by Steven Moore
The latter are especially enlightening, for they indicate publishing hasn’t changed a bit in two and a half centuries.89 A fellow proofreader deflates Sebaldus’s lofty notion of authorship by explaining that writers simply follow a trade, “as does a painter of tapestry or a performer on the bagpipes,” and a mercenary trade at that: “The author wishes to contract with the publisher for as few sheets of manuscript as possible, against as much money as he can bargain for. The publisher, on the other hand, strives to screw his author down to a great number of alphabets90 at the very lowest price he can bring him to accept of—and to sell his copy again to the public as dear as he can” (2.1). Hieronymus confirms this, and adds that booksellers like himself are not in the business of “the propagation of the truth,” as Sebaldus naively assumes, but to make money, and that means catering to “stupid and ignorant people”:
They purchase books that correspond with their own character, that is to say, stupid ones; and these are at once the most numerous and the most voluminous. Add to this that it is much easier and commodious to write and publish for stupid people than for men of letters. [. . . A bookseller] is not at liberty to regulate his trade according to the taste of the learned, not even according to his own, but according to the taste of the gross multitude; and the multitude in return for this compliment paid to their taste, are kind enough to put it in his power to dispense altogether with the services of good writers. . . . The author looks always at the intrinsic value of his book, the publisher forms his estimate by the probable sale of the work. The former sets a price upon his writings according to the degree of applause they have met with from a few men of taste; the latter prudently considers whether there be any chance or probability that the book will attract a number of purchasers, no matter whether the buyers be learned or unlearned, wise or simple, whether they look for instruction or for amusement. (2.2)
In Holland, Sebaldus decides to translate Thomas Amory’s John Buncle (1756)—a delightfully eccentric novel we’ll discuss later in chapter 4—which gets rejected for exactly the same reasons publishers use today to reject worthy but noncommercial novels: “Van der Kuit failed not to start the customary difficulties, in answer to his proposals. He was, he observed, already overstocked with manuscripts; besides, business was uncommonly dead, and the price of paper and workmen’s wages has most exorbitantly increased” (7.5). And when, after 30 years, Sebaldus finally finishes his own Interpretation and Exposition of the Apocalypse, his friend Hieronymus politely rejects it, arguing that “the authority of the Apocalypse has been rendered so strongly suspected by Oeder and Semler” (9.5).91 Nicolai’s novel ends with Sebaldus deciding to raise money for its publication by subscription. And then it will be at the mercy of the reviewers (who likewise haven’t changed in 250 years), which Sebaldus’s son Rambold decides to become:
Whenever therefore the reader meets with dogmatical critiques upon a work which it is evident the reviewer himself does not comprehend—when he sees men of established reputation libeled by an anonymous scribbler—when he finds pun substituted for wit, malevolence for honest satire—. . . when he sees a laborious word-hunter set himself up for a critic—when plodding dullness affects the character of genius—when doggerel is called verse, bombast sublimity—. . . when literary talent is appreciated by popular opinion, and a book is condemned or applauded not from a reference to its intrinsic merit but from the degree of adventitious celebrity annexed to the name of the author—. . . when lastly the commonplace jargon of criticism supplies the want of judgment and discrimination—when the shadow is substituted for the substance, the echo for the essence:—in these and all similar cases, if the reader is not previously apprised of the name of the blockhead who commits such crudities to paper, he may safely set them down to Rambold’s account. (9.5).
Given its sustained attacks on religious orthodoxy and footnoted pedantry, it’s surprising to learn that Sebaldus Nothanker was “probably the literary bestseller German Enlightenment” (Selwyn, 16). Then again, maybe not: Hieronymus notes that few German authors attempt (like their French and English counterparts) to appeal to both the literati and common readers, and Nicolai—a successful enough publisher to spot an unfilled niche when he saw one—cleverly supplied a novel that addresses both audiences. There is more than enough intellectual meat for us “bookworms”—whom the narrator addresses in a footnote (3.3)—sandwiched by enough picaresque and romantic adventures for general readers, and concludes with a happy, if overly fortuitous ending. (Amusingly enough, the Apocalyptic-minded Sebaldus wins the lottery by betting on 666.) The novel is realistic but not sordid, critical but not contemptuous of religion, and is as entertaining as it is enlightening. It’s no Tristam Shandy, but it’s more substantial than Sterne’s Sentimental Journey. Thümmel liked what Nicolai did with his novella.92
What sounds like the most Shandyesque of German novels, Theodor von Hippel’s “Life Histories on an Ascending Line” (Lebensläufe nach aufsteigender Linