Goethe S Elective Affinities And The Critics

The first book-length examination in English of the critical reception of Goethe's daring novel The Elective Affinities. From the time of its publication to today, Goethe's famous novel The Elective Affinities (Die Wahlverwandtschaften, 1809), has aroused a storm of critical confusion. Critics in every age have vehemently disagreed about its content (whether it defends the institution of marriage, radically supports its dissolution, or even whether it is about marriage at all), its style (whether it is romantic, realistic, modern, or postmodern) and its tone (whether it is tragic, anti-romantic, or ironic). The present study begins by focusing upon the reaction of Goethe's contemporaries, and then discusses Goethe's own efforts -- in light of the initial negative critical reaction -- toshape the novel's reception. It continues by viewing the novel through the lens of 19th-century Hegelianism, positivism, and biographical studies, and by exploring the relationship between the novel's 19th-century reception and the growth of psychoanalytic theory and German nationalism. Moving on to the 20th century, the book considers the re-evaluation of Goethe's scientific works, the impact of World War II on the novel's interpreters, and the growing influence of literary theory. Here particular emphasis is placed upon Walter Benjamin's seminal essay on the novel and upon the criticism that the essay has inspired. Astrida Orle Tantillo is assistant professor of German at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

From the Introduction. IN the spring of the year 1807 Goethe began work on the second part of Wilhelm Meister. He had no very definite plot in view, but proposed to make room for a number of short stories, all relating to the subject of renunciation, which was to be the central theme of the Wanderjahre. In the course of the summer, while he was taking the waters at Karlsbad, two or three of the stories were written. The following spring he set about elaborating another tale of renunciation, the idea of which had occurred to him some time before. But somehow it refused to be confined within the limits of a novelette. As he proceeded the matter grew apace, until it finally developed into the novel which was given to the world in 1809 under the title of The Elective Affinities. When that which should be a short story is expanded into a novel one can usually detect the padding and the embroidery. So it is certainly in this case. Those long descriptions of landscape-gardening; the copious extracts from Ottilie's diary, containing many thoughts which would hardly have entered the head of such a girl; the pages given to subordinate characters, whose comings and goings have no very obvious connection with the story, - all these retard the narrative and tend to hide the essential idea. The strange title, too, has served to divert attention from the real centre of gravity. Had the tale been called, say, "Ottilie's Expiation," there would have been less room for misunderstanding and irrelevant criticism; there would have been less concern over the moral, and more over the artistic, aspect of the story. What then was the essential idea? Simply to describe a peculiar tragedy resulting from the invasion of the marriage relation by lawless passion. As for the title, it should be remembered that there was just then a tendency to look for curious analogies between physical law and the operations of the human mind. Great interest was felt in suggestion, occult influence, and all that sort of thing. Goethe himself had lately been lecturing on magnetism. He had also observed, as no one can- fail to observe, that the sexual attraction sometimes seems to act like chemical affinity: it breaks up old unions, forms new combinations, destroys pre-existing bodies, as if it were a law that must work itself out, whatever the consequences. Such a process will now and then defy prudence, self-respect, duty, even religion, - going its way like a blind and ruthless law of physics. But if this is to happen the recombining elements must, of course, have each its specific character; else there is no affinity and no tragedy. It is no part of the analogy that the pressure of sex is always and by its very nature like the attraction of atoms. Aside from the fact that character consists largely in the steady inhibition of instinct and passion by the will, there is this momentous difference between atoms or molecules, on the one hand, and souls on the other: the character of the atom or molecule is constant, that of the soul is highly variable. There is no room here for remarks on free will and determinism; suffice it to say that Goethe does not preach any doctrine of mechanical determinism in human relations. The scientific analogy must not be pressed too hard. It is really not important, since after all nothing turns on it. Whatever interest the novel has it would have if all reference to chemistry had been omitted. Goethe's thesis, if he can be said to have one, is simply that character is fate....

Volume two begins with Goethe's theories of affinities, i.e. the chemical reaction view of human life in 1809. This is followed by the history of how the thermodynamic (1876) and quantum (1905) revolutions modernized chemistry such that affinity (the 'force' of reaction) is now viewed as a function of thermodynamic 'free energy' (reaction spontaneity) and quantum 'valency' (bond stabilities). The composition, energetic state, dynamics, and evolution of the human chemical bond A?B is the centerpiece of this process. The human bond is what gives (yields) and takes (absorbs) energy in life. The coupling of this bond energy, driven by periodic inputs of solar photons, thus triggering activation energies and entropies, connected to the dynamical work of life, is what quantifies the human reaction process. This is followed by topics including mental crystallization, template theory, LGBT chemistry, chemical potential, Le Chatelier's principle, Muller dispersion forces, and human thermodynamics.

Challenges traditional novel scholarship that emphasizes the individual and the Bildungsroman, broadening the focus to the family and both canonical and non-canonical novels, reading them together with biological, legal and pedagogical texts.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1872. The publishing house Anatiposi publishes historical books as reprints. Due to their age, these books may have missing pages or inferior quality. Our aim is to preserve these books and make them available to the public so that they do not get lost.

Preliminary Material -- Introduction /Catriona MacLeod -- Summaries -- Consulting the Manual: Word and Image in Marcel Duchamp's Étant donnés /Michael R. Taylor -- Living and Dying in the Limelight: Performing the Self in Frida Kahlo's Diary and Paintings /Adriana Dragomir -- Imbrication de l'image, du texte et de la musique dans un corpus de prières énigmatiques à la Vierge /Laurence Wuidar -- The Künstlerroman as Romantic Arabesque: Parody, Collaboration, and the Making of The Modern Vasari (1854) /Cordula Grewe -- The “Inscapes” of Louis le Brocquy /Karen E. Brown -- American Scenery/Canadian Scenery: Conflicting Views of Indigenes in Mid-Nineteenth-Century British Portrayals of the American Continent /Robert Grant -- Cartoonists as Matchmakers: The Vibrant Relationship of Text and Image in the Work of Lynda Barry /Miriam Harris -- The Truth of the Word, the Falsity of the Image: Transmetropolitan's Critique of the Society of the Spectacle /Steen Christiansen -- Le magazine français Vu (1928-40): Naissance de l'information visuelle et utopie de la substitution de l'image photographique au texte écrit /Danielle Leenaerts -- From Ekphrasis to History: Verbal Transformations of the Display of Picture Galleries--Wilhelm Heinse and Friedrich Schlegel /Hubert Locher -- Modernizing History and Historicizing Modernity: Baudelaire and Baudelairean Representations of Contemporaneity /Lauren S. Weingarden -- Serial Künstler: Portrait of the Artist as a Malefactor /Valentin Nussbaum -- Hypnotic Performance and the Falsity of Appearances: The Aesthetics of Medical Spectatorship and Axel Munthe's Critique of Jean-Martin Charcot /Jonathan Marshall -- New Light and Old Shadows: Industrial Illumination and its Imaginaire /Susana Oliveira -- Illustrating the Shadow of Doubt: Henry James, Blindness, and “The Real Thing” /Jennifer A. Greenhill -- Picturing Paradise: Baudelaire's “L'Invitation au voyage” /Eric T. Haskell -- The Writing-Drawing Continuum of Alexei Remizov /Julia Friedman -- Aby Warburg as Reader of Gottfried Semper: Reflections on the Cosmic Character of Ornament /Spyros Papapetros -- John Heartfield's Insects and the “Idea” of Natural History /Cristina Cuevas-Wolf -- The Photographic Thought of Latina/o Literature and Cultural Critique /María DeGuzmán -- Diderot, Brecht, Eisenstein, Fassbinder: Découpage Aesthetics on the Divide /Susan Nurmi-Schomers -- (Ideo-)Logical Alliances between Image and Script: Calligraphic Reconfigurations in Contemporary Chinese Art /Birgit Mersmann -- Contributors -- Index.