supposes to be Mariane, and these had fanned the flames of his “sickness” that had died down in the interim. Learning

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Interlude

93

of her death – and his unfairness to her – leads to sadness and remorse but learning the truth about Felix brings a kind of quiet peace. Yet this “healing” is neither final nor complete: later, Wilhelm is driven into a despairing, passionate illness again as he becomes aware of the destinies of those around him, and especially as he becomes painfully aware of his own guilt in past and present relationships with others: Wilhelm was disturbed, and disorganized by strong emotions. His whole being became totally bereft, through all these terrible unexpected happenings, of any power to withstand the passion that had taken such a strong hold over his heart. (WMA, 370)47

Earlier, he had imagined that he could see the loom of destiny weaving its threads before his mind’s eye: In quick succession he thought about the fates of several people – or rather he did not think it all, he simply let his mind be invaded by what he could not repel. There are moments in our lives when events, like winged shuttles, flip backwards and forwards before our eyes, weaving continuously at a tapestry which we have more or less designed and spun for ourselves. (WMA, 333)48

This is the first intimation that much of what had previously seemed impersonal fate or “chance” passively experienced is actually in large part the creation of human actions, a self-woven web. Wilhelm becomes more and more conscious of his own guilt and lack of self-knowledge, and finally is taken “ill” (WMA, 370); the doctor prescribes physical medicaments – obviously to no avail. Friedrich takes things in hand with the help of the painting (WMA, 371), bringing to light Natalie’s love for Wilhelm, yet thereby bringing the inner crisis to a head. Wilhelm breaks out in wild despair and self-reproach: Wilhelm was in a sorry state. Being at last alone with his friend, he nevertheless remained silent, quickly surveying his life up to that point and finally shuddering at his present situation. Suddenly he jumped up and said: “if I am responsible for what is happening to you and me, then rebuke me! … Time and time again my eyes have been opened to what I am, but always too late and always to no purpose. How I deserved that dressing down by Jarno! I thought I had understood it well enough to embark on a new life! Could I? Should I?” (WMA, 371)49

He becomes totally desperate and confused and believes for a moment that his destiny is not in his own hands. Yet the crisis is resolved for him: he is given Natalie as a bride, and thus “healed,” as the “logic” of the Antiochus legend demands.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

94

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

Yet in what sense can one say that he has really been “healed”? Mignon’s and the Harfner’s tragic demise remains unchanged: Mariane is still dead and wronged by Wilhelm. It is none of Wilhelm’s doing that he has come to know his own son. Wilhelm ends up engaged to a woman whom he has not himself consciously chosen, and he seems in no way her equal in maturity. From the time of its initial publication, interpreters have objected to the Apprenticeship’s ending, and with good reason, it would seem. In what sense is Wilhelm healed of his passions? In what sense has he progressed farther along the road toward self-mastery, toward self-government? Only insofar as he has gained insight – very painful insight – into his own self. The first step toward mastery of the lower self is to gain an overview of it, to achieve self-consciousness. Such archetypes are simply not to be found in the much more prosaic concept of Bildung.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

chapter 5

The Romance

Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years

5.1 In a letter to Göttling of January 1929, Goethe compared the novel he was straining to complete to a “Sisyphean boulder” that he hoped soon to push over the summit and roll toward the public.1 Predictably, Goethe’s readers have for the most part merely scurried out of the way. Interpreters of the Journeyman Years, attempting to roll this great boulder of a novel back uphill to see whence it came, have all too often abandoned the Sisyphean task in utter frustration. Numerous critics have turned to the Journeyman Years seeking a coherent formal or structural principle only to come away convinced that there is none to be found. In his history of the novel of the Age of Goethe, H. H. Borcherdt has given the Journeyman Years a chapter apart, as an anomaly;2 Hermann Broch and Ehrhard Bahr have seen the Journeyman Years as an “experimental novel” anticipating modernism’s total break with traditional genre forms.3 The long-prevailing view of the Journeyman Years is presented succinctly by Emil Staiger;4 he suggests that the unity of the work lies somehow “beyond the novel” and is to be supplied by the reader (p. 134), but also, less charitably, that the work’s disunity represents “a sign of declining power … which old age brings. His energy is no longer sufficient to shape an extended whole definitely and consequently” (p. 136). Staiger goes on to conclude that one can find grounds for reading almost any interpretation into the novel: The various thoughtful interpretations that have been mounted heretofore can justly be juxtaposed and yet are also at the same time, depending on how one views the matter, inconsequential. With the best of intentions namely one can draw out the thread either this way or that, sometimes connecting these points, sometimes others, find them to be in harmony with the second or third or fourth, and take pleasure with the most various figures and constellations in the epic field. The poet invites us and pushes us away with the same gesture into the limitations, which he himself doesn’t transcend. (p. 137) 95

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

96

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

All interpretations, and none, are justified in what Staiger sees as a situation of total formal ambiguity and ambivalence. Certain of Goethe’s own pronouncements upon the two versions of the Journeyman Years (some of which Staiger quotes) might well seem at first glance to support such a contention.5 I shall argue below, however, that these statements must not be taken as apologies for formlessness, but rather as descriptions of a kind of formal unity different from that which Goethe’s contemporaries had come to expect in a novel; warnings that the form of the Journeyman Years was of a different order altogether. In Chapter 5 I shall attempt to demonstrate that, while the new and seemingly unique form of the Journeyman Years is not that of any particular historical genre, it can nevertheless be located within a larger literary context: that of Frye’s modal category of Romance. As was the case with the modes of Satire or Irony and Comedy, Romance must be understood as a formal-thematic complex that is pregeneric, and thus not identical to any of its historical manifestations.6 Numerous historical genres fall under this large rubric, among them the Greek prose romance (Daphnis and Chloe is the best known), the medieval courtly romance (e.g. Parzival), Shakespeare’s dramatic romances (Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest), the loosely joined cycle of fantastic tales or romantic novellas (e.g. 1001 Nights or The Decameron), the philosophical romance of the Enlightenment (e.g. Johnson’s Rasselas), as well as the Gothic romance and its progeny (e.g. Wuthering Heights). Goethe’s last novel does not take its form from any one of these specific historical genres, yet its underlying tonality, its structural core, is a complex of formal and thematic elements that most, and in some cases all of these historical genres share. Uncovering this essential structural tonality of the Journeyman Years also provides substantial insights into the ways in which this late work can justly be viewed as a sequel to the Apprenticeship. Certainly there are important thematic “dovetailings,” as Goethe termed them, and most of the major characters reappear in the second novel. But the most important unity-in-difference that joins the Apprenticeship and the Journeyman Years – and the distinct yet unified portions within the Apprenticeship itself – is the continuity of the logical development of Comic form as it evolves from Satire or Irony through Comedy proper into Romance. The unity of the Apprenticeship and its sequel is thus not the simpler unity of identical structure, but rather a more complex unity of formal development as process, an organic unity that consists in the unfolding of latent forms or structural metamorphosis.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Romance

97

The close affinity between the Journeyman Years and other Romance works has gone virtually unnoticed: to my knowledge, only two interpreters of the novel clearly identify important Romance elements. In her study of Goethe’s cyclical narratives (1975), Jane Brown notes that Makarie’s realm is filled with “the trappings of medieval romance”: her estate is “a mysterious, unexplained landscape pregnant with allegorical significance”; she lives in a castle surrounded by “venerable old trees,” furnished with “chivalric pictures”; they are greeted by the astronomer, who is “a sort of Merlin figure,” and Angela, a “divine messenger” (p. 70). Yet since these are the only Romance elements Brown finds, they seem anomalous and inorganic to her, and she thus concludes that they are ironic and “playful” (pp. 70–71). Eric Blackall discerns within the earlier version of 1821 certain elements of a “fairy-tale-like structure” derived from the eighteenthcentury romance: “We notice the presence of sensational romance-type motifs (underground caverns, strange inscriptions à la Magic Flute, discovered objects, mysterious halls and palaces), and coincidental encounters which turn out to be of great significance (with Jarno and with the Collector) and which also derive from the tradition of the romance.”7 Yet Blackall finds the remainder of the novel – particularly the “serious conversations on ideas” – too much unlike the “fairy-tale-like structure” to classify it as a romance.8 In this regard it is revealing to note that, although interpreters of the Journeyman Years rarely do attempt to view the novel within the context of any historical genre, when attempts at classification have been made, the choice has invariably been not any of the historical Romance genres, but rather the picaresque novel. Hans-Jürgen Bastian, for example, argues that the “mosaic-like macrostructure” is clearly recognizable as “the old picaresque structural principle of the addition of episodes,”9 while Jane Brown and Hans Reiss also place the Journeyman Years within the picaresque tradition.10 Bastian’s argument is most revealing of the underlying problem; he claims that all the early forms of the novel share the same “aggregate” quality: Bundles of adventures and novellas, episodic-additive aggregates stand at the beginning of the history of the novel and control – of course with changing historical modifications – it structure over the centuries. The courtly epics, the popular books and novels about rogues, indeed all the early bourgeois epic works add adventure to adventure and line up episode after episode. (p. 629)

Surely this is a great oversimplification. Both formally and thematically there is all the difference in the world between the courtly romance and

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

98

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

other Romance forms on the one hand, and the picaresque novel on the other.11 Mimetically the picaresque novel is poles apart from Romance, the former being among the most, the latter among the least displaced forms. The structure of the Romance forms is vertical and hierarchical, while that of the picaresque novel and other Satiric forms is horizontal. Romance forms can, like the picaresque, consist of numerous shorter novellas or adventures, but it is characteristic of Romance that these shorter narrative elements are subtly interwoven with the frame and with each other in a manner that is totally unlike the simple aggregation characteristic of picaresque narrative. Certain themes central to Romance – e.g. themes of ascent and descent, apparent death, and hierogamy – are impossible within the formal logic of the picaresque, or can appear only ironically. There are, to be sure, certain important affinities between forms of Romance and picaresque forms, which can lead to confusion if the subtler distinctions are overlooked, yet these affinities are not of the nature of formal and thematic correspondence, but rather of parody. The senseless wanderings of the picáro parody the heroic quest of Romance and picaresque trickery the Romance hero’s feats. Scholes and Kellogg stress the antithetical, parodistic relationship between the two modes, as have numerous other theorists: “The picaresque narrative is the comic anti-type of the romance … It sets the contemporary world and a firstperson narrator up against the never-never world and the impalpable narrator of romance” (p. 75). Historically, the picaresque novel arises as an immediate reaction against the medieval heroic romance, and much of its effect depends upon direct parody of quintessential Romance motifs and devices.12 The relationship between the two is intimate, yet in the end antithetical.

5.2 During the last three decades of his life, the years in which the Journeyman Years slowly took shape, Goethe developed a profound interest in a broad spectrum of foreign – especially Eastern – literature, and began to speak of a “World Literature,” a unity he perceived underlying a vast array of culturally diverse and historically disparate works. Meanwhile, his own writings began to reveal a new and highly unique late style, as different from his earlier productions as Shakespeare’s last plays are from the tragedies and comedies of his middle period. To a great extent, Goethe’s highly individualistic late style is, I believe, a

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Romance

99

result of his preoccupation with the literature of non-Western cultures. Diverse as they are, however, the literary works that exercised so profound an influence on Goethe’s late style do nevertheless share one important quality: almost without exception they are composed in the modality of Romance. In 1807 Goethe began to write many of the novellas that would eventually be included in the Journeyman Years: on May 17, 1807, he began to dictate “Saint Joseph the Second,” while his diary records that the “story of the dwarf” (clearly a reference to “The New Melusine,” a story he had known and told already in Sesenheim) was completed in Karlsbad on May 31. Goethe remained in Karlsbad through August of the same year, dictating first “The Perilous Wager” and then, in part, “The Man of Fifty Years” (August 4), while under August 5 the Tagebuch records: “Translation of the ‘Folle en pelerinage’.” It is extremely interesting to note how Goethe described this activity to others and to himself. In a letter to Charlotte von Stein, Goethe termed these novellas that were eventually to be woven into the framework of the Journeyman Years “small romantic narratives,” the creation of a “free fantasy.”13 Two days earlier, Goethe had noted in his Diary: “thought about romantic motifs, those from Pyramus and Thisbe and of mystification.”14 This is in turn highly reminiscent of two entries in an octavo notebook containing preliminary outlines for what was to become the Journeyman Years15 and lists of themes and motifs obviously culled from Goethe’s readings at the time:16 one of several rubrics in this latter collection is “Mystification,” while just above there stands “Motifs from Piramus and Thisbe and Romeo and Juliet should be balanced.”17 Katharina Mommsen argues convincingly in her book Goethe and the Arabian Nights (p. 307 f.) that this notebook must date from Goethe’s stay in Karlsbad in 1807 – that is, at precisely the time the first full inspiration for the Journeyman Years came to Goethe and the aforementioned novellas were dictated. It is a fascinating document, and very much to the present purpose, since it offers so much insight into what Goethe was reading and thinking at the time, and thus into possible antecedents and sources of the novel’s form. To a remarkable extent it reads like a synopsis of the major themes, motifs, and specific literary works belonging to the mode of Romance: Modern conditions and their motifs in old forms. …

Courtly war.

…

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

100

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman Greek novels Arabic ones. Indian. The Arthurian novels that have passed over to the Germans as popular books. Those better known to us, e. g. Fierabras and everything related to Charlemagne. King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Narrow circle of the troubadours. Have a look at the course of the Arabian Nights and at the sequence of motifs. Boccaccio. The Nouvelles Nouvelles Queen Margarethe’s Nouvelles and similar things that exist, in various regards, but especially with regard to the ordering of the masses. Motifs from Pyramus and Thisbe to be balanced by those from Romeo and Juliet. Express the most universal, and invent a new story on that schema. Lovers. Neighbors and separated. Meetings. Rendezvous. It comes first. Apparent death. His despair. Hers. … Mystification. … Fairytales.

Variations on the Castle of Otranto.18

Goethe’s Diary also contains an extensive listing of the motifs in Daphnis and Chloe (the best known of the “Greek novels,” and one of Goethe’s favorite works late in life),19 and numerous entries from the same period of time (May–August 1807) such as that of July 22: “thought about romance motifs for the Journeyman Years.” Some of these themes and motifs did find their way directly into the final version of the Journeyman Years, e.g. “apparent death” (one of the most essential themes of Romance – it shall be discussed at some length later), and certain important themes from the Arabian Nights. Katherina Mommsen has traced the latter, and includes among the direct borrowings a remarkable parallel to the

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Romance

101

raising of Aladdin’s treasure, the figure of the “messenger,” “wandering and travels,” and the image of the “living armillary sphere,” used by the astronomer to describe Makerie. Northrop Frye has called Scheherezade “one of the greatest figures of romance,”20 and Gillian Beer argues that The Arabian Nights has had a profound effect upon the Romance even in its European forms.21 Twice Goethe even compared himself explicitly to “Sultana Scheherazade” in connection with the Journeyman Years.22 As for the remainder of the motifs in the Karlsbad notebook, those that did not find their way directly into the Journeyman Years, Goethe did what he had suggested to himself concerning Pyramus and Thisbe: “Express the most universal, and invent a new story on that schema” – i.e. penetrate to the common modal principles that generate the themes and forms of all these works. The region in which Goethe’s “free fantasy” was moving at this time when the Journeyman Years was taking shape is altogether that of Romance. In later years, Goethe’s interest in this mode grew only stronger. I have already mentioned the favorite work of his old age, Daphnis and Chloe, with its discovered treasure, dreams, visions, and its love-plot and symbolic death-and-resurrection reflected in the separation and reunion occasioned by the changing seasons. Typical of this shift in Goethe’s literary allegiances late in life away from Realism toward Romance is his response to Eckermann’s praise of the “entirely decisive reality” of Smollett’s picaresque novel Roderick Random: Goethe asked whether he knew Johnson’s Rasselas, a philosophical romance that, according to Eric Blackall, might best be characterized by its “entirely decisive ideality.” Blackall goes on to argue that Rasselas might even have served as a model for the Journeyman Years.23 The narrative framework has elements of the romance such as always appealed to Goethe (mysterious chambers, caverns, robbers, abductions), a worldly-wise raisonneur with points of similarity to Goethe’s character Montan, an astronomer (though here one whose reason is deluded by imagination), a self-contained, isolated province, and its two main characters seeking a form of life that will ensure happiness – but, above all, a tone, as Bertrand H. Bronson has said, “of tested wisdom, sympathetic forbearance and ironic compassion.”24

Equally important and telling is Goethe’s interest in three Chinese novels that he read during this period: Huan Chien Chi (in an English translation, Chinese Courtship [1824]), Hau Kiou Choaan (probably in a German translation by Murr [1766], from an earlier English translation – this novel

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

102

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

Goethe may have read as early as 1796), and Iu Kiao Li (in a French translation, Les deux cousines [1826]).25 As both Stuart Atkins26 and Blackall27 have noted, all these novels are romances. Blackall points out many similarities between the Chinese novels and the Greek romance Daphnis and Chloe. The basic situation in all is that of a “love-sick youth” yearning for an “idealized and remote lady”; the style is symbolic; the reference universal, and even mythic; and the nexus of each plot one or more falsely reported deaths – again the central Romance theme of apparent death. In Hau Kiou Choaan, the lovers are divided by a wall, as in Ovid’s Pyramus and Thisbe – a romance that takes an uncharacteristic tragic turn. Earlier I suggested that what is commonly termed Goethe’s late style might, like the late style of Shakespeare, best be understood as a newly awakened interest in Romance forms. Might not Goethe’s notion of a “World Literature,” so central to his late thought, also be understood in these terms, as a corollary of his interest in Romance? Romance is the most universal of the modes, because the least mimetic and the closest to pure myth. Viewed in this light, it is no accident that Goethe’s famous remarks to Eckermann concerning world literature (January 31, 1827) follow directly upon his discussion of the aforementioned Chinese romances. It was not the experience of the nearly related literature of the other Western nations that awakened a realization of the possibility of a “World Literature” in Goethe, but rather the surprising discovery that literature socially and historically remote from the mainstream of Western transmission nevertheless bore remarkable similarities to these more familiar, directly transmitted works. In one passage of his Essay on Romance, Walter Scott virtually echoes Goethe on world literature in his own characterization of “romance,” arguing that “fables of a nature similar to the Romances of Chivalry, modified according to the manners and state of society, must necessarily be invented in every part of the world, for the same reason that grass grows upon the surface of the soil in every climate and in every country,” and quoting the poet Southey’s claim that “mythological and romantic tales … are found wherever there is language and discourse of reason, in other words, wherever there is man” (p. 132). Romance arises where alien cultures touch.28 Goethe’s intuition of a realm of literary experience transcending national boundaries can be seen as an immediate outgrowth of his preoccupation with Romance. In 1807, Goethe began what was to become a twenty-year-long search for a literary form appropriate to the Journeyman Years. What he found was not a new form, but rather a very old one – or perhaps better, one that is timeless.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Romance

103

5.3 The most obvious, and perhaps the most characteristic and essential formal feature of Romance is its episodic plot. For this reason, Romance and picaresque narratives exhibit certain superficial similarities, yet the Romance version of episodic form is utterly different from its parodistic picaresque counterpart: Romance fictions employ this formal device in order to express, not the disordered and even chaotic universe of picaresque narrative, but rather a highly complex kind of ordering beyond simple formal unity. Romance narrative seeks to reflect a “unity-withindiversity,” a miraculous order emerging within a concatenation of seemingly unrelated events. The “radical of romance” is a sequel of “marvelous adventures”; since the essential element of plot in Romance is adventure, romance “is naturally a sequential and processional form.”29 The archetypal Romance plot is “a complex and prolonged succession of incidents usually without a single climax.”30 However, unlike picaresque narrative, which uses a succession of episodes to mirror fragmentation and finitude, the Romance episodic plot can be seen as a kind of “mimesis of the infinite.” One type of this infinite perspective of Romance is the long tradition, “much older than the ‘vast French romances’ of The Rape of the Lock,” of “naïve” forms in which the protagonist undertakes adventure after adventure without undergoing any perceptible development or even aging, and without progressing toward any foreseeable conclusion.31 This tradition survives in modern counterparts such as the comic strip. According to Frye, such stories are “designed to provide a kind of idealized shadow of the continuum of our lives, an endless dream world in which we can keep losing ourselves.”32 The analogue to this structure in less naïve Romance forms (like the Journeyman Years) is one which seeks to capture the infinite within the confines of a finite form through multiple internal mirrorings. Such a “modulation of the endless romance33 is the “wreath of novellas,” the cycle of linked tales or smaller romances unified by a common frame. This is, indeed, one of the most common Romance forms, The Canterbury Tales, The Decameron, The Arabian Nights, and The Faerie Queen being the most familiar examples. The medieval romances, with their intricately interwoven, multiple plot strands, represent yet another variant. The nineteenth-century prose Romance can be distinguished from the novel in much the same way: the Romance usually requires a narrator, who relates the story “with linear accents,” as opposed to the novel, which “manoeuvers around a central situation.”34 Romance displays a “polyphonic” form, a profusion of adventures related by multiple narrators, and a centrifugal dispersion of interest.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

104

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

There are two major variants of the central episodic plot of Romance. These are the amorous quest and a more spiritual quest, usually overtly symbolic if not allegorical, that involves wandering and adventure. Either can be stressed to the virtual exclusion of the other, or the two can be combined in varying degrees. Both distinguish Romance from picaresque narrative, for the picáro lacks love,35 and his progress through the world is a series of “anti-adventures,” a selfish “anti-quest” for material comfort and security. The Romance form closest to the pole of the exclusively “amorous” plot is the Greek prose romance, which Scholes and Kellogg define succinctly: “The plot elements of these romances are highly stylized. A young couple fall in love, are prevented from consummating their love by various catastrophes which place them in grave danger while separated from one another, but they emerge chaste and unscathed, to marry at the end of the narrative” (p. 68). The second archetypal Romance plot, the spiritual quest, represents a sublimation of the first. This sublimated form can range from a focus upon more “Platonic” kinds of love36 to the bloodless idealism of the allegorical quest and the essayistic thrust of the philosophical romance, which constantly skirts the borders of non-fiction, and thus represents the polar opposite of the Greek romance. Scholes and Kellogg distinguish three forms of the quest romance: “the journey to a distant goal” (as in the Aeneid), “the return home” (as in the Odyssey), and “the quest, which involves voyage out, achievement, and return” (as in the Argonautica) (p. 228). The two plots can be intertwined, and often are (as in e.g. Wolfram’s Parzival); or the process of sublimation can be depicted within the development of a single character as he transfers the intent of his striving to the higher goal: one finds such a shift in the same work within Parzival himself, who quickly abandons the pursuit of “courtly love” in order to seek the Grail. What both plots share is the core experience of wandering: “there is always something of the nomadic in romance … an imaginative uprooting, a drive over and across everything settled and planted and built.”37 Wandering brings the Romance hero trials that prove him worthy of the ideal he pursues. A further essential characteristic of the Romance plot is the “happy ending.” Certain romances do end tragically (Pyramus and Thisbe, Romeo and Juliet, and Wuthering Heights): the possibility always lies near at hand that the death-and-resurrection plot of the Romance will be frustrated, ending only in death. One recalls Frye’s modal circle in which the first half of the Romance mode is coextensive with the first half of Tragedy.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Romance

105

Yet when it occurs within the mode of the Romance, Tragedy is not present as a positive structure, but rather as a frustration of that modality’s fundamentally comic thrust: A romance is normally comic, in the sense that usually the heroine’s wiles or whatever are successful and the story ends with marriage or some kind of deliverance. Tragedy or pathos comes from some obstacle or accident which frustrates this conclusion … Such romantic tragedies as Romeo and Juliet or The Bride of Lammermoor seem more like a comedy gone wrong: for all Romeo’s talk about the stars, his tragedy is not built into the scheme of things as the tragedy of Lear is, or that of Oedipus before him.38

The tragic ending is so infrequent within Romance that the “happy ending” is almost universally recognized as one of the most salient characteristics of the mode.39 As in comedy, the most common resolution of the plot is a marriage which can, and often does, symbolize higher forms of union. There is within Romance a marriage-ending that corresponds to each of the two fundamental plots: the sexual union or reunion (usually, but not necessarily, in marriage) of the long-separated lovers of the “amorous” romance, and an analogous “marriage” between the seeker and his long-sought ideal. The latter form of marriage is usually highly symbolic, a “deliverance” (as Frye terms it) from a state of alienation, a reunion with the divine or, later, with the divine-in-nature. Following Eleanor Hinz, I shall term this latter form of marriage “hierogamy,” and discuss it in some detail later in connection with the Journeyman Years. The lineaments of this archetypal Romance plot structure are immediately recognizable within the Journeyman Years. Wilhelm’s vow never to spend more than three days in one place, and never to return to the same place again, gives rise to an episodic narrative that brings a change of scenery and a different cast of characters with virtually every chapter. Yet this narrative represents only one of the many episodic sequences that interweave to form the narrative fabric of the novel. Two central plots of equal importance can be discerned: the “Felix-Hersilie” plot, and the plot of Wilhelm’s wanderings, essentially the “Wilhelm-Makarie” plot. As is typical of Romance, neither could be termed more central than the other: they interweave with each other, and then with numerous smaller plots, episodes, and stories in turn. The addition of other essential Romance elements – especially the interpolated sequence of novellas that merges in places with its frame – results in a Romance form of astounding subtlety and complexity. The mode of narration is decidedly “polyphonic”: each novella brings a new narrator, and thus opens up a new narrative

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

106

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

perspective, while the remnants of the first version’s predominantly “archival” form, in which virtually every character speaks for himself through letters, stories, and odd epigrams, adds even more voices to the fugue. Moreover, the Journeyman Years’s two main plots correspond precisely to the two archetypal plots of Romance, the “amorous” and the “spiritual” quests. The “Felix-Hersilie” plot represents an “amorous” quest (with Hersilie appropriately remote and idealized and Felix appropriately impetuous) while Wilhelm’s wanderings, encounter with Makarie, and search for a vocation represent a “spiritual” quest. The ending of the novel, in which Wilhelm and Felix meet like Castor and Pollux, represents an interweaving of the two plots, but also a sublimation of the amorous plot with its sexual love into the more Platonic love between father and child – again, as I have argued earlier, typical of Romance. Moreover, the function of both the novellas and the collections of aphorisms (“Reflections in the Spirit of the Wanderers” at the end of Book II, and “From Makarie’s Archives” at the end of Book III) can perhaps best be understood by viewing them as antitheses, as thematic and formal counterpoints to the “FelixHersilie” and “Wilhelm-Makarie” plots respectively. Excepting only “The Perilous Wager,” the novellas all represent variations upon the theme of love between men and women, and serve to explore the consequences of passionate excess, vanity, and infidelity, as well as moderation, patience, conscientious sympathy, and renunciation. Similarly, the aphorisms might be seen as “thought adventures,” individual “quests-in-miniature” within Wilhelm’s more cognitional realm; their inclusion in the novel is motivated, however tenuously, by Wilhelm’s encounter with Makarie and the astronomer. Finally, each of the two loosely interwoven plots has its own “happy ending,” although the situation is complicated in that the endings cross, merge, and intertwine numerous separate strands. The “amorous” Felix plot concludes happily when he is saved from passionate excess by Wilhelm. This scene reflects in turn the scene in which the key that symbolizes Felix’s attraction to Hersilie, broken by his passionate attempt to open the casket, is repaired, while the casket, a kind of Pandora’s box that rises from the depths rather than falling from the sky (like the mysterious kuphete in the projected continuation of Goethe’s Pandora),40 is sealed once and for all. With it are closed up all the dark drives that have made Felix unworthy of Hersilie, and the reader is led to believe that his union with Hersilie will ultimately follow. Another amorous plot, the story of Lenardo and Nachodine, concludes in a similar fashion: Lenardo successfully passes his trial of renunciation, and his eventual union with Nachodine, now the

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Romance

107

“Virtuous Beauty,” is presaged when the latter takes the place of Angela beside Makarie. In the “rash of happy endings” near the novel’s conclusion,41 Montan and Lydie are reunited, Philine appears happily reformed, and even Angela becomes engaged.42 Montan attains “hierogamy,” the cognitional correlate to “marriage,” in his highly symbolic meeting with Makarie and the astronomer, as does Wilhelm, who shows mastery of his craft, and thus a certain attainment of the higher union, the living understanding of man and nature he had sought, in saving Felix.43

5.4 Closely related to the episodic plot is another fundamental characteristic of Romance form: vertical structure. In more “realistic” fictional modes, the plot progresses horizontally according to the laws of causality and probability toward a fully motivated resolution of the central situation. Romance is structured quite differently: it usually presents not a coherent story progressing toward a probable conclusion, but rather a sequence of archetypal images or experiences. The unifying element in Romance is the inner coherence of symbolic scenes according to their own “symbolic logic.” Readers and critics often fault Romance fictions for “lack of unity,” whereas they are merely unable (or unwilling) to recognize a unifying principle other than that of the “hence” narrative.44 Romance substitutes the horizontal extension of the “hence” narrative with vertical projections into realms above and beneath those of ordinary human experience: describing the formal characteristics of Shakespeare’s last plays, Frye writes of a return to “the expanded screen of the old romances” and a “vertical extension of the action into upper and lower worlds.” The simplest variant consists of a tension between two worlds, an idealized world above, and a demonic parody of the idealized world beneath normal human experience.45 As an example one might adduce the vertical structure of The Tempest, where Prospero and Ariel on the one hand, and Caliban on the other, represent the poles of the vertical axis. While there must always be a certain amount of horizontal movement in any literary fiction, the primary movement within Romance passes along the vertical axis from one level to the next. The fully developed vertical structure found in more sophisticated Romance typically exhibits four main levels, two above our own, and two below it.46 The highest is a kind of heaven, the abode of the divine; although this realm is “strictly beyond space,” it may “be symbolized, as in

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

108

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

Dante’s Paradiso, by the spatial metaphor of heaven in the sense of the sky, the world of the sun, moon and stars.”47 The level immediately below this is occupied by an “earthly paradise” – in Christian terms, the Garden of Eden. The third level is that of ordinary, everyday experience; the fourth, a demonic or evil world beneath the third, such as the Christian vision of Hell, although there are analogs to this in the literature of non-Christian cultures. The universe of Dante’s Divina Commedia exhibits this fourfold structure immediately and unambiguously, with the “inferno” representing a realm beneath (both spatially and morally – the two are always correlative in Romance) the normal earthly existence from which Dante departs; the “purgatorio” representing a realm in which we can gradually regain the earthly paradise located at the peak of the mountain; and the “paradiso” representing the heavenly realm. As in the Divina Commedia, ascent within this vertical structure is accompanied, and usually preceded, by descent, but in the end ascension tends to prevail, in keeping with the Romance’s function as an extension of an impulse that is fundamentally Comic.48 Although it has not been seen in conjunction with Romance form, the vertical structure of the Journeyman Years has been noted and described with great precision, primarily by Erich Trunz in his commentary to the Hamburger Edition.49 If one pursues further this intuition of a vertical hierarchical structure in the Journeyman Years, one eventually arrives at a fourfold hierarchy that corresponds quite closely to the vertical ordering of space – the mythological universe underlying the Romance mode as Frye describes it in The Secular Scripture. Corresponding to the level of “earth” in Frye’s scheme is the plane of the novellas in the Journeyman Years. In Goethe’s novel, this is the realm of experience, vanity, and desires, mimetically the closest to what we conceive to be everyday life. Above this realm lies another corresponding to Frye’s Romance earthly paradise: the realm of utopias, which range above the plane immediately below through association with towers or mountains. This is the realm of the Society of the Tower, of Makarie’s castle with its observatory, of the Pedagogical Province located high within the mountains, and of the story of Joseph.50 The plane above the novellas is that of the frame, or of the novellas that merge with the frame when their characters join “the renunciants,” those who have climbed the Mount of Purgatory, as it were, and have been cleansed of selfishness and passion.51 Moreover, there are in the Journeyman Years planes both above and below those of the novellas and the frame. Above is a cosmic plane

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Romance

109

corresponding to Frye’s divine realm, symbolized, as is usual in Romance, by the astronomical heavens. Only one figure in the novel, Makarie, actually inhabits this realm in any sense. Beneath the novellas lies a subterranean, “sub-human” realm of caves, labyrinthine gorges, and the dangerous casket. These spatial depths symbolize the dark recesses of the inner life. Flavio, overcome with passion, is imagined as being pursued by furies (WMJY, 238; MA XVII, 434); looking at him, Hilarie later reacts as though the gates of Hell had been opened before her.52 At the end of the novel, Felix, when he is saved from the consequences of passion by his father, is likened to one of the Dioscuri rising up “from Orcus to the realm of light” (WMJY, 471; MA XVII, 687). Downward movement within this vertical structure represents a tendency towards isolation: e.g. Montan, who is most clearly associated with this sub-human realm of rocks and minerals, is also the most misanthropic. The dangers of descent are egotism and passion. Upward movement, on the other hand, represents a tendency toward community and selflessness, the best example of which is Makarie, who mediates all personal difficulties by mirroring back to each soul its own higher nature (e.g. WMJY 252; MA XVII, 453). The danger of such ascent is a loss of self within the higher community.53 In the Journeyman Years, upward movement within this vertical hierarchy is predominant and clearly preferable to descent. This vertical ethical orientation in the form of the novel is mirrored in miniature by the “four reverences” taught in the Pedagogical Province: there the children are taught to reverence, while performing appropriately symbolic gestures, that which is above man, that which is beneath him, that which is at the same level (their fellow men), and finally themselves.54 Here the vertical hierarchy of Romance and man’s intermediate position within that hierarchy are strikingly preserved. Even “reverence for that beneath” is a way of moving upwards, a path of personal ennoblement. Humility purifies the soul of selfishness and desire. Together, the principles of renunciation and reverence constitute an ethos very much like the more explicit “strongly enforced code of conduct to which all the characters must comply” that Gillian Beer lists as one of the chief characteristics of Romance.

5.5 The “vertical extension of the action into upper and lower worlds” in the Journeyman Years, described earlier in terms of the “expanded screen of the old romances,”55 represents a move away from realistic mimesis toward the symbolic, even the mythical. Such a movement away from realistic

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

110

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

mimesis has long been seen as the touchstone for identifying the historical genres Frye groups beneath the Romance mode, beginning with Clara Reeve’s early but prescient distinction between the Romance and the novel: The Romance is an heroic fable, which treats of fabulous persons and things. – The novel is a picture of real life and manners, and of the times in which it is written. The Romance in lofty and elevated language, describes what never happened nor is likely to happen. – The novel gives a familiar relation of such things, as pass every day before our eyes. (vol. I, p. 111)

Samuel Johnson characterizes Romance less charitably as a “wild strain of imagination,” arguing that the romancer needed only “to retire to his closet, let loose his invention, and heat his mind with incredibilities,” which would enable such an author to produce a book “without fear of criticism, without the toil of study, without knowledge of nature, or acquaintance with life” (p. 19). In his Essay on Romance, Walter Scott also contrasts the Romance with the novel: the “Romance” he defines as “a fictitious narrative in prose or verse; the interest of which turns upon marvelous and uncommon incidents,” while the novel is for him “a fictitious narrative, differing from the Romance, because the events are accommodated to the ordinary train of human events and the modern state of society” (p. 100). Hawthorne keeps very much within this vein in the Preface to his own Romance The House of the Seven Gables: When a writer calls his work a Romance, it need hardly be observed that he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume had he professed to be writing a Novel. The latter form of composition is presumed to aim at a very minute fidelity, not merely to the possible, but to the probable and ordinary course of man’s experience. The former – while, as a work of art, it must rigidly subject itself to laws, and while it sins unpardonably so far as it may swerve aside from the truth of the human heart – has fairly a right to present that truth under circumstances, to a great extent, of the writer’s own choosing or creation. (p. xxi)

Of course these characteristics are somewhat contradictory in detail (Hawthorne’s romances, for example, do not contain the truly “fabulous persons and things” Clara Reeve finds essential), but then each of these writers is discussing historical genres, rather than the Romance mode, which subsumes all historical genres. The mode of Romance is characterized by that which all these varying definitions share: a stress upon nonrealistic, non-displaced mimesis.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Romance

111

More recent criticism has only underscored this distinction. Frye places the Romance nearest pure myth in his modal scheme: for him it is mimetically the least realistic or “displaced” of modes. The world of the Romance hero is one in which “the ordinary laws of nature are slightly suspended”;56 Romance is “the nearest of all literary forms to the wish-fulfillment dream,” and is forever seeking “some kind of imaginative golden age in time or space.”57 Gillian Beer also stresses the centrality of supernatural or idealized – i.e. non-mimetic – elements in romance (pp. 9–10). In his essay Form and Meaning in Medieval Romance, Eugène Vinaver has argued that the psychological motivation of mimetically realistic narratives gives way in Romance to an entirely different kind of motivation that arises directly from the constellation of thematic symbols and images itself (p. 18) – the kind of “symbolic logic” that we have found to be typical of all aspects of Romance form. That the Journeyman Years exhibit this feature of “undisplacement” so essential to the Romance mode has been attested by numerous critics. Paul Böckmann characterizes the form of Goethe’s novel as one in which “the illusion of characters and actions otherwise proper to the novel is sublated, and instead it suggested to the reader to take part in another kind of novelistic illusion, in which a spiritual world is created through a union of the didactic with the historical” (p. 35). Claude David argues that the Journeyman Years must be seen as a “symbolic fiction,” in which the characters are less individualized, and the narration focuses so much more on “typifying” than “painterly depiction” that the novel seems located in “an imaginary space.”58 Spranger has emphasized the novel’s “fairytale-like features” (p. 196), while Katharina Mommsen stresses the Journeyman Years’s “proximity to the fairytale” (p. 125), the “insouciant interplay from the real into the sphere of the fairytale-like” (p. 127) so characteristic of its narration. Moreover, it is clear that Goethe was himself completely conscious of this formal quality of the late novel that made it so very different from the Apprenticeship, and so incomprehensible to his contemporaries. In a conversation with Riemer of April 4, 1814 (well after work on the Journeyman Years had begun), Goethe revealed the direction in which he was moving by comparing the Apprenticeship with two later, more symbolic works, The Natural Daughter and Pandora: A remarkable expression by Goethe about himself, a propos Wilhelm Meister. “That only youth has variety and specification, old age the genera, indeed the Familias.” Showed it in himself and Titian, who finally painted velvet only symbolically …

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

112

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman In his Natural Daughter and in Pandora, Goethe entered into the generic; in Meister one still had variety. (Graf 1569)

In a conversation of 1821, at which time Goethe’s plans to complete the trilogy with a Wilhelm Meister’s Years of Mastery seem to have been very much alive, he warned that this tendency away from realistic mimesis toward the symbolic would be carried even further: “… the Years of Mastery are even more difficult, the most difficult part of the whole trilogy. Everything is to be taken only symbolically, and everywhere something different is standing behind it. Every solution of a problem is a new problem.”59 It is neither possible, nor really necessary, to consider all the instances, of which there are so many in the Journeyman Years, of this tendency toward the symbolic, the archetypal, and the mythical. Characterization presents itself as an immediate and essential example. One finds throughout a tendency toward the symbolic, even the allegorical, which is entirely consonant with the Journeyman Years’s Romance modality. Frye describes the figures in a typical romance as “characters in vacuo idealized by revery”60; unlike the picáro, whose psyche is depicted as many-faceted yet disorganized, the hero of Romance is simple yet highly structured. Like the Comic protagonist, the Romance hero is usually characterized by a single, overriding character trait. Yet in the Romance hero, this single trait is not a disruptive humor, but rather the humor’s positive analogue: a single perfection that symbolizes a host of others. Numerous characters in the Journeyman Years bear allegorical names: Meister and Felix continue from the Apprenticeship; Jarno of the Apprenticeship has become Montan. Makarie’s and Angela’s names are openly symbolic-allegorical, while in the course of the narrative Nachodine becomes “the virtuous beauty.”61 The story of Joseph that begins the novel might be viewed as a systematic baring of the same formal device, a kind of introductory “paradigm case” for the translation of the realistic into the mythical. The episodes surrounding Makarie have been seen as Goethe’s attempt to create a Platonic myth, an “myth of immortality.”62 Others in the novel are at least momentarily imagined mythically: Nachodine as Penelope weaving; Felix first as Ulysses (WMJY, 125; MA XVII, 281), then as Adam to Hersilie’s Eve,63 and finally as Castor to Wilhelm’s Pollux in the last scene of the novel (WMJY, 417; MA XVII, 687). Trunz’s commentary upon this scene – that it represents an “earthly myth” constituting “the Polar complement to the myth of light” (HA VIII, 658) – makes clear that extension downwards along the vertical axis of Romance represents movement from the realistic into the mythic as well. Indeed, the entire scene is profoundly archetypal, with its

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Romance

113

overtones of Greek mythology; the flowing river (as an image of time, or perhaps symbolizing the rivers of Paradise); intimations of a netherworld and an overworld; the father who resurrects his son; and the image of Felix lying naked, newly created by the Elohim. Equally mythic is the dominant motif of the casket, both in “The New Melusine” and elsewhere, with its resonances from “fairy tales,” “astral legends,” “the Greek myths of the parcae,”64 and even the Eleusinian mysteries. Thus, the sublation of realistic narration and movement toward symbolism begun in the Comic phase of the Apprenticeship is greatly extended in the Romance phase represented by the Journeyman Years.65

5.6 It was noted earlier that numerous critics have sought a principle of formal unity in the Journeyman Years but found none: instead, they stress what they see as the novel’s sheer openness, complexity, and diversity. Goethe’s contemporaries also missed such a unifying principle. Yet Goethe himself saw the work differently: he wrote of a “romantic thread” running through the work, weaving it together into a “marvelously attractive whole.”66 To one correspondent who had criticized the “disunity” of the first version Goethe replied rather defensively: That you reined in your impatience in rereading the Journeyman Years makes me very happy. The context, goal, and purpose lies within the little book itself; it may not be of one piece, yet it’s of one sense. This was the task: to bring several strange outer occurrences into a concord of feeling. The second part won’t be any more satisfying than the first.67

Although the unity of the Journeyman Years was certainly not the simple, systematic unity of classical form, Goethe did insist that there was a unifying “sense” at work reconciling and conjoining seeming antitheses in the novel. Other interpreters have intuited a certain unity in the Journeyman Years, yet have been able to describe it only in the vaguest ways. Eberhard Lämmert, for example, in his Structures of Narration, describes the Journeyman Years’s unusual mode of narrative integration merely as a “unhampered mode of connection” (p. 62), while Wilhelm Emrich argues that in the novel formal “totality” is “achieved only indirectly” (p. 351), without explaining how. Katharina Mommsen sees the selection of motives as an “equivalent” to formal unity amidst formal license: “the lack of formal unity is thus replaced by the unity of the motifs” (p. 121). Yet surely the unity of all

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

114

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

motifs must originate at a level of formal organization above that of the individual motif, which would then constitute a “formal unity.” Claude David claims to have found the unifying principle of the Journeyman Years’s narrative in the concept of chance, which forces him, however, into some rather paradoxical statements, e.g.: “One can literally say that a kind of reason is ascribed to chance” (p. 117); and “A certain disorder can only add to the sense of the whole” (p. 117). Yet one must wonder how chance – the picaresque “disunity-principle” – can serve as the foundation for artistic unity, and whether David has not rather begged the entire question. More recently two very precise metaphors or formal analogs of the unifying principle in the Journeyman Years have come to dominate discussion of the novel’s form: Goethe’s own image of “repeated reflections,” and that of musical polyphony. These subtle insights have indeed proved keys that unlock many of the novel’s formal secrets. Yet I shall argue later that these perspectives on the form of the Journeyman Years open out upon an even greater vista; that they can in turn best be understood when seen within the context of the Romance mode. In this way it shall become possible to define even more precisely the kind of formal unity-in-diversity achieved in the Journeyman Years’s narration, and to see clearly the relationship between this and other formal and thematic aspects of Goethe’s novel. The tremendous refraction of attention and diversity of perspectives generated by the Journeyman Years’s multiple narration is typical of Romance form. In The Nature of Narrative, Scholes and Kellogg trace this device from Heliodorus, who first employed it extensively in his romances, through more modern Romance writers: As narrators are multiplied, evidence becomes hearsay, empiricism becomes romance. The multiplication of narrators is characteristic of modern fictions which lean toward romance (as the fictions of Conrad, Faulkner, and Isak Dinesen clearly do); it is characteristic of earlier romantic novels of the Gothic variety, and of such a compromise between the novel and the Gothic tale as Wuthering Heights. (p. 262)

The shift from single to multiple narration is accompanied by an analogous shift from a “simple linear plot” to a “multifoliate plot.”68 In a similar vein, Gillian Beer lists as “the traditional narrative techniques of prose romance” … the apparent prolixity, the easy way of calling back into activity episodes and characters long abandoned, the burgeoning of story out of story … the infinitely supple tension, the prolific and apparently disorderly

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Romance

115

inclusiveness, the way in which events engender a whole range of disconnected happenings whose connections, are yet felt though never pointed,69 the onward drift which dissolves the present into the past and remakes new presents which themselves dislimn. (pp. 76–77)

Beer adds that these narrative techniques “make the experience of reading the romances close to the experiencing of life” (p. 77) and give them a unique “power of synthesizing what seem to us to be disparate sources of experience” (p. 26). In a way, the romances “make available and apparent simultaneously all their preoccupations” (Beer, p. 20). Beer seconds C. S. Lewis’s suggestion that the organization of Romance works might best be described as “polyphonic narrative” (p. 20). As in polyphonic music, in which the various voices move independently yet harmonize, romance narration “moves freely while at the same time being interwoven to compose a congruent whole” (p. 20). Following Eugène Vinaver, Beer finds a further analogy to Romance polyphonic narration in the interlacing [“entrelacement”] of motifs end ornament in the visual art of the Middle Ages (p. 21), a device that allows the romancers to intimate “the infinity which everywhere touches on the world they display” without resorting to overt allegory (p. 18). It is in Eugène Vinaver’s address Form and Meaning in Medieval Romance, however, that one finds the subtlest and most precise characterization of the unique quality of Romance narration. Vinaver relates in outline the efforts of the late twelfth- and thirteenth-century writers to arrange the various Arthurian legends, tales, and sagas into “a vast rational ensemble” (p. 7), a true “Arthurian cycle.” Their chief problem, according to Vinaver, was to find a way to narrate in coherent fashion adventures that had been transmitted independently and haphazardly, and had thus lost whatever organic connection they might once have possessed. The device they eventually hit upon was to weave together the stories in such a way that none could stand alone, because each implied and was entwined with the others: To achieve this effect the author, or authors, had recourse to a narrative device known to earlier writers, including Ovid, but never before used on so vast a scale, namely the device of interweaving two or more separate themes. Far from being a mosaic from which any one stone could be removed without upsetting the rest, the Cycle turned out to be remarkably like the fabric of matting or tapestry; a single cut across it, made at any point, would unravel it all. And yet it was clearly not a unified body of material: it consisted of a variety of themes, independent of, but inseparable from, one another. (p. 10)

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

116

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

The result was “an eminently acentric composition, with as much internal cohesion as one would find in any centralized pattern” (Vinaver, p. 10), an entirely “un-Aristotelian” mode of unity. Such a Romance form is woven between the warp and woof of amplification or digressio, an “expansion or an unrolling of a number of interlocked themes” (Vinaver, pp. 11–12), and “interlacing.” The result is an ordered projection of the narrative threads, a “stretching” of the narrative fabric “until the reader loses every sense of limitation in time or space” (p. 12). The Romance thus remains totally “open-ended,” yet each section is a microcosm of the potential whole: And since it is always possible, and often even necessary, for several themes to be pursued simultaneously, they have to alternate like threads in a woven fabric, one theme interrupting another and again another, and yet all remaining constantly present in the author’s and the reader’s mind. The adventures which constitute the great cycles of romances thus become part of a carefully thought-out structure of fantastic dimensions – of a narrative composition in which a coherence of the subtlest kind exists, though it is conveyed, not, as most modern readers would expect, through explanatory observations and discourses, but through the amplification and expansion of the matter itself – a device which it will take the modern world nearly half-a-millennium to re-discover through the work of a few solitary writers of our own time.70

Vinaver finds analogs to this archetypal Romance formal principle in the basic patterns of Romanesque and early Gothic ornament, especially the “interlace” and the “coiling spiral” (p. 14). Unlike classical ornament, in which the design approaches and recedes from an imaginary center, this acentric medieval ornament moves toward “potential infinity” (p. 14), then returns whence it came. Like Romanesque ornament, Romance narrative is anything but chaotic: the subtle principles of its unity are merely less obvious. The extent to which the same, or very similar, analogies have been employed to characterize the form of the Journeyman Years is truly remarkable. In his book Goethe and the Novel, Eric Blackall entitles his interpretation of the Journeyman Years “Counterpoint in the Symbolic Mode,” choosing the same metaphor to describe the work’s underlying structure that C. S. Lewis had found most apt to describe the form of Romance: musical polyphony. Like Lewis’s medieval Romances, the Journeyman Years resounds with rich choruses of antiphonal voices, seemingly independent in their movement yet continually yielding subtle harmonies when “heard together”: The counterpoint of the final Journeymanship is of various kinds: there are themes and counterthemes, there are primary subjects and secondary subjects, there is a main structure into which lesser and to a certain extent

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Romance

117

contrasting structures are introduced. The total effect is one of richness achieved by polar tensions, of tensions building one upon the other, progressively and yet not dialectically, for no synthesis is reached at the end.71

Victor Lange has also noted an essential formal principle in the Journeyman Years that reminds one precisely of Vinaver’s interlacing, in which no one segment is meaningful in itself, but only in the context of its interweavings with other segments: The world through which Wilhelm and his son are led is pieced together from a multiplicity of details, each in itself important, but deriving its full force only from the light which they all, in turn, cast upon each other. What results, or what, at any rate, Goethe meant to produce, was an interlocking system of archetypal forms …72

Another scholar, Claude David, likens the configuration of leitmotifs that run through the work to “a symbolic filigree” (p. 114). Goethe seems to have worked quite consciously with this underlying formal principle of polar opposition and interweaving that is the key to the Journeyman Years. In one letter he explains, “I love parallel stories. One points to another, one explains its meaning better than many dry words,”73 while elsewhere he notes to himself, emphasizing the contrapuntal nature of the novel-to-be, “Everything to be worked against everything else.”74 Within the novel itself, this formal device of interweaving is “bared” by the fictive narrator of the Journeyman Years precisely in the middle of the novel, in the “Interpolation”: “In this second book we have seen our old friends’ relationships significantly enhanced, and have also made new acquaintances. … We may therefore look forward to encountering them again one after the other, mingling and separating, on paths rough and smooth” (WMJY, 267).75 The image of weaving and interweaving as a metaphor for narrative thus stands at the very center of the novel. Weaving is one of the great symbols of order for Goethe, both in the Journeyman Years and elsewhere:76 the wonderfully ordered existence of the “virtuous beauty” is symbolized by the weaving that her people perform, and in the Apprenticeship, at the moment of greatest insight into the ordering power of destiny, Wilhelm imagines his own life woven together with the lives of those around him by the flying shuttle of a great loom (WMA, 333; MA V, 545–546). An extremely apposite example of the interaction of these two principles, “digression” and “interlace,” is offered by Wilhelm’s own “narration within the narration,” the letter to Natalie in which he attempts to relate why he has decided to become a surgeon.77 Again and again he tries to come directly to the point, only to lapse into seemingly unrelated digressions.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

118

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

He begins by telling the story of a lad who finds a rudder-pin upon the seashore; his interest awakened, the lad sets about to acquire first a full rudder, then a boat, mast, sails, etc. until finally, as an indirect result of the original chance find, he becomes the master of a great ship. But then Wilhelm halts and is forced to admit: “Even as I give you occasion to reread this charming story, I must confess that it has bearing here only in the most remote sense; yet it smooths the way for what I have to say. Meanwhile I must proceed by way of matters even more distant” (WMJY, 284).78 Wilhelm goes on to discuss man’s innate faculty for imitation; how the son frequently chooses the occupation of the father, although he sometimes lacks the father’s talent; how those born into a “family talent” are perhaps the most fortunate. Yet this, too, proves to be a digression: “But since this, too, is not what I wish to say, I must try to approach my revelations from some other angle” (WMJY, 285).79 Wilhelm laments that he cannot reproduce in writing the complicated intermediate steps that weave together the thoughts that lead to resolution: “The sad thing about being far from friends is that we cannot instantaneously join and connect thoughts by means of those intermediary and auxiliary elements that develop on both sides and weave back and forth as quick as lightning when we are together. Here, then, to begin with, a story from my early youth” (WMJY, 285).80 Wilhelm despairs of reproducing the fullness of reality, but hits upon a way of narration that approximates this fullness: a series of seeming digressions that are actually subtly interrelated, or “interwoven,” as Wilhelm’s telling metaphor conveys. Wilhelm’s letter to Natalie is an attempt to reproduce in narrative the infinitely complicated yet immediate, and thus timeless, workings of the mind in assessing its own destiny. What Wilhelm has to convey is too subtle for direct assertion or immediate exposition. His decision to become a surgeon is inseparable from the process that has led up to it, yet no single phase of the process would be meaningful in isolation, either. Only when all the episodes are seen together do their “deep subliminal inter-relationships” stand revealed.81 The seeming digressions actually interlace end interweave to form a subtle tapestry, a narrative fabric just like that of the romance as described by Vinaver. Wilhelm’s letter to Natalie, which seeks to make sense of his whole life’s course, is a microcosm of the entire novel, one that condenses and lays bare in a most remarkable way the formal underpinnings of the Journeyman Years as a whole. There follows Wilhelm’s relation of his childhood friendship with the so-called “son of the fisherman,” the latter’s drowning, and Wilhelm’s

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Romance

119

passionate yet unsuccessful attempts to revive him. Yet even this digression proves insufficient to attain the goal. Wilhelm apologizes for having to pursue such a “digression,” and in the process arrives at yet another telling metaphor for the subtle, indirect mode of narration that his letter, and the Journeyman Years as a whole, display: But if after this involved story I have to confess that I still have not arrived at my intended goal and can hope to reach it only by a detour, what can I say! How shall I excuse myself? At all events, I could offer the following observation: if it is permissible for the humorist to throw together a hodgepodge of inconsequential details, if he brazenly leaves it to the reader to extract that half-meanings hidden in the confusion, should it not be incumbent upon the intelligent and reasonable person to strive in a seemingly curious fashion after many different points, until one can finally identify them, reflected and gathered into one focal point, and comprehend how the most diverse influences surrounding a person impel him to a decision which he could’ve made in no other way, neither out of inner impulse nor outward occasion? (WMJY, 291–292)82

Wilhelm likens his narrative to a set of mirrors arranged around a periphery that are however unified in their effect, in that they are all focused upon one central focal point. Goethe had used a similar image in a letter to the orientalist Karl Iken in 1827: “Since many of our experiences can’t be spoken of immediately and directly communicated, for a long time I’ve chosen the means of revealing the meaning to those capable of noting of mutually reflecting formations.”83 Numerous critics have found this analogy of “repeated mirrorings” particularly apt in describing the form of the Journeyman Years.84 For our purposes, it is most important to realize that this metaphor of “repeated mirrorings” is in every way the equivalent of those of “polyphony,” “weaving,” and of “digression” and “interlace,” that Vinaver and others have used to describe the unique texture of romance narrative. In Goethe’s Romance, as in all Romance, the ultimate goal is to capture the infinite within the finite, a mimesis of “potential infinity” that is ideal, yet as complex, contradictory and all-inclusive as one’s experience of life itself – a kind of realism subsumed beneath the ideal: With such a little book it’s as it is with life itself: in the complex of the whole there’s to be found necessary and chance occurrences, things proposed and things excluded, soon successful, soon done in vain, whereby it attains a kind of infinity that intelligible and reasonable words cannot thoroughly grasp nor enclose.85

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

120

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

Here one might recall that the largest structural “counterpoint” in the novel, the “mutual reflection” and “interweaving” of the novellas and their frame, is a form that Frye has called “a modulation of the endless romance.”86 Even better, one might recall that the archetypal “movement” of the Journeyman Years, with its digressive, ever-expanding inclusiveness, is presented ideally in the image of Makerie’s spiraling journey out into the cosmos. The spiral is, as Vinaver has shown, an analogue of the interlace (p. 14), and thus an archetypal Romance form. Finally, one notes a remarkable similarity between the way in which medieval Romancer sought to unite the disparate Arthurian adventures into a single cohesive narrative, and the gestation process of the Journeyman Years from its earliest, formative stages in 1807 through the first version of 1821 to the final version of 1829.87 The version of 1821 was a true aggregate that presented itself as an “archival novel”: a fictive editor presented the plethora of novellas, epigrams, and isolated incidents more or less “as he found them,” leaving the work of unifying them mentally to the reader. The 1829 version Goethe shaped into a coherent whole, a symbolic novel with “a highly complex, but nevertheless unitary structure.”88 In the twenty years in which the Journeyman Years took shape, Goethe worked steadily toward the culmination of Romance form: complete unity-in-diversity. Was this not one of the last and grandest visions in Dante’s greatest of Romances, the vision of the scattered sibyl’s leaves of the universe all bound together in one book by love?89

5.7 Much has been said already in Section 5.7 concerning the metamorphosis of narrative structure that occurs between the Apprenticeship and the Journeyman Years. The narrative situation of the Apprenticeship, in which one omniscient narrator looks down upon his narrative with complete insight and thus with complete control of tone, has disappeared. As Spranger has noted, the narrator of the sequel is no longer a “psychological observer,”90 but rather an editor of others’ narratives. Volker Neuhaus discerns approximately twenty different narrators in the Journeyman Years, exclusive of the authors of the various epigrams appended to Books II and III.91 The one narrator who speaks directly to the reader has merely taken it upon himself to collect and organize others’ narratives. Thus he characterizes himself as the “collector and arranger of these papers” (WMJY, 380)92 as the “editor of these pages” (WMJY, 277),93 and as a “faithful reviewer”

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Romance

121

(HA VIII, 532).94 Even the Wilhelm plot, which seems initially to be narrated by the editor, is in fact (as Neuhaus has well argued)95 a transposition of Wilhelm’s Diary from the first into the third person. The Diary itself is mentioned in Wilhelm’s letter to Natalie (see WMJY 101; MA XVII, 246); as Neuhaus shows (p. 19), it is this device that allows, among other things, description of the Society of Emigrants through Wilhelm’s innocent eyes. Although this “editor” addresses himself directly to the reader, the complicity between reader and narrator that characterizes the Apprenticeship and is the basis of its irony is no longer present in the sequel. The narrator of the Journeyman Years is not in control of the tone of the work; he has no special psychological or philosophical insight upon which the reader is dependent. In places he goes so far as to underscore his own lack of omniscience through overt admissions of ignorance, as for example in his introduction to Book II, chapter 15: Having arrived at this point, we cannot resist the temptation to share a page from our archives concerning Makarie and the special quality with which her mind was endowed. Unfortunately, this essay was written from memory, long after his contents were communicated, and thus cannot be regarded as entirely authentic, as might be wished in so remarkable a case. (WMJY, 409)96

Among others, Emil Staiger has argued that it is chapter fifteen where Goethe reveals “the deepest foundation of belief in his cosmic religion.”97 Yet if Goethe does manage to communicate his personal vision here, it is not by way of the narrator, who cannot vouch for the chapter’s authenticity, let alone explicate it. Any meaning conveyed passes over the editor’s head. Unlike the narrator of the Apprenticeship, who proves eventually to be himself a member of the Society of the Tower, the fictive editor of the Journeyman Years stands outside Makarie’s circle, as is apparent from his inability to illuminate for the reader the mysterious views and occurrences that he relates. This change in narrative structure between the Apprenticeship and the Journeyman Years makes the form of Irony so characteristic of the former impossible in the sequel. Irony as it arises in the Apprenticeship, as a function of the narrator’s superior insight and ability to shape his protagonist’s destiny freely, ceases in the Journeyman Years or, one might say, is transformed into a very different kind of irony – if indeed it can still be termed irony at all. Lack of space precludes full examination of the many examples of this different kind of irony in the Journeyman Years: instead, I quote the results of Ehrhard Bahr’s fine study Irony in the Late Works of Goethe. Bahr contrasts strongly the “rhetorical irony” characteristic of

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

122

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

most ironic fictions (including the Apprenticeship) with that employed by Goethe in his later works: “The hidden meaning is not established, but rather is approached indirectly through the opposition of polar, mirroring thoughts. That makes clear a main characteristic of Goethean irony … In Goethe were not dealing with an ironie qui sait, but rather with an ironie qui cherche. Goethean irony is already ambiguous for the author.”98 It is a narrative stance that Bahr aptly describes elsewhere as “irony from reference.”99 The ironie qui sait of the Apprenticeship has been transformed into ironie qui cherche – an irony so different in quality one might even argue that it is no longer Irony as that term is usually understood. Such a change in narrative structure and quality of irony is, again, entirely characteristic of a shift from the Comic mode into Romance. Romance narrative is typically “polyphonic”: either multiple narrators speak directly, or a single narrator presents material gathered from various sources.100 In either case, the “polyphonic” narration of Romance precludes a form of irony that is available to a single omniscient narrator. This “irony of condescension” (as one might term it) that results from the narrator’s ability to shape, comprehend and even foreknow the whole of his own narrative, is no longer possible in the multiple narrative structure of Romance. The narrator tends to become “impalpable.”101 This is especially the case in the medieval Romances. John Arthos has described the typical narrator of Romance as one “who from the beginning has called himself to our attention as a reflective person apart from the story he is telling”; unlike the drama and the epic, in which “the poet and the reader alike are drawn into the immediate scene,” “in romances our very sympathy depends on the consciousness of our separation from what we are being told of. The poet, too, is outside, and the Romance is told by someone about life within a place he himself has not yet entered.”102 Such is the narrator’s dilemma in the Roman de le Rose: And whan I had a while goon, I saugh a gardyn right anoon, Ful long and brood, and euerydell Enclosed was, and walled well With highe walles embatailled With many riche portraitures. And bothe the ymages and peyntures gen I biholde bysyly; And I wollde telle you redyly

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Romance

123

Of thilk ymages the semblaunce, As fer as I have remembraunce. But way I couthe fynde noon Into that gardyne for to goon. Ne nought wist I if that ther were Eyther hole or place where, By which I myght have entre Ne ther was noon to teche me, For I was al aloone i-wys, For-wo and angwishis of this. Till atte last bithought I me, That by no weye ne myght it be That ther nas laddre, or way to passe, or hole, into so faire a place. Tho gan I go a full grete pas, Envyroning evene in compas The closing of the square wall, Tyl that I fonde a wiket small, So shett that I ne myght in gon, And other entre was ther noon. (11. 513–30)103

The Romance narrator typically does not stand over and control his material: rather, it stands outside him, at a distance. He may, as in the Roman de la Rose, even have difficulty gaining direct access to it, and present it as a dream-experience. Yet this exclusion of the narrator from the sphere of his narrative is not confined to medieval Romance; it is typical of nearly all Romance forms. Even in a later Romance such as Wuthering Heights the heart of the narrative is supplied by a faceless housekeeper who recounts events that have happened in the “primary” narrator’s (Lockwood’s) absence.104 The gradual metamorphosis of the form of Irony found in the Apprenticeship (the higher self, in the person of the narrator, ironizing the lower, in the person of his protagonist) into that of the Journeyman Years is entirely consonant with Frye’s circle of modes. Within this scheme, Irony is a continuous measure of the gap between the potential and actual, and thus ultimately the driving force behind the dialectic of Comic “education.” Thus Frye’s characterization of ironic comedy as unfulfilled Romance: Comedy, like all forms of art that are presented in time, is primarily an impetus toward completing a certain kind of movement … Shakespearean romantic comedy presents the full or completed form of this movement;

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

124

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman ironic comedy presents incomplete or divergent forms of it. As a rule irony is intelligible only as a frustration of a completed movement which is presented in romance: thus we need to have the normal or romantic design at least unconsciously in our minds to understand the parodies of it that irony supplies.105

In Romance, the eiron-figure of Comedy, the individual who conceals a greater potential than he reveals, is replaced by a wise figure who has actualized his or her potential: In romance the “white” pieces who strive for the quest correspond to the eiron group in comedy, though the word is no longer appropriate, as irony has little place in romance. Romance has a counterpart to the benevolent retreating eiron of comedy in its figure of the “old wise man,” as Jung calls him, like Prospero, Merlin, or the Palmer of Spenser’s second quest, often a magician who affects the action he watches over. The Arthur of The Faerie Queene, though not an old man, has this function. He has a feminine counterpart in the sibylline wise mother-figure.106

The “old wise man” and the “sibylline wise mother-figure” stand “beyond irony,” as it were; they represent the fully actualized higher self with its allencompassing, and thus magical, consciousness. In the Journeyman Years, this central, wise figure – expressly a “Sibyl” – is of course Makarie.107

5.8 Having considered the principal formal features of Romance as they appear in the Journeyman Years, I turn now to discuss the novel’s most important Romance themes. An essential theme that Goethe encountered in the Romance literature he read during the 1807 journey to Karlsbad was apparent death. The archetype of death-and-resurrection is ubiquitous in the Greek romances of Xenophon, Apollonius, and Heliodorus, and is especially prominent and transparent in Shakespeare’s late romances.108 Gillian Beer sees Shakespeare as “penetrating to the organic patterns celebrated in romance … of suffering and survival, of regeneration …” (p. 38). Pericles contains three apparent deaths (those of Thaisa, Marina and, in a sense, Pericles himself, who is presumed dead by his subjects), while in The Winter’s Tale the daughter Perdita is long believed dead, while the mother, Hermione, is brought to life from an apparently lifeless statue. Cymbeline’s daughter Imogen seems dead, but has only taken a strong sleeping potion, like Juliet; while Imogen, seeing Cloten’s corpse dressed in Posthumus’s clothes, falsely believes her lover dead. In The Tempest, all are thought lost in mock death only to be found again.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Romance

125

There are three main variants of the theme of apparent death in the Journeyman Years. The first is Makarie’s apotheosis, which Trunz aptly describes as a kind of death resurrected into a higher form of life: “Faust runs up repeatedly against his limits, and only after his death does he transcend them. Makarie overcomes this limit already in this world. Her figure expresses anew the old mystical knowledge that the highest vision is a kind of death, an ‘unbecoming’” (HA VIII, 535–536). In addition, Wilhelm’s renunciation – his decision to restrict himself to one pursuit – is, as Brown has so well argued (1975, p. 51), also a kind of death, but one which is only apparent, since it also resurrects new forces within him. Yet the most important instance of apparent death in the Journeyman Years is Felix’s apparent death and resurrection at the very end of the work. And this is but the culmination of a whole series of deaths and rebirths that are “implicit throughout the novel in Felix’s series of injuries incurred for Hersilie’s sake.”109 Wilhelm’s own apparent death through renunciation also proves the source of new life – a resurrection – for his son Felix. Goethe compares Wilhelm and Felix in this scene to Castor and Pollux meeting “halfway along the road from Orcus to the realm of light” (WMJY, 417; MA XVII, 687): it is a grand symbol of resurrection, for in the myth Pollux renounces half his immortality to redeem his mortal friend Castor from death. In the end, the “screen of Romance” is widened to its furthest extension: Felix, restored and lying naked upon the ground, is imagined as the newly created, immortal Adam, a “glorious image of God” (WMJY, 417; MA XVII, 687).

5.9 Another central Romance theme touched upon earlier and actually inseparable from the formal principle of “vertical structure,” is one I shall term “anabasis” and “katabasis” or “ascent” and “descent.” In the geography of Frye’s universe of pure myth, the forces of good dwell in paradise or its equivalent, while the forces of evil are imagined in a hellish netherworld. In Romance, these two realms are displaced mimetically into the natural world, with the result that the hero and his antagonist are associated with the opposite poles of nature. As fiction becomes more displaced, this relationship prevails, if at all, in ever more oblique association. The good, or the goal of aspiration, is associated with what is naturally or geographically elevated – usually mountains or the heavens. This is in keeping with the predominance of, and preference for, upward movement within the vertical structure. The undesirable realm is symbolized on the other hand

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

126

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

by caves and labyrinthine gorges. Another form of the elevated realm is the human analog of the tower, or sometimes both the tower and mountains, as in the Journeyman Years.110 Katabasis, or descent within the vertical structure, brings with it the dangers of passion and egotism – which, paradoxically, represent a loss of identity, since the true or higher self is a communal, selfless self. Katabasis is an indispensable theme in Romance fictions: The general theme of descent, we saw, was that of a growing confusion of identity and of restrictions on action. There is a break in consciousness at the beginning, with analogies to falling asleep, followed by a descent into a lower world which is sometimes a world of cruelty and imprisonment, sometimes an oracular cave … human beings are turned into subhuman creatures … hero or heroine are trapped in labyrinths or prisons.111

Such characteristic downward movement is clearly evident in the Journeyman Years. In “The New Melusine,” we learn to see the subterranean as sub-human, a kingdom of dwarves. Yet the most important instance of katabasis in the Journeyman Years is Felix’s descent into the labyrinthine caves of the “Castle of the Giants” (WMJY, 121 ff.), which is followed by an imprisonment (WMJY, 124) and a break in consciousness (WMJY, 125): The Castle of the Giants itself is described in such a way that it suggests “a deeply mysterious, subterranean ‘life’” that threatens to ensnare one in its labyrinthine windings.112 In the cavern, within an iron casket, Felix discovers the casket (or “small octavo volume, old and splendid in appearance,” as it is also called). Friedrich Ohly has argued that this casket is remarkably similar to the cista mystica employed in the Eleusinian Mysteries, an overtly sexual symbol (cf. also the overtly sexual casket at the end of the Carnival masque in Faust II113). When the casket is taken together with its key, its sexual meaning is obvious from a Freudian perspective as well. Like the casket in “The New Melusine,” which is also associated with the subterranean realm, the casket Felix raises is a symbol of sexual love, his unbridled passion for Hersilie. It is a kind of Pandora’s Box that is best kept shut, as the aged goldsmith and jeweler wisely recommends.114 Fitz, who leads Felix to the Castle of the Giants and thus to the casket, is a roguish figure clearly in love with the illicit: Staroste has seen him as one guise of the “Hermes the Thief-archetype” (p. 51f.), while Brown even identifies him with “the Biblical tempter” (1975, p. 85). The antithesis of this sexual temptation within the “amorous” plot of Romance is considerably more attractive. I shall call this antithetical movement “amorous anabasis.” Frye describes the shape of this archetypal Romance theme succinctly:

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Romance

127

Romance, in any case, eventually takes us into the great Eros theme in which a lover is driven by his love to ascend to a higher world. This ascent is full of images of climbing or flying, of mountains, towers, ladders, spiral staircases …The great exemplar of the theme is Dante’s Purgatorio, where Dante is inspired by his love of Beatrice to climb a mountain leading to the Garden of Eden.115

The 1821 version of the Journeyman Years contains a remarkable scene in which Wilhelm, peering out through a telescope from the peak of a mountain, spies Natalie atop another peak, waving to him with a white kerchief. In the final version Natalie does not appear, but is only mentioned. Instead, the role of Makarie is greatly expanded. Ascending to meet Makarie, Wilhelm learns in the final version of a nobler kind of love, a Platonic love even more in harmony with the ultimate amorous striving of Romance than his quest of Natalie. Yet there is within Romance also a “cognitive anabasis,” a kind of ascent within the spiritual quest corresponding to that of the amatory plot. The goal of this cognitive quest is an elevated location, the point of epiphany found, in some form, in virtually all Romance fictions: One important detail in poetic symbolism [of the “mythos of Romance”] remains to be considered. This is the symbolic presentation of the point at which the undisplaced apocalyptic world and the cyclical world of nature come into alignment, and which we propose to call the point of epiphany. Its most common settings are the mountain-top, the island, the tower, the lighthouse, and the ladder or staircase.116

Like amorous anabasis, cognitive anabasis is also imagined as a spiral climb. Dante’s cognitive journey spirals around the mountain of the purgatorio, while ancient and even prehistoric monuments – thought by archaeologists to have been “points of epiphany” – often take the form of mounds or towers with spiraling external staircases. Rachel Levy has described such structures in her chapter on ziggurats in The Gate of Horn. The plan of the masonic tower, of which Makarie’s observatory is a near analogue, specifies an internalized spiral staircase – a bit of symbolism that figures prominently in most masonic catechisms.117 In the Journeyman Years, the spiraling of the observatory staircase (Wilhelm “wind[s] his way up” [WMJY, 177; MA XVII, 350]) is projected outward to form the controlling symbol of cognitive striving in the Journeyman Years, Makarie’s spiral journey out into the cosmos: Makarie stands in a relationship to our solar system that one hardly dares to express. Not only does she harbor it, and see it in her mind, in her soul, in her imagination; she constitutes a part of it, as it were.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

128

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman She sees herself drawn along in those heavenly circles, but in her own particular way; since childhood she has moved around the sun, and, to be specific, as has now become clear, in a spiral course, moving ever farther from the center and circling toward the outer regions. (WMJY, 409–410)118

The goal of cognitive anabasis, the epiphany for which the Romance hero strives, is a discovery of one’s own higher self. Makarie is the embodiment of such a paradoxically “selfless” self; she is revealed to be a mirror both of the higher selves of others (WMJY, 252; MA XVII, 453) and of the cosmos. She is a self undivided from the cosmos, and the astronomer describes her fittingly as a “living armillary sphere” (WMJY, 411). Appropriately, Wilhelm’s entry into Makarie’s realm, his climb to the top of the observatory, occasions just such an epiphany: Overwhelmed and amazed, he covered both eyes. The colossal ceases to be sublime; it exceeds our power to understand, it threatens to annihilate us. “What am I in the face of the universe?” He asked his spirit. “How can I stand before it, stand and its very midst?” Upon brief reflection, however, he continued, “The result of our evening’s discussion also solves the riddle of the present moment. How can man confront the infinite except by gathering all his spiritual forces, which are drawn in all directions, into the innermost, deepest part of his being, by asking himself: ‘Have you the right even to imagine yourself in the midst of this eternally living order if there does not immediately manifest itself inside you something in continuous motion, revolving around the pure center? And even if it would be difficult for you to find the center in your own breast, you would recognize it because a benevolent, beneficent effect emanates from it and testifies to its existence.’ (WMJY, 177)119

The epiphany has a dual effect: it nearly annihilates the “lower” self, the self that experiences itself as separate from the cosmic environment, but at the same time it awakens the experience of a higher mode of selfhood – a mode Makarie has already attained. Characteristically, the higher self is born when the amorous and cognitional strivings attain, through reverence and renunciation, what proves to be a common goal: the experience of an active intellectual love. A sense for symmetry naturally leads one to ask at this point: is there such a thing as “cognitive katabasis” in the Journeyman Years and other romances? There is indeed. Katabasis represents an ambiguous and ambivalent movement within the vertical structure of Romance: it represents a danger, but also a unique cognitive opportunity. This ambivalence is revealed in the Journeyman Years both in the figure of Montan and in Felix’s

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Romance

129

descent into the cave to raise the casket. As Staroste has argued (“Zur Ding‘Symbolik’ …,” pp. 51–53), Fitz, as a “Hermes figure,” is both “rogue” and “messenger,” both a “guide of the soul” (p. 52) and “tempter of the soul,” the psychopomp who leads Felix to a kind of hermaion or “fortunate find” (p. 53). Finding the casket represents for Felix both a temptation and a probation, an opportunity to grow in passing through the trials of new modes of experience. In Montan one sees the other positive aspect of cognitive katabasis: a new, deeper relationship to nature. The opening chapters of the Journeyman Years, in which Wilhelm gives Felix geography lessons, carries further the overcoming of alienation from nature begun in Book VIII of the Apprenticeship, where Felix’s childlike questions kindle Wilhelm’s interest in the natural world and awaken a new organ in him. Montan’s katabasis, his sympathetic self-immersion in the mineral kingdom, is of a different order from Felix’s amorous descent. He counters the threat of human isolation and even misanthropy by seeking a kind of community in nature: “One of our friends, lest he become a Timon of Athens, had buried himself in the deepest chasms of the earth, and there had come to realize that human nature contains something analogous to what is crudest and most rigid” (WMJY, 406).120 He communes with nature, and finds there something humanity shares with nature. Like Makarie, to whom he is compared and contrasted, he is united with the natural environment: the goal of their antithetical strivings is thus in a sense the same. oδoς ανω κατω μια και ωυτη121 or, as Mephistopheles advises Faust: “Sink down then! I could also say: rise up! / It’s one and the same.”122 This is symbolized in the Journeyman Years by Montan pursuing his studies on mountain peaks, as we find him in Book I, chapter three. Both anabasis and katabasis, pursued to their limits, result in union with the natural world, heavenly or earthly. Another important Romance theme that can be seen as a variant of anabasis/katabasis is the raising of the treasure. Usually this takes the form of katabasis, while its symbolic import can be either amorous or cognitive. Frye and Beer both underscore the importance of the theme in their discussions of Romance: In some romances, adventure, which commonly goes alongside love as the great theme and machinery of the work, may take over entirely. The search for treasure, whether it be grail or gold, or dragon’s horde, is engrossing enough in itself, and the object of the quest serves as the love-object. Pilgrim’s Progress, Treasure Island, and The Hobbit are three romancemutants of this sort.123

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

130

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

Another variant is Daphnis and Chloe, in which a treasure raised from the depths of the sea (found next to a stranded dolphin) provides the necessary wealth for wooing. The most famous raising of a treasure in Romance is, of course Aladdin’s in The Arabian Nights. Katharina Mommsen has placed the texts of Aladdin’s and Felix’s raising of the treasure side by side, finding everywhere close parallels and in some places verbatim translation (p. 125 ff.). The casket in “The New Melusine” is also a treasure that has risen up from beneath the earth, and serves as light-hearted counterpoint to the episode with Felix. A further variant of this theme is found, as might be expected, in the miners’ festival, where the work of the miners (and, by association, Montan’s striving to raise cognitive treasures) is referred to as an “extraction of hidden, scarcely accessible treasures of the earth” (WMJY, 278).124

5.10 Anabasis and katabasis bring the hero of Romance both new trials and new cognitional possibilities. If he can experience the “fearsome depths, where waterfalls [roar] in a labyrinth of gorges” (WMJY, 114) of his own inner life without becoming ensnared; if he can confront the vast expanses of the cosmos without losing himself; if he is able to pass through these trials of fire and water, then the Romance hero experiences these upward and downward movements as cognitional paths rather than false paths.125 The two then join in a great circle – an image of wholeness at a higher level of integration. Both lead to reunion with the natural environment, cosmic and earthly, and the Journeyman Years expressly proclaims this as our highest goal, as a “metaphor for the highest good”: On and in the ground one finds material for the highest terrestrial necessities, a world of substances made available to man’s highest ingenuity for fashioning. But along the other, spiritual path, sympathy, love, and disciplined, free effectiveness are always to be found. To move these two worlds toward one another, to manifest their reciprocal qualities in the transient phenomenon of life, that is the highest form toward which man must aspire. (WMJY, 406–407)126

The meeting of the earthly and heavenly realms as a symbol of accomplished striving is the profoundest of the archetypal Romance themes. Frye notes that “folk tales and mythologies are full of stories of an original connection between heaven or the sun and earth,”127 and that Romance depicts, or adumbrates at least, the reunion of the separated realms.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Romance

131

Almost always, it is symbolized as a sacred marriage or “hierogamy” as Eleanor Hinz has termed it. Such a sacred marriage is to be found, for example, at the end of Shakespeare’s romance The Tempest: “It is the wedding masque in which the dialectic of Shakespearean romance is most fully and completely stated. What the wedding masque presents is the meeting of earth and heaven under the rainbow, the symbol of Noah’s new-washed world, after the tempest and flood have receded.”128 The Comic ending so often encountered in the novel represents a new form of social integration; the Romance carries this tendency even further until it takes on mythic, or even eschatological proportions (as Frye suggests for The Tempest). Eleanor Hinz has in fact suggested this distinction between “profane” marriage or “wedlock” and “mythic” marriage or hierogamy, as the basis for differentiating the romance from the novel. The Romancer recaptures in his fiction a mythic experience of our primordial humanity: The paradigmatic marriage for archaic man is the hierogamy, the sacred marriage, and the prototype of the sacred marriage is the union of the earth and sky … it is extremely important to recognize that in its primordial aspect marriage was a meeting not of humans – man and woman – but of the elements – earth and sky – for it is in this form that hierogamy frequently is presented in fiction.129

Hinz discusses many romances which display this theme, but finds the least “displaced,” most archetypal form to be the tale of Cupid and Psyche in Apuleius’s romance The Golden Ass.130 Although the sacred marriage consists in the joining of the upper and lower realms, the union always occurs in the upper world, in keeping with the predominance of anabasis or upward movement within Romance’s vertical structure. Hierogamy always becomes possible when the hero, after descending, ascends to attain “the point of epiphany.”131 This archetypal theme of hierogamy is suggested in numerous places in the Journeyman Years,132 but is clearest in three episodes in the novel: in the meeting between Montan and Makarie, Wilhelm, and the Astronomer; in the miners’ festival attended by Wilhelm in Book II, chapter nine; and in the poem “Schiller’s Relics” printed at the end of the novel. Montan suddenly appears in Makarie’s circle ([WMJY, 404] – note the typical Romance disregard for motivation) – and soon gains the confidence of the Astronomer, who reveals to him Makarie’s extraordinary relationship to the solar system. Their quick intimacy is no surprise to the narrator: “It was predictable that Montan would soon reach an understanding

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

132

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman

with the astronomer” (WMJY, 405) – surely a curious remark to readers uninitiated into the symbolic logic, the inevitabilities, of the Romance mode. Beneath Makarie’s star, as it were, they bind themselves in friendship and undertake to propagate together what they have learned. Both Montan and the Astrologer, through Makarie, have learned to live deep within the secrets of the natural world.133 Hierogamy between the upper and nether worlds is also symbolized in the great miners’ festival to which Wilhelm is invited (WMJY, 277 ff.). Wilhelm climbs a steep mountain and is amazed to see long lines of flame emerge from the caverns and ravines winding around the mountain. Yet here the passionate element has been tamed: “Here was a phenomenon far friendlier than when a volcano erupts, spewing out a tumult that threatens whole regions with destruction, and yet the light gradually blazed brighter, spreading and intensifying, twinkling like a river of stars, mild and lovely, to be sure, but extending boldly over the entire region” (WMJY, 278).134 The torches are more like the chaste light of the stars than a fiery volcano. Stars rising from the earth! – again an image of the sacred marriage between the earth and heaven. The fire of passion has been transformed into the light of cognition in order to seek out the mysteries of the earth: in the festival, the miners bear this knowledge up the mountain as though to meet the heavens.135 Predictably, Montan, the greatest exemplar in the novel of such cognitive katabasis leading to hierogamy, is present at the “large, secret Association” (WMJY, 278). The final assertion of hierogamy, however, is the poem “Schiller’s Relics,” which was printed in original edition at the very end of the novel, after the fragments “From Makarie’s Archives.” Interpreters of the Journeyman Years have felt that the poem has little or nothing to do with the novel,136 and many editions no longer print the texts together.137 Yet the poem recapitulates so many of the Journeyman Years’s essential Romance themes that it might very justly be seen as a microcosm of the novel as a whole: THE SOLEMN CHARNEL-HOUSE IT WAS [SCHILLER’S RELICS] The solemn charnel-house it was, where I perused How skulls to skulls were joined in seemly rows; The olden days returned, in shades of gray. Packed tight in rows, these former enemies, And doughty bones, once mortally opposed, Lie tame withal here, crosswise, at their rest.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Romance

133

Wrenched shoulder blades! what they once bore None asks, and limbs, once moved so gracefully, The hand, the foot, strewn out of living joint. In vain you weary ones lay down, no rest Vouchsafed you in the grave: back up into The light of day you’re driven once again, And none can love the dried-out husk, despite The noble kernel that it once enclosed. And yet, for me, Adept, the script was penned Whose holy sense is not revealed to all, As, standing there amid the stiffened crowd, I saw a priceless form magnificent, Such that, despite the cramped room’s moldy chill I felt myself refreshed, and warm, and free, As though a fount of life sprang forth from death. Mysteriously the form delighted me! The godthought trace that had preserved itself! Translated by a glimpse to that far shore, A flowing sea that streams forth heightened forms. Mysterious vessel! speaking ceaseless oracles, What right have I to hold thee in my hand, This jewel purloining now with piety, And toward the open air, toward thinking free, Around I turn toward sunlight, reverently. What higher goal can any man attain Than God-in-nature unto him revealed? How forms once fixed to Spirit she lets flow, How Spirit is firmly held in forms below?138

The speaker finds within the shattered forms of the charnel-house, within apparent death, a “fount of life” (1. 21) – again the archetypal Romance theme of apparent death. Moreover, the retrieval of the skull is described as a raising of a treasure much like Felix’s: here, too, a “mysterious vessel” (1. 26), a “jewel” from beneath the earth is “purloin[ed] now with piety” (1. 28). Above all, though, the poem represents a final recapitulation of the theme of hierogamy. The speaker is an “adept” who is able to read the “script” of natural forms – a remarkable allusion to the “adept” Montan, who is, one recalls, “initiated into mountain and chasm” (WMJY, 278): “You are evading the question,” Wilhelm said, “for after all, what does this have to do with these cliffs and peaks?” “But suppose I treated these very fissures and crevasses as letters, attempted to decipher them, shaped them into words, and learn to read them, would you have any objection to

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

134

Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman that?” “No, but it seems to me a rather diffuse alphabet.” “More coherent than you think; but you must learn it, like any other. Nature has only one script …” (WMJY, 116)139

Here, as in the hierogamy symbolized by Montan joining Makarie, the earth (here the moldy skull) is borne up out of the subterranean darkness and lifted up, chalice-like, toward the light of the sun (1. 30), while the closing quatrain distills the essence of the Journeyman Years’s final vision – a hierogamy, a living intercourse between the earth and heaven. Again, these symbols resonate much more broadly and deeply than any mere program of Bildung.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Conclusion

I have sought in this study to establish the unity of Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship and Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years upon a foundation of Comic form. The unity of these two novels taken together consists not, however, in mere uniformity: thus, no simple and static notion of Comic form would have been adequate to shed light upon their underlying structure. The interpretive task at hand required a notion of Comic form as dynamic and internally differentiated as the complex narrative it sought to elucidate. Northrop Frye’s subtle morphology of Comic form, in which Comedy as a pregeneric modality is seen as a continuous evolution of structure modulating through Satiric-Ironic, pure Comic, and Romance “tonalities” proves uniquely capable of uncovering the unity within Goethe’s richly diverse narrative. Viewed through the optic of Frye’s Comic modality, the disjunctions that occur within the Apprenticeship, and between that novel and its sequel, reveal themselves to be not interruptions of an otherwise unified narrative flow, but rather articulations of the narrative’s unifying principle itself. The seeming disjunctions mark the transition points, the modulations between narrative “tonalities.” Seen in this light, Books II through VI of the Apprenticeship evince features typical of Satire and Irony; Books I, VII, and VIII Comedy proper, and the Journeyman Years features typical of Romance. Each of these represents in turn a substructure of Frye’s overarching Comic modality. A number of such themes (e.g. “fortune,” the “atmosphere of delinquency,” “hermaphrodism,” “apparent death,” and “hierogamy”) have been traced earlier in some detail, and there is no need to recapitulate them. Moreover, certain seemingly discontinuous formal aspects of the novels reveal themselves to be continuous and integral when seen within the context of Comic form. The most important of these are changes in the level of mimesis and in the mode of narration. 135

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press

136

Conclusion

Many critics have taken Goethe to task for alleged formal inconsistencies between the early and later books of the Apprenticeship, as well as between the Apprenticeship and the Journeyman Years. I have sought to show, however, that those seeming formal inconsistencies are actually coherent structural metamorphoses that obey the inner logic of the Comic mode as Frye conceives it. As Satiric-Ironic forms give way to pure Comic and then to Romance forms within the narrative, the mimetic “displacement” that yields realistic mimesis in Satire and Irony is gradually reversed. Books VII and VIII of the Apprenticeship present a Comic utopian society; symbolism replaces realism; the general supplants the particular; the logic of the narrative becomes improbable, and even “fairy-tale-like.” In the Journeyman Years, mimetic presentation begins with symbolism and moves in the direction of pure myth: the novel closes with Goethe’s Platonic “myth of Makarie,” and Felix lying naked beside his father like a newly created Adam. The horizontality of the Apprenticeship’s picaresque books gives way to the verticality of the Journeyman Years, the succession of realistic mimesis to the synchronic juxtaposition of symbolic complexes.1 A similar evolution can be observed in the structure of the novels’ narration. Within Frye’s modal scheme, irony serves as the motive force underlying the dialectic of Comic form. Ironic discrepancies between the awareness of the narrator and that of the protagonist within Satire and Irony initiate and then give way to a Comic educational process that gradually narrows the gap in awareness, with a concomitant reduction of irony. We have traced this process through the Apprenticeship, where ironic commentary and condescension toward Wilhelm on the part of the narrator gradually diminished until the narrator “withdraws” in the final books, as Wilhelm achieves the wisdom of an objective “self-narrator.” In the Romance narration of the Journeyman Years, irony generated by the discrepancy between a knowing narrator and an ignorant protagonist (ironie qui sait) is, as expected, absent altogether. Finally, when the unity of the two novels taken together is perceived, an archetypally Comic “circuitous journey” becomes clearly discernible – the same “circuitous journey” that M. H. Abrams has described in Natural Supernaturalism as the core of the great Romantic literature of Goethe’s contemporaries. The Comic protagonist begins like the picáro in being cast from his home, from the “father’s” society, and wanders as an outsider; but unlike the picáro he is able to enter or even to create a new, “higher” society that replaces the old. In Romance, the “­ circuitous journey” appears in its undisplaced form, as a myth of the Fall and the

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Conclusion

137

regaining of Paradise. From the perspective of Romance, Wilhelm’s loss of Mariane, and the shattering of his dream of becoming a poet, reveal their mythic roots as a displacement of the biblical Fall. Wilhelm describes the poet as a friend and companion of the gods (WMA, 45), but feels that judgment has been passed upon him in his loss of Mariane (“… judgment has been passed on me …” [WMA, 46]), and that he has tumbled from the dream of the poet’s divine calling. At the end of the Journeyman Years, the “son,” Felix, lies at the feet of his father, who has brought him to life, created him anew “in the image of God” (“glorious image of God” [WMJY, 417]). The Comic circle closes with a radical myth of reconciliation and renewal. Moreover, the pathologies in the reception of the novels that we outlined in Chapter 1 have all been healed. The Journeyman Years reveal themselves to be a true sequel to the Apprenticeship. Goethe’s novels are no longer outliers in literary history: rather, they fit perfectly into the development of the Western novel. At the same time, they participate deeply in Frye’s universal modal scheme. Indeed, the Apprenticeship and the Journeyman Years can be seen as exemplars of World Literature, the transhistorical, transcultural ideal of Goethe’s old age. Needless to say, it was Frye’s ideal as well.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Notes

CHAPTER 1 1. Faust 1995–1996: “Denn eben wo Begriffe fehlen, / Da stellt ein Wort zur rechten Zeit sich ein.” 2. As Goethe termed the Apprenticeship (Eckermann, Gespräche, January 18, 1825). 3. Cf. Staiger, Goethe, III, p. 129; and Bastian, “Die Makrostruktur …,” pp. 626–628. For overviews of the critical reception of the Journeyman Years, see Schrimpf, Das Weltbild …, p. 8ff.; Peschken, Entsagung …, p. 1ff.; Schädel, Metamorphose und Erscheinungsformen des Menschen, p. 298ff.; and Klingenberg, Goethes Roman …, p. 14ff. 4. K. May argued convincingly against this notion as early as 1957 (“Wilhelm Meisters Apprenticeship, ein Bildungsroman?” pp. 1–37), and H. Eichner, among others, has rejected this view in the strongest terms: “If we insist on interpreting the Apprenticeship as the depiction of the development of a simple, well-defined ideal of Bildung free of contradiction, then we arrive at the conclusion that this novel was ill-conceived by Goethe. The question of course is whether such a procedure is justified” (“Zur Deutung …,” p. 176). 5. Cf. Todorov, Introduction, pp. 11–12. 6. See the essay by Wolf-Dieter Stempel (“Gibt es Textsorten?”) in Textsorten. 7. Todorov, Introduction, pp. 10–11. Cf. also his “Genres littéraires,” pp. 195–196. 8. “In order for there to be transgression, the norm has to be perceptible” (Introduction, p. 12). Parody would seem an exception, but I would argue that parody is a special case, with its own distinct markers. 9. Hempfer’s methodological justification is far too long and complex to rehearse here: instead, the reader is referred to pp. 128–191 of his subtle and closely argued study. 10. Hempfer uses “corpus” here, no doubt to avoid the negative connotations that have come to be associated with “canon.” I prefer to retain the more conventional term, which is not meant to suggest any judgment regarding literary quality, but rather only what I take to be the list of exemplars conventionally associated with this generic term. 11. Swales’s study covers the same five but adds Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game. 12. “Beyond this, the only further claim that can be made about the distinctive features of this type of novel without entering controversial ground is that we must look to Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship as a primary reference point in any study of the genre” (p. 1). 138

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Notes to pages 6–13

139

13. Of course, it would be possible to adduce many studies that still subscribe to the notion of a bildungsroman (e.g. Dumont; Greiner, “Der Gedanke der Bildung …”; Gradl; Gutjahr; Irmscher, “Beobachtungen zum Problem …”; all the texts by Jacobs; Mahoney, “Apprenticeship of the Reader …”; Gerhart Mayer, “Johann Wolfgang von Goethe …”; Muenzer; Redfield, Phantom Formations  …; Schwinge; Sorg; Uwe Steiner; Tiefenbacher; Voßkamp, “Johann Wolfgang von Goethe …”; Voßkamp, “Perfectibilité und Bildung …”). However, I am convinced that the general tendency is ­undeniably in the direction of skepticism vis-à-vis the received notion and new ways of considering these novels. Sharing my skepticism to a greater or lesser degree are Vaget, “Goethe the Novelist …”; Blair; both ­studies by Steinecke; Kontje, Private Lives …; Saine, “Was Wilhelm Meister Lehrjahre …”; and Sammons, “Bildungsroman for Nonspecialists …” 14. Cf. Selbmann, Der deutsche Bildungsroman, pp. 9–12; he draws no conclusions from these episodes, however. 15. P. 189; cf. Sammons, “Mystery of the Missing Bildungsroman …” p. 237. For Krüger, Lukács, Lange, and Rehm, see Köhn, Entwicklungs- und Bildungsroman, pp. 65–66, 81. 16. See “Kafka’s Hapless Pilgrims …,” p. 341. Miles interprets Green Henry at greater length in “The Picaro’s Journey …,” pp. 974–976. 17. On Mann’s view of the bildungsroman as a national genre, see Sammons, “Mystery of the Missing Bildungsroman …” p. 241. 18. Jacobs, Wilhelm Meister …, p. 28. 19. Ibid. 20. Steinecke, “‘Wilhelm Meister’ und die Folgen …,” p. 94. 21. Ibid., p. 112. 22. Beddow has noted this as well, complaining of Buckley’s “inadequate grasp of the German tradition” (p. 288). 23. Further criteria she suggests on p. 111 are so vague as to apply to any number of narrative genres, nor does she specify which of them are meant to be common to the bildungsroman. 24. A prime example would be the female (anti-)bildungsroman, on which see Abel et al. 25. As these are numerous and spread throughout Fowler, I shall not attempt to reference each separately; however, most are to be found in ch. 4 (“Historical Kinds and the Generic Repertoire”) and ch. 6 (“Generic Signals”). 26. Cf. pp. 24–25: “Syntagmatically, one can define a history of apprenticeship (of Bildung) by two parallel transformations affecting the subject: on the one hand, the transformation ignorance (of oneself) – knowledge (of oneself); on the other hand, the transformation passivity – action. … Paradigmatically, in terms of its actantial system, the Bildungsroman is defined by the following minimal condition: the actantial categories of subject, object, and recipient are syncretized and a sole actor, who is the hero of the novel. This one goes through the world in order to know himself (object), and it’s he himself who benefits from this knowledge (recipient). … Nevertheless,

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

140

Notes to pages 14–21

[Lukacs’s] Theory of the Novel constitutes a precious point of departure for the present discussion – not only because it formulates (read in the light of modern criticism) a structural definition of the continuity of the novel of apprenticeship, but also because it proposes a classification of three types of apprenticeship. The differences among them reduce themselves in the end to a binary couple: ‘positive’ apprenticeship (authentic) vs. ‘negative’ apprenticeships (deficient).” 27. Köhn complained of the oversight in his Forschungsbericht: several studies in Voßkamp’s volumes on Utopieforschung now address this aspect of the bildungsroman. 28. See Pizer on this development generally. 29. Sammons, “Mystery of the Missing Bildungsroman …” p. 241. On Mann’s attempts to promote the bildungsroman as a national genre, see Sammons’s perspicuous remarks, pp. 240–241. 30. Cf. also p. 8: “Through this knowledge of the world, the completed persons in all novels, who can be counterposed to the seekers, are not merely ideal forms closed on themselves, but rather at the same time the highest embodiments of her worldly wisdom, who can serve the strivers as leaders and teachers.” 31. Enright, “the Ambiguousness of Goethe,” p. 95 (on the Apprenticeship). 32. Jacobs, Wilhelm Meister …, p. 89. 33. Ibid., pp. 93–94: “[the Journeyman Years are] in motive narration, structure, and ethos decidedly different from the Apprenticeship. We are dealing therefore not with a mere continuation, not upon a mere piling up upon the same foundations.” 34. Reiss, Goethes Romane, p. 269. 35. Staiger, Goethe, III, p. 129. 36. Bruford, “Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister …,” p. 37. 37. Korff, Geist der Goethezeit, II, p. 340. 38. Staiger, Goethe, II, p. 139. 39. Miles, “Picaro’s Journey …,” p. 983. 40. Wellek, Theory of Literature, pp. 140–141. 41. Frye, Natural Perspective, p. 46. 42. I shall henceforth differentiate Frye’s modes from the historical genres of the same name by the use of capitals. 43. Frye, Anatomy, p. 136. 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid., p. 137. 46. Ibid., p. 162. 47. Ibid. 48. In Anatomy of Criticism, Frye is anxious to assert as the basis of this “natural cycle” the turning seasons of the year, and thus primitive seasonal ritual as the ultimate basis (although not the “origin” – a distinction that is in itself difficult to see) of narrative form. This is to my mind the most questionable aspect of Frye’s work; Frye’s scheme of literary modes remains, however,

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Notes to pages 21–24

141

totally comprehensible and, I believe, equally valid without postulating the ritual basis. Thus, for my purposes I shall dispense with it entirely. It is ­interesting to note that Frye himself seemed to move away from this earlier alliance with the British mythographers. In The Secular Scripture, he offered what seems to me a much more attractive explanation of the uncanny applicability of his categories: these “generic plots,” these archetypal modes of literary experience, are “maps” of the structure of the human imagination: The imagination, then, is the constructive power of the mind, the power of building unities out of units. In literature the unity is the mythos or narrative; the units are metaphors, that is, images connected primarily with each other rather than separately with the outer world. … The long-standing association between the words imagination and fancy may suggest that the imaginative, by itself, tends to be fantastic or fanciful. But actually, what the imagination, left to itself, produces is rigidly conventionalized. In folktales, plot-themes and motifs are predictable enough to be counted and indexed; improvised drama, from commedia dell’ arte to guerilla theater, is based on formulas with a minimum of variables. Anyone recording, or reading about, reveries, daydreams or conscious sexual fantasies must be struck by the total absence in such things of anything like real fantasy. They are formulaic, and the formulaic unit, of phrase or story, is the cornerstone of the creative imagination, the simplest form of what I call an archetype. (p. 36)

49. Frye, Anatomy, p. 136. 50. Ibid. 51. Book I shall prove to be in a sense the common origin of both the Comic and Satiric or Ironic phases. 52. Frye places the picaresque novel squarely within the mode of Satire or Irony, although he has little more to say about the historical genre as such. Frye’s discussion of this mode is the weakest generally. 53. At times Miller seems unsure about the distinction between Comedy and Romance, however. See e.g. p. 38, where Roderick Random is said to be “like a good comic or romance hero,” and he writes of the “comic-romance ending” of Smollett’s novel. 54. Cf. Frye, Anatomy, p. 161. 55. Hegel, Phenomenology, “Preface,” p. 6: Spirit is indeed never at rest but always engaged in moving forward. But just as the first breath drawn by a child after its long, quiet nourishment breaks the gradual notice of merely quantitative growth – there’s a qualitative leap, and the child is born – so likewise the Spirit in its formation matures slowly and quietly into its new shape.

CHAPTER 2 1. Goethe’s Novels, pp. 106–107. Yet Reiss also characterizes the Wanderjahre as a picaresque novel (Ibid., p. 257), which means that he can only be using the term in the vaguest sense. 2. p. 97. Similarly, Stock, “View of Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship,” p. 88, and Zecevic.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

142

Notes to pages 24–27

3. Miles, “Kafka’s Hapless Pilgrims …,” p. 350. 4. Miles, “Picaro’s Journey …,” p. 982. 5. Ibid., p. 983. Beddow also distinguishes the mimetic status of the Apprenticeship’s first five books from that of the last three: In the service of these concerns, Wieland and Goethe developed a distinctive novel form. This form makes deliberate use of two kinds of fiction, which give rise to two kinds of fictional world within the same work. The first kind of fiction employed is that which is already familiar to us from the picaresque novels we have examined, the one we encounter also in the major works of the European realist tradition … (p. 114)

Yet the likeness to the picaresque novel Beddow finds in the Apprenticeship is merely that of realistic mimesis. I shall argue that the similarities run far deeper. See also Beddow, Thomas Mann’s Felix Krull and the Traditions of the Picaresque Novel and the Bildungsroman, pp. 111–112. 6. Eichner, “Zur Deutung …,” p. 195. 7. p. 106. It is unclear whether Bakhtin means the Apprenticeship or the Mission, but his remarks could apply to either novel. 8. Jurij Striedter, Der Schelmenroman …, p. 12. See also Bataillon, Le roman picaresque, p. 3. 9. See Jauß, “Ursprung und Bedeutung der Ich-Form im ‘Lazarillo de Tormes’.” Parody of other literary forms is one of the most characteristic features of the picaresque. 10. In tracing this history I follow Parker, pp. 6–7 and passim. 11. Following in Guzman’s footsteps came Ubeda’s La picara Justina (1605), Barbadillo’s La hija de Celestina (1612) and La ingeniosa Elena (1614), Espinel’s Marcos de Obregon (1618), Yanez’s Alonso (1624 and 1626), Quevedo’s La vide del buscon (1626) – with which the picaresque novel is thought to reach its zenith – and Estibanillo Gonzalez (1646). 12. Guzman de Alfarache had been quickly translated into French (by Gabriel Chappuys, 1600), German (by Aegidius Albertinus, 1615), and English (Mabbe’s The Rogue, 1622), giving rise to Sorel’s quasi-picaresque Francion (1622 and 1641), Scarron’s Roman comique (1651), Head and Kirkman’s The English Rogue (1655, 1668 and 1671), Grimmelshausen’s Simplicissimus (1669), Lesage’s Gil Blas (1715, 1724 and 1735), Defoe’s Colonel Jack and Moll Flanders (both 1722) and finally Smollett’s Roderick Random (1748) and Ferdinand Count Fathom (1753). 13. Alter, Rogue’s Progress, p. viii. 14. Guillén, “Toward a Definition …,” p. 71. 15. Wicks, “Nature of Picaresque Narrative,” p. 241. 16. Alter, Rogue’s Progress, p. x. 17. pp. 26–27: Thereby in the course of the novel the stylistic character of the whole is shifted. The first three books (Part 1) … are still entirely in the style of the novela picaresca (the technique of which also corresponds to the loose stringing together of individual episodes in a chronologically progressive narration). In the fourth book, their heroic-gallant element comes into its own (and the compositional

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Notes to pages 27–31

143

technique with its recuperative prehistories and it’s complicated intrigues also corresponds to their heroic-gallant novel). The final books however (from Book Eight onward) … display … expressly features of the memoir. Yet it is a matter of a gradual transformation of the style, not of stylistic breaks. Even in the parts in which a particular style dominates, the others remain at play …

18. On Tom Jones as a “comic epic,” see Wright, Henry Fielding, pp. 57–121. 19. Guillén, “Toward a Defintion …,” p. 94. 20. Georg Ellinger’s article (“Der Einfluss …”) seems to me very convincing, but see Blackall, Goethe and the Novel, p. 59, for an opposing point of view. 21. Blackall, Goethe and the Novel, pp. 144, 148. 22. See Goethe’s letter to Kanzler v. Müller, May 29, 1814. 23. Wicks, “Nature of Picaresque Narrative,” p. 247 (“The Ejection Motif”). See also Mannach. 24. Guillén, “Toward a Definition …,” p. 100. 25. Jenisch, “Vom Abenteuer zum Bildundgsroman,” p. 339. 26. Wicks, “Nature of Picaresque Narrative,” p. 244. 27. Guillén suggests that the picaresque novel in its later forms is often only apparently “loosely episodic,” that it is ordered by “recurrent motifs” or “circular patterns” (“Toward a Definition …,” pp. 84–85). It is hard to know precisely what Guillén means here, since he gives no examples. Strictly circular movement is characteristic of the absurd, and thus conveys meaninglessness, whereas repetition or circularity with variation can mark development and convey ordered growth. This latter, for which I shall adopt Stuart Miller’s term “the dance pattern,” is a comic phenomenon, no longer part of the picaresque proper. This characteristic Comic movement might better be termed a spiral than a circle. It will be discussed in Chapter 2 below. 28. In Mabbe’s translation of 1623: And being come now to the height of all my labours and paines-taking, and when I was to have received the reward of them, and to take mine ease after all this toyle, the stone rolled down, and I was forced like Sisyphus, to beginne the world anew, and to fall afresh to my work. (Pt. II, Bk. III, Ch. iv) (Quoted by Wicks, “The Nature of Picaresque Narrative,” pp. 243–244).

29. Miller, Picaresque Novel, p. 10. 30. See Kayser, Das sprachliche Kunstwerk, p. 363 and Jenisch, “Vom Abenteuer zum Bildundgsroman,” p. 340. 31. Cf. Kayser, Das sprachliche Kunstwerk, p. 363 and Miller, Picaresque Novel, p. 88. 32. “wie eine, die Königsreiche verschenkt.”Münchener Ausgabe, V, p. 32. Unless otherwise indicated, all references to Goethe’s German works shall be to this edition (abbreviated MA). The English translations are taken from the Suhrkamp Edition, abbreviated WMA and WMJY respectively. 33. “Die warnenden Drohungen der Alten [=das Gewerbe] wurden verschmäht; ich sah die mir versprochenen Reichtümer schon mit dem Rücken an; enterbt und nackt übergab ich mich der Muse, die mir ihren goldnen Schleier zuwarf und meine Blösse bedeckte” (MA V, 32).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

144

Notes to pages 32–36

34. The structure of Book VI and its relationship to the four preceding books is no less picaresque, but it is typically picaresque in a different way, which will be discussed in detail below. 35. On Mignon, see Ammerlahn, “Puppe …”; Jirku; Horstkoffe; Hoffmeister, Goethes Mignon …; Bohm; Brettschneider; Cave; Edmunds; Leutner; both studies by MacLeod; Mahlendorf; Saße, “Die Socialisation des Fremden …” 36. One might object here that Wilhelm’s adventures make a great deal of sense, and even seem purposeful, from the retrospective view of the Apprenticeship. This may be true. Yet there exists no such perspective within the earlier, picaresque books from which to make such a judgment. 37. Steiner, Goethes Wilhelm Meister. Sprache und Stilwandel, pp. 92–133. 38. Dürr, “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre,” p. 204. 39. Ibid. 40. Guillén, “Toward a Definition …,” p. 84. 41. “Nun fing man an das Haus zu durchsuchen, die Türen aller Zimmer ¨ fen, gewirkte Tapeten, eingelegte Fussböden waren waren offen, grosse O von seiner vorigen Pracht noch übrig, von anderm Hausgeräte aber nichts zu finden, kein Tisch, kein Stuhl, kein Spiegel, kaum einige ungeheure leere Bettstellen, alles Schmuckes und alles Notwendigen beraubt. Die nassen Koffer und Mantelsäcke werden zu Sitzen gewählt, ein Teil der müden Wandrer bequemte sich auf dem Fussboden. Wilhelm hatte sich auf einige Stufen gesetzt, Mignon lag auf seinen Knien; das Kind war unruhig, und auf seine Frage, was ihm fehlte, antwortete es: “Mich ­hungert!” ” (MA V, 158). 42. Dürr, “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre,” p. 204. 43. Ibid., pp. 203–204. 44. A weaker form of this archetypal movement is the picáro’s escape from the buffets of fortune into the safe haven of a bourgeois existence: heavy irony invariably reveals such “havens” to be illusory (as in, for example, Lazarillo and Moll Flanders). 45. Jacobs and Krause, Der deutsche Bildungsroman, p. 24. 46. Parker, Literature and the Delinquent, pp. 22 and 32 and Jenisch, “Vom Abenteuer zum Bildundgsroman,” p. 340. 47. “dann steht letzten Endes nicht recht eigentlich das Virtud-Ideal im Mittelpunkt des Lazarillo, sondern eine Ironisierung des ganzen Problemkomplexes von Fortuna, Virtud, Dios und demonio” (p. 291). 48. p. 19. Cf. also Wicks, “Nature of Picaresque Narrative,” pp. 244–246. 49. Guillén, “Toward a Definition …,” pp. 81–82 and 89 f. 50. Lothar Schmidt, e.g., in his study “Das Ich im ‘Simplicissimus’,” arrives at many of the same conclusions Jauß reaches regarding Lazarillo. 51. On the “schöne Seele,” see Becker-Cantarino, “Die Bekenntnisse …”; Blesken; both studies by Farrelly; Hirsch, “Spiritual ‘Bildung’ …”; Kawa, “Die Dame …”; Kowalik; and Zantop. 52. E. L. Stahl has traced the influence of pietistic religious confessions on the eighteenth-century Bildungsroman in his study of the notion of Bildung. See, e.g., p. 118 f.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Notes to pages 36–39

145

53. “Das Bild des Erwachens (‘despertar’), das in der Vita der Hl. Theresa als ein mystisches Hauptmotif wiederkehrt, verwendet schon Augustinus …” (p. 300). Jauß sees the first episode of Lazarillo as a parodistic “anti-awakening,” “eine Initiation in den Brauch der Welt, wie sie nun einmal ist, und keine Hinkehr zu Gott …” (p. 301), and even argues that Lazarillo represents a systematic “Kontrafaktur der seit 1540 aufblühenden nationalspanischen Mystik” (p. 306). 54. “Während des neun monatlichen Krankenlagers, das ich mit Geduld aushielt, ward, so wie mich dünkt, der Grund zu meiner ganzen Denkart gelegt, indem meinem Geiste die ersten Hülfsmittel gereicht wurden, sich nach seiner eigenen Art zu entwickeln” (MA V, 360). 55. “Darf ich hier das Gesetz einer bloss historischen Darstellung überschreiten, und einige Betrachtungen über dasjenige machen, was in mir vorging? Was konnte das sein, was meinen Geschmack und meine Sinnesart so änderte, dass ich im zwei und zwanzigsten Jahre, ja früher, kein Vergnügen an Dingen fand, die Leute von diesem Alter unschuldig belustigen können? Warum waren sie mir nicht unschuldig? Ich darf wohl antworten: eben weil sie mir nicht unschuldig waren, weil ich nicht, wie andre meinesgleichen, unbekannt mit meiner Seele war. Nein, ich wusste aus Erfahrungen, die ich ungesucht erlangt hatte, dass es höhere Empfindungen gebe, die uns ein Vergnügen wahrhaftig gewährten, das man vergebens bei Lustbarkeiten sucht, und dass in diesen höheren Freuden zugleich ein geheimer Schatz zur Stärkung im Unglück aufbewährt sei” (MA V, 380). 56. Cf. Jauß, “Ursprung und Bedeutung der Ich-Form im ‘Lazarillo de Tormes’,” p. 298. 57. “Gott sei Dank, dass ich erkenne, wem ich dieses Glück schuldig bin” (MA V, 422). 58. See Schmidt, “Das Ich …,” p. 215. 59. Lazarillo, Guzmán, La vide del buscón, Simplicissimus, Roderick Random, Gil Blas, Moll Flanders and most other novels in the picaresque tradition are narrated in the first person. The Comic Novel, Ferdinand Count Fathom, and Tom Jones are narrated in the third person. 60. Jauß, “Ursprung und Bedeutung der Ich-Form im ‘Lazarillo de Tormes’,” p. 293. 61. One sees this same tendency in certain of Goethe’s own autobiographical writings. See e.g. the beginning of Poetry and Truth, in which Goethe describes his childhood pranks in the third person. 62. Thomas Mann, Gesammelte Werke, IX, p. 150. 63. The German Bildungsroman, p. 23. 64. The terms “authorial” and “figural” are Stanzel’s. 65. “Durch den Druck seines Armes, durch die Lebhaftigkeit seiner erhöhten Stimme war Mariane erwacht und verbarg durch Liebkosungen ihre Verlegenheit; denn sie hatte auch nicht ein Wort von dem letzten Teile siner Erzählung vernommen, und es ist zu wünschen, dass unser Held für seine Lieblingsgeschichten aufmerksamere Zuhörer künftig finden möge” (MA V, 33).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

146

Notes to pages 39–42

66. “Höchst willkommen war ihm das Ideal, womit er seinen gegenwärtigen Zustand vergleichen konnte, und der Selbstbetrug, wozu er fast eine unüberwindliche Neigung spürte, ward ihm dadurch ausserordentlich erleichtert” (MA V, 208). See also, e.g., MA V, 203–205 and 241–242. 67. “Er merkte nicht, dass er beinah in eben dem Falle war, in dem er sich befand, als er, ein Schauspiel, das weder geschrieben, noch weniger memoriert war, aufzuführen, Lichter angezündet und Zuschauer herbeigerufen hatte” (MA V, 266). 68. “Mit grossem Erstaunen fand er sein Bett leer, die Kissen und Decken in schönster Ruhe. Er sah sich um, suchte nach, suchte alles durch, und fand keine Spur von dem Schalk. Hinter dem Bette, dem Ofen, den Schränken war nichts zu sehen; er suchte emsiger und emsiger; ja ein boshafter Zuschauer hätte glauben mögen, er suche, um zu finden” (MA V, 320). 69. Miles, “Picaro’s Journey …,” p. 984. 70. See, e.g., MA V, 138. 71. On this characteristically Goethean type of irony, see Hass, “Über die Ironie bei Goethe,” passim. For a thorough and subtle treatment of irony in the Apprenticeship, see Hass, “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.” 72. This would explain the predominance of ironic, third-person narration in picaresque novels that modulate into the Comic mode (for example, The Comic Novel and Tom Jones). Gil Blas would seem an exception, but see Striedter, Der Schelmenroman …, p. 25, who argues that Gil Blas’ typically picaresque first-person narration is virtually third-person, in that Gil is able to be “his own narrator” even during his adventures. 73. Miles, “Picaro’s Journey …,” p. 980. 74. Miller, Picaresque Novel, p. 70. 75. “Ohne unangenehme Weitläufigkeiten und Wiederholungen würde ich die Bemühungen nicht darstellen können, welche ich anwendete, um jene Handlungen, die mich nun einmal zerstreuten und meinen innern Frieden störten, so zu verrichten, daß dabei mein Herz für die Einwirkungen des unsichtbaren Wesens offen bliebe, und wie schmerzlich ich empfinden musste, daß der Streit auf diese Weise offen bliebe, und wie schmerzlich ich empfinden musste, daß der Streit auf diese Weise nicht beigelegt werden könne. Denn sobald ich mich in das Gewand der Torheit kleidete, blieb es nicht bloss bei der Maske, sondern die Narrheit durchdrang mich sogleich durch und durch” (MA V, 380). 76. “Gedacht gewagt. Ich zog die Maske ab und handelte jedesmal, wie mirs ums Herz war” (MA V, 381). She seeks to assert her higher self “ohne fremde Formen, in reinem Zusammenhang” (MA V, 389). 77. Cf. Eric Blackall’s analysis of the Beautiful Soul: She knows the attractions of the world but shrinks from them into cultivation of her moral self and that only. She tells her story entirely from the standpoint of what she has persuaded herself to believe. It is a consistent – and, at times,

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Notes to pages 42–48

147

frantic – piece of self-justification: and the statement at the end that she knows no pride is hardly convincing. Nevertheless it is an ordered world – but ordered only because it omits what is disruptive of its calm. It is her uncle who points this out. He distinguishes between the unity that comes from limitation and the harmony that comes from integration. (Goethe and the Novel, p. 129)

78. S. Fleischer and Frederick J. Beharriel arrive at similar conclusions, although I cannot agree with Fleischer that the “kingdom” that Wilhelm is said to inherit at the end of Book VIII is as empty and abstract as the world of the Beautiful Soul, nor with Beharriel that Goethe had at this, or at any other time, come to believe that the “hidden roots of religiosity” were “sickness, neurosis and fear” (p. 37). 79. Lukács, “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre,” p. 38. 80. Ibid. 81. Eichner, “Zur Deutung …,” p. 195: “Wilhelm ist nicht bloss, und v­ ielleicht nicht einmal vor allem, der Held eines Bildungsromans. Er ist auch der Held eines pikaresken Romans und der Held, wenn eine so extreme Bezeichnung gewagt werden darf, eines realistischen Märchens: er ist ein Hans im Glück.” 82. Miles, “Picaro’s Journey …,” p. 980. 83. It is true that we hear of Laertes’ marriage and subsequent cuckolding, but this is merely an anecdote to explain his misogyny, not a life history. Aurelie tells her own story in great detail and is certainly tormented by memory, but she is as much a retroaction from the later books as a continuation of the picaresque – it is, after all, she who sends Wilhelm to Lothario, and thus to the Society of the Tower. As was emphasized earlier, the modalities overlap upon the circle, and it is thus inevitable that Book Five should be transitional in this way. 84. Gerhard Storz, “Zur Komposition …,” p. 163. See also Storz, “Wieder ­einmal …,” p. 196. 85. Storz, “Zur Komposition …,” p. 159. 86. Ibid. 87. Frye, Anatomy, p. 162. 88. Guillén, “Toward a Definition …,” p. 83. 89. Bruford, “Goethe’s ‘Wilhelm Meister’ as a Picture …,” p. 37. 90. Blackall, Goethe and the Novel, p. 116: “The novel works through ­oppositions, and the most important of these is that between fate and chance.” 91. Röder, Glück und glückliches Ende im deutschen Bildungsroman, p. 105. 92. Storz makes a similar distinction: “den Laertes ergreift die Fortuna, die Providentia ist es, die Wilhelm nicht nur erhöht, sondern zuvor auch leitet” (“Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre,” p. 73). “Providentia” is, however, surely not the agency that guides Wilhelm. Rather, it is the Society of the Tower, whose views Wilhelm gradually adopts toward the close of the novel.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

148

Notes to pages 48–52

93. Röder notes this important change that accompanies the transition from the earlier to the later books of the Apprenticeship, and describes it with great precision as “Entmachtung der Fortuna und Verinnerung des Erzählens” (p. 128). 94. “So glauben Sie kein Schicksal? Keine Macht, die über uns waltet and alles zu unserm Besten lenkt?  ”  …  “Das Gewebe dieser Welt ist aus Notwendigkeit und Zufall gebildet, die Vernunft des Menschen stellt sich zwischen beide, und weiß sie zu beherrschen, sie behandelt das Notwendige als den Grund ihres Daseins, das Zufällige weiss sie zu lenken, zu leiten und zu ­nutzen … Jeder hat sein eigen Glück unter den Händen, wie der Künstler eine rohe Materie, die er zu einer Gestalt umbilden will” (MA V, 70–71). 95. Guillén, “Toward a Definition …,” p. 80. 96. Wicks, “Nature of Picaresque Narrative,” p. 245. 97. Walter Scott describes the poor treatment and low esteem they were afforded in his Essay on Romance, p. 127. 98. See Wicks, “Nature of Picaresque Narrative,” p. 245 and Miller, Picaresque Novel, p. 65. 99. I have discussed above (p. 30) the importance of “the carnivalesque,” the tradition of folk-humor, as one source of the picaresque novel as a historical genre. 100. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, p. 10. In a similar vein, see BabcockAbrahams’ article “The Novel and the Carnival World …” 101. Bakhtin argues that the utopian spirit of “the carnivalesque” affected Goethe profoundly (p. 103). 102. Bruford, “Goethe’s ‘Wilhelm Meister’ as a Picture …,” p. 29. 103. “Die Gesellschaft wurde in dem Schloße eingeteilt, und Melina befahl sehr strenge, sie sollten sich nunmehr ordentlich halten, die Frauen sollten besonders wohnen, und jeder nur auf seine Rollen, auf die Kunst sein Augenmerk und seine Neigung richten. Er schlug Vorschriften und Gesetze, die aus vielen Punkten bestanden, an alle Türen. Die Summe der Strafgelder war bestimmt, die ein jeder Übertreter in die gemeine Büchse entrichten sollte” (MA V, 161). 104. El buscón is pitched from his horse into an open latrine. On the clown-king, see Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, p. 197 f. 105. “Durch fortdauernde Anhänglichkeit und Liebe wird der Diener seinem Herrn gleich, der ihn sonst nur als einen bezahlten Sklaven anzusehen berechtigt ist” (MA V, 210). 106. Cf. Goethe to Eckermann, 25 xii 1825: “Es gibt wunderliche Kritiker”, fuhr Goethe fort. “An diesem Roman tadelten sie, dass der Held sich zu viel in schlechter Gesellschaft befinde. Dadurch aber, dass ich die sogennante schlechte Gesellschaft als Gefäss betrachtete, um das, was ich von der guten zu sagen hatte, darin niederzulegen, gewann ich einen poetischen Körper und einen mannigfaltigen dazu.”

1 07. Wicks, “Nature of Picaresque Narrative,” p. 247. 108. Alter, Rogue’s Progress, p. 42. 109. Wicks, “Nature of Picaresque Narrative,” p. 246.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Notes to pages 53–58

149

CHAPTER 3 1. The “comic” ending of Moll Flanders is admittedly problematical. See Miller’s discussion, pp. 121–122. 2. Frye, Natural Perspective, p. 46. 3. Hans Reiss (“Lustspielhaftes …”) has traced Comic elements through the whole of the Apprenticeship, although he finds the Comic elements ­concentrated principally at the beginning and end. Mariane disguising ­herself as an officer, the “romantic triangle” of Book I, the ubiquitous “play at role and hiding,” Philine’s playful and flirtatious nature, the incongruity between Wilhelm’s illusions and reality, Mignon’s sexual ambiguity and the atmosphere of gaiety that pervades the worlds of the itinerant actors and rococo nobility  – all these Reiss finds typical of Enlightenment comedy. Moreover, Reiss points out that such amalgamation of genres, the inclusion of dramatic features in prose n ­ arratives, is altogether typical of Goethe’s age (p. 142). However, even Reiss resists the momentum of his own evidence: he is committed to the notion of Bildung as that which ultimately unifies the text (p. 129), and thus concludes that the Apprenticeship’s Comic features “in no way make it a comic novel” (p. 140). 4. Frye, Anatomy, p. 171. 5. Frye, Natural Perspective, p. 73. 6. For a concise discussion of both the Old and New comedy, see Sandbach, Comic Theatre of Greece and Rome. 7. Frye, Natural Perspective, p. 75. 8. Ibid., p. 76. 9. Frye, Anatomy, p. 170. Blair describes Felix’s mistaken identity as traditional Comic topos. 10. Frye, Natural Perspective, p. 78. See also Anatomy, pp. 43–44, 163, 165 and Secular Scripture, pp. 136–137. 11. Frye, Anatomy, p. 43. 12. Ibid., p. 44. 13. Ibid., p. 163. 14. Ibid., p. 171. 15. Cf. Miller, Picaresque Novel, p. 81: “In Comedy, society is reformed and solidly re-formed at the end. In the picaresque novel, it is totally and repeatedly dissolved.” 16. Schlechta is most extreme in his denial of any “progress” on Wilhelm’s part (p. 235), while Seidler has argued that Wilhelm’s development is strictly ­linear (pp. 151–152). 17. Cf. Saine, “Wilhelm Meister’s Homecoming …,” p. 451. 18. Eines Abends sagte Jarno zu ihm: wir können Sie nun so sicher als den Unsern ansehen, daß es unbillig wäre, wenn wir Sie nicht tiefer in unsere Geheimnisse einführten. Es ist gut, daß der Mensch, der erst in die Welt tritt, viel von sich halte, dass er sich viele Vorzüge zu erwerben denke, daß er alles möglich zu machen suche; aber wenn seine Bildung auf einem gewissen Grade steht, dann ist es vorteilhaft, wenn er sich in einer größern Masse

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

150

Notes to pages 58–60

verlieren lernt, wenn er lernt um anderer willen zu leben, und seiner selbst in einer pflichtmässigen Tätigkeit zu vergessen. Da lernt er sich selbst kennen; denn das Handeln eigentlich vergleicht uns mit andern. Sie sollen bald erfahren, welch eine kleine Welt sich in Ihrer Nähe befindet, und wie gut Sie in dieser kleinen Welt gekannt sind; morgen früh, vor Sonnenaufgang, sein Sie angezogen und bereit (MA V, 494). 19. Mit welchem Interesse betrachtete er die Baumschulen und die Gebäude, wie lebhaft sann er darauf, das Vernachlässigte wiederherzustellen und das Verfallne zu erneuern. Er sah die Welt nicht mehr wie ein Zugvogel an, ein Gebäude nicht mehr für eine geschwind zusammengestellte Laube, die vertrocknet, ehe man sie verläßt. 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, und mit dem Gefühl des Vaters hatte er auch alle Tugenden eines Bürgers erworben (MA VI, 503–504). 20. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Aesthetik, Werke, Vol. xiv, p. 220. 21. However, Lukács retreats from this position in his later essay “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre,” where the ideal, utopian quality of the Society of the Tower is stressed. 22. Ich übersehe sehr deutlich, daß ich in vielen Stücken, bei der Wirtschaft meiner Güter, die Dienste meiner Landleute nicht entbehren kann, und daß ich auf gewissen Rechten strack und streng halten muß; ich sehe aber auch, daß andere Befugnisse mir zwar vorteilhaft, aber nicht so unentbehrlich sind, daß ich davon meinen Leuten auch was gönnen kann, und daß man nicht immer verliert, wenn man entbehrt. Nutze ich nicht meine Güter weit besser als mein Vater? werde ich meine Einkünfte nicht noch höher treiben? und soll ich diesen wachsenden Vorteil allein geniessen? soll ich dem, der mit mir und für mich arbeitet, nicht auch in dem Seinigen Vorteile gönnen, die uns erweiterte Kenntnisse, die uns eine vorrückende Zeit darbietet? (MA V, 432). 23. On the bildungsroman as a typically Romantic “circuitous journey” to ever higher levels of integration, see Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, p. 225 ff., esp. pp. 229–230. 24. See MA V, 432 ff., Trunz’s commentary (Hamburger Ausgabe VIII, 702), and especially G.-L. Fink, “Die Bildung …,” p. 33. The Hamburger Ausgabe will be abbreviated HA henceforth. 25. Was den Stand betrifft, so weißt Du, wie ich von je her drüber gedacht habe. Einige Menschen fühlen die Mißverhältnisse der äussern Zustände fürchterlich, und können sie nicht übertragen. Ich will niemanden überzeugen, so wie ich nach meiner Überzeugung handeln will. Ich denke kein Beispiel zu geben, wie ich doch nicht ohne Beispiele handle. Mich ängstigen nur die innern Mißverhältnisse, ein Gefäß, das sich zu dem, was es enthalten soll, nicht schickt; viel Prunk und wenig Genuß, Reichtum und Geiz, Adel und Roheit, Jugend und Pedanterei, Bedürfnis und Zeremonien, diese Verhältnisse wären’s, die mich vernichten könnten, die Welt mag sie stempeln und schätzen, wie sie will (MA V, 532–533). 26. Letter to Goethe, 5 vii 1796.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Notes to pages 61–63

151

27. Lukács, “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre,” pp. 33–34. 28. Storck, “Das Ideal …,” p. 229. 29. Frye, Anatomy, p. 182. 30. e.g. Eichner, “Zur Deutung …,” p. 181. 31. Frye, Natural Perspective, p. 25: The only place where the tradition of Shakespearean romantic comedy has survived with any theatrical success is, as we should expect, in opera. As long as we have Mozart or Verdi or Sullivan to listen to, we can tolerate identical twins and lost heirs and love potions and folk tales: we can even stand a fairy queen if she is under two hundred pounds. And when we look for the most striking modern parallels to Twelfth Night and The Tempest, we think first of all of Figaro and The Magic Flute.

Hans Eichner’s interpretation is somewhat different: he sees the ending not as a logical evolution of narrative structure, but as a means to a different aesthetic end: Nur aus innig verbundenem Ernst und Spiel kann wahre Kunst entspringen,” schrieb Goethe 1799, und gerade in den “Lehrjahren,” in denen ja trotz Marianes, Aurelies, Mignons und des Harfners Tod eine durchaus heitere und behagliche Stimmung vorherrscht, erfordert der Spielcharakter des Kunstwerks ein heiteres Ende. (“Zur Deutung …,” p. 192)

But clearly not all works of literature have “ein heiteres Ende,” and the Comic ending of the Apprenticeship as structure can legitimately arouse the most contradictory emotions in the reader. 32. Cf. Eichner, “Zur Deutung …,” p. 167. 33. Eben gingen einige Leute vorbei, und sie liebkoste ihn auf das anmutigste, und er, um kein Skandal zu geben, war gezwungen, die Rolle des geduldigen Ehemannes zu spielen (MA V, 131). 34. Man werde, sagte sie, der Gräfin die unvermutete Ankunft ihres Gemahls, und seine üble Laune ankündigen; sie werde kommen, einigemal im Zimmer auf und abgehn, sich alsdann auf die Lehne des Sessels setzen, ihren Arm auf seine Schultern legen, und einige Worte sprechen. Er solle seine Ehemannsrolle so lange und so gut als möglich spielen … (MA V, 187). 35. For Eric Blackall, the marriages at the end of the Apprenticeship exemplify the typical romance ending of the Trivialroman (Goethe and the Novel, p. 116). The line separating comedy from romance is extremely difficult to trace. Romance also ends with a marriage, but one of a very different kind, something Evelyn Hinz terms “hierogamy,” as opposed to the “wedlock” ending of comedy. 36. Jarno ging in der Stube auf und ab. “Was soll ich sagen?” rief er aus, oder soll ich’s sagen? Es kann kein Geheimnis bleiben, die Verwirrung ist nicht zu vermeiden. Also denn Geheimnis gegen Geheimnis! Überraschung gegen Überraschung! Therese ist nicht die Tochter ihrer Mutter! das Hindernis ist gehoben, ich komme hierher, Sie zu bitten, das edle Mädchen zu einer Verbindung mit Lothario vorzubereiten (MA V, 535). 37. See Miller, Picaresque Novel, p. 44. See Ammerlahn, “Der Strukturparallelismus …”; Saariluoma, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre …; and Kakandes.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

152

Notes to pages 63–65

38. Miles, “Picaro’s Journey …,” pp. 980–981. 39. The essence of comedy has often been said to be a sudden apprehension of incongruity (see O. Rommel, “Die wissenschaftlichen Bemühungen um die Analyse des Komischen,” passim). Many theories of comedy and humor are based upon such a division of the self into “Ich” and “Über-Ich”; humor results when one’s point of view shifts suddenly from that of the lower to that of the higher ego: Ich meine, wir geben dieser wenig plausiblen Vorstellung einen starken Rückhalt, wenn wir in Betracht ziehen, was wir aus pathologischen Erfahrungen über die Struktur unseres Ichs gelernt haben. Dieses Ich ist nichts Einfaches, sondern beherbergt als seinen Kern eine besondere Instanz, das Über-Ich, mit dem es manchmal zusammenfliesst, so dass wir die beiden nicht zu unterscheiden vermögen, während es sich in anderen Verhältnissen scharf von ihm sondert. Das Über-Ich ist genetisch Erbe der Elterninstanz, es hält das Ich oft in strenger Abhängigkeit, behandelt es wirklich noch, wie einst in frühen Jahren die Eltern – oder der Vater – das Kind behandelt haben. Wir erhalten also eine dynamische Aufklärung der humoristischen Einstellung, wenn wir annehmen, sie bestehe darin, dass die Person des Humoristen den psychischen Akzent von ihrem Ich abgezogen und auf ihr Über-Ich verlegt habe … (Freud, “Der Humor,” pp. 277–278)

See also Rovit, “Humor and the Humanization of Art,” p. 148 (“Again, this being able to laugh at ourselves is possible only because we are able to detach some part of ourselves from our immediate struggling response in order to effect a psychical distance which will enable us to observe ourselves.”), and W. Preisendanz’s entry on “Humor” in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, III, 1234. 40. Miller’s example of this use of the “dance pattern” is Simplicissimus, in which Grimmelshausen “purposely disappoints our expectations by writing a dark parody of the romantic finale in which wonderful coincidence and anagnorisis are without any significant consequence or issue whatever” (p. 16). 41. Miller, Picaresque Novel, pp. 17–18. 42. Cf. Eric Blackall, Goethe and the Novel, pp. 143–148, esp. p. 148 and Jacobs, Wilhelm Meister und seine Brüder, pp. 25–26. 43. Miller discusses Gil Blas as a transitional work at great length; unfortunately, space does not allow further consideration of his thoughtful interpretation. 44. Storz, “Zur Komposition …,” p. 159. 45. Storz, “Wieder einmal …,” pp. 191–192. 46. Yet, as I have argued in the first chapter, Book I must also be seen as the origin of the picaresque tonality as well. This seeming contradiction is explained by the overlapping of the Satiric mode and that of the Comic proper. The end of Book I contains both a picaresque ejection and a f­rustration by a blocking action of Wilhelm and Mariane’s Comic drive to be united. It is telling that Goethe described the Apprenticeship as “not eusynopton” (to Riemer, March 26, 1814).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Notes to pages 65–68

153

47. Significantly, another (or the same?) “emissary” from the Society, debating with Wilhelm, hits upon the “arbitrary example” of a young man whose taste is ruined when chance leads him astray through an encounter with a “puppet theater” (WMA, 68). 48. Sie [die Türe] eröffnete sich; allein nicht wie sonst zum hin und widerlaufen, der Eingang war durch eine unerwartete Festlichkeit ausgefüllt. Es baute sich ein Portal in die Höhe, das von einem mystischen Vorhang verdeckt war. Erst standen wir alle von ferne, und wie unsere Neugier größer ward, um zu sehen was wohl blinkendes und rasselndes sich hinter der halb durchsichtigen Hülle verbergen möchte, wies man jedem sein Stühlchen und gebot uns, in Geduld zu warten (MA V, 12). 49. See von der Thüsen, “Der Romananfang …,” p. 624: “Der Auftritt der drei Personen ist gestuft nach zunehmender Wichtigkeit ihrer Funktion im Roman, was an die Tradition der Dienstboteneröffnung in Komödien erinnert.” 50. See Hass, “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre,” passim, but esp. pp. 142 and 144–145. 51. This has of course been noted by numerous critics. Joachim Storck, for example, sees the “klassische Gesellschaft” of the final books as a contradiction, rather than a realistic reflection, of the society of Goethe’s time (“Das Ideal …,” p. 229). See also Beddow, Fiction …, p. 103: Goethe transfers his hero, as Wieland had done before him, to a world where he can find fulfillment – and at the same time, again like Wieland, emphasizes the fictionality of that alternative world, making no attempt to disguise its divergence from anything recognizable as an image of the “workaday world” of extraliterary experience.

52. See esp. the interesting studies by Pfaff and Thomé. 53. Eichner, “Zur Deutung …,” p. 195. See also Hass (“Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre,” p. 181) and Fink (“Die Bildung …,” p. 24), both of whom ­compare these books’ narrative “logic” to that of a fairy tale. 54. Cf. Staiger, Goethe, II, p. 172; Pascal, German Novel, p. 28; Gundolf, Goethe, pp. 517–518; Korff, Geist der Goethezeit, II, 340; Borcherdt, Roman der Goethezeit, pp. 298–300; and Viëtor, Goethe, pp. 148–150. 55. Jacobs, Wilhelm Meister …, p. 277. See also p. 38: Der Bildungsroman strebt also, wie am Agathon und am Wilhelm Meister abzulesen ist, über die bloss aufs Innerliche und Familiäre eingeschränkte Lebensform hinaus. Da indessen die konkrete soziale Umwelt solcher tätigen Integration nicht günstig war, wurde leicht eine utopisch überhöhte Gesellschaft zum Bezugspunkt des theoretisch konzipierten oder literarisch gestalteten Bildungsprozesses.

Jacobs sees such a failure to integrate the real and the ideal as an unsolved problem within the bildungsroman as a whole, and thus terms it “eine unerfüllte Gattung” (1972, p. 271 ff.). 56. Frye, Natural Perspective, p. 8. 57. Ibid., p. 12. 58. Frye, Anatomy, pp. 166–167.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

154

Notes to pages 68–70

59. Frye, Anatomy, p. 167: In the comedy of manners the main ethical interest falls as a rule on the blocking characters. The technical hero and heroine are often not very interesting people … Fictional comedy, especially Dickens, often follows the same practice of grouping its interesting characters around a somewhat dullish pair of technical leads. Even Tom Jones, though far more fully realized, is still deliberately associated, as his commonplace name indicates, with the conventional and typical.

60. Ibid., p. 170. 61. Dort, hinter einem Lichtschirme, der sie beschattete, saß ein Freuenzimmer und las. “O dass sie es wäre!” sagte er zu sich selbst in diesem entscheidenden Augenblick. Er setzte das Kind nieder, das aufzuwachen schien, und dachte sich der Dame zu nähern, aber das Kind sank schlaftrunken zusammen, das Frauenzimmer stand auf und kam ihm entgegen. Die Amazone war’s! er konnte sich nicht halten, stürzte sich auf seine Knie, und rief aus: sie ist’s! er faßte ihre Hand, und küßte sie mit unendlichen Entzücken. Das Kind lag zwischen ihnen beiden auf dem Teppich und schlief sanft (MA V, 515). 62. Frye, Anatomy, pp. 182–183. 63. Er sah das umhüllende Kleid von ihren Schultern fallen; ihr Gesicht, ihre Gestalt glänzend verschwinden. Alle seine Jugendträume knüpften sich an dieses Bild. Er glaubte nunmehr die edle, heldenmütige Chlorinde mit eigenen Augen gesehen zu haben: ihm fiel der kranke Königssohn wieder ein, an dessen Lager die schöne, teilnehmende Prinzessin mit stiller Bescheidenheit herantritt (MA V, 233). 64. “At times the whole incident seemed to dream, and he would’ve considered it a fantasy if the coat were not still there to assure him of the reality of the apparition” (WMA, 139). Oft kam ihm die Geschichte wie ein Traum vor, und er würde sie für ein Märchen gehalten haben, wenn nicht das Kleid zurückgeblieben wäre, das ihm die Gewissheit der Erscheinung versicherte. (MA V, 233)

65. Hass, “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre,” pp. 193–194: The images of the dream, on the other hand, which Wilhelm dreams under Lothario’s roof, bring him, in contrast to his thoughts and fantasies while waking, significant foreshadowings of his real future.

66. On the application of Freud’s theories to Comic form, see Charles Mauron’s Psychocritique du genre comique, esp. pp. 17–33. Mauron notes quite correctly that Freud differentiates “Witz,” “Komik” and “Humor,” and thus feels obliged to place dramatic comedy under one of these headings to the exclusion of the others. He chooses “Witz”: “… je soutiendrais volontiers la thèse qu’une comédie bien construite n’est qu’un vaste et complexe trait d’esprit” (p. 18). This seems somewhat arbitrary, and I would prefer to see all three as different manifestations of the same activity of the unconscious, which is also the basis of dream symbolism and, in part, the transformative power of memory. Dorrit Cohn’s reading of Wilhelm’s dream is especially brilliant.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Notes to pages 70–75

155

67. Frye, “Argument of Comedy,” pp. 58–59. 68. Frye, Anatomy, pp. 164–165. 69. Frye, Natural Perspective, pp. 92–93. 70. See Trunz’s commentary, HA VII, 703. 71. Frye, “Argument of Comedy,” p. 59. Thomé also ascribes to Friedrich an important Comic function. Thomé sees him, somewhat abstractly, not as a “fool,” but rather as a “Symbol des Humors” (p. 482). 72. Frye, Natural Perspective, p. 82. 73. Ibid., p. 83. 74. Ammerlahn offers an interpretation of Mignon that is different, yet closely related to that offered here. He sees Mignon as a “genius” figure born out of the protagonist’s longing for the ideal, out of a mental love relationship poetically equated with that between man and woman (“Mignons … Vorgeschichte …,” p. 15). See also Fick, “Mignon …” 75. Frye, Natural Perspective, p. 7. 76. Frye, Anatomy, pp. 136–137. 77. The Beautiful Soul for example, describes him as “a wonderful man, whom people take for a French abbé (though no one knows really where he comes from [ein wunderbarer Mann, den man für einen französischen Geistlichen hält, ohne dass man recht von seiner Herkunft unterrichtet ist …])” (WMA, 255; MA V, 421). 78. Cf. Frye, Natural Perspective, p. 141: The forest world presents a society in contrast to the one outside it, as the court of Duke Senior is in contrast to Duke Frederick. The forest society is more flexible and tolerant than its counterpart … It is associated with the “golden world” in As You Like It and with Robin Hood in both As You Like It and The Two Gentlemen. It is explicitly a dream world in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and at least a magical one in As You Like It …

79. Ibid. 80. Frye, Anatomy, p. 181. 81. Dieckmann, “Repeated Mirror Reflections …,” pp. 162–163. 82. Cf. Frye’s discussions of the twofold nature of this theme in Secular Scripture, p. 117. 83. Frye, Natural Perspective, p. 78 and Secular Scripture, p. 117. 84. Frye, Anatomy, p. 183. 85. “die wahre Eva, die Stamm-Mutter des weiblichen Geschlechts” (MA V, 98). Larrett, “Wilhelm Meister and the Amazons …,” p. 51. 86. Staiger, Goethe, II, p. 166. 87. Ibid. 88. Und jene himmlischen Gestalten, Sie fragen nicht nach Mann und Weib, Und keine Kleider, keine Falten, Umgeben den verklärten Leib.     (MA V, 517)

89. See Larrett, “Wilhelm Meister and the Amazons …,” p. 52 and Schings, “Wilhelm Meisters schöne Amazone …”

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

156

Notes to pages 76–78

90. Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education …, Letter xv, p. 108. See Larrett, “Wilhelm Meister and the Amazons …,” pp. 53–54. Ronald Gray stresses the hermaphroditical nature of the ultimate alchemical symbol of union, the Philosopher’s Stone: Starkey describes the Stone as a “reconciliation of Contraries, a making friendship between Enemies.” Very often, since the conflicting opposites were ­considered as being male and female, the Stone was called an Hermaphrodite … it was intended to represent the unitive and universal nature of the Stone. Equally common was the representation of the final stage by a marriage from which the “Hermaphroditical Infant” was sometimes said to emerge. (Goethe the Alchemist, p. 34)

Elsewhere in the same work, Gray speculates that Mignon may have been inspired by Goethe’s alchemical studies (p. 224). 91. Larrett, “Wilhelm Meister and the Amazons …,” p. 56. 92. Delcourt, “Deux interpretations romanesques du mythe de l’androgyne Mignon et Seraphita,” p. 239. CHAPTER 4 1. Eckermann, Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens, 1948 [January 18, 1825], pp. 141–142. 2. Denn im Grunde scheint doch das Ganze nichts anderes sagen zu wollen, als dass der Mensch, trotz aller Dummheiten und Verwirrungen, von einer höheren Hand geleitet, doch zum glücklichen Ziele gelange. Ibid., p. 142. 3. There has been some speculation as to what painting Goethe may have had in mind, but it seems certain that it was “The Sick Prince” (or “Antiochus and Stratonice”) by Antonio Bellucci (1654–1726) – a painting earlier attributed to Andrea Celesti (on the problem of attribution, see Gronau, pp. 157–162). Goethe visited the gallery in Kassel where it hung many times, and surely would have seen it there. Cf. Kunze; Schweitzer, Wilhelm Meister und das Bild vom kranken Königssohn, p. 422; Trunz, HA VIII, 632; and Ammerlahn, “Goethe und Wilhelm Meister …,” pp. 47–84. But cf. also Nolan, who argues that the painting Goethe describes is closer in important ways to Januarius Zick’s in Wiesbaden. 4. Letter to Goethe, June 28, 1796. Cf. Ammerlahn, “Goethe und Wilhelm Meister …,” p. 49. 5. Cf. esp. Roberts, Indirections of Desire …, which contains numerous subtle insights. However, even Roberts has not grasped the full scope of the theme, as he makes no attempt to trace the many important variants through the Journeyman Years. See also Schings, “Symbolik des Glücks …”; Barner, “Die Verschiedenheit …”; and Saße, “Gerade seine Unvollkommenheit ….” 6. “Ganz richtig! Es stellte die Geschichte vor, wie der kranke Königssohn sich über die Braut seines Vaters in Liebe verzehrt.” Es war eben nicht das beste Gemälde, nicht gut zusammengesetzt, von keiner sonderlichen Farbe, und die Ausführung durchaus manieriert. Das verstand ich nicht und versteh‘ es noch nicht; der Gegenstand ist es, der mich an einem Gemälde reizt, nicht die Kunst (MA V, 69).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Notes to pages 79–83

157

7. Sollten Sie mich nicht wieder erkennen? Sollten Sie, unter andern Dingen, die Sie wissen möchten, nicht auch zu erfahren wünschen, wo die Kunstsammlung ihres Großvaters sich gegenwärtig befindet? Erinnern Sie sich des Gemäldes nicht mehr, das Ihnen so reizend war? Wo mag der kranke Königssohn wohl jetzo schmachten? (MA V, 495). 8. Er riß die Türflügel auf und wies nach dem großen Bilde im Vorsaal. Wie heißt der Ziegenbart mit der Krone dort, der sich am Fuße des Bettes um seinen kranken Sohn abhärmt? Wie heißt die Schöne, die herein tritt, und in ihren sittsamen Schelmenaugen Gift und Gegengift zugleich führt? Wie heißt der Pfuscher von Arzt, dem erst in diesem Augenblicke ein Licht aufgeht, der das erste Mal in seinem Leben Gelegenheit findet, ein vernünftiges Rezept zu verordnen, eine Arznei zu reichen, die aus dem Grunde kuriert, und die ebenso wohlschmeckend als heilsam ist? (MA V, 606). 9. Großmächtigster König und Herr Herr! (MA V, 13). 10. der Philister… fiel endlich wie ein Klotz und gab der ganzen Sache einen herrlichen Ausschlag (MA V, 13). 11. “In allen Winkeln des Bodens, der Ställe, des Gartens, unter allerlei Umständen, studierte ich das Stück ganz in mich hinein, ergriff alle Rollen, und lernte sie auswendig, nur daß ich mich meist an den Platz des Haupthelden zu setzen pflegte und die übrigen wie Trabanten nur im Gedächtnisse mitlaufen ließ. So lagen mir die großmütigen Reden Davids, mit denen er den übermütigen Riesen Goliath herausforderte, Tag und Nacht im Sinne…” (MA V, 21). 12. See 1 Samuel 15; 35;1. See Bluhm, “‘Du kommst mir vor … (pp. 129–131)’” and Brown, “Im Anfang war das Bild. (pp. 241–243)” 13. “But the LORD said unto Samuel, look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him; for the LORD seeth not as a man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart” (1 Samuel 16; 7). 14. “Sein Freund Shakespeare, den er mit großer Freude auch als seinen Paten anerkannte, und sich nur um so lieber Wilhelm nennen ließ, hatte ihm einen Prinzen bekannt gemacht, der sich unter geringer, ja sogar schlechter Gesellschaft eine Zeitlang aufhält, und, ohngeachtet seiner edlen Natur, an der Rohheit, Unschicklichkeit und Albernheit solcher ganz sinnlichen Bursche sich ergötzt” (MA V, 208). 15. Henry IV, I.ii.187–195. See Michelsen, “Wilhelm Meister Reads Shakespeare.” 16. “Falstaff. Marry then, sweet wag, when thou art king let us not that are squires of the night’s body be called thieves of the day’s beauty; let us be Diana’s foresters, gentlemen of the shade, minions of the moon, and let men say we be men of good government, being governed as the sea is by our noble and chaste mistress the moon, under whose countenance we steal.” 1 Henry IV, I.ii.23–29. It is significant that Wilhelm will also experience his higher self as a sun within the changing cosmos. 17. “Höchst willkommen war ihm das Ideal, womit er seinen ­gegenwärtigen Zustand vergleichen konnte, und der Selbstbetrug, wozu er eine fast unüberwindliche Neigung spürte, ward ihm dadurch außerordentlich

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

158

Notes to pages 83–86

erleichtert … Das schöne seidne Halstuch, das gerettete Andenken Marianens, lag nur locker geknüpft unter der nesseltuchenen Krause. Ein runder Hut mit einem bunten Bande und einer großen Feder machte die Maskerade vollkommen” (MA V, 208). 18. “Wir setzten uns vor, das Stück zu spielen, und ich hatte, ohne zu wissen, was ich tat, die Rolle des Prinzen übernommen” (MA V, 214). 19. “Auch glaubte ich recht in den Geist der Rolle einzudringen, wenn ich die Last der tiefen Schwermut gleichsam selbst auf mich nähme, und unter diesem Druck meinem Vorbilde durch das seltsame Labyrinth so mancher Launen und Sonderbarkeiten zu folgen suchte. So memorierte ich, und so übte ich mich, und glaubte nach und nach mit meinem Helden zu einer Person zu werden” (MA V, 214–215). 20. “In diesen Worten [‘Die Zeit ist aus dem Gelenke; wehe mir, daß ich geboren ward, sie wieder einzurichten’], dünkt mich, liegt der Schlüssel zu Hamlets ganzen Betragen, und mir ist deutlich, daß Shakespeare habe schildern ­wollen: eine große Tat auf eine Seele gelegt, die der Tat nicht gewachsen ist. Und in diesem Sinne find’ ich das Stück durchgängig gearbeitet. Hier wird ein Eichbaum in ein köstliches Gefäß gepflanzt, das nur liebliche Blumen in seinen Schoß hätte aufnehmen sollen; die Wurzeln dehnen sich aus, das Gefäß wird zernichtet” (MA V, 245). 21. “hamlet. Farewell, dear mother. King. Thy loving father, Hamlet. Hamlet. My mother – father and mother is man and wife, man and wife is one flesh, and so my mother …” (IV, iii.48–51). See Dumiche (pp. 191–200), Dye (p. 73) and Paulin (pp. 179–190). 22. Allein je weiter ich kam, desto schwerer ward mir die Vorstellung des Ganzen, und mir schien zuletzt fast unmöglich, zu einer Übersicht zu gelangen (MA V, 215). 23. The novellas in the Journeyman Years are usually discussed in terms of the overcoming of passion through Entsagung, or the failure to do so. See e.g. Trunz’s commentary passim, but especially HA VIII, 618; and FischerHartmann, Goethes Altersroman …, pp. 15–58. See also Clouser, “‘Die pilgernde Törin’ …”; Martin, “Who Is the Fool Now? …”; and Mommsen, “Krieg ist das Lösungswort …” The following analysis of the theme of the Sick Prince as it appears in certain novellas is not intended as an alternative comprehensive interpretation of the novellas: this would not be possible, since the theme is not present in some. Rather, we seek to show an important way in which the Journeyman Years can be understood as a true sequel to the Apprenticeship, an important way in which the two novels are united by a Comic theme. 24. “Herr von Revanne, ein reicher Privatmann, besitzt die schönsten Ländereien seiner Provinz. Nebst Sohn und Schwester bewohnt er ein Schloß, das eines Fürsten würdig wäre; und in der Tat, wenn sein Park, seine Wasser, seine Pachtungen, seine Manufakturen, sein Hauswesen auf sechs Meilen umher die Hälfte der Einwohner ernähren, so ist er durch sein Ansehen und das Gute, das er stiftet, wirklich ein Fürst” (MA XVII, 284).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Notes to pages 86–90

159

25. “Schon mehrere Jahre steh’ ich im Namen meines Fürsten einer Provinz vor … Mit unumschränkter Vollmacht gebot ich in diesem Lande” (MA XVII, 637). 26. “Wer nicht fühlt, was ein ehrbares Mädchen empfinden muß, wenn man um sie wirbt, der verdient sie nicht zu erhalten. Wer gegen alle Vernunft, gegen die Absichten, gegen den Plan seiner Familie, zu Gunsten seiner Leidenschaften, Entwürfe schmiedet, verdient die Früchte seiner Leidenschaft zu entbehren und der Achtung seiner Familie zu ermangeln” (MA XVII, 296). 27. “Halten Sie solche Ausbrüche einer plötzlichen leidenschaftlichen Neigung zurück, wenn Sie ein Glück nicht verscherzen wollen, das Ihnen sehr nahe liegt, das aber erst nach einigen Prüfungen ergriffen werden kann” (MA XVII, 585). 28. “Mein Geld … verlor sich eines Abends völlig aus meinem Beutel, als ich mich unvorsichtig einem leidenschaftlichen Spiel überlassen hatte” (MA XVII, 587). 29. “Wasser ist für die Nixen! … Was will der Zwerg?” (MA XVII, 594). 30. “Sie werden sich doch nicht meistern lassen!” (MA XVII, 594). 31. E.g. the barber’s first deliberations on discovering that his lady is a dwarf: Ich sah sie an; schöner war sie als jemals, und ich dachte bei mir selbst: Ist es denn ein so großes Unglück, eine Frau zu besitzen, die von Zeit zu Zeit eine Zwergin wird, so dass man sie im Kästchen herumtragen kann? Wäre es nicht viel schlimmer, wenn sie zur Riesin würde und ihren Mann in den Kasten steckte? (MA XVII, 592)

32. “Im Gegenteil wurde ich nur noch tückischer, als man eine Laute brachte und meine Schöne ihren Gesang zur Bewunderung aller übrigen begleitete. Unglücklicherweise erbat man sich eine allgemeine Stille. Also auch schwatzen sollte ich nicht mehr und die Töne taten mir in den Zähnen weh. War es nun ein Wunder, dass endlich der kleinste Funke die Mine zündete?” (MA XVII, 594). 33. As in the frame plot, there is even a mysterious key to the chest (MA XVII, 585–586). On the symbolism of the “Kästchen,” see esp. Emrich, “Das Problem der Symbolinterpretation …,” pp. 331–352; Dürr, “Geheimnis und Aufklärung …”; Schmitz-Emans, “Vom Spiel mit dem Mythos …”; Merkl, “Die Hülle des Gewünschten als Gegenstand der Wunscherfahrung …”; and Brüggemann, Makarie und Mercurius … . Emrich views the “Kästchen” as the controlling symbol in the Wanderjahre. 34. “Zu den umrahmenden theoretisch-utopischen Kapiteln bildet die Novelle den grössten Gegensatz: sie ist ganz und gar Verlebendigung; sie ist eminent psychologisch und darin modern” (HA VIII, 649). 35. “Und so ist denn allen bekannt, wie und auf welche Weise unser Bund geschlossen und gegründet sei, niemand sehen wir unter uns, der nicht zweckmäßig seine Tätigkeit jeden Augenblick üben könnte, der nicht versichert wäre, daß er überall, wohin Zufall, Neigung, ja Leidenschaft ihn führen könnte, sich immer wohl empfohlen, aufgenommen und gefördert, ja von Unglücksfällen möglichst wiederhergestellt finden werde” (MA XVII, 619).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

160

Notes to pages 90–93

36. “Doch was wir auch sinnen und vorhaben geschehe nicht aus Leidenschaft, noch aus irgendeiner Nötigung, sondern aus einer dem besten Rat entsprechenden Überzeugung” (MA XVII, 614). “Da wir uns nun alles dieses einander vergegenwärtigt und aufgeklärt, so wird kein beschränkter Trübsinn, keine leidenschaftliche Dunkelheit über uns walten” (MA XVII, 618). 37. “Haben wir uns nun bisher auf jedem Schritt zu ehren gewußt, indem wir die vorzüglichste Masse tätiger Menschen als unsere Gesellen und Schicksalsgenossen angesprochen, so stehet euch, teure Freunde, zum Abschluß noch die höchste Gunst bevor, indem ihr euch mit Kaisern, Königen und Fürsten verbrüdert findet” (MA XVII, 618). 38. A subtle allusion to “The Man of Fifty Years”? This would underscore the triangular rivalry of the painting, which obtains in the novella as well. 39. “Es ist ein Wirrwarr ohne Grenzen,” fuhr der Kellner fort; “… man hält Sie für einen alten Oheim den man wieder zu umarmen leidenschaftlich verlangt” (MA XVII, 628). 40. “Leidenschaft erzeugt Leidenschaft. Bewegt wie er war, sehnte er sich nach etwas anderem, Fremdem” (MA XVII, 629). 41. Lenning, I, sub “Gesell.” See both of Abbott’s works; Schings, “Wilhelm Meister und das Erbe der Illuminaten …”; and Baer und Müller, “Lehr- und Wanderjahre ….” 42. Ibid., sub “Kunst (die königliche).” 43. Ibid. 44. “Alles was unsern Geist befreit, ohne uns die Herrschaft über uns selbst zu geben, ist verderblich” (MA XVII, 523). 45. E.g. Zauberflöte II.ii: “… Tamino, ein Königssohn, zwanzig Jahre seines Alters, wandelt an der nördlichen Pforte unseres Tempels, will seinen nächtlichen Schleier von sich reissen und ins Heiligtum des grössten Lichtes blicken.” 46. Cf. Allgemeines Handbuch der Freimaurerei, I, 602, sub “Leidender”: “Leidender wird in der Lehrart der grossen Landes loge in Berlin der Aufzunehmende genannt in Beziehung auf die Beschwerden, die er vor seiner Aufnahme zum Freimaurer zu überwinden hat. Auch in den Asiatischen Brüdern gab es eine Probestufe der L” and Lenning, II, 272, sub “Lehrling”: “Nun kommst Du näher zur Aufnahme… Schon wird Dir Ahnung heiliger Wahrheit und göttlichen Lichts. In der demütigen Stellung, wo Du Dich selbst hingiebst, als ein Armer, Kranker, Leidender, der gern zur Genesung durch Licht und Wahrheit kommen wollte, leitet der Grossmeister Deine Hand auf das heilige Buch …” 47. “Wilhelm war durch die heftigsten Leidenschaften bewegt und zerrüttet, die unvermuteten und schreckhaften Anfälle hatten sein Innerstes ganz aus aller Fassung gebracht, einer Leidenschaft zu widerstehen, die sich des Herzens so gewaltsam bemächtigt hatte” (MA V, 605). 48. “Er dachte mit großer Schnelle eine Reihe von Schicksalen durch, oder vielmehr er dachte nicht, er ließ das auf seine Seele wirken, was er nicht entfernen konnte. Es gibt Augenblicke des Lebens, in welchen die Begebenheiten,

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Notes to pages 93–98

161

gleich geflügelten Weberschiffchen, vor uns sich hin und wider bewegen, und unaufhaltsam ein Gewebe vollenden, das wir mehr oder weniger selbst gesponner und angelegt haben” (MA V, 545–546). 49. “Wilhelm war in der schrecklichsten Lage … er überlief mit flüchtigem Blick seine Geschichte, und sah zuletzt mit Schaudern auf seinen gegenwärtigen Zustand, endlich sprang er auf und rief: bin ich Schuld an dem, was vorgeht, an dem, was mir und Ihnen begegnet, so strafen Sie mich! … Aber und abermal gehen mir die Augen über mich selbst auf, immer zu spät und immer umsonst. Wie sehr verdiente ich die Strafrede Jarnos! Wie glaubte ich sie gefaßt zu haben, ein neues Leben zu gewinnen! Konnte ichs? Sollte ichs?” (MA V, 606–607). CHAPTER 5 1. “Der Abschluss des Ganzen folgt nächstens, und ich werde erst wieder frei Atem holen, wenn dieser sisyphische Stein, der mir so oft wieder zurückrollt, endlich auf der anderen Bergseite hinunter ins Publikum springt.” (Letter to Gottling, 17 Jenuary 1829; Gräf 1925) 2. Borcherdt, Roman der Goethezeit, pp. 559–597. 3. See Ehrhard Bahr, “Goethe’s Wanderjahre as an Experimental Novel.” 4. See also, e.g., Henkel, Entsagung, p. 11; Fischer-Hartmann, Goethes Altersroman, p. 113 f.; Bastian, “Die Makrostruktur …,” p. 633; and Viëtor, Goethe, pp. 281–304. 5. E.g. Goethe’s letter to Zauper of September 7, 1821 (Gräf 1783); his letter to Rochlitz of July 28, 1829 (Gräf 1941); his letter to Boiserée of September 2, 1829 (Gräf 1943); and his conversation with Fr. v. Müller of February 18, 1830 (Gräf 1947). 6. Since the word “romantic,” capitalized or uncapitalized, bears so many possibilities for confusion, I shall henceforth employ the term Romance, both as noun and inelegant adjective, meaning thereby the literary mode described in the introduction and immediately above. Uncapitalized, the word “romance” refers to any of the several historical genres. 7. Blackall, Goethe and the Novel, p. 228. 8. “But inside this fairy-tale-like structure we have serious conversations on ideas such as would not naturally arise in such a structure but are nevertheless found in fantastic tales and novels of the eighteenth century – in Rasselas, for instance, in certain works by Wieland, and in the contes of Voltaire” (Ibid.). 9. Bastian, “Die Makrostruktur …,” p. 628. 10. See Brown, Goethe’s Cyclical Narratives, p. 83 and Reiss, Goethe’s Novels, pp. 106–107. 11. See also Scholes and Kellogg, Nature of Narrative, p. 95; Wicks, “Nature of Picaresque Narrative,” p. 242; Parker, Literature and the Delinquent, p. 79; Guillén, “Towards a Definition …,” p. 74; and Frye, Anatomy, p. 223. 12. Grimmelshausen, e.g., uses parody of romance to great effect. See Miller, Picaresque Novel, p. 10.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

162

Notes to pages 99–102

13. “Seit zehn Wochen und drüber habe ich in meinem stillen Leben schon mehrere Epochen gehabt. Erst dictirte ich kleine romantische Erzählungen; … dann ward gezeichnet, und dann kam das Stein- und Gebirgsreich an die Reihe und nun bin ich wieder zur freieren Phantasie zurückgekehrt, eine Region, in der wir uns zuletzt immer noch am besten befinden.” Karlsbad, August 10, 1807 (Gräf 1460). 14. Karlsbad, August 8, 1807 (Gräf 1957). On “mystification,” see H. Schlaffer’s marvelous study Wilhelm Meister: Das Ende der Kunst …, passim. 15. These have been printed at I 252 214 f. of the Weimarer Ausgabe (henceforth WA). 16. These are printed at WA I 53, 438–442. 17. WA I 53, 439. 18. Ibid., 438–440. 19. July 22, 1807. Eric Blackall makes much of Goethe’s interest in Daphnis and Chloe in the concluding chapter of Goethe and the Novel. Blackall quotes his comments to Eckermann (which constitute, according to Blackall, “Goethe’s most detailed analysis of a novel” [p. 271]) in full; further on, he compares that romance to the Wanderjahre: … It is not difficult to understand why this tale of young love, this confirmation of goodness, piety and reverence, should have appealed so strongly to the old poet, the creator of Felix and Hersilie. And then there were plenty of novelistic elements in Daphnis and Chloe, and here, as in The Vicar of Wakefield, ­natural and strange elements  – and ordinary and extraordinary circumstances, as in Scott – were happily combined. (p. 273) The juxtaposition of “natural and strange elements,” “ordinary and extraordinary circumstances,” is one of the salient qualities of the Romantic, while Scott is, of course, the great modern master of the prose romance.

20. Frye, Secular Scripture, p. 126. 21. Beer, Romance, p. 6. See also Scott, Essay on Romance, p. 113. 22. Cf. his letter to Göttling, January 27, 1829 (Gräf 1929): “E. W. verzeihen, wenn ich, nach Art der Sultanin Scheherazade, meine Mährchen stückweise zu überliefern anfange …” See also Gräf 320, 7–9. 23. Blackall, Goethe and the Novel, pp. 195–196: Eckermann had been praising the realism, the “ganz entschiedene Realität” of Roderick Random, but Goethe referred him to Rasselas, which is a novel of a totally different order … a philosophical dialogue with an advancing argument but the barest ­narrative outline. What Johnson gives us is not “ganz entschiedene Realität,” but what one might call “ganz entschiedene Idealität,” voices but never ­realistically delineated characters.

24. Blackall, Goethe and the Novel, p. 196. 25. See Blackall, Goethe and the Novel, pp. 273–274 and his article “Goethe and the Chinese Novel,” which describes these works in some detail. See also Schuster. 26. Atkins, “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre: Novel or Romance?”, p. 52 (fn.). 27. Blackall, Goethe and the Novel, p. 274; “Chinese Novel,” pp. 35–36.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Notes to pages 102–7

163

28. See also Beer, pp. 2 and 5; Gaslee, passim; Koch, “‘Weltliteratur’ …”; and esp. Griffin’s extremely interesting distinction between epic and romance. All three view the romance as a product of the interaction between alien or otherwise remote cultures. 29. Frye, Anatomy, p. 192 and Anatomy, p. 186. 30. Beer, Romance, p. 10. 31. Frye, Secular Scripture, p. 169 and Anatomy, p. 186. 32. Frye, Secular Scripture, p. 169. 33. Ibid. 34. Anatomy, p. 304. Frye arrives at this distinction through comparing Wuthering Heights to the novels of Jane Austen. 35. See Miller, Picaresque Novel, p. 81 and Bataillon, Le roman picaresque, p. 38. 36. Cf. Tuve, Allegorical Imagery, p. 375: We read a great deal about love as that term embraces an endless variety of human affections  – the poignancy of the relationship between Gawain and Lancelot, suddenly ungovernable desires or folies, consistently faithful devotion, the protective love of powerful beings like the Lady of the Lake, love especially intense between leader and men, especially resilient between brothers, especially tender between parents and children. (Quoted by Beer, p. 25)

37. Frye, Secular Scripture, p. 186. 38. Ibid., p. 92. 39. e.g., Miller, Picaresque Novel, p. 11; Beer, Romance, pp. 10 and 29; and Frye, Secular Scripture, p. 54. 40. cf. Brown, Goethe’s Cyclical Narratives, p. 133. 41. Ibid., p. 72. 42. Brown (Goethe’s Cyclical Narratives, p. 72) finds these endings “trite,” and interprets this scene as an ironic undercutting of Makarie’s realm on Goethe’s part. Yet it seems clear that Goethe really did want Makarie to be taken as a “Gleichnis des Wünschenswertesten” (MA XVII, 672), an image of man’s highest striving. If the novel has a high-point, it is the myth of Makarie that follows immediately upon the various unions (cf. Trunz, H.A. VIII, 658). It is within Makarie’s realm that one finds “die höchste Gestalt, wozu sich der Mensch auszubilden hat” (MA XVII, 672). Such an ending may seem ironic because it is unmotivated, but such a lack of motivation, such disregard for narrative probability, is also typical of Romance. More on this below. 43. Both Trunz (H.A. VIII, 658) and Röder (p. 222) undervalue the importance of this final scene. I shall argue below that it represents a true culmination in the development of archetypal themes in the Wanderjahre. 44. Cf. Frye, Secular Scripture, p. 51: “There are other dramas besides Shakespeare’s Pericles  – Goethe’s Faust, for example  – which have been criticized for lack of “unity,” meaning continuity or “hence” narrative, but might display a good deal more coherence to critics able to see them as archetypal sequences.” The same might be said of those who find Goethe’s Wanderjahre formless as well.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

164

Notes to pages 107–12

45. Frye, Secular Scripture, pp. 49–50 and Natural Perspective, pp. 56, 110, and 112. 46. Frye, Secular Scripture, p. 97. 47. Ibid. 48. Cf. Frye, Natural Perspective, p. 118. 49. HA VIII, 531. Elsewhere, Trunz compares the form of the Wanderjahre to that of Faust II, in which “die kausal verknüpfenden Handlungsglieder …  fortfallen und die Szenen nur noch nach den Gesetzen eines tieferen Symbolzusammenhangs aneinandergesetzt werden” (HA VIII, 598). Ibid., p. 529. Cf. also Emmel (p. 268), who sees this structure in the late works of both Goethe and Wieland. 50. Trunz argues for this same vertical distinction, except that he sees certain novellas as transitional, and thus assigns them an intermediate level: Aus der Fülle der Bilder hebt sich deutlich ein Höhenbereich heraus: Makarie, die Pädagogische Provinz, der Bereich des Abbé, auch die Josephsgeschichte. Es gibt ferner einen Bereich des Alltäglichen: die Lucidor-Novelle, das MelusinenMärchen, The Perilous Wager und andere Partien, die überraschend leicht klingen. Dazwischen liegt eine verbindende Mittelschicht, die etwa durch den Mann von funfzig Jahren und das Nussbraune Mädchen gekennzeichnet ist. (HA VIII, 547)

51. HA VIII, 548. 52. “Hilariens Miene zeigte der Mutter einen furchtbaren Ausdruck, es war als wenn das liebe Kind die Pforten der Hölle vor sich eroffnet sähe, zum erstenmal ein Ungeheures erblickte und für ewig” (MA XVII, 435). 53. Cf. Trunz, HA VIII, 549. 54. MA XVII, 380–381; 154–157. Friedrich Ohly has elaborated a somewhat ­different spatial structure underlying the Wanderjahre based upon the “four reverences.” His argument is long, complex and subtle, and the reader is thus referred to his article “Goethes Ehrfurchten – ein ordo caritatis.” 55. Cf. Frye, Natural Perspective, p. 56. 56. Frye, Anatomy, p. 33. 57. Ibid., p. 186. 58. “Es ist eine bekannte Tatsache, dass die Gestalten des Buches weniger individualisiert sind, dass Goethe eher eine Typisierung anstrebt als eine malerische Darstellung. Auch ist der Raum, in dem sich die Handlung abspielt, in so allgemeinen Zügen geschildert, dass er fast als ein imaginärer Raum erscheint” (p. 114). See also Brüggemann, Makarie und Mercurius, p. 126. 59. June 8, 1821, with Fr. v. Müller (Gräf 1765). 60. Frye, Anatomy, p. 305. 61. See Horwath, “Zur Namengebung  …” Cf. Maierhofer, Roman der Nebeneinander …, pp. 154 and 169. 62. Bauer, Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift, p. 181. In this regard, cf. also Sommerhage, who discerns a Tantalus myth underlying “Der Mann von fünfzig Jahren,” and especially the remarkable book by Schlaffer, Wilhelm Meister: Das Ende der Kunst und die Wiederkehr des Mythos.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Notes to pages 112–8

165

63. She “tempts him with an apple, which leads to his cutting himself (MA XVII, 283)  – the first of many “falls” resulting from his passion for her. See Brown, Goethe’s Cyclical Narratives, p. 44, who sees Fitz as “the Biblical tempter,” and Staroste, ““Zur Ding-‘Symbolik’ …,” p. 5l ff., who sees Fitz as a Hermes figure. 64. Cf. Freud‘s essay “Das Motiv der Kästchenwahl.” 65. Cf. Ohly, “Zum Kästchen…,” passim. 66. “This season was rich and shorter stories, devised, begun, continued, executed; all of them will be bound together through a Romance thread under the title: Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years, and shall form a marvelously attractive whole” (Tag- und Jahres-Hefte, 1807, actually written January 1823 [Gräf 1807]). 67. Letter to Zauper, September 7, 1821 (Gräf 1783). 68. Scholes and Kellogg, Nature of Narrative, pp. 208–209: Epic, becoming romanticized, can evolve into an endless proliferation of heroic deeds, as in the Middle Ages the Arthurian and Carolingian cycles did … the simple linear plot of the epic being supplanted by the multifoliate plot of the romance.

See also Maierhofer, Roman des Nebeneinander…, p. 157; Muenzer, Figures of Identity, p. 107; Hisagama; Hunfeld; Ishihara; Saße, “Von ‘dem heilsamen Esoterischen …’.” 69. Remarkably close to Goethe’s own description of the form of the Journeyman Years!: “… And just thin was the task, namely to bring several alien, external events together as a harmonious feeling” (Letter to Zauper, September 7, 1821 [Gräf 1783]). 70. Vinaver, Form and Meaning in Medieval Romance, pp. 12–13. One is reminded by Vinaver’s final comment here how long it took for Goethe’s romance to begin to be understood, and that comparison of the Journeyman Years with the modern novel has been the route many have had to travel to reach understanding. 71. Blackall, Goethe and the Novel, p. 236. 72. “Goethe’s Craft …,” pp. 59–60. 73. Letter to Iken, September 23, 1827. 74. WA I 252, 215. 75. “Wir haben in diesem zweiten Buche die Verhältnisse unsrer alten Freunde bedeutend steigern sehen und zugleich frische Bekanntschaften gewonnen … Erwarten wir also zunächst, einen nach dem andern, sich verflechtend und entwindend, auf gebahnten und ungebahnten Wegen wiederzufinden” (MA XVII, 474). 76. Cf. Blackall, Goethe and the Novel, p. 268. 77. Cf. Lucidor in “Wer ist der Verräter?”, who decides after repeated failures to attain his goal that the shortest distance between two points may be a crooked line after all. I am grateful to Prof. Maria Tatar for this insight. 78. “Indem ich dich nun veranlasse diese artige Geschichte wieder zu lesen, muß ich bekennen daß sie nur im weitesten Sinne hierher gehört, jedoch mir den Weg bahnt, dasjenige auszudrücken, was ich vorzutragen habe. Indessen muss ich noch einiges entferntere durchgehen” (MA XVII, 498).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

166

Notes to pages 118–20

79. “Da dieses aber nicht ist was ich sagen wollte, so muß ich meinen Mitteilungen von irgendeiner andern Seite näher zu kommen suchen” (MA XVII, 499). 80. “Das ist nun das Traurige der Entfernung von Freunden daß wir die Mittelglieder, die Hülfsglieder unserer Gedanken, die sich in der Gegenwart so flüchtig wie Blitze wechselseitig entwickeln und durchweben, nicht in augenblicklicher Verknüpfung und Verbindung vorführen und vortragen können. Hier also zunächst eine der frühsten Jugendgeschichten” (MA XVII, 499). 81. Bahr, “Goethe’s Wanderjahre as an Experimental Novel…,” p. 66. 82. “Wenn ich nach dieser umständlichen Erzählung zu bekennen habe, daß ich noch immer nicht ans Ziel meiner Absicht gelangt sei, und dass ich nur durch einen Umweg dahin zu gelangen hoffen darf, was soll ich da sagen! wie kann ich mich entschuldigen! Allenfalls hätte ich folgendes vorzubringen: Wenn es dem Humoristen erlaubt ist, das Hundertste ins Tausendste durcheinanderzuwerfen, wenn er kecklich seinem Leser überläßt, das, was allenfalls daraus zu nehmen sei, in halber Bedeutung endlich aufzufinden, sollte es dem Verständigen, dem Vernünftigen nicht zustehen, auf eine seltsam scheinende Weise ringsumher nach vielen Punkten hinzuwirken, damit man sie in Einem Brennpunkte zuletzt abgespielt und zusammengefaßt erkenne, einsehen lerne wie die verschiedensten Einwirkungen den Menschen umringend zu einem Entschluss treiben, den er auf keine andere Weise, weder aus innerm Trieb noch äusserm Anlaß, hätte ergreifen ­können?” (MA XVII, 508–509). 83. Letter to Iken, September 23, 1827. 84. See esp. the articles by Willoughby (“Literary Relations…”) and Dieckmann, but also Trunz, HA VIII, 530; Spranger, ““Die sittliche Astrologie …,”p. 196; Blackall, Goethe and the Novel, p. 262; David, “Goethes ‘Wanderjahre’ als symbolische Dichtung,” pp. 124–125; and Brown (1975), who has brought out very well the importance of “perspectivity” in the Wanderjahre, passim. See also Vaget, “Goethe the Novelist …,” p. 8 ff. 85. Goethe, letter to Rochlitz, November 23, 1829 (Gräf 1945). Cf. David, “Goethes ‘Wanderjahre’ als symbolische Dichtung,” p. 115 and Lange, “Goethe’s Craft …,” p. 60. 86. Frye, Secular Scripture, p. 169. 87. Blackall, Goethe and the Novel, chapters 10 and 11. 88. Blackall, Goethe and the Novel, p. 269: The first version of Wilhelm Meister’s Journeymanship is an archive-novel, the second is a symbolic novel. Both versions are concerned with achieving breadth, with presenting fundamental attitudes to experience, with distillations of farreaching vision and deep-reaching analogies. But whereas Goethe had demanded in the first version that the reader himself should see the novel as a collection of separate parts and either respect that or try to provide the connections himself, in the second version he has transformed the whole disparate collection into a highly complex, but nevertheless unitary, contrapuntal structure.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Notes to pages 120–1

167

89. Dante, Paradiso XXXIII, 55–66 and 82–90. In Wicksteed’s translation: Thenceforward was my vision mightier than our discourse, which faileth at such sight, and faileth memory at so great outrage. As is he who dreaming seeth, and when the dream is gone the impression stamped remaineth, and naught else cometh to the mind again; even such am I; for almost wholly faileth me my vision, yet doth the sweetness that was born of it still drop within my heart. So doth the snow unstamp it to the sun, so to the wind on the light leaves was lost the Sibyl’s wisdom. … Oh grace abounding, wherein I presume to fix my look on the eternal light so long that I wearied my sight thereon! Within its depths I saw ingathered, bound by love in one volume, the scattered leaves of all the universe; Substance and accidents and their relations, as though together fused, after such fashion that what I tell of is one simple flame.

90. Spranger, “Der psychologische Perspektivismus…,” p. 228: Der psychologische Beobachter wird also ersetzt durch einen Redaktor, der nicht nur die verschiedensten literarischen Gattungen: Novelle, Icherzählung, Archiv, Tagebuch, Brief, Gespräch (ja sogar dramatisiertes Gespräch I, 9) durcheinander mischt, sondern auch in zahlreichen Zwischenreden die eigene Werkstatt sehen lässt, in der er mit Ächzen die Stücke zum Stückwerk flickt. Publikum, Leser und Gönner werden dabei unbedenklich angeredet und ins Geheimnis gezogen …

Unfortunately, Spranger then confuses this “Redaktor” with Goethe. See Neuhaus, “Die Archivfiktion in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahren,” p. 13 ff. 91. Neuhaus, “Die Archivfiktion in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahren,” p. 25. On the multiplicity of narrative perspectives in the novel, see also Brown, Goethe’s Cyclical Narratives, p. 78. 92. “Sammler und Ordner dieser Papiere” (MA XVII, 636). 93. “Redakteur dieser Bogen” (MA XVII, 488). 94. Trunz’s contention that the narrator “clearly steps forth as an individual” (HA VIII, 532) is, I think, unconvincing. All we know with certainty is that he has engaged in theatrical pursuits in the past, and now seems to regret it (MA XVII, 488). The editor cannot be assumed the author of the various fragments – especially since they originate in the circle around Makarie, of which the editor is not a part – and the remaining evidence Trunz adduces to prove that the editor is aged (MA XVII, 332 and 439) is entirely inconclusive. 95. Neuhaus, “Die Archivfiktion in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahren,” p. 18 ff. I follow Neuhaus here. 96. “Zu diesem Punkt aber gelangt können wir der Versuchung nicht widerstehen ein Blatt aus unsern Archiven mitzuteilen welches Makarien betrifft und die besondere Eigenschaft die ihrem Geiste erteilt ward. Leider ist dieser Aufsatz erst lange Zeit, nachdem der Inhalt mitgegeben worden aus dem Gedächtnis geschrieben und nicht, wie es in einem so merkwürdigen Fall wünschenswert wäre, für ganz authentisch anzusehen” (MA XVII, 676).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

168

Notes to pages 121–7

97. Staiger, Goethe, III, p. 176. 98. Bahr, Die Ironie im Spätwerk Goethes, pp. 17–18. 99. Ibid., p. 126. 100. Cf. Hinz, who observes that “most mythic [= Romance] artists, in the manner of Poe or H. Rider Haggard, present themselves as editors rather than as inventors of their tales …” 101. Scholes and Kellogg, Nature of Narrative, p. 75. 102. Arthos, On the Poetry of Spenser and the Form of Romances, p. 66. 103. Quoted by Arthos, On the Poetry of Spenser and the Form of Romances, p. 67. The translation from the French is Chaucer’s. 104. See Scholes and Kellogg, Nature of Narrative, p. 262. 105. Frye, Natural Perspective, p. 118. 106. Frye, Anatomy, p. 195. 107. MA XVII, 298. On Makarie, see Brüggemann, Makarie und Mercurius, pp. 41–59 and Muenzer, Figures of Identity, p. 120 ff., who is especially good. 108. Frye, Secular Scripture, pp. 113–114 and Natural Perspective, p. 113. 109. Brown, Goethe’s Cyclical Narratives …, p. 73. 110. The “tower” in the Wanderjahre is of course Makarie’s observatory. Interestingly enough, the most elaborately described geographical feature in the landscape of the Wanderjahre is a mountain called the Castle of the Giants that is remarkable for its architectural form. Cf. Ohly, “Goethes Ehrfurchten …,” pp. 416–423, where the “Riesenschloss”-episode is ­discussed in terms of the possible influence of August Kestner’s Agape, and thus, indirectly, the early Christian apocalypse Hermae Pastor. The controlling symbol of the Hermae Pastor is an enormous tower being raised upon a rock, clearly an allegory of Christ’s building of the brotherhood of the early Church. See also Rowley and Schueler. 111. Frye, Secular Scripture, p. 129. 112. Emrich, “Das Problem der Symbolinterpretation im Hinblick auf Goethes ‘Wanderjahre’,” p. 345. 113. Ohly, “Zum Kästchen…,” passim. 114. MA XVII, 685–686. Brown (1975) has noted this similarity of the casket to Pandora’s box. See also Goethe’s Tagebuch sub April 28, 1808, which shows Goethe working on Pandora and “The New Melusine” on the same day. (Gräf 1945). 115. Frye, Secular Scripture, pp. 151–152. 116. Frye, Anatomy, p. 203. See also the article by Golder, who traces this theme through Pilgrim’s Progress and The Faerie Queen (“Bunyan and Spenser,” pp. 216 and 228 ff.). 117. Cf. e.g. the Catéchisme des Maîtres (three slightly differing versions extant – see Lenning, Encyclopädie, II, p. 416): “1. D  em. Mon Frère, d’où venez-vous?” ““Rep. Tres-Respectable, je viens de la chambre du milieu.”” “2. D  . Qu’y fait-on dans la chambre du milieu?” ““R. On y honore la mémoire [mort] de notre respectable maitre Hiram [Adonhiram].””

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Notes to page 128

169

“3. D. Comment y êtes-vous parvenu?” ““R. Par un escalier [en forme de vis] qui se monte par trois, cinq et sept.”” “4. D  . Que signifient ces nombres?” ““R. Qu’il faut trois ans pour faire un apprenti, cing pour un compagnon et sept pour un maître.”” … (Quoted at Lenning, Encyclopädie, II, p. 416)

118. “Makarie befindet sich zu unserm Sonnensystem in einem Verhältnis, welches man auszusprechen kaum wagen darf. Im Geiste, der Seele, der Einbildungskraft hegt sie, schaut sie es nicht nur, sondern sie macht gleichsam einen Teil desselben; sie sieht sich in jenen himmlischen Kreisen mit fortgezogen, aber auf eine ganz eigene Art; sie wandelt seit ihrer Kindheit um die Sonne, und zwar, wie nun entdeckt ist, in einer Spirale, die sich immer mehr vom Mittelpunkt entfernend und nach den äusseren Regionen hinkreisend” (MA XVII, 676–677). This symbol of cosmic striving may well have its source in Dante: we know that Goethe read Dante intensively in 1826, and even translated portions of the Commedia at that time (see Wais, “Die Divina Commedia als dichterisches Vorbild im xix. und xx. Jahrhundert,” p. 31, and Sulger-Gebing, Goethe und Dante: Studien zur vergleichenden Literaturgeschichte, p. 77). In any case, there is in the greatest of romances an exact parallel to Makarie’s spiral journey out into the heavens. In Canto X of the Paradiso, Dante, now reunited with Beatrice, regards the spiral journey of the sun about the earth and in regarding is suddenly made one with the sun in its motions: Lo ministro maggior della natura, che del valor del cielo il mondo imprenta e col suo lume il tempo ne misura, Con quella parte che su si rammenta congiunto, si girava per le spire in che più tosto ognora s’appresenta. Ed io era con lui; ma del salire non m’accors’io, se non com’ uom s’accorge, anzi il primo pensier, del suo venire. (Paradiso X, 28–36)

(In Wicksteed’s translation: The greatest minister of nature, who with the worth of heaven stampeth the world, and with his light measureth the time for us, United with that part now called to mind, was circling on the spirals whereon he doth present him ever earlier. And I was with him; but of my ascent I was no more aware than is a man, ere his first thought, aware that it is coming.)

119. “Ergriffen und erstaunt hielt er sich beide Augen zu. Das Ungeheuere hört auf erhaben zu sein, es überreicht unsre Fassungskraft, es droht uns zu vernichten. Was bin ich denn gegen das All? sprach er zu seinem Geiste: wie kann ich ihm gegenüber, wie kann ich in seiner Mitte stehen? Nach einem kurzen Überdenken jedoch fuhr er fort: das Resultat unsres heutigen Abends löst ja auch das Rätsel des gegenwärtigen Augenblicks. Wie kann sich der Mensch gegen das Unendliche stellen, als wenn er alle geistigen Kräfte die

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

170

Notes to pages 129–31

nach vielen Seiten hingezogen werden in seinem Innersten, Tiefsten versammelt, wenn er sich fragt: Darfst du dich in der Mitte dieser ewig lebendigen Ordnung auch nur denken, sobald sich nicht gleichfalls in dir ein beharrlich Bewegtes, um einen reinen Mittelpunkt kreisend, hervortut? Und selbst wenn es dir schwer würde, diesen Mittelpunkt in deinem Busen aufzufinden, so würdest du ihn daran erkennen, daß eine wohlwollende, wohltätige Wirkung von ihm ausgeht und von ihm Zeugnis gibt” (MA XVII, 351). 120. “Der eine Freund [Montan], um nicht ein Timon zu werden, hatte sich in die tiefsten Klüfte der Erde versenkt und auch dort ward er gewahr, daß in der Menschennatur etwas Analoges zum starrsten und rohsten vorhanden sei” (MA XVII, 672). 121. Heracleitus, Fragment Nr. 60, Diehls, I, 89, which Diehls translates: “Der Weg auf und ab ist ein und derselbe” [The way upward and downward is one and the same]. 122. “Versinke denn! Ich könnt auch sagen: steige! / ’s ist einerlei.” Faust 6275–6 (MA XVII, 423–424). Cf. Schueler on this theme. 123. Beer, Romance, p. 3. See also Frye, Anatomy, pp. 193 and 198 and Secular Scripture, pp. 117 and 119. 124. “Fördernis versteckter, kaum erreichbarer irdischer Schätze” (MA XVII, 489). 125. Here I must disagree strongly with Böckmann, who sees what I have termed “anabasis” and “katabasis” as dangers only, as desertions of man’s proper sphere: “The world of the stars stands opposite that of the mountains; both threaten to overwhelm and destroy man … Man can only fulfill his mission by taking a position between the poles signified by Makarie and Montan, between heaven and earth, between ‘etheric poetry’ and ‘terrestrial fairytale’” (p. 140). This certainly was Goethe’s earlier, “Classical” view (cf. e.g. “Bounds of Humanity” [“Grenzen der Menschheit”]), but the Goethe of the Wanderjahre clearly argues that man must take as much as he can of each of these realms into himself, and thus strive for ever-higher forms of union with nature. 126. “An und in dem Boden findet man für die höchsten irdischen Bedürfnisse das Material, eine Welt des Stoffes, den höchsten Fähigkeiten des Menschen zur Bearbeitung übergeben; aber auf jenem geistigen Wege werden immer Teilnahme, Liebe, geregelte freie Wirksamkeit gefunden. Diese beiden Welten gegen einender zu bewegen, ihre beiderseitigen Eigenschaften in der vorübergehenden Lebenserscheinung zu manifestieren, das ist die höchste Gestalt, wozu sich der Mensch auszubilden hat” (MA XVII, 672). 127. Frye, Anatomy, p. 203. 128. Frye, Natural Perspective, pp. 157–158. 129. Hinz, “Hierogamy vs. Wedlock,” p. 905. 130. “In The Golden Ass, Apuleius introduces the most ancient and basic variant of the marriage prototype in his narrative of the union of Cupid (the god, the sky) and Psyche (the mortal , the earth) …” (p. 906). 131. Cf. Frye, Anatomy, pp. 203–204.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Notes to pages 131–3

171

132. E.g. in Wilhelm’s resuscitation of Felix, discussed above (see p. 217), where they are imagined meeting on the way up “from Orcus to the realm of light” (WMJY, 417; MA XVII, 687). 133. Cf. Trunz, HA VIII, 584: “Der Sonnenmythos ist nicht Allegorie für das Sittliche, sondern höchster Ausdruck eines Lebens mit der Natur.” 134. “Viel freundlicher als wenn ein Vulkan sich auftut und sein sprühendes Getös ganze Gegenden mit Untergang bedroht, zeigte sich diese Erscheinung, und doch glühte sie nach und nach mächtiger, breiter und gedrängter, funkelte wie ein Strom von Sternen, zwar sanft und lieblich, aber doch kühn über die ganze Gegend sich verbreitend” (MA XVII, 489). 135. Cf. Gray, Goethe the Alchemist …, pp. 198–199, who interprets this scene differently in terms of the alchemical symbolism of center and periphery. 136. E.g. Eric Blackall, who says this explicitly (Goethe and the Novel, p. 260). 137. E.g. the Hamburger Ausgabe, in which the poem is to be found at I, 366–367 only. 138. Translation by Frederick Amrine. Im ernsten Beinhaus war’s, wo ich beschaute, Wie Schädel Schädeln angeordnet passten; Die alte Zeit gedacht ich, die ergraute. Sie stehn in Reih’ geklemmt, die sonst sich hassten, Und derbe Knochen, die sich tödlich schlugen, Sie liegen kreuzweis zahm allhier zu rasten. Entrenkte Schulterblätter! was sie trugen, Fragt niemand mehr, und zierlich-tät’ge Glieder, Die Hand, der Fuss, zerstreut aus Lebensfugen. Ihr Müden also lagt vergebens nieder, Nicht Ruh’ im Grabe liess man euch, vertrieben Seid ihr herauf zum lichten Tage wieder, Und niemand kann die dürre Schale lieben, Welch herrlich edlen Kern sie auch bewahrte. Doch mir Adepten war die Schrift geschrieben, Die heil’gen Sinn nicht jedem offenbarte, Als ich inmitten solcher starren Menge Unschätzbar herrlich ein Gebild gewahrte, Dass in des Raumes Moderkält’ und Enge Ich frei und wärme fühlend mich erquickte, Als ob ein Lebensquell dem Tod entspränge. Wie mich geheimnisvoll die Form entzückte! Die gottgedachte Spur, die sich erhalten! Ein Blick, der mich an jenes Meer entrückte, Das flutend strömt gesteigerte Gestalten. Geheim Gefäß! Orakelsprüche spendend, Wie bin ich wert, dich in der Hand zu halten, Dich höchsten Schatz aus Moder fromm entwendend Und in die freie Luft zu freiem Sinnen, Zum Sonnenlicht andächtig hin mich wendend. Was kann der Mensch im Leben mehr gewinnen, Als dass sich Gott-Natur ihm offenbare? Wie sie das Feste läßt zu Geist verrinnen, Wie sie das Geisterzeugte fest bewahre. (MA XVII, 713–714)

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

172

Notes to pages 134–6

139. “Du willst mir ausweichen”, sagte der Freund; “denn was soll das zu diesen Felsen und Zacken?”  – “Wenn ich nun aber”, versetzte jener, “eben diese Spalten und Risse als Buchstaben behandelte, sie zu entziffern suchte, sie zu Worten bildete und sie fertig zu lesen lernte, hättest du etwas dagegen?” – “Nein, aber es scheint mir ein weitläufiges Alphabet.”  – “Enger, als du denkst; man muss es nur kennen lernen wie ein anderes auch. Die Natur hat nur Eine Schrift …” (MA XVII, 267). CONCLUSION 1. Swales, The German Bildungsroman from Wieland to Hesse, p. 30 ff.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Bibliography

Abbott, Scott. “‘Des Maurers Wandeln/Es gleicht dem Leben’: The Freemasonic Ritual Route in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre.” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, 58 (2) (1984) 262–288.   Fictions of Freemasonry: Freemasonry and the German Novel. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1991. Abel, Elizabeth, Marianne Hirsch, and Elizabeth Langland, eds. The Voyage In: Fictions of Female Development. Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1983. Abrams, Meyer Howard. Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1971. Adler, Jeremy. “‘Die Sonne stand noch hoch …’. Zu Landschaft und Bildung in ‘Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre’.” In Heinz Ludwig Arnold, ed., Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Sonderband aus der Reihe Text + Kritik. Munich: ­edition text + kritik, 1982, pp. 222–239. Alighieri, Dante. The Paradise of Dante Alighieri. 16th ed. P. Wicksteed, trans.; P. Wicksteed and H. Oelsner, eds. London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1941. Alter, Robert. Partial Magic: The Novel as a Self-Conscious Genre. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975.   Rogue’s Progress: Studies in the Picaresque Novel. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964. Ammerlahn, Hellmut. “Der Strukturparallelismus von Wilhelms kreativer, bildender und tätiger Vergangenheitsbewältigung in Goethes MeisterRomanen.” Goethe Yearbook, 10 (2001) 154–190.   “Goethe und Gretchens Lied vom Machandelboom. Zur Symbolik des dichterischen Schaffensprozeßes.” In Heinz Rupp and Hans-Gert Roloff, eds., Akten des VI. Internationalen Germanisten-Kongreßes, Basel 1980. Bern and Las Vegas, NV: Peter Lang, 1980–1981, pp. 338–344.   “Goethe und Wilhelm Meister, Shakespeare und Natalie: die klassische Heilung des kranken Königssohns.” Jahrbuch des freien deutschen Hochstifts (1978) 47–84.   “Goethe’s ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’: An Apprenticeship toward the Mastery of Exactly What?” Colloquia Germanica, 30 (1997) 99–119.

173

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

174

Bibliography

  Imagination und Wahrheit: Goethes Künstler-Bildungsroman “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre”: Struktur, Symbolik, Poetologie. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2003.   “The Marriage of Artist Novel and Bildungsroman: Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, A Paradigm in Disguise.” German Life and Letters, 59 (2006) 25–46.   “Mignons nachgetragene Vorgeschichte und das Inzestmotiv: zur Genese und Symbolik der goetheschen Geniusgestalten.” Monatshefte, 64 (1972) 15–24.   “Natalie und Goethes urbildliche Gestalt: Untersuchungen zur Morphologie and Symbolik von Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahren.” Dissertation, University of Texas, 1965.   “Puppe – Tänzer – Dämon – Genius – Engel: Naturkind, Poesiekind und Kunstwerdung bei Goethe.” German Quarterly, 54 (1981) 19–32.   “Wilhelm Meisters Mignon – ein offenbares Rätsel: Name, Gestalt, Symbol, Wesen und Werden.” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, 42 (1968) 89–116. Amrine, Frederick. “Comic Configuration and Types in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.” Seminar, 19 (1983) 6–19.   “Rethinking the Bildungsroman.” Michigan Germanic Studies, 13 (1987) 119–139.   “Romance Narration in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre.” German Quarterly, 55 (1982) 29–38. Armstrong, Bruce. “An Idyl Sad and Strange: The St. Joseph the Second Section and the Presentation of Craft Work in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre.” Monatshefte für deutschsprachige Literatur und Kultur, 77 (1985) 415–432. Arthos, John. On the Poetry of Spenser and the Form of Romances. 1956. Reprint. Freeport: Books for Libraries Press, 1970. Atkins, Stuart. “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre: Novel or Romance?” In Peter Uwe Hohendahl et al., eds., Essays on European Literature: In Honor of Liselotte Dieckmann. St. Louis, MI: Washington University Press, 1972, pp. 45–52. Auer, Michael E. “‘Originalnatur’ in ‘Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre’.” German Studies Review, 32 (2009) 637–651. Azzouni, Safia. Kunst als praktische Wissenschaft: Goethes “Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre” und die Hefte “Zur Morphologie.” Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2005. Babcock-Abrahams, B. “The Novel and the Carnival World: An Essay in Memory of Joe Doherty.” Modern Language Notes, 89 (1974) 911–937. Baer, Joachim and Gerhard Müller. “Lehr- und Wanderjahre – Goethes Weg durch die Geheimgesellschaften.” Goethe-Jahrbuch, 118 (2001) 31–45. Bahr, Ehrhard. “‘… diese sehr ernsten Scherze …’ Zur rhetorischen Struktur und Funktion der Ironie in Goethes Spätwerk.” Goethe, 31 (1969) 157–173.   Die Ironie im Spätwerk Goethes: “… diese sehr ernsten Scherze …”: Studien zum ‘West-östlichen Divan’, zu den ‘Wanderjahren’ und zu “Faust II.” Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1972.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Bibliography

175

 “Goethe’s Wanderjahre as an Experimental Novel.” Mosaic, 5 (1972) 61–71.   The Novel as Archive: The Genesis, Reception, and Criticism of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 1998.   “Revolutionary Realism in Goethe’s Wanderjahre.” In William J. Lillyman, ed., Goethe’s Narrative Fiction: The Irvine Goethe Symposium. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1983, pp. 161–175.   “Um einen ironischen Goethe bittend – Gedanken über einen GoetheKalender.” Germanic Notes, 1 (1970) 26–29; 36–37.  “Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre als Roman des 19. Jahrhunderts.” In Jorg Thunecke, ed., Formen realistischer Erzählkunst: Festschrift für Charlotte Jolles. Nottingham: Sherwood, 1979.   “Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre oder die Entsagenden.” In Bernd Witte, ed., Goethe-Handbuch, Bd. 3. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1997, pp. 186–231.  “Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, oder die Entsagenden (1821–1829): From Bildungsroman to Archival Novel.” In James Hardin, ed., Reflection and Action: Essays on the Bildungsroman. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991, pp. 163–194. Baioni, Giuliano. “‘Märchen’ – ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’ – ‘Hermann und Dorothea’. Zur Gesellschaftsidee der deutschen Klassik.” Goethe-Jahrbuch, 92 (1975) 73–123. Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Trans. R. Iswolsky. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1968. Baldwin, Birgit. “Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre as an Allegory of Reading.” Goethe Yearbook, 5 (1990) 213–232. Barbera, Sandro. “Italienische Landschaften und künstlerischer Schein in Goethes ‘Lehr-’ und ‘Wanderjahren’.” In Klaus Manger, ed., Italienbeziehungen des klassischen Weimar. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1997, pp. 113–126. Barkhoff, Jürgen. “Goethes Ehrfurchtsgebärden in den Wanderjahren als Anthropologie vom Leibe her.” In Jürgen Barkhoff and Eda Sagarra, eds., Anthropologie und Literatur um 1800. München: Iudicium, 1992, pp. 161–186. Barner, Wilfried. “‘Die Verschiedenheit unsrer Naturen’. Zu Goethes und Schillers Briefwechsel über Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre”. In Wilfried Barner et al., Unser Commercium: Goethes und Schillers Literaturpolitik. Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta’sche Buchhandlung, 1984, pp. 379–404.   “Geheime Lenkung: Zur Turmgesellschaft in Goethes Wilhelm Meister.” In William J. Lillyman, ed., Goethe’s Narrative Fiction: The Irvine Goethe Symposium. New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1983, pp. 85–109. Bastian, Hans-Jürgen. Die Gesellschaftproblematik in Goethes Roman “Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre oder die Entsagenden.” Dissertationsschrift, MartinLuther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, 1966.   “Die Makrostruktur von ‘Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahren’.” Weimarer Beiträge, 14 (1968) 629–639. Bataillon, M. Le roman picaresque. Paris: La Renaissance du Livre, 1931.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

176

Bibliography

Bauer, Georg-Karl. “Makarie.” Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift, 25 (1937) 178–197. Baumanns, Peter. “Der Lazarillo de Tormes, eine Travestie der Augustinischen Confessiones?” Romanistisches Jahrbuch, 10 (1959) 285–291. Baumgart, Wolfgang. “Philine.” In Horst Meller and Hans-Joachim Zimmmermann, eds., Lebendige Antike: Symposion für Rudolf Sühnel. Berlin: E. Schmit, 1967, pp. 95–110. Becker, Eva. Der deutsche Roman um 1780. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1964. Becker, H. “Eine Quelle zu Goethes ‘Neuer Melusine’.” Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 52 (1927) 150–151. Becker-Cantarino, Barbara. “Die ‘Bekenntnisse einer schönen Seele’: Zur Ausgrenzung und Vereinnahmung des Weiblichen in der patriarchalischen Utopie von ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahren’.” In Wolfgang Wittkowski, ed., Verantwortung und Utopie: Zur Literatur der Goethe-Zeit. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1988, pp. 70–90.   “The Discourse of Patriarchy in Goethe’s ‘Wilhelm Meister’.” Neohelicon, 20 (1993) 137–153. Beddow, Michael. The Fiction of Humanity: Studies in the Bildungsroman from Wieland to Thomas Mann. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982.   Thomas Mann’s Felix Krull and the Traditions of the Picaresque Novel and the Bildungsroman. Dissertation, Cambridge University, 1975. Beer, Gillian. The Romance. London: Methuen, 1970. Beharriel, Frederick J. “The Hidden Meaning of Goethe’s ‘Bekenntnisse einer schönen Seele’.” In Jeffrey L. Sammons and Ernst Schürer, eds., Lebendige Form: Interpretationen zur deutschen Literatur: Festschrift für Heinrich Henel. München: W. Fink, 1970, pp. 39–62. Behler, Ernst. “Goethes ‘Wilhelm Meister’ und die Romantheorie der Frühromantik (1989).” In Studien zur Romantik und zur idealistischen Philosophie, 2. Paderborn: Schönigh, 1993, pp. 157–172.   “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre and the Poetic Unity of the Novel in Early German Romanticism.” In William J. Lillyman, ed., Goethe’s Narrative Fiction: The Irvine Goethe Symposium. New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1983, pp. 110–127. Beitl, Richard. Goethes Bild der Landschaft: Untersuchungen zur Darstellung der Landschaft in Goethes Kunstprosa. Inaugural-Dissertation, FriedrichWilhelm-Universität, 1929. Benert, Colin. “The Theater of Anamnesis: The Spaces of Memory and the Exteriority of Time in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.” Goethe Yearbook, 24 (2017) 21–41. Berger, Albert. Ästhetik und Bildungsroman. Goethes “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.” Wien: Wilhelm Braumüller, 1977.   “Aesthetische Bildung. Thesen und Erläuterungen zu ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahren’.” Sprachkunst, 6 (1975) 224–237.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Bibliography

177

Berghahn, Klaus L. and Beate Pinkerneil. Am Beispiel Wilhelm Meister: Einführung in die Wissenschaftsgeschichte der Germanistik. 2 vols. Königsstein: Athenäum, 1980. Bergson, Henri. Le Rire: Essai sur la signification du comique. 27th ed. Paris: F. Alcan, 1928. Bergstraesser, Arnold. Goethe’s Image of Man and Society. Chicago, IL: Henry Regnery, 1949. Beriger, Hanno. Goethe und der Roman: Studien zu ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’. Zürich: Juris-Verlag, 1955. Bersier, Gabrielle. “Goethe’s Parody of Nazarene Iconography. The Joseph Story in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre.” Goethe Yearbook, 9 (1999) 264–277. Beutler, Ernst. “Die vierfache Ehrfurcht.” Modern Language Quarterly, 10 (1949) 259–263. Bez, Martin. Goethes “Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre”: Aggregat, Archiv, Archivroman. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2013. von Biedermann, F. Freiherr, ed., Goethes Gespräche. 5 vols. Leipzig: Biedermann, 1909–1911. Blackall, Eric. “The Contemporary Background to a Passage in the Lehrjahre.” In S. Corngold et al., eds., Aspekte der Goethezeit. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1977, pp. 137–145.  “Goethe and the Chinese Novel.” In P. F. Ganz, ed., The Discontinuous Tradition: Studies in German Literature in Honor of Ernst Ludwig Stahl. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1971, pp. 29–53.   Goethe and the Novel. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976.   “Sense and Nonsense in ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’.” Deutsche Beiträge zur geistigen Überlieferung, 5 (1965) 49–72.   “Wilhelm Meister’s Pious Pilgrimage.” German Life and Letters, 18 (1964–1965) 246–251. Blair, John. Tracing Subversive Currents in Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship. Columbia: Camden House, 1997. Blanckenburg, Friedrich von. Versuch über den Roman. Faksimiledruck. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1965. Blesken, Karl. “Von der pietistischen Selbstschau zum weiblichen Lebensentwurf. Anmerkungen zu Goethes ‘Bekenntnisse einer schönen Seele’.” In Michaela Holdenried, ed., Geschriebenes Leben: Autobiographik von Frauen. Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1995, pp. 155–171. Blessin, Stefan. “Die radikal-liberale Konzeption von ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahren’.” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturgeschichte und Geistesgeschichte, 49 (1975) 190–225.   Goethes Romane: Aufbruch in die Moderne. Paderborn: Schöningh, 1996. Bluhm, Lothar. “‘Du kommst mir vor wie Saul, der Sohn Kis’ …’: ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’ zwischen ‘Heilung’ und ‘Zerstörung’.” In “ daß gepfleget werde der feste Buchstab”: Festschrift für Heinz Rölleke zum 65. Geburtstag am 6. Nov. 2001. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2001, pp. 122–140.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

178

Bibliography

  “Goethes ‘incalculable Productionen’: zur Kontextualität von ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahren’ und den ‘Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten.” In Friedhelm Marx, ed., Der europäischen Roman zwischen Aufklärung und Postmoderne: Festschrift zum 65. Geburtstag von Jürgen C. Jacobs. Weimar: VDG, 2001, pp. 35–50. Böckmann, Paul. “Voraussetzungen der zyklischen Erzählform in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahren.” In A. R. Schmitt, ed., Festschrift für Detlev W. Schumann zum 70. Geburtstag. München: Delp, 1970, pp. 130–144. Bohm, Arnd. “‘O Vater, lass’ uns ziehn?’: A Mythological Background to ‘Mignon’s Italian Song’.” Modern Language Notes, 100 (1985) 651–659. Böhme, Hartmut. “Lebendige Natur – Wissenschaftskritik, Naturforschung und allegorische Hermetik bei Goethe.” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturgeschichte und Geisteswissenschaft, 60 (1986) 249–272. Bollnow, Otto Friedrich. “Vorbetrachtungen zum Verständnis der Bildungsidee in Goethes ‘Wilhelm Meister’.” Die Sammlung, 10 (1955) 445–463. Bonds, Mark Evan. “Die Funktion des Hamlet-Motifs in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.” Goethe, 96 (1979) 101–110. Booth, Wayne. “The Self-Conscious Narrator in Comic Fiction before Tristram Shandy.” Publications of the Modern Language Association, 67 (1952) 163–185. Borcherdt, Hans. “Bildungsroman.” In Paul Merker, Wolfgang Stammler, Klaus Kanzog et al., eds., Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturgeschichte. 2nd ed. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1958–1988.   “Der deutsche Bildungsroman.” In Franz Koch, ed., Von deutscher Art in Sprache und Dichtung. Stuttart and Berlin: Kohlhammer, 1941, V, pp. 3–55.   Der Roman der Goethezeit. Urach and Stuttgart: Port Verlag, 1949. Boucke, E. Goethes Weltanschauung auf historischer Grundlage. Stuttgart: Fromanns Verlag, 1907. Boyle, Nicholas. Goethe: The Poet and the Age. 2 vols. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1992.   “Kantian and Other Elements in Goethe’s ‘Vermächniss’.” Modern Language Review, 73 (1978) 533–549. Braemer, Edith. “Zu einigen Problemen in Goethes Roman Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’.” In Hans Günther Thalheim and Ursula Wertheim, Studien zur Literaturgeschichte und Literaturtheorie. Berlin: Rütten & Loenig, 1970. Brandt, Helmut. “Entsagung und französische Revolution. Goethes Prokuratorund Ferdinand-Novelle in weiterführender Betrachtung.” In Paolo Chiarini and Walter Dietze, eds., Deutsche Klassik und Revolution: Texte eines literaturwissenschaftlichen Kolloquiums. Roma: Ed. dell’ Ateneo, 1981, pp. 195–227. Breazeale, D. “Fichte’s Aenisidemus Review and the Transformation of German Idealism.” Review of Metaphysics, 34 (1981) 545–568. Brednow, W. “‘Vom ‘guten Humor’ zum ‘reinen Humor’ bei Goethe.” In D. Lüders, Jahrbuch des freien deutschen Hochstifts. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1977, pp. 111–128.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Bibliography

179

Brettschneider, Julia. “Herzsprung: die Geschichte des Herzens und dessen Dekonstruktion am Beispiel Mignon.” In Heike Brandstädter und Katherina Braack-Jeorgakopulos, eds., Margarete, Ottilie, Mignon: GoetheLektüren. Hamburg: Argument, 1999, pp. 77–90. Brinkmann, Reinhold. “Kennst Du das Buch? Oder: Die Vertreibung der Musiknoten aus ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahren’.” Goethe-Jahrbuch, 118 (2001) 289–303. Brisson, Luc. Sexual Ambivalence: Androgyny and Hermaphoditism in GraecoRoman Antiquity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Broszeit-Rieger, Ingrid. “Practice and Theory of Dance in Goethe’s ‘Meister’.” Neophilologus, 90 (2006) 303–320.   “Transgressions of Gender and Generations in the Families of Goethe’s ‘Meister’.” In Jeffrey Cass and Larry Peer, eds., Romantic Border Crossings. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008, pp. 75–85. Brown, Jane K. Goethe’s Cyclical Narratives: Die Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten und Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975.   “Im Anfang war das Bild: ‘Wilhelm Meister’ und die Bibel.” In Johannes Anderegg und Edith Anna Kunz, eds., Goethe und die Bibel. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2005, pp. 241–259.   “The Theatrical Mission of the ‘Lehrjahre’.” In William J. Lillyman, ed., Goethe’s Narrative Fiction: The Irvine Goethe Symposium. New  York: Walter de Gruyter, 1983, pp. 69–84. Also in James Hardin, ed., Reflection and Action: Essays on the Bildungsroman. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991, pp. 142–162. Bruford, Walter Horace. “A Footnote to ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’.” In German Studies Presented to Leonard Ashley Willoughby. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1952, pp. 19–25.   The German Tradition of Self-Cultivation: “Bildung” from Humboldt to Thomas Mann. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1975.   “Goethe’s ‘Wilhelm Meister’ as a Picture and Criticism of Society.” Publications of the English Goethe Society, 9 (1933) 20–45. Brüggemann, Diethelm. Makarie und Mercurius: Goethes Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre als hermetischer Roman. Bern: Peter Lang, 1999. Buckley, Jerome H. Season of Youth: The Bildungsroman from Dickens to Golding. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974. Buhr, Manfred. “Die ursprüngliche Philosophie Johann Gottlieb Fichtes und die Französische Revolution.” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 10 (1962) 1468–1469.   Revolution und Philosophie: Die ursprüngliche Philosophie Johann Gottlieb Fichtes und die Französische Revolution. Berlin: VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1965. Buschinger, Philippe. Die Arbeit in Goethes Wilhelm Meister. Stuttgart: Verlag Hans-Dieter Heinz, Akademischer Verlag, 1986.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

180

Bibliography

Cave, Terence. Mignon’s Afterlives: Crossing Cultures from Goethe to the TwentyFirst Century. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011. Cillien, Ursula. “Die Ironie in Goethes Wilhelm Meister.” Neue Sammlung, 5 (1965) 258–264. Citati, Pietro. Goethe. Milano: Adelphi Edizione, 1990. Clouser, Robina. “‘Die pilgernde Törin’: Genesis, Revaluation, and Mirroring in Goethes ‘Wanderjahre’.” Goethe Yearbook, 14 (2007) 176–206. Cohen, G. “Mignon.” Jahrbuch der Goethe Gesellschaft, 7 (1920) 132–153. Cohn, Dorrit. Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978.   “Wilhelm Meister’s Dream: Reading Goethe with Freud.” German Quarterly, 62 (1989) 459–472. Colie, Rosalie L. The Resources of Kind: Genre Theory in the Renaissance. Barbara K. Lewalskt, ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973. Cornford, Francis. The Origin of Attic Comedy. London: E. Arnold, 1914. Cottrell, Alan. Goethe’s Faust: Seven Essays. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1976. Curran, Jane V. Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship: A Reader’s Commentary. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2002. David, Claud. “Goethes ‘Wanderjahre’ als symbolische Dichtung.” Sinn und Form, 8 (1956) 113–128. Degering, Thomas. Das Elend der Entsagung: Goethes “Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre.” Bonn: Bouvier, 1982. Deile, Gotthold. Goethe als Freimaurer. Berlin: Mittler und Sohn, 1908. DeLaura, David J. “Heroic Egotism: Goethe and the Fortunes of Bildung in Victorian England.” In Ulrich Goebel and Wolodymyr T. Zyla, eds., One Hundred and Fifty Years of Continuing Vitality. Lubbock: Texas Tech Press, 1984, pp. 41–60. Delcourt, Marie. “Deux interpretations romanesques du mythe de l’androgyne Mignon et Seraphita.” Revue des langues vivantes, 38 (1972) 228–246 and 340–347. Derrida, Jacques. “La Loi du genre/The Law of Genre.” Glyph: Textual Studies, 7 (1980) 176–232. Diamond, William. “Wilhelm Meister’s Interpretation of Hamlet.” Modern Philology, 23 (1925) 89–101. Dick, Anneliese. Weiblichkeit als natürliche Dienstbarkeit: Eine Studie zum ­klassichen Frauenbild in Goethes “Wilhelm Meister.” Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1986. Dieckmann, Liselotte. “Repeated Mirror Reflections: The Technique of Goethe’s Novels.” Studies in Romanticism, 1 (1961–1962) 152–174. Diels, H. Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. 4th ed. Berlin: Weidmannische Buchhandlung, 1922. Dowden, Steve. “Irony and Ethical Autonomy in ‘Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre’.” Deutche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturgeschichte und Geisteswissenschaft, 68 (1) (1984) 134–154.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Bibliography

181

Dubrow, Heather. Genre. The Critical Idiom, 42. London and New  York: Methuen, 1982. Dumont, Louis. “Bildung Represented: The Years of Apprenticeship of Wilhelm Meister.” In German Ideology: From France to Germany and Back. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1994, pp. 145–195. Dumiche, Béatrice. “La mise en scène d’‘Hamlet’ dans ‘Les Anées d’Apprentissage de Wilhelm Meister’: une critique de la théâtromanie.” Revue germanique international, 5 (2007) 185–202. Duncan, Bruce. “The Marchese’s Story in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.” Seminar, 8 (1972) 169–180. Dürr, Volker. “Geheimnis und Aufklärung: Zur pädagogischen Funktion des Kästchens in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahren.” Monatshefte, 74 (1982) 11–19.   “Perspectives of ‘Wilhelm Meisters Travels’ and Nietzsche’s perspectivism.” In Richard Block and Peter Fenves, eds., “The spirit of poesy”: Essays on Jewish and German Literature and Thought in Honor of Geza von Molnar. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2000, pp. 176–192.  “‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’: Hypotaxis, Abstraction and the ‘Realistic Symbol’.” In V. Dürr and G. von Molnár, eds., Versuche zu Goethe: Festschrift für Erich Heller. Heidelberg: Lothar Stiehm, 1976, pp. 201–211. Dupréel, Eugène. “Le Problème sociologique du Rire.” Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’Etranger, 106 (1928) 213–260. Dye, R. Ellis. “Wilhelm Meister and ‘Hamlet’, Identity and Difference.” Goethe Yearbook, 6 (1992) 67–85. Eckermann, J. P. Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens. Gedenkausgabe, vol. 24. E. Beutler, ed. Zürich: Artemis, 1948. Edmunds, Kathryn R. “‘Ich bin gebildet genug … um zu lieben und zu t­ rauern’: Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship in Mourning.” Germanic Review, 71 (1996) 83–100. Egger, Irmgard. “‘… eine Art von Experiment’: Goethes Kritik szientifischer Methoden und die ‘Wilhelm Meister’-Romane.” In Jahrbuch des Freien Deutschen Hochstifts. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1997, pp. 69–92.   Diätik und Askese: Zur Dialektik der Aufklärung in Goethes Romanen. München: Wilhelm Fink, 2001.   “‘unermeßliche Räume’: Weltbürgentum versus Auswandererutopie in ‘Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahren’.” Goethe-Jahrbuch, 126 (2009) 129–137. Eichner, Hans. “Zur Deutung von Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahren.” In Jahrbuch des Freien Deutschen Hochstifts. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1966, pp. 165–196. Eigler, Friederike. “Wer hat ‘Wilhelm Schüler’ zum ‘Wilhelm Meister’ gebildet? Wihhelm Meisters Lehrjahre und die Aussparungen einer hermeneutishen Verstehens- und Bildungspraxis.” Goethe Yearbook, 3 (1986) 93–119. Ellinger, Georg. “Der Einfluß von Scarrons Roman Comique auf Goethes Wilhelm Meister.” Goethe-Jahrbuch, 9 (1888) 188–197. Elsaghe, Yahya. “‘Einstweilen Laertes’: Zum Doppelgängermotiv in ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahren’.” Goethe Jahrbuch, 111 (1994) 45–59.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

182

Bibliography

  “‘Helle’ und ‘Hölle’: Zur Rolle der Dichtung in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahren.” Goethe Yearbook, 7 (1994) 118–132.   “Philine Blaútē. Zur Genese und Funktion mythologischer Reminiszenzen in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahren.” Jahrbuch des Freien deutschen Hochstifts. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1992, pp. 1–35.   “Wilhelm Meisters letzter Brief: Homosexualität und Nekrophilie bei Goethe.” Forum Homosexualität und Literatur, 24 (1995) 5–36. Emmel, Hildegard. “Formprobleme des Romans in Spätwerk Wielands und Goethes.” In P. Böckmann, ed., Stil- und Formprobleme in der Literatur. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1959, pp. 267–272.   Was Goethe vom Roman der Zeitgenossen nahm: Zu Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. Bern and München: Francke Verlag, 1972. Emrich, Wilhelm. “Das Problem der Symbolinterpretation im Hinblick auf Goethes ‘Wanderjahre’.” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, 26 (1952) 331–352. Rpt. in his Protest und Verheißung: Studien zur klassischen und modernen Dichtung. Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum, 1960, pp. 48–66. Enright, Dennis. “Wilhelm Meister and the Ambiguousness of Goethe.” In Dennis J. Enright, ed., The Apothecary’s Shop: Essays on Literature. London: Secker & Warburg, 1957, pp. 93–112. Eppers, Arne. Miteinander im Nebeneinander: Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft in Goethes Wilhelm Meister-Romanen. Tübingen: Stauffenburg Verlag, 2003. Eroms, Hans-Werner. “Textformen und Sprachhaltung in Goethes Wilhelm Meister. In Hans-Werner Eroms and Hartmut Laufhütte, eds., Vielfalt der Perspektiven: Wissenschaft und Kunst in der Auseinandersetzung mit Goethes Werk: Dokumentation des Goethe-Symposions an der Universität Passau vom 17. bis 19.11.1982. Passau: Passavia Universtitätsverlag, 1985, pp. 39–56. Esau, Helmut. “Die Landschaft in Goethes Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahren: Zur Bedeutung einer Strukturprinzips in der Landschaftsgestaltung.” Colloquia Germanica, 7 (1973) 234–251. Fähnrich, Hermann. “Goethes Musikanschauung in ‘Wilhelm Meister’.” Goethe, 23 (1961) 141–153. Fairley, Barker. A Study of Goethe. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1947. Farrelly, Daniel J. “The Autonomy and Socialisation of the ‘schöne Seele’.” In Marianne Henn and Britta Hufeisen, eds., Frauen: MitSprechen, MitSchreiben: Beiträge zur litertatur- und sprachwissenschaftlichen Frauenforschung. Stuttgart: Verlag Hans-Dieter Heinz Akademischer Verlag, 1997, pp. 37–47.   Goethe and Inner Harmony: A Study of the “schöne Seele” in the Apprenticeship of Wilhelm Meister. Shannon: Irish University Press, 1973. Fichte, Johann Gottlieb. Philosophie der Maurerei. Wilhelm Flitner, ed. Leipzig: Meiner, 1923.   Philosophy of Masonry: Letters to Constant. Roscoe Pound, trans. and ed. Seattle: Research Lodge Nr. 281, F. & A. M., 1945.   Werke. Immanuel Hermann Fichte, ed. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1971.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Bibliography

183

Fick, Monika. “Destruktive Imagination: Die Tragödie der Dichterexistenz in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahren.” Jahrbuch der deutschen Schillergesellschaft, 29 (1985) 207–247.   “Mignon – Psychologie und Morphologie der Geniusallegorese in ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahren’.” Sprachkunst, 13 (1982) 2–49. Fink, Gonthier-Louis. “Die Auseinandersetzung mit der Tradition in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahren.” Recherches Germaniques, 5 (1975) 89–142.   “Die Bildung des Bürgers zum ‘Bürger’. Individuum und Gesellschaft in ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’.” Recherches Germaniques, 2 (1972) 3–37.   “Multiperspektivische Erhählhaltung und Romanstruktur.” In Goethe, Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre. Münchener Ausgabe, Band 17, 1991, pp. 1002–1015.   “Tagebuch, Redaktor und Autor: Erzählinstanz und Struktur in Goethes Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre.” Recherches Germaniques, 16 (1986) 7–54. Fischer-Hartmann, Deli. Goethes Altersroman: Studien über die innere Einheit von “Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahren.” Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1941. Flaherty, Gloria. “The Stage-Struck Wilhelm Meister and Eighteenth-Century Psychiatric Medicine.” Modern Language Notes, 110 (1986) 493–515. Fleischer, Stefan. “‘Bekenntnisse einer schönen Seele’: Figural Representation in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.” Modern Language Notes, 83 (1968) 807–820. Foltinek, H. “Goethe und der englische Roman.” Jahrbuch des Wiener GoetheVereins, 79 (1975) 30–43. Fowler, Alastair. Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982. Freud, Sigmund. “Das Motiv der Kästchenwahl.” In A. Mitscherlich et al., eds., Studienausgabe, Vol. 10: Bildende Kunst und Literatur. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1969–1975.   “Der Humor.” In A. Mitscherlich et al., eds., Studienausgabe, Vol. 4: Psychologische Schriften. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1969–1975, pp. 254–282.   “Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewußten.” In A. Mitscherlich et al., eds., Studienausgabe, Vol. 4: Psychologische Schriften. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1969–1975. Friedenthal, R. Goethe: Sein Leben und seine Zeit. Stuttgart and Hamburg: Deutscher Bücherbund, 1963. Fries, Bettina. “Goethe und Lesage.” Euphorion, 21 (1914) 568–572. Frohock, W. “The Idea of the Picaresque.” Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature, 16 (1967) 43–52. Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957.   “The Argument of Comedy.” In D. Robertson, ed., English Institute Essays, 1948. New York: Columbia University Press, 1949, pp. 58–73.   A Natural Perspective: The Development of Shakespearean Comedy and Romance. New York: Columbia University Press, 1965.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

184

Bibliography

  The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976. Fuchs, Albert. “Makarie.” In Goethe-Studien. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1968, pp. 97–117. Fuhrmann, Helmut, ed. Wilhelm Meister und seine Nachfahren: Vorträge des 4. Kasseler Goethe-Seminars. Kassel: Wenderoth, 2000. Gaslee, Stephen. “Appendix on the Greek Novel.” In Stephen Gaslee, ed., Daphnis and Chloe by Longus and the Love Romances of Parthenius and Other Fragments. 5th ed. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962. Gelley, Alexander. “Frame, Instance, Dialogue: Narrative Structures in the Wanderjahre.” In Ulrich Goebel and Wolodymyr T. Zyla, eds., Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Continuing Vitality. Lubbock: Texas Tech Press, 1984, pp. 61–78. Genette, Gérard. “Genres, ‘types,’ modes.” Poétique, 32 (1977) 389–421. Gerhard, Melitta. Der deutsche Entwicklungsroman bis zu Goethes ‘Wilhelm Meister.’ Halle und Saale: Max Niemeyer, 1926.   “Ursache und Bedeutung von Goethes ‘Entsagung’.” In Jahrbuch des Freien deutschen Hochstifts. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1981, pp. 110–115. Gerth, Klaus. “‘Das Wechselspiel des Lebens’: ein Versuch, ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’ (wieder) einmal anders zu lesen.” Goethe Jahrbuch, 113 (1996) 105–120. Gidion, Heidi. Zur Darstellungsweise von Goethes “Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre.” Göttingen: Vandenhock & Ruprecht, 1969. Gilby, William. “The Structural Significance of Mignon in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.” Seminar, 16 (1980) 136–150. Gilg, André. “Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre” und ihre Symbole. Zürich: Atlantis Verlag, 1954. Gille, Klaus F. Goethes Wilhelm Meister: Zur Rezeptionsgeschichte der Lehr- und Wanderjahre. Königsstein: Athenäum, 1979.   “Wilhelm Meister” im Urteil der Zeitgenossen: Ein Beitrag zur Wirkungsgeschichte Goethes. Van Gorcum’s literaire bibliotheek: Literarische Reihe, 19. Assen: Van Gorcum, 1971. Gode-von Aesch, A. “Makarie.” Monatshefte, 34 (1942) 31–33. Goethe, J. W. von. Werke. Hamburger Ausgabe. Vol. 7. Erich Trunz, ed. Hamburg: Christian Wegner, 1968.   Werke. Hamburger Ausgabe. Vol. 8. Erich Trunz, ed. Hamburg: Christian Wegner, 1973.   Werke. Weimarer Ausgabe. Weimar: H. Böhlau, 1887–1912.   Wilhelm Meister Lehrjahre: Erläuterungen und Dokumente. Ehrhard Bahr, ed. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1982.   Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship. In Goethe: Collected Works, Vol. 10. Trans. Eric A. Blackall. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989.   Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years. In Goethe: Collected Works, Vol. 10. Jane K. Brown, ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Bibliography

185

  Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre: Ein Roman. In Sämtliche Werke nach Epochen seines Schaffens: Münchener Ausgabe, Vol. V. Karl Richter, ed. München: Carl Hanser, 1988.   Wilhelm Meisters theatralische Sendung. Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, 1982.   Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre: Maximen und Reflexionen. In Sämtliche Werke nach Epochen seines Schaffens: Münchener Ausgabe, Vol. XVII. Karl Richter, ed. München: Carl Hanser, 1991. Gooch, George Peabody. Germany and the French Revolution. New York: Russell & Russell, 1966. Gräf, H. Goethe über seine Dichtungen. Pt. I, Vol. 2. Die epischen Dichtungen. Frankfurt am Main: Rütten & Loenig, 1902. Gradl, Karlheinz. Säkulisierung und Bildung: Eine Studie zu Goethes Roman ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1985. Graevenitz, Gerhart von. Die Setzung des Subjekts: Untersuchungen zur Romantheorie. Studien zur deutschen Literatur, 36. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1973. Graham, Ilse. Goethe: Portrait of the Artist. Berlin and New  York: Walter de Gruyter, 1977.   “Mignons Flügel.” In Goethe: Schauen und Glauben. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1988, pp. 13–33. Gray, Ronald. Goethe the Alchemist: A Study of Alchemical Symbolism in Goethe’s Literary and Scientific Works. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1952.   “Wilhelm Meister.” In Goethe: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1967, pp. 186–200. Greiner, Bernhard. “Der Gedanke der Bildung als Fluchtpunkt der deutschen Klassik: Natur und Theater: Goethes ‘Wilhelm Meister’.” Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch, 48 (2007) 215–245.   “Puppenspiel und Hamlet-Nachfolge: Wihelm Meisters ‘Aufgabe’ der theatralischen Sendung.” Euphorion, 83 (1989) 281–296. Greiner, Martin. Die Entstehung der modernen Unterhaltungsliteratur: Studium zum Trivialroman des 18. Jahrhunderts. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1964. Griffin, N. “The Definition of Romance.” Publications of the Modern Language Association, 38 (1923) 50–70. Grimm, R. and K. Berghahn, eds., Wesen und Formen des Komischen im Drama. Wege der Forschung, Vol. 62. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgeselleschaft, 1975. Gronau, Georg. “Das ‘Bild vom kranken Königssohn’ in Wilhelm Meister.” Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst, 50 (N. F. 26) (1915) 157–162. Guillén, Claudio. “Toward a Definition of the Picaresque.” In Literature as System: Essays Toward a Theory of Literary History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971, pp. 71–217. Gundolf, Friedrich. Goethe. 12th ed. Berlin: Georg Bondi, 1920.   Shakespeare und der deutsche Geist. Berlin: Georg Bondi, 1920.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

186

Bibliography

Günther, H. “Der ewige Simplicissimus: Gestalt und Wandlungen des deutschen Schelmenromans.” Welt und Wort, 10 (1955) 1–5. Gutjahr, Ortrud. Einführung in den Bildungsroman. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2007. Haas, Rosemarie. Die Turmgesellschaft in ‘Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahren’. Zur Geschichte des Geheimbundromans und der Romantheorie im 18. Jahrhundert. Bern: Peter Lang, 1975. Hahn, Karl-Heinz. “Zeitgeschichte in Goethes Roman ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’.” In Goethe-Studien. Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 2001, pp. 142–156. Also in Paolo Chiarini and Walter Dietze, eds., Deutsche Klassik und Revolution: Texte eines literaturwissenschaftlichen Kolloquiums. Roma: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1981, pp. 169–194. Haiduk, Stefan. “Identität und Verlust: Der Wandel des Familienbildes und die Dynamik der Geniuspsychologie in ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’.” Weimarer Beiträge, 55 (2009) 196–220. Hansen, Volkmar. “Von der inneren Natur Wilhelm Meisters: Goethes Roman ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’.” In Haupt- und Nebenwege zu Goethe. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2005, pp. 75–79. Hardin, James, ed. Reflection and Action: Essays on the Bildungsroman. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991. Hartung, Günter. “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre und das Faustische.” Weimarer Beiträge, 36 (1990) 284–312. Hass, Hans-Egon. “Über die Ironie bei Goethe.” In Albert Schäfer, ed., Ironie und Dichtung. München: C. H. Beck, 1970.   “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.” In Benno von Wiese, ed., Der deutsche Roman: Vom Barock bis zur Gegenwart: Struktur und Geschichte. Düsseldorf: August Bagel, 1963, I, pp. 132–210. Hatfield, Henry. Goethe: A Critical Introduction. New York: New Directions, 1963.   “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre and ‘progressive Universalpoesie’.” Germanic Review, 36 (1961) 221–229. Hauer, Bernhard E. “Die Todesthematik in ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’ und ‘Heinrich von Ofterdingen’.” Euphorion, 79 (1985), 182–206. Haupt, Jürgen. “Die ‘etwas materielle’ Therese. ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’ als Gesellschafts-Konzeption.” Literatur für Leser, 5 (1982), 205–216. Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “Author’s Preface” to The House of the Seven Gables: A Romance: The Complete Writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Vol. 7. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1883. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Phenomenology of the Spirit. Trans. A. V. Miller. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1977.   Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik. Werke. Vols. 13–15. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1969–1971. Heidenreich, Helmut., ed. Pikarische Welt: Schriften zum europäischen Schelmenroman. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1969. Heinz, Jutta. Narrative Kulturkonzepte. Wielands Aristipp und Goethes Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre. Heidelberg: Winter Universitätsverlag, 2006.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Bibliography

187

Helfer, Martha B. “Wilhelm Meister’s Women.” Goethe Yearbook, 11 (2002) 229–254. Heller, Erich. “Goethe and the Avoidance of Tragedy.” In The Disinherited Mind. London: Bowes and Bowes, 1975, pp. 35–63. Hellersberg-Wendringer, A. “Soziologischer Wandel im Weltbild Goethes. Versuch einer neuen Analyse von Wilhelm Meisters Lehr- und Wanderjahren.” Publications of the Modern Language Association, 56 (1941) 447–465. Hempfer, Klaus F. Gattungstheorie. Information and Synthese. München: Fink, 1973. Henkel, Arthur. Entsagung: Eine Studie zu Goethes Altersroman. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1954.   “Versuch über den ‘Wilhelm Meister’.” Ruperto-Carola, 31 (1962) 59–67.   “Versuch über Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahren.” In Goethe-Erfahrungen: Studien und Vorträge. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1982, pp. 103–115.   “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre”: Kritik and Prognose der modernen Gesellschaft. Goethe, 97 (1980) 82–89.   “Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre. Zeitkritik und Prognose?.” In GoetheErfahrung: Studien und Vorträge. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1982, pp. 117–135. Henrich, Dieter. “Fichte’s Original Insight.” Contemporary German Philosophy, 1 (1982) 15–53.   “Fichtes ursprüngliche Einsicht.” In Dieter Henrich and Hans Wagner, eds., Subjektivität und Metaphysik: Festschrift für Wolfgang Cramer. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1966.   “Freie Komik.” In Wolfgang Preisendanz and Rainer Warning, eds., Das Komische. München: Wilhelm Fink, 1976. Henriksen, A. “Der Doppelroman Wilhelm Meister aus heutiger Vogelperspektive.” Trans. C. Lutz. Text & Kontext, 14 (1982) 28–38. Hering, Robert. Wilhelm Meister und Faust und ihre Gestaltung im Zeichen der Gottesidee. Frankfurt am Main: G. Schulte-Bulmke, 1952. Hernadi, Paul. Beyond Genre: New Direction in Literary Classification. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1972. Herwig, Henriette. “Heilkundiges in Goethes Wilhelm Meister.” In Peter Stulz et al., eds., Literatur und Medizin. Zürich: Chronos Verlag, 2005, pp. 13–22. Himmel, Hellmuth. “Die Urmeister-Frage.” Jahrbuch des Wiener Goethe-Vereins, 77 (1973) 64–88. Hinz, Eleanor. “Hierogamy vs. Wedlock: Types of Marriage Plots and Their Relationship to Genres of Prose Fiction.” Publications of the Modern Language Association, 91 (1976) 900–913. Hirsch, Marianne. “The Novel of Formation as Genre: Between Great Expectations and Lost Illusions.” Genre, 12 (1979) 293–311.   “Spiritual ‘Bildung’: the Beautiful Soul as Paradigm.” In Elizabeth Abel, Marianne Hirsch et al., eds., The Voyage In: Fictions of Female Development. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1983, pp. 23–48. Hisayama, Yuko. “Krankheit, Spiegel und Hoffnung. Makarie als eine ­‘geistige’ Figur in Goethes Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre.” In Gernot Böhme, ed., Über Goethes Romane. Bielefeld: Aisthesis-Verlag, 2016, pp. 75–86.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

188

Bibliography

Ho, Shu Ching. “Knochenbau der Erde als Konstruktion der Welt: Zur Bedeutung der Geologie in ‘Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahren’.” GoetheJahrbuch, 125 (2008) 122–135. Hoeschen, Andreas. “Die ‘Zirkulation der Ideen’ bei Lazarus/Steinthal: Von öffentlicher Kulturproduktion zu sozial-normativer ‘Wilhelm Meister’Rezeption.” In Harald Schmidt, ed., Gedächtnis und Zirkulation: Der Diskurs des Kreislaufs und frühen 19. Jahrhundert. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002, pp. 207–233. Hoffmeister, Gerhart. “From Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister to Anti-Meister Novels: The Romantic Novel between Tieck’s William Lovell and Hoffmann’s Kater Murr.” In Dennis F. Mahoney, ed., The Literature of German Romanticism. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2004, pp. 79–99.  ed. Goethes Mignon und ihre Schwestern: Interpretationen und Rezeption. New York: Peter Lang, 1993. Hohendahl, Peter Uwe. Der europäische Roman der Empfindsamkeit. Wiesbaden: Athenaion, 1977. Hohlfeld, Alexander. “Zur Frage einer Fortsetzung von Goethes ‘Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre’.” Publications of the Modern Language Association, 60 (1945) 399–420. Holland, Jocelyn. “The School of Shipwrecks: Improvisation in ‘Wilhelm Meisters theatralische Sendung’ and the ‘Lehrjahre’.” Goethe Yearbook, 15 (2008) 19–33. Hörisch, Jochen. “Glück und Lücke in ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.” In Gott, Geld und Glück: Zur Logik der Liebe in den Bildungsromanen Goethes, Kellers, and Thomas Manns. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1983, pp. 30–99. Horstkotte, Silke. “Wilhelm Meisters Mignon und die Ambivalenz der Autorschaft.” German Life and Letters, 57 (2004) 143–157. Horwath, Peter. “Zur Namengebung des ‘nußbraunen Mädchens’ in ‘Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahren’.” Goethe, 89 (1972) 297–304. Hunfeld, Barbara. “Das sprachlose All und der Kosmos der Sprache: zur Sternwartenszene in Goethes ‘Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre’.” In Claudia Benthien and Irmela Marei Krüger-Fürhoff, eds., Über Grenzen: Limitation und Transgression in Literatur und Ästhetik. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 38–60. Irmscher, Hans Dietrich. “Beobachtungen zum Problem der Selbstbestimmung im deutchen Bidungsroman am Beispiel von Goethes Roman Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.” Jahrbuch des Wiener Goethe-Vereins, 86–88 (1982–1984) 135–172.   “Wilhelm Meister auf der Sternwarte.” Goethe-Jahrbuch, 110 (1993) 275–296. Ishihara, Aeka. Makarie und das Weltall: Astronomie in Goethes “Wanderjahren.” Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 1998. Jabs-Kriegsmann, M. “Felix und Hersilie. Eine Studie zu Wihelm Meisters Wanderjahren.” In Erich Trunz, ed., Studien zu Goethes Alterswerken. Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum, 1971, pp. 75–98. Jackson, J. “Ophélie ou un point ambigu de l’Apprentissage de Wilhelm Meister.” Arcadia, 13 (1978) 177–184.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Bibliography

189

Jackson, W. The Literature of the Middle Ages. New York: Columbia University Press, 1960. Jacobs, Jurgen. “Bildungsroman.” In Harald Fricke et al., eds., Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft, Bd. 1, A-G. New  York: de Gruyter, 2007, pp. 230–233.   Prosa der Aufklärung: Moralische Wochenschriften, Autobiographie, Satire, Roman: Kommentar zu einer Epoche. München: Winkler Verlag, 1976.   Wilhelm Meister und seine Brüder: Untersuchungen zum deutschen Bildungsroman. München: Wilhelm Fink, 1972.   Zwischenbilanzen des Lebens. Zu einem Grundmuster des Bildungsromans. Bielefeld: Aisthesis Verlag, 2005. Jacobs, Jürgen and Markus Krause. Der deutsche Bildungsroman: Gattungsgeschichte vom 18. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert. München: Beck, 1989. Jahn, K. “Wilhelm Meisters theatralische Sendung und der humoristische Roman der Engländer.” Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift, 5 (1913) 225–233. Jantz, Harold. “Die Ehrfurchten in Goethes ‘Wilhelm Meister.’ Ursprung und Bedeutung.” Euphorion, 48 (1954) 1–18.   “Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister: Image, Configuration, and Meaning.” In H.-J. Mähl and E. Mannack, eds., Studien zur Goethezeit: Erich Trunz zum 75. Geburtstag. Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1981, pp. 103–120. Jantz, Rolf-Peter. “Zum sozialen Gehalt der ‘Lehrjahre’.” In H. Arntzen et al., eds, Literaturwissenschaft und Geschichtsphilosophie: Festschrift für Wilhelm Emrich. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1975, pp. 320–340. Jauß, Hans-Robert. “Ursprung und Bedeutung der Ich-Form im Lazarillo de Tormes.” Romanistisches Jahrbuch, 8 (1957) 290–311. Jenisch, Erich. “Vom Abenteuer zum Bildundgsroman.” Germanisch-Romische Monatsschrift, 10 (1926) 339–351. Jirku, Brigitte E. “Mignon: Rätsel oder Geheimnis.” Monatshefte für deutschsprachige Literatur und Kultur, 92 (2000) 283–301. John, Johannes. “Goethes ‘Wanderjahre’ und das Theater.” Goethe-Jahrbuch, 133 (2016) 92–111. Johnson, Samuel, ed. The Rambler. London, 1793. Jost, François. “La Tradition du Bildungsroman.” Comparative Literature, 21 (1969) 97–115.   “Variations of a Species: The Bildungsroman.” Symposium, 37 (1983), 125–146. Jungmann, Karl. “‘Die pädagogische Provinz’ in den ‘Wanderjahren’. Eine Quellenstudie.” Euphorion, 14 (1907) 274–287 and 517–533. Jurgensen, Manfred. “Das fiktionale Ich – Anmerkungen zur literarischen Genese.” In R. Nethersole, ed., Literatur als Dialog: Festschrift zum 50. Geburtstag von Karl Tober. Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1979, pp. 33–42. Kakandes, Irene. “Re-presentation of Time in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.” Seminar, 26 (1990) 95–118. Karnick, Manfred. “Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre” oder die Kunst des Mittelbaren. München: Wilhelm Fink, 1968.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

190

Bibliography

Kaschnitz, M. “Mignon.” In Zwischen Immer und Nie: Gestalten und Themen der Dichtung. Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1971, pp. 89–98. Kaufmann, Walter. Discovering the Mind: Goethe, Kant and Hegel. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980. Kawa, Rainer. “Die Dame in der Nachbarschaft: Konjekturen zur Verknüpfung des VI. Buchs von ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’ mit dem Romankontext.” Text & Kontext, 26 (2004) 42–71.   “Die Klarheit Thereses: Erscheinungsbild und Wesen einer Frauengestalt in ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’.” Recherches germaniques, 25 (1995) 113–132. Kay, Carol and Henry. Jacobs, eds. Shakespeare’s Romances Reconsidered. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1978. Kayser, Wolfgang. Das sprachliche Kunstwerk: Eine Einführung in die Literaturwissenschaft. Bern and München: Francke, 1948. Keener, Frederick M. The Chain of Becoming: The Philosophical Tale, the Novel, and a Neglected Realism of the Enlightenment: Swift, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Johnson and Austen. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983. Keppler, Stefan. Grenzen des Ich. Die Verfassung des Subjekts in Goethes Romanen und Erzählungen. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 2006. Ker, William. Epic and Romance. London: Macmillan, 1922. Kermode, Frank. The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967. Kim, Hee-Ju. Der Schein des Seins: Zur Symbolik des Schleiers in Goethes “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.” Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2005.   “Rituelle Identitätsbilung: zur Lossprechung Wilhelm Meisters.” Goethe Jahrbuch, 119 (2002) 42–51. Kim, Sun-Hyung. “Die bildende Kunst und die Dichtung in Goethes Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre: Zur ambivalenten Liebe in Sankt Joseph der Zweite, Der Mann von fünfzig Jahren und der Episode am Lago Maggiore.” Wirkendes Wort, 53 (2003) 385–399. Kittler, Friedrich. Über die Sozialisation Wilhelm Meisters. In Frierich Kittler and Gerhard Kaiser, eds., Dichtung als Sozialisationsspiel. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1978. Klingenberg, Anneliese. “Das Verhältnis von Individuum und Gesellschaft in seiner Entwicklung von den ‘Lehr-’ zu den ‘Wanderjahren’.” Weimarer Beiträge, 28 (1982) 142–145.   Goethes Roman “Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre oder die Entsagenden”: Quellen und Komposition. Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau-Verlag, 1972.   “Zur ökonomischen Theorie Goethes in den ‘Wanderjahren’.” Goethe, 32 (1970) 207–220. Kluge, Sofie. “An Allegory of Bildung: Friedrich Schlegel’s Interpretation of Goethe’s ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’.” Orbis litterarum, 62 (2007) 177–209. Knight, G. Wilson. The Shakespearean Tempest. London: Methuen, 1953. Koch, Franz. “Vorwort.” In Franz Koch, ed., Von deutscher Art in Sprache in Dichtung. Stuttgart and Berlin: Kohlhammer, 1941, I, vii–ix.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Bibliography

191

Koch, Manfred. “Serlo, Aurelie, Orest und Cornelia: zu den Namen in Goethes Roman ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’.” Germanisch-romanischen Monatsschrift, 47 (1997) 399–413.   “‘Weltliteratur’ in Goethes Altersroman ‘Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre’.” Goethe-Jahrbuch, 126 (2009) 138–148. Köhn, Lothar. Entwicklungs- und Bildungsroman: Ein Forschungsbericht. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1969. Kommerell, Max. “Wilhelm Meister.” In Inge Jens, ed., Essays, Notizen, Poetische Fragmente. Olten: Walter-Verlag, 1969, pp. 81–186. Kontje, Todd. The German Bildungsroman: A History of a National Genre. Columbia: Camden House, 1993.   “The German Bildungsroman as Metafiction.” Michigan Germanic Studies, 13 (1987) 140–155.   Private Lives in the Public Sphere: The German “Bildungsroman” as Metafiction. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992. Köpke, Wulf. “Jean Pauls Auseinandersetzung mit Werther und Wilhelm Meister in ‘Titan’.” In Wolfgang Wittkowski, ed., Goethe im Kontext: Kunst und Humanität, Naturwissenschaft und Politik von der Aufklärung bis zur Restauration: Ein Symposium. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1984, pp. 69–88. Korff, Hermann. Geist der Goethezeit: Versuch einer ideelen Entwicklung der klassisch-romantischen Literaturgeschichte. 4th ed. Leipzig: Koehler & Amelang, 1957. Kowalik, Jill Anne. “Feminine Identity Formation in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.” Modern Language Quarterly, 53 (1992) 149–172. Krauss, Paul. “Migon, der Harfner, Sperata. Die Psychopathologie einer Sippe in ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahren’.” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, 22 (1944) 327–354. Krieger, Murray., ed. Northrop Frye in Modern Criticism: Selected Papers from the English Institute. New York: Columbia, 1966. Kriegleder, Wynfried. “Wilhelm Meisters Amerika: Das Bild der Vereinigten Staaten in den Wanderjahren.” Jahrbuch des Wiener Goethe-Vereins, 95 (1991) 15–31. Krimmer, Elisabeth. “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: Paternity and Bildung in Goethe’s ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’.” German Quarterly, 77 (2004) 257–277. Krings, Marcel. “Die entgötterte Welt: Religion und Ökonomie in Goethes ‘Lehrjahren’.” Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie, 127 (2008) 161–178.   “Geld oder Liebe: Familienmodelle in Goethes ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahren’.” Text & Kontext, 30 (2008) 112–148. Kühl, Hans-Ulrich. “Bild und Spiegelbild. Überlegungen zur Genrestruktur von Goethes ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’.” Weimarer Beiträge, 24 (1978) 61–89.   “Das Poetische in Goethes Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.” Goethe-Jahrbuch, 101 (1984) 129–138.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

192

Bibliography

  “‘Wilhelm Meister’ – Individuum und Gesellschaft.” Weimarer Beiträge, 28.10 (1982) 131–141. Kuntze, K. “Die Geschichte vom kranken Königssohn.” Die Grenzboten, 48 (1889) 214–224. Kurth, Lieselotte. Die zweite Wirklichkeit: Studien zum Roman des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969. Lachmann, Frederick. “Goethes Mignon. Entstehung, Name, Gestaltung.” Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift, 15 (1927) 100–116. Lämmert, Eberhard. Bauformen des Erzählens. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1955. Lange, Victor. “Goethe’s Craft of Fiction.” Publications of the English Goethe Society, 12 (1953) 31–63.   “Zur Entstehungsgeschichte von Goethes Wanderjahre.” German Life and Letters, N.S, 23 (1969) 47–54. Langer, Susanne. “The Comic Rhythm.” In Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art Developed from Philosophy and a New Key. New York: Scribner, 1953. Larrett, William. “‘Weder Kern noch Schale’. The ‘Novel’ epistemology of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre.” Publication of the English Goethe Society, 56 (1987) 38–55.   “Wilhelm Meister and the Amazons. The Quest for Wholeness.” Publications of the English Goethe Society, 39 (1968) 31–56. Lehnert-Rodick, Gertrud. “‘Das nußbraune Mädchen’ in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre oder die Entsagenden.” Goethe Jahrbuch, 102 (1985) 171–183. Lenning, C. Allgemeines Handbuch der Freimaurerei. [3rd edition of the author’s Encyclopädie der Freimaurerei.] Leipzig: Max Hesse, 1900–1901.   Encyclopädie der Freimaurerei. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1822–1828. Leutner, Petra. “Cyborgs und Zwitterwesen: Goethes Gestalten Mignon und Helena.” In Matthias Luserke, ed., Goethe nach 1999: Positionen und Perspektiven. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001, pp. 89–98. Levy, Rachel. The Gate of Horn: A Study of the Religious Conception of the Stone Age, and Their Influence on European Thought. London: Faber & Faber, 1948. Lewis, Clive Staples. The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1967. Lillyman, William J., ed. Goethe’s Narrative Fiction: The Irvine Goethe Symposium. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1983. Loeb, E. “Markarie und Faust: Eine Betrachtung zu Goethes Altersdenken.” Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie, 88 (1969) 583–597. Lottmann, André. Arbeitsverhältnisse: Der arbeitende Mensch in Goethes Wilhelm Meister-Romanen und in der Geschichte der politischen Ökonomie. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2011. Lukács, G. Die Theorie des Romans: Ein geschichtsphilosophischer Versuch über die Formen der großen Epik. Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 1971.   “‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’.” In Goethe und seine Zeit. Bern: Francke Verlag, 1947, pp. 31–48.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Bibliography

193

Macher, H. “Wilhelm and Werner: Zur Persönlichkeits-Konzeption in Goethes Wilhelm Meister.” In Helmut Brandt and Manfred Beyer, eds., Ansichten der deutschen Klassik. Berlin: Aufbau, 1981, pp. 209–232. MacLeod, Catriona. Embodying Ambiguity: Androgyny and Aesthetics from Winckelmann to Keller. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1998.   “Pedagogy and Androgyny in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.” Modern Language Notes, 108 (1993) 389–426. Madland, H. S. “The Role and Function of Philine in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.” Selecta, 4 (1983) 64–68. Mahlendorf, Ursula. “The Mystery of Mignon: Object Relations, Abandonment, Child Abuse and Narrative Structure.” Goethe Yearbook, 7 (1994) 23–39. Mahoney, Dennis. “The Apprenticeship of the Reader: The Bildungsroman in the ‘Age of Goethe’.” In James Hardin, ed., Reflection and Action: Essays on the Bildungsroman. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991, pp. 97–117.   “‘Ubi bene, ibi patria’ oder: Amerika, hast du es besser?” Goethe-Jahrbuch, 126 (2009) 149–160. Maienhofer, Waltraud. “Perspektivenwechsel. Zu Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahren und dem amerikanischen Reisetagebuch Bernhards von Sachsen-WeimarEisenach.” Zeitschrift für Germanistik, 5 (1995) 508–522.   “Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre” und der Roman des Nebeneinander. Bielefeld: Aisthesis Verlag, 1990. Mann, Thomas. Gesammelte Werke. 2nd revised ed. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1974. Mannach, Eberhard. “Die Aufnahme in den Kanon der Nationalliteratur: ‘Simplicissimus’ und ‘Wilhelm Meister’ im Vergleich.” Simpliciana: Schriften der Grimmelshausen-Gesellschaft, 29 (2007) 239–247.   “Der Roman zur Zeit der Klassik: ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’.” In Karl Otto Conrady, ed., Deutsche Literatur zur Zeit der Klassik. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1977, pp. 211–225.   Raumdarstellung und Realitätbezug in Goethes epischer Dichtung. Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum, 1972. Marahrens, Gervin. “Über die Schicksalskonzeptionen in Goethes ‘Wilhelm Meister’-Romanen.” Goethe Jahrbuch, 102 (1985) 144–170. Martin, Laura. “Who Is the Fool Now? A Study of Goethe’s Novelle ‘Die ­pilgernde Törin’ from His Novel Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre.” German Quarterly, 66 (1993) 431–450. Martini, Fritz. “Bildungsroman – Term and Theory.” In James Hardin, ed., Reflection and Action: Essays on the Bildungsroman. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991, pp. 1–25.   “Der Bildungsroman. Zur Geschichte des Wortes und der Theorie.” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geisteswissenschaft, 35 (1961) 44–63.   “Ebenbild, Gegenbild. ‘Wilhelm Meisters theatralische Sendung’ und Goethe in Weimar 1775 bis 1786.” Goethe-Jahrbuch, 93 (1976) 60–83.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

194

Bibliography

Marx, Friedhelm. Erlesene Helden: Don Sylvio, Werther, Wilhelm Meister und die Literatur. Heidelberg: Winter, 1985. Mauron, C. Psychocritique du genre comique. Paris: Librairie José Corti, 1964. Mautner, F. et al. “‘Ist fortzusetzen’: zu Goethes Gedicht auf Schillers Schädel.” Publications of the Modern Language Association, 59 (1944) 1156–1172. May, Anja. Wilhelm Meisters Schwestern: Bildungsromane von Frauen im ausgehenden 18. Jahrhundert. Königstein: Ulrike Helmer Verlag, 2006. May, Kurt. “Wilhelm Meister Lehrjahre, ein Bildungsroman?” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, 31 (1957) 1–37. Mayer, Gerhart. “Johann W. v. Goethe: Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.” In Der deutsche Bildungsroman: Von der Aufklärung bis zur Gegenwart. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992, pp. 43–59.   “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. Gestaltbegriff und Werkstruktur.” Goethe 92 (1975) 140–164. Mayer, Matthias. Selbstbewußte Illusion: Selbtreflexion und Legitimation der Dichtung im “Wilhelm Meister.” Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1989. McCollom, William. The Divine Average: A View of Comedy. Cleveland, OH: Case Western Reserve, 1971. Mehra, M. “The Aesthetics of Imperfection in Goethe’s Last Novel.” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, 12 (1983) 205–211. Merkl, Helmut. “Die Hülle des Gewünschten als Gegenstand der Wunscherfahring. Das Kästchen-Episode in Goethes Wanderjahre.” Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift, 47 (1997) 65–75. Meyer, E. Goethes Wilhelm Meister. München: Filsner-Verlag, 1947. Meyer, H. “Mignons Italienlied und das Wesen der Verseinlage in ‘Wilhelm Meister’. Versuch einer gegenständlichen Polemik.” Euphorion, 46 (1952) 149–169. Michaelson, P. H. “Wilhelm Meisters theatralischen Sendung and the German Comic Biography.” Unpublished ms. Michelsen, Peter. “Wilhelm Meister Reads Shakespeare.” In Nicholas Boyle and John Guthrie, eds., Goethe and the English-speaking World: Essays from the Cambridge Symposium for His 250th Anniversary. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2002, pp. 21–33. Miles, David. “Kafka’s Hapless Pilgrims and Grass’s Scurrilous Dwarf: Notes of Representative Figures in the Anti-Bildungsroman.” Monatshefte, 65 (1973) 341–350.   “The Picaro’s Journey to the Confessional: The Changing Image of the Hero in the German Bildungsroman.” Publications of the Modern Language Association, 89 (1974) 980–982. Miller, Stuart. The Picaresque Novel. Cleveland, OH: Case Western Reserve, 1967. Minden, Michael. “The Place of Inheritance in the Bildungsroman: Agathon, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, and Der Nachsommer.” In James Hardin, ed., Essays on the Bildungsroman. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991, pp. 254–292.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Bibliography

195

Mittermüller, Christian. “‘Das schiebt sich und verschiebt sich’ – poetologische Reflexionen in Goethes Romanen ‘Die Wahlverwandtschaften’ und ‘Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre.” Goethe Jahrbuch, 121 (2004) 53–65.   Sprachskepsis und Poetologie: Goethes Romane “Die Wahlverwandtschaften” und “Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre.” Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2008. Molnár, Géza von. “Goethe’s Reading of Kant’s Critique of Esthetic Judgement. A Referential Guide for Wilhelm Meister’s Esthetic Education.” EighteenthCentury Studies, 15 (1981/1982) 402–420.   “‘Wilhelm Meister’ from a Romantic Perspective. Aspects of Novalis’ Predisposition that Resulted in his Initial Preference for Goethe’s Novel.” In V. Dürr and G. von Molnár, eds., Versuche zu Goethe: Festschrift für Erich Heller. Heidelberg: Lothar Stiehm Verlag, 1976, pp. 235–247.   “Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship as an Alternative to Werther’s Fate.” In Clifford A. Bernd et al., eds., Goethe Proceedings: Essays Commemorating the Goethe Sesquecentennial at the University of California, Davis. Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture, Vol. 12. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1984, pp. 77–91. Mommsen, Katharina. Goethe und 1001 Nacht. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1960.   “‘Krieg ist das Losungswort’. Zur Euphorion-Szene in Faust II und zu den letzten Novellen der Wanderjahre.” Jahrbuch des Freien Deutschen Hochstifts. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1993, pp. 128–147. Muenzer, Clark S. Figures of Identity: Goethe’s Novels and the Enigmatic Self. University Park and London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1984. Müller, Günther. “Aufbauformen des Romans. Dargelegt an den Entwicklungsromanen Gottfried Kellers und Adalbert Stifters.” In Morphologische Poetik: Gesammelte Aufsätze. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1968, pp. 556–570.   Gestaltung-Umgestaltung in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahren. Halle (Saale): Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1948. Müller, Irmgard. “Goethe und die Medizin seiner Zeit.” Goethe Jahrbuch, 112 (1995) 55–70. Müller, Joachim. “Goethes Romantheorie.” In Reinhold Grimm, ed., Deutsche Romantheorien. Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum Verlag, 1974, I, pp. 60–104.   “Phasen der Bildungsidee in ‘Wilhelm Meister’.” Goethe, 24 (1962) 58–80. Müller, Klaus-Detlef. “Lenardos Tagebuch. Zum Romanbegriff in Goethes Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre.” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturgeschichte und Geisteswissenschaft, 53 (1979) 275–299.   “Wilhelm Meisters Weg in ein tätiges Leben. Jarno als Mentor.” GoetheJahrbuch, 133 (2016) 57–91. Muschg, Adolf. “‘Bis zum Durchsichtigen gebildet’: Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre. In Goethe als Emigrant: Auf der Suche nach dem Grünen bei einem alten Dichter. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986, pp. 105–143.   “Der Mann von fünfzig Jahren.” In Goethe als Emigrant: Auf der Suche nach dem Grünen bei einem alten Dichter. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986, pp. 144–169.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

196

Bibliography

Neuhaus, Volker. “Die Archivfiktion in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahren.” Euphorion, 62 (1968) 13–27. Neumann, Michael. Roman und Ritus: Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1992. Niekerk, Carl. “‘Individuum ist ineffabile’: Bildung, der Physiognomikstreit und die Frage nach dem Subjekt in Goethes ‘Wilhelm-Meister’-Projekt.” Colloquia Germanica, 28 (1995) 1–33. Nolan, E. “Wilhelm Meistes Lieblingsbild: Der kranke Königssohn. Quelle und Funktion.” Jahrbuch des freien deutschen Hochstifts. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1979, pp. 132–152. Oellers, Norbert. “Goethes Novelle ‘Die pilgernde Törin’ und ihre französische Quelle.” Goethe Jahrbuch, 102 (1985) 88–104. Ohly, Friedrich. “Goethes Ehrfurchten – ein ordo caritatis.” Euphorion, 55 (1961) 113–145 and 405–448.   “Zum Kästchen in Goethes ‘Wanderjahren’.” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum, 91 (1962) 255–262. Øhrgaard, Per. “Anmerkungen zum Reden und Schweigen in ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahren’.” Goethe Jahrbuch, 118 (2001) 176–186.   Die Genesung des Narcissus. Eine Studie zu Goethe: “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.” København: Københavns Univeritet, 1978.   “Goethe und der dänische Bildungsroman.” Text & Kontext, 14 (1982) 39–59.   “Roman, Bildung, Experiment: Anmerkungen zur Erzählweise in ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahren’.” Jahrbuch des Freien Deutschen Hochstifts. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2000, pp. 27–49. Orłowski, Hubert. Untersuchungen zum falschen Bewußtsein im deutschen Entwicklungsroman. Poznán: Uniwersytet Im. Adama Mickiewieza, 1971. Parker, Alexander A. Literature and the Delinquent: The Picaresque Novel in Spain and Europe 1599–1753. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1967. Pascal, Roy. The German Novel. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1956.   “Goethe und das Tragische. Die Wandlung von Goethes Shakespeare-Bild.” Goethe, N.F. 26 (1964) 38–53. Paulin, Roger. “Wilhelm Meister liest Shakespeare: Über Wilhelm Meisters Shakespeare-Verständnis.” In Jochen Golz and Wolfgang Müller, eds., “Von Pol zu Pol Gesänge sich erneuen …”: Das Europa Goethes und seine Nationalautoren. Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 2001, pp. 179–190. Peschken, Bernd. “Das ‘Blatt’ in den ‘Wanderjahren’.” Goethe, N.F. 27 (1965) 205–230.   Entsagung in “Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahren.” Bonn: Bouvier, 1968. Pfaff, Peter. “Plädoyer für eine typologische Interpretation von ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahren’.” Text & Kontext, 5 (1977) 37–55. Phelan, Anthony. “What ‘Wilhelm Meister’ Did Next.” Publications of the English Goethe Society, 75 (2006) 109–124. Pirholt, Mattias. Metamimesis: Imitation in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre and Early German Romanticism. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2012.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Bibliography

197

  “A Symbolic Mystic Monstrosity: Ideology and Representation in Goethe’s ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’.” Goethe Yearbook, 16 (2009) 69–99. Pizer, John David. The Historical Perspective in German Genre Theory: Its Development from Gottsched to Hegel. Stuttgarter Arbeiten zur Germanistik, 160. Stuttgart: Heinz, 1985. Pleister, Michael. “Zu einem Kapitel vergessener Rezeptionsgeschichte: Heinrich Gustav Hotho: Rezension der Wanderjahre von Goethe, analysiert unter Einbeziehung der Hegelschen Epos- und Romantheorie.” Euphorion, 87 (1993) 387–407. Ponzi, Mauro. “Zur Entstehung des Goetheschen Motivs der ‘Entsagung’.” Zeitschrift für Germanistik, 7 (1986) 150–159. Preisendanz, W. “Humor.” In J. Ritter, ed., Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Vol. 3. Basel: Schwabe, 1970, columns 1232–1234. Propp, Vladimir. Morphology of the Folktale. Trans. Laurence Scott. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968. Raabe, August. “Das Dämonische in den ‘Wanderjahren’.” Goethe, 1 (1936) 119–127. Radbruch, Gustav. “Wilhelm Meisters sozialistischen Sendung.” In Hans Adler, ed., Der deutsche soziale Roman des 18. Und 19. Jahrhunderts. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1990, pp. 129–156. Ramtke, Nora. Anonymität – Onymität: Autorname und Autorschaft in Wilhelm Meisters “ doppellten Wanderjahren.” Heidelberg: Winter Universitätverlag, 2016. Rausch, Jürgen. “Lebensstufen in Goethes ‘Wilhelm Meister’.” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, 20 (1942) 65–114. Redfield, Marc. “The Dissection of the State: Wilhelm Meiters Wanderjahre and the Politics of Aesthetics.” German Quarterly, 69 (1996) 15–31.   Phantom Formations: Aesthetic Ideology and the Bildungsroman. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996. Reed, Terence James. The Classical Centre: Goethe and Weimar, 1775–1832. Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble, 1980.   “Revolution und Rücknahme. Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre im Kontext der Französischen Revolution.” Goethe Jahrbuch, 107 (1990) 27–43. Reeve, Clara. The Progress of Romance. Colchester, 1785. Rehm, Walther. Begegnungen und Probleme. Bern: Franke, 1957. Reincke, O. “Goethes Roman ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’ – ein zentrales Kunstwerk der klassichen Literaturperiode in Deutschland.” Goethe, 94 (1977) 137–187. Reiss, Hans. “Bild und Symbol in ‘Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahren’.” Studium Generale, 6 (1953) 340–348.   “Das Poetische in ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’.” Goethe-Jahrbuch, 101 (1984) 112–128.   Goethe’s Novels. London: Macmillan, 1969.   Goethes Romane. Bern and München: Francke Verlag, 1963.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

198

Bibliography

  “Lustspielhaftes in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.” In Gerhart Hoffmeister, ed., Goethezeit: Festschrift für Stuart Atkins. Bern: Francke Verlag, 1981, pp. 131–144.   “On Some Images in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.” Publications of the English Goethe Society, 20 (1951) 111–138.   “Wilhelm Meisters theatralische Sendung – Ernst oder Ironie?” Jahrbuch der deutschen Schillergesellschaft, 11 (1967) 268–296. Renner, Rold Günter. “Text, Bild und Gedächtnis: Goethes Erzählen im “Mann von fünfzig Jahren” und in den “Wanderjahren.” Poetica, 31 (1999) 149–174. Reuchlein, Georg. Die Heilung des Wahnsinns bei Goethe: Orest, Lila, der Harfner, und Sperata: Zum Verhältnis von Literatur, Seelenkunde, und Moral im späten 18. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1983. Ritter, H. Die pädagogischen Strömungen in letzten Drittel des 18. Jahrhunderts in den gleichzeitigen deutschen pädagogischen Romanen und romanhaften Darstellungen. Diss. Halle-Wittenberg, 1938. Ritter, J. “Über das Lachen.” Blätter für deutsche Philosophie, 14 (1940) 1–21. Roberts, David. The Indirections of Desire: Hamlet in Goethe’s “Wilhelm Meister.” Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universtätsverlag, 1980.   “Wilhelm Meister and Hamlet. The Inner Structure of Book III of Wilhelm Meister Lehrjahre.” Publications of the English Goethe Society, 45 (1974–1975) 64–100. Robertson, Ritchie. “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.” In Peter Hutchinson, ed., Landmarks in the German Novel. Bern: Peter Lang, 2007, pp. 31–48. Röder, Gerda. Glück und glückliches Ende im deutschen Bildungsroman. München: Max Hueber Verlag, 1968. Rommel, Otto. “Die wissenschaftlichen Bemühungen um die Analyse des Kosmischen.” Deutsch Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, 21 (1943) 161–195. Roos, Carl. “Faust und die Zikade. Das Faustsymbol.” Euphorion, 46 (1952) 31–47. Rösch, Ewald. “Goethes Novelle ‘Nicht zu weit’: Im Feuer des Himmels, im Eis der Hölle.” Jahrbuch des Freien Deutschen Hochstifts. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2002, pp. 54–115. Rovit, M. “Humor and the Humanization of Art. Centennial Review, 9 (1965) 135–152. Rowley, Brian A. “Steps to Heaven and to the Abyss. Goethe’s Quantum Theory of Development.” Publications of the English Goethe Society, 52 (1983) 44–66. Ryan, Judith. “‘Pfeile mit Widerhaken’: On the Aphorism in Goethe’s ‘Wahlverwandtschaften’ und ‘Wanderjahre’.” Goethe Yearbook, 16 (2009) 1–10. Rybakoff, Aleksej. “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre – Geburtsstunde der modernen Wirklichkeit?” In Béatrice Dumiche, ed., Goethe als Neuerer und Vermittler: Akten des deutsch-französischen Nachwuchskolloqiums zum 250. Geburtstag des Dichters. Essen: Die Blaue Eule, 2003, pp. 103–116.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Bibliography

199

Saariluoma, Liisa. Erzählstruktur und Bildungsroman: Wielands ‘Geschichte des Agathon’, Goethes ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2004.   Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre und die Entstehung des modernen Zeitbewusstseins. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2005. Sagmo, Ivar. Bildungsroman und Geschichtsphilosophie: Eine Studie zu Goethes Roman “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.” Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann, 1982.   “Hier oder nirgend ist Amerika! Hier oder nirgend is Herrnhut! Zur Lokalisierung des Turmbezirks in Goethes Roman Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.” Text & Kontext, 8 (1980) 63–87. Saine, Thomas P. “Über Wilhelm Meisters ‘Bildung’.” In Jeffrey Sammons and Ernst Schürer, eds., Lebendige Form: Interpretationen zur deutschen Literatur: Festschrift für Heinrich E. K. Henel. München: Wihelm Fink Verlag, 1970, pp. 63–81.   “Was Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre Really Supposed to Be a Bildungsroman?” In James Hardin, ed., Reflection and Action: Essays on the Bildungsroman. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991, pp. 118–141.  “What Time Is It in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre?” Hannelore Mundt et al., eds., Horizonte: Festschrift für Hebert Lehnert zum 65. Geburstag. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1990, pp. 52–69.   “Wilhelm Meister’s Homecoming.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 69 (1970) 450–469. Sammons, Jeffrey L. “The Bildungsroman for Nonspecialists: An Attempt at a Clarification.” In James Hardin, ed., Reflection and Action: Essays on the Bildungsroman. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991, pp. 26–45.   “The Mystery of the Missing Bildungsroman, or: What Happened to Wilhelm Meister’s Legacy?” Genre, 14 (1981) 229–246. Sampaolo, Giovanni. “Raum-Ordnung und Zeit-Bewegung: gespaltene Naturerkenntnis in ‘Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahren’.” Goethe-Jahrbuch, 124 (2007) 153–160. Sandbach, Francis. The Comic Theatre of Greece and Rome. New York: Norton, 1977. Saße, Günter. Auswandern in die Moderne: Tradition und Innovation in Goethes Roman “Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre.” Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2010.   “Das Plagiat als Sehnsuchtsort. Zur Eingangsnovelle der Wanderjahre.” Euphorion, 99 (2005) 491–510.   “‘Der Abschied aus diesem Paradies’. Die Überwindung der Sehnsucht durch die Kunst in der Lago Maggiore-Episode in Goethes Wanderjahren.” Jahrbuch der deutschen Schillergesellschaft, 42 (1998) 95–119.   “Der Gesang in Goethes Roman Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre als Medium der Sozialdisziplinierung.” Goethe Jahrbuch, 118 (2001) 274–288.   “Der Sohn als Vater: Wilhelm Meisters Weg vom ‘unbefiederten Kaufmannssohn’ zur ‘zweifelhaften Vaterschaft’.” In Klaus-Michael Bogdal et al., eds., Jugend: Psychologie – Literatur – Geschichte: Festschrift für Carl Pietzcker. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2001, pp. 133–146.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

200

Bibliography

  “Die Sozialisation des Fremden. Mignon oder: Das Kommersurable des Inkommensurablen in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjaren.” In Yoshinori Shichiji, ed., Akten des VIII. Internationalen Germanisten-Kongesses Tokyo 1990: Begegnung mit dem “Fremden”. Grenzen – Traditionen – Vergleiche, Band 11. München: iudicium verlag, 1991, pp. 103–113.   “‘Gerade seine Unvollkommenheit hat mir am meisten Mühe gemacht’. Schillers Briefwechsel mit Goethe über ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’.” Goethe Jahrbuch, 122 (2005) 76–91.   “‘Sinn ist mehr als Glück’. Die symbolische Ordnung der Pädagogischen Provinz in Goethes Wanderjahren.” In Ortrud Gutjahr, ed., Westöstlicher und nordsüdlicher Divan. Goethe in interkultureller Perspektive. Paderborn: Schöningh, 2000, pp. 177–186.   “Von ‘dem heilsamen Esoterischen in das allzubreite Exoterische’. Zur Gestalt der Makarie in Goethes Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre.” In Olaf Hildebrand and Thomas Pittrof, eds., “… auf klassischem Boden begeistert”. Antike-Rezeptionen in der deutschen Literatur. Festschrift für Jochen Schmidt. Freiburg in Breisgau: Rombach, 2004, pp. 171–190. Saul, Nicholas. “Goethe and Colonisation: The ‘Wanderjahre’ and Cooper.” In Nicholas Boyle and John Guthrie, eds., Goethe and the English-speaking World: Essays from the Cambridge Symposium for His 250th Anniversary. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2002, pp. 85–98. Schad, Wolfgang. “Medizin und Heilkunst in Goethes Leben und Dichtung: Heinrich Faust und Wilhelm Meister.” In Goethes Weltkultur. Stuttgart: Freies Geistesleben, 2007, pp. 206–225 and 417–418. Schädel, C. Metamorphose und Erscheinungsformen des Menschen in “Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahren.” Marburg: N. G. Elwert Verlag, 1969. Schäfer, Jochem. Goethe und sein Alterswerk “Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre” im Lichte des Widerstands gegen den Nationalsozialismus. Norsdstrand: M.-G. Schmitz-Verlag, 2011. Scher, Steven P. “Mignon in Music.” In Gerhart Hoffmeister, ed. Goethe in Italy, 1786–1986. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1988, pp. 159–169. Schiff, Julius. “Mignon, Ottilie, Makarie im Lichte der Goetheschen Naturphilosophie.” Jahrbuch der Goethe-Gesellschaft, 9 (1922) 133–147. Schillemeit, Jost. “‘Historisches Menschengefühl’: über einige Aphorismen in Goethes ‘Wanderjahren’.” In Rosemarie Schillemeit, ed., Studien zur Goethezeit. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2006, pp. 235–253. Schiller, F. On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters. E. Wilkinson and L. Willoughby, eds. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1967. Schings, Hans-Jürgen. “‘Agathon’, ‘Anton Reiser’, ‘Wilhelm Meister’. Zur Pathologie des modernen Subjekts in Roman.” In W. Wittkowski, ed., Goethe im Kontext: Kunst und Humanität, Naturwissenschaft und Politik von der Aufklärung bis zur Restauration: Ein Symposium. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1984, pp. 42–68.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Bibliography

201

  “‘Gedenke zu wandern’: Wihelm Meisters Lebensreise.” In James Hardin and Jörg Jungmayr, eds., “Der Buchstab tödt – der Geist macht lebendig”: Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag von Hans-Gert Roloff von Freunden, Schülern und Kollegen. Bern: Peter Lang, 1992, Vol. 2, pp. 1029–1044.   “Goethes Wilhelm Meister und Spinoza.” In Wolfgang Wittkowski, ed., Verantwortung und Utopie: Zur Literatur der Goethezeit. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1998, pp. 57–66.   “Natalie und die Lehre des †††. Zur Rezeption Spinozas in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahren.” Jahrbuch des Wiener Goethe-Vereins, 89–91 (1985–87) 37–88.   “Symbolik des Glücks: Zu Wilhelm Meisters Bildergeschichte.” In Ulrich Göbel und Wolodymyr T. Zyla, eds., One Hundred and Fifty Years of Continuing Vitality. Lubbock: Texas Tech Press, 1984, pp. 157–177.   “Wilhelm Meisters Geselle Laertes.” Euphorion, 77 (1983) 419–437.   “Wilhelm Meisters schöne Amazone.” Jahrbuch der deutschen Schillergesellschaft, 29 (1985) 141–206.   “Wihelm Meister und das Erbe der Illuminaten.” Jahrbuch der Deutschen Schillergesellschaft, 43 (1999) 123–147. Schlaffer, Heinz. “Exoterik und Esoterik in Goethes Romanen.” Goethe-Jahrbuch, 95 (1978) 212–226.   Wilhelm Meister: Das Ende der Kunst und die Wiederkehr des Mythos. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1980. Schlechta, Karl. Goethes Wilhelm Meister. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1953. Schmidt, Lothar. “Das Ich im ‘Simplicissimus’.” Wirkendes Wort, 10 (1960) 215–220. Schmitz-Emans, Monika. “Vom Spiel mit dem Mythos: Zu Goethes Märchen ‘Die neue Melusine’.” Goethe Jahrbuch, 105 (1988) 316–332. Schneider, H. Quest for Mysteries: The Masonic Background for Literature in Eighteenth-Century Germany. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1947. Schneider, Margaret. Etüden zum Lesen sprachlicher Formen in Goethes Wilhelm Meister. Zürich: Atlantis Verlag, 1970. Schneider, Martin. “Verfehlte Feste. Theatrale Kollektivbildung in Goethes Prosa (‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’, ‘Die Wahlverwandtschaften’ und ‘Novelle’).” Goethe-Jahrbuch, 133 (2016) 15–22. Schödlbauer, Ulrich. Kunsterfahrung als Weltverstehen. Die ästhetische Form von “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahren.” Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1984. Scholes, Robert and R. Kellogg. The Nature of Narrative. London: Oxford University Press, 1966. Schöll, Julia. “Bekenntnisse des Ich. Zum Entwurf des Subjekts in Goethes doppeltem Bildungsroman ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’.” Goethe-Jahrbuch, 125 (2008) 38–50.   “Inszenierte Dinge. Die Ästhetik der Objekte in Goethes Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.” In Gernot Böhme, ed., Über Goethes Romane. Bielefeld: Aisthesis-Verlag, 2016, pp. 45–60.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

202

Bibliography

Schößler, Franziska. Goethes Lehr- und Wanderjahre. Eine Kulturgeschichte der Moderne. Tübingen: Francke, 2002.   “Mechanische Uhr und Sonnenwende-Zeit in Goethes Roman Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre.” Recherches Germaniques, 27 (1997) 75–92.   “Progress and Restorative Utopia in Faust II and Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre.” In Paul Bishop, ed., A Companion to Goethe’s Faust: Parts I and II. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2001, pp. 169–193. Schrader, Monika. Mimesis und Poeisis: Poetologische Studien zum Bildungsroman. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1975. Schrimpf, Hans. Das Weltbild des späten Goethe: Überlieferungen und Bewahrung in Goethes Alterswerk. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1956. Schueler, H. J. “The Polar Identity of Descent and Ascent in Goethe’s Faust.” German Life and Letters, 35 (1982) 105–107. Schulz, Gerhard. “Bürgerliche Epopöen? Fragen zu einigen deutschen Romanen zwischen 1790 and 1800.” In Karl Conrady, ed., Deutsche Literatur zur Zeit der Klassik. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1977, pp. 189–210.   “Gesellschaftsbild und Romanform: Zum Deutschen in Goethes ‘Wanderjahren’.” In Jürgen Brummack, ed., Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschicte: Festschrift für Richard Brinkmann. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1981, pp. 258–282. Schumann, D. “Die Zeit in ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahren’.” Jahrbuch des freien deutschen Hochstifts. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1968, pp. 130–165. Schuster, I. Blick nach Osten: Studien zum Spätwerk Goethes und zum Chinabild in der deutschen Literatur. Bern: Peter Lang, 1981. Schutjer, Karin. “Beyond the Wandering Jew: Anti-Semitism and Narrative Supersession in Goethes ‘Wihhelm Meisters Wanderjahre’.” German Quarterly, 77 (2004) 389–407. Schwamborn, Claudia. Individualität in Goethes “Wanderjahren.” Paderborn: Schöningh, 1997. Schwanke, Martina. Index zu Goethes Roman “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.” Stuttgart: Verlag Hans-Dieter Heinz Akademischer Verlag, 1994. Schweitzer, C. “Wilhelm Meister und das Bild vom kranken Königssohn.” Publications of the Modern Language Association, 72 (1957) 419–432. Schwinge, E.-R. “Anmerkungen zu Goethes Gattungstheorie.” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, 56 (1982) 123–134. Scott, Walter. Essay on Romance. In The Miscellaneous Prose Works of Sir Walter Scott in Six Volumes. Boston, MA: Wells & Lilly, 1829. Seidler, Herbert. “Wandlungen des deutschen Bildungsromans im 19. Jahrhundert.” Wirkendes Wort, 11 (1961) 148–162. Seidlin, Oskar. “Melusine in der Spiegelung der Wanderjahre.” In S. Corngold et al., eds., Aspekte der Goethezeit. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1977, pp. 146–162.   “Zur Mignon-Ballade.” Euphorion, 45 (1950) 83–99. Seitz, Erwin. “Die Vernunft des Menschen und die Verführung durch das Leben: eine Studie zu den ‘Lehrjahren’.” Goethe Jahrbuch, 113 (1997) 121–137.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Bibliography

203

Selbmann, Rolf. Der deutsche Bildungsroman. Sammlung Metzler, 214. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1984.   “Kann uns Schillers Schädel den Bildungsroman erklären?: Ein etwas anderer Zugang zu Goethes ‘Wilhelm Meister’.” Goethe-Jahrbuch, 125 (2008) 193–203.   “Theaterroman als Bildungsroman: ‘Wilhelm Meister’.” In Theater im Roman: Studien zum Strukturwandel des deutschen Bildungsromans. München: Wilhelm Fink, 1981, pp. 62–87.  ed. Zur Geschichte des deutchen Bildungsromans. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1988. Sengle, F. Goethes Verhältnis zum Drama. Berlin: Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1937. Shakespeare, William. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. W. J. Craig, ed. London: Oxford University Press, 1957. Skonietzki, Horst-Hartmuth. “Ehrfurcht als verborgene Systole der ‘Entsagenden’ in Goethes ‘Wanderjahren’ und bei Albert Schweizer.” Goethe Jahrbuch, 109 (1992) 163–166. Skorniakova, Kristina. Moderne Transzendenz: Wie Goethes Wilhelm-MeisterRomane Sinn machen. Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2010. Smith, John H. “Sexual Difference, Bildung, and the Bildungroman.” Michigan Germanic Studies, 13 (1987) 206–225. Sommerhage, Claus. “Familie Tantalos. Über Mythos und Psychologie in Goethes Novelle der Mann von fünfzig Jahren.” Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie, 103 (1984) 78–105. Sorensen, Bengt Algot. “Über die Familie in Goethes ‘Werther’ und ‘Wilhelm Meister.’ Orbis Litterarum, 42 (1987) 118–140. Sorg, Klaus-Dieter. Gebrochene Teleologie: Studien zum Bildungsroman von Goethe bis Thomas Mann. Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1983. Sow, Alioune. “‘Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre’: Bilder einer vormodernen und Vorschein einer modernen Gesellschaft.” In M. Moustapha Diallo and Dirk Göttsche, eds., Interkulturelle Texturen: Afrika und Deutschland im Reflexionsmedium der Natur. Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2003, pp. 285–310. Spranger, E. “Der psychologische Perspektivismus im Roman.” In Goethe: Seine geistige Welt. Tübingen: Rainer Wunderlich, 1967, pp. 207–232.   “Die sittliche Astrologie der Makarie in ‘Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahren’.” In Goethes Weltanschauung: Reden und Aufsätze. Wiesbaden: Insel-Verlag, 1946, pp. 192–206.   “Goethe und die Metamorphose des Menschen.” Jahrbuch der GoetheGesellschaft, 10 (1924) 219–238. Stadler, U. “Wilhelm Meisters unterlassene Revolte. Individuelle Geschichte und Gesellschaftsgeschichte in Goethes Lehrjahren.” Eurphorion, 74 (1980) 360–374. Stahl, E[rnest] L. Die religiöse und die humanitätsphilosophische Bildungsidee und die Entstehung des deutschen Bildungsromans im 18. Jahrhundert. Bern: Paul Haupt, 1934.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

204

Bibliography

Staiger, Emil. “Adalbert Stifter: ‘Der Nachsommer’.” In Meisterwerke deutscher Sprache aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert. 2nd ed. Zürich: Atlantis, 1948, pp. 188–203.   Goethe. 3 vols. Zürich: Atlantis, 1959. Stanzel, Franz. Typische Formen des Romans. 5th ed. Göttingen: Vandenhock & Ruprecht, 1970. Staroste, Wolfgang. “Zum epischen Aufbau der Realität in Goethes ‘Wilhelm Meister’.” In Raum und Realität in dichterischer Gestaltung: Studien zu Goethe und Kafka. Heidelberg: Stiehm, 1971.   “Zur Ding-‘Symbolik’ in Goethes ‘Wihelm Meister’.” Orbis Litterarum, 15 (1960) 44–58. Steer, Alfred. Goethe’s Science in the Structure of the Wanderjahre. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1979.   “The Wound and the Physician in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister.” In Siegfried Mews, ed., Studies in German Literature of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Festschrift for Frederic E. Coenen. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1970, pp. 11–23. Steinecke, Hartmut. “The Novel and the Individual: The Significance of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister in the Debate about the Bildungsroman.” In James Hardin, ed., Reflection and Action: Essays on the Bildungsroman. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991, pp. 69–96.   “‘Wilhelm Meister’ und die Folgen. Goethes Roman und die Entwicklung der Gattung im 19. Jahrhundert.” In Wolfgang Wittkowski, ed., Goethe im Kontext: Kunst und Humanität, Naturwissenschaft und Politik von der Aufklärung bis zur Restauration: Ein Symposium. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1984, pp. 89–112. Steiner, J. Goethes Wilhelm Meister: Sprache und Stilwandel. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1966. Steiner, Uwe. “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.” In Bernd Witte et al., eds., GoetheHandbuch in vier Bänden, Bd. 3, Prosaschriften. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1997, pp. 113–152. Stock, Irving. “A View of Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship.” Publications of the Modern Language Association, 72 (1957) 84–103. Storck, J. “Das Ideal der klassischen Gesellschaft in ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahren’.” In V. Dürr and G. von Molnár, eds., Versuche zu Goethe: Zeitschrift für Erich Heller. Heielberg: Lothar Stiehm, 1976, pp. 211–234. Storz, Gerhard. Goethe-Vigilien oder Versuche in der Kunst, Dichtung zu verstehen. Stuttgart: Ernst Klett, 1953.   “Wieder einmal die ‘Lehrjahre’.” In V. Dürr and G. von Molnár, eds., Versuche zu Goethe: Festschrift für Erich Heller. Heidelberg: Lothar Stiehm, 1976, pp. 190–200.   “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.” In Goethe-Vigilien oder Versuche in der Kunst, Dichtung zu verstehen. Stuttgart: Ernst Klett, 1951, pp. 61–103.   “Zur Komposition von Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahren.” In Konrad Gaiser, ed., Das Altertum und jedes neue Gute: Festschrift für Wolfgang Schadewalt zum 15. März 1970. Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 1970, pp. 157–165.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Bibliography

205

Strack, Friedrich. “Selbst-Erfahrung oder Selbst-Entsagung? Goethes Deutung und Kritik des Pietismus in ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’.” In Wolfgang Wittlkowski, ed., Verlorene Klassik? Ein Symposion. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1986, pp. 52–73. Strelka, Joseph. “Goethes Wilhelm Meister und der Roman des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts.” German Quartely, 41 (1968) 338–355. Strich, Fritz. Goethe und die Weltliteratur. 2nd expanded ed. Bern: Francke, 1957. Striedter, Jurij. “Der Clown und die Hürde.” In W. Preisendanz and R. Warning, eds., Das Komische. München: Wilhelm Fink, 1976, pp. 389–398.   Der Schelmenroman in Russland: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des russischen Romans vor Gogol’. Berlin: Osteuropa-Institut an der Freien Universität Berlin, 1961. Suleiman, Susan. “La structure d’apprentissage. Bildungsroman et roman à these.” Poétique, 37 (1979) 24–42. Sulger-Gebing, Emil. Goethe und Dante: Studien zur vergleichenden Literaturgeschichte. Berlin: Alexander Duncker, 1907. Swales, Martin. “The German Bildungsroman and ‘The Great Tradition’.” Paper given at the British Comparative Literature Association Conference, Warwick, December 1977.   The German Bildungsroman from Wieland to Hesse. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978.  “Irony and the Novel: Reflections on the German ‘Bildungsroman’.” London: Inaugural Lecture Delivered at University College, 1979.   “Utopie und Bildungsroman.” In Wilhelm Voßkamp, ed., Utopieforschung: Interdisziplinäre Studien zur neuzeitlichen Utopie, Bd. 3. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1982, pp. 218–226. Tannebaum, Daniela. Weibliches Werden: Sozialisation und Selbstfindung der Frauengestalten in Goethes Wihelm Meisters Lehrjahre. Marburg: Tectum Verlag, 2009. Textsorten: Diffenzierungskriterien aus linguistischer Sicht. Elisabeth Gülich and Wolfgang Raible, eds. Athenäum-Skripten Linguistik, 5. Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum, 1972. Thomé, H. Roman und Naturwissenschaft: Eine Studie zur Vorgeschichte der ­deutchen Klassik. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1978. Thornburg, E. Henry Fielding’s Theory of the Comic Prose Epic. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1931. von der Thüsen, J. “Der Romananfang in ‘Wihelm Meisters Lehrjahren’.” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, 43 (1969) 622–630. Tiefenbacher, Herbert. Textstrukturen des Entwicklungs- und Bildungsromans: Zur Handlungs- und Erzählstruktur ausgewählter Romane zwischen Naturalismus und Erstem Weltkrieg. Hochschulschriften: Literaturwissenschaft, 54. n.p.: Forum Academicum, 1982. Tobin, Robert D. Doctor’s Orders: Goethe and Enlightenment Thought. Lewisburg, PA: Buckness University Press, 2001.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

206

Bibliography

  “The Medicinalization of Mignon.” In Gerhard Hoffmeister, ed. Goethes Mignon und ihre Schwestern: Interpretationen und Rezeption. New  York: Peter Lang, 1993. Todorov, Tzvetan. “Genres littéraires.” In Oswald Ducrot and Tzvetan Todorov. Dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences du langage. Paris: Seuil, 1972, pp. 193–201.   Introduction à la literature fantastique. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1970. Trunz, E. “Die ‘Wanderjahre’ als ‘Hauptgeschäft’ in Winterhalbjahr 1828/1829.” In Erich Trunz, ed., Studien zu Goethes Alterswerken. Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum, 1971, pp. 99–121. Tunner, Erika. “‘L’Esprit de Mignon.’ Mignon-Bilder von der Klassik bis zur Gegenwart.” Goethe-Jahrbuch, 106 (1989) 11–21. Turner, D. “Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship and German Classicism.” In J. Ritchie, ed., Periods in German Literature: Vol. 2. London: Oswald Wolff, 1969, pp. 85–114. Tuve, Rosemond. Allegorical Imagery: Some Medieval Books and Their Posterity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966. Tynjanov, Jurij. Die literarischen Kunstmittel und die Evolution in der Literatur. Trans. Alexander Kaempfe. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1967. Vaget, Hans Rudolf. “Goethe the Novelist: On the Coherence of His Fiction.” In William J. Lillyman, ed., Goethe’s Narrative Fiction: The Irvine Goethe Symposium. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1983, pp. 1–20.   “Johann Wolfgang Goethe: Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (1829).” In P. M. Lützeler, ed., Romane und Erzählungen zwischen Romantik und Realismus: Neue Interpretationen. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1983, pp. 136–164.   “Katzengold: Kunst und Religion in ‘Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre’.” In Johannes Anderegg und Edith Anna Kunz, eds., Goethe und die Bibel. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2005, pp. 279–294.   “Liebe und Grundeigentum in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahren: Zur Physiognomie des Adels bei Goethe.” In P. U. Hohendahl and P. M. Lützeler, Legitimationskrisen des deutschen Adels 1200–1900. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1979, pp. 137–157. Valk, Thorsten. “‘Alles macht einen ewigen Zirkel in mir’: Aurelie als Melancholikerin in Goethes ‘Wilhelm Meister’.” Goethe Jahrbuch, 116 (1999) 259–270. Vasonyi, Nicholas. “Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre: A Question of Talent.” German Quarterly, 62 (1989) 39–47. Verweyen, Theodor and Gunther Witting. “Zum deskriptiven Gehalt des Utopiebegriffs. Dargelegt anhand von Grimmelshausens Simplicissimus und Goethe’s Meister-Romanen.” Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift, 43 (1993) 399–416. Viëtor, Karl. Goethe: Dichtung: Wissenschaft: Weltbild. Bern: Francke Verlag, 1949.   “Goethes Gedicht auf Schillers Schädel.” Publication of the Modern Language Association, 59 (1944) 142–183.   “Zur Frage einer Fortsetzung … (Antwort).” Publication of the Modern Language Association, 60 (1945) 421–426.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Bibliography

207

Vinaver, Eugène. Form and Meaning in Medieval Romance. Modern Humanities Research Association, 1966. Voßkamp, Wilhelm. “Bilder der Bildung in Goethes Romanen ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’ und ‘Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre’.” In Der Roman des Lebens: Die Aktualität der Bildung und ihre Geschichte im Bildungroman. Berlin: Berlin University Press, 2009, pp. 62–82.   “Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’ (1795) – ‘Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre’ (1821 and 1829).” In “Ein anderes Selbst”: Bild und Bildung im deutschen Roman des 18. und 19. Jarhunderts. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2004, pp. 33–53.  “Perfektibilité und Bildung. Zu den Besonderheiten des deutschen Bildungskonzepts im Kontext der europäischen Utopie- und Fortschrittsdiskussion.” In Der Roman des Lebens: Die Aktualität der Bildung und ihre Geschichte im Bildungroman. Berlin: Berlin University Press, 2009, pp. 33–48.   “Utopie und Utopiekritik in Goethes Romanen Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre und Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre.” In Utopieforschung: Interdisziplinäre Studien zur neuzeitlichen Utopie: Vol. 3. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1982, pp. 227–249.   “Utopie und Utopiekritik in Goethes ‘Wilhelm Meister’-Romanen.” In Der Roman des Lebens: Die Aktualität der Bildung und ihre Geschichte im Bildungroman. Berlin: Berlin University Press, 2009, pp. 83–115.  ed. Utopieforschung: Interdisziplinäre Studien zur neuzeitlichen Utopie. 3 vols. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1982.   “Wilhelm Meister theatralische Sendung.” In Goethe-Handbuch, Bd. 3. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1997, pp. 101–110.   “Wilhelm Meisters Theatralishche Sendung und dessen Lehrjahre im 20. Jahrhundert bei Botho Strauß und Thomas Bernhard.” In Der Roman des Lebens: Die Aktualität der Bildung und ihre Geschichte im Bildungroman. Berlin: Berlin University Press, 2009, pp. 160–180. Wagenknecht, C. “Goethes ‘Ehrfurchten’ und die Symbolik der Loge.” Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie, 84 (1965) 490–497. Wagner, W. “Goethes Mignon.” Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift, 21 (1933) 401–415. Waidson, H. M. “Death by Water – or the Childhood of Wilhelm Meister.” Modern Language Review, 56 (1961) 44–53. Wais, K. “Die Divina Commedia als dichterisches Vorbild im xix. und xx. Jahrhundert.” Arcadia, 3 (1968) 27–47. Walter-Schneider, Margret. “Die Kunst des Hintergrunds in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.” Jahrbuch der deutschen Schillergesellschaft, 24 (1980) 87–101. Ward, Albert. Book Production, Fiction, and the German Reading Public, 1740–1800. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1974. Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957. Wattenberg, D. “Goethe und die Sternenwelt.” Goethe, 31 (1969) 66–111.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

208

Bibliography

Weinrich, H. Article “Ironie.” In J. Ritter, ed., Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie: Vol. 4. Basel: Schwabe, 1971, columns 577–582. Weiss, G. “An Interpretation of the Miner’s Scene in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.” In J. Sammons and E. Schürer, eds., Lebendige Form: Interpretationen zur deutschen Literatur: Festschrift für Heinrich E. K. Henel. München: Wilhelm Fink, 1970, pp. 83–88. Wellek, R. Theory of Literature. 3rd ed. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962. Westerhoff, Armin. “Schweigen und Verstummen in Goethes ‘Wanderjahren’.” In Béatrice Dumiche, ed., Goethe als Neuerer und Vermittler: Akten des deutsch-französischen Nachwuchskolloqiums zum 250. Geburtstag des Dichters. Essen: Die Blaue Eule, 2003, pp. 117–132. Wicks, Ulrich. “The Nature of Picaresque Narrative: A Modal Approach.” Publications of the Modern Language Association, 89 (1974) 240–249. Wilkinson, Elizabeth M. and L. A. Willoughby. “‘Having and being’, or Bourgeois versus Nobility: Notes for a Chapter on Social and Cultural History of for a Cultural History or for a Commentary on ‘Wilhelm Meister’ (1968).” In Jeremy Adler et al., eds., Models of Wholeness: Some Attitudes to Language, Art and Life in the Age of Goethe. Oxford, UK: Peter Lang, 2002, pp. 227–232. Williams, I., ed. Novel and Romance, 1700–1800: A Documentary Record. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970. Willoughby, L. “Literary Relations in the Light of Goethe’s Principle of ‘Wiederspiegelung’.” Comparative Literature, 1 (1949) 309–323.   “‘Name ist Schall und Rauch.’ On the Significance of Names for Goethe.” German Life and Letters, 16 (1963) 294–307. Wolf, Norbert Christian. “‘Die Wesenheit des Objektes bedingt den Stil’. Zur Modernität des Erzählkonzepts in ‘Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahren’.” Goethe Jahrbuch, 119 (2002) 52–65. Wright, Andrew. Henry Fielding: Mask and Feast. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966. Wundt, Max. “Aus Makariens Archiv. Zur Entstehung der Aphorismensammlungen in den Wanderjahren.” Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift, 7 (1915) 177–184.   Goethes Wilhelm Meister und die Entwiclung des modernen Lebensideals. 2nd ed. Berlin and Leipzig: de Gruyter, 1932. Zantop, Susanne. “Eignes Selbst und fremde Formen: Goethes ‘Bekenntnisse einer schönen Seele’.” Goethe Yearbook, 3 (1986) 73–92. Zecevic, Patricia D. The Speaking Divine Woman: López de Úbeda’s “La Picara Justina” and Goethe’s “Wilhelm Meister”. Oxford: Lang, 2001. Zenker, Markus. “Bergpredigt, ‘Weltfrömmigkeit’ und natürliche Theodizee in Goethes Roman ‘Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre oder die Entsagenden.” In Johannes Anderegg und Edith Anna Kunz, eds., Goethe und die Bibel. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2005, pp. 261–277.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Index

1 Henry IV, 83 1001 Nights, 96

Don Quixote, 13 Don Sylvio, 64

Aeneid, 104 Agathon, 6, 7, 12, 13 anabasis, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131 anagnorisis, 57, 62, 64, 71, 74 Apollonius, 124 Apuleius, 131 Arabian Nights, The, 101, 103, 130 Argonautica, 104 Aristotle, 15, 116 As You Like, 74 Augustine, 35

Eckermann, 77, 101, 102 El Buscón, 49, 51, 52, 64 Eleusinian mysteries, 113, 126 Faerie Queene, The, 103, 124 Faulkner, 114 Faust, 1 Fielding, 27 Fowler, Alastair, 3, 4, 6, 11, 13, 14 Freemasonry, 91, 92, 127 Freud, 89, 126 Frye, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 27, 46, 54, 55, 56, 57, 61, 67, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 96, 101, 103, 104, 105, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 120, 123, 125, 126, 129, 130, 131, 135, 136, 137

Bakhtin, 25, 26, 50, 51 Balzac, 72 Bildung, 2, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 14, 16, 43, 52, 76, 85, 94, 134 Bildungsroman, 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 15, 28, 39, 52 bildungsroman, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, 24, 38, 39, 43, 59, 64 Blanckenburg, 6, 11 Bride of Lammermoor, The, 105

Gil Blas, 26, 27, 28, 41, 49, 53, 63, 64 Golden Ass, The, 131 Götz von Berlichingen, 46 Green Henry, 6, 7, 12, 13, 14 Grimmelshausen, 26 Guzmán de Alfarache, 29, 30, 34, 35, 36

Canterbury Tales, The, 103 carnivalesque, 25, 50, 51, 56, 75 comedy, 23, 34, 39, 64 comic, 21, 22, 23, 25, 27, 28, 30, 31, 34, 38, 40, 41, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 74, 75, 76, 80, 82, 85, 96, 105, 112, 113, 122, 123, 124, 131, 135, 136, 137 Comic Novel, The, 26, 27, 28, 41, 49 commedia dell’ arte, 54, 74 Conrad, 114 Croce, 4 Cymbeline, 96, 124

Hamlet, 32, 46, 65, 84 Hau Kiou Choaan, 101, 102 Hawthorne, 110 Hegel, 14, 23, 43, 51, 59 Heliodorus, 114, 124 Hempfer, Klaus, 4, 5, 11 Hobbit, The, 129 House of the Seven Gables, The, 110 Huan Chien Chi, 101 Indian Summer, 6, 7, 12, 13 Iu Kiao Li, 102

Dante, 108, 120, 127 Daphnis and Chloe, 96, 100, 101, 102, 130 Decameron, The, 47, 96, 103 Derrida, 3 Dinesen, 114

Johnson, Samuel, 110 Joseph Andrews, 49 katabasis, 125, 126, 128, 129, 130, 132

209

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.009 Published online by Cambridge University Press

210

Index

Lazarillo de Tormes, 13, 26, 30, 35, 38 Lesage, 64 Lewis, C. S., 115, 116 Magic Flute, The, 92, 97 Magic Mountain, The, 6, 8, 12, 13 Menosprechio de corte, 35 Merry Wives, The, 73 Moll Flanders, 26, 30, 53 Morgenstern, 7, 11 Natural Daughter, The, 111 New Comedy, 56, 57, 66 Novalis, 14 Odyssey, 104 Old Comedy, 56 Ovid, 102, 115 Pandora, 106, 111 paratactic, 33 Parsifal, 5 Parzifal, 46 Parzival, 96, 104 Pericles, 73, 96, 124 Petrarch, 11 picaresque, 5, 8, 12, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 56, 57, 63, 64, 69, 75, 97, 98, 101, 103, 104, 114, 136 Pilgrim’s Progress, 129 Plutarch, 77, 81, 84 Propp, 13, 91 Proust, 68 Pyramus and Thisbe, 101, 102, 104 Quevedo, 51 Rasselas, 96, 101 Roderick Random, 30, 53, 101

Roman de la Rose, 123 romance, 12, 13, 20, 21, 22, 23, 46, 47, 54, 61, 64, 67, 73, 88, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 118, 119, 120, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 135, 136, 137 Romeo and Juliet, 104 Russian formalism, 19 satiric and ironic, 21, 22, 23, 135, 136 satiric-ironic, 135 Scarron, 25, 26, 27, 28, 41 Schiller, 1, 14, 28, 60, 68, 76, 78 Schlegel, Friedrich, 14, 67 Scott, Walter, 102, 110 Shakespeare, 4, 35, 48, 54, 56, 67, 71, 72, 73, 74, 82, 96, 98, 102, 107, 123, 124, 131 Simplicissimus, 5, 30, 35, 37, 63 Sorel, 25, 26 Spenser, 124 Tasso, 75 Tempest, The, 73, 96, 107, 124, 131 Titian, 111 Tom Jones, 26, 27, 28, 30, 53, 64 tragedy, 7, 11, 15, 21, 22, 31, 44, 53, 61, 65, 66, 80, 82, 94, 102, 104, 105 Treasure Island, 129 Twelfth Night, 72, 73, 74 Vicar of Wakefield, The, 27, 41, 49 Vinaver, 111, 115, 116, 117, 120 Wieland, 55, 64 Winter’s Tale, The, 73, 96, 124 Wordsworth, 68 Wuthering Heights, 96, 104, 114, 123 Xenophon, 124

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774468.009 Published online by Cambridge University Press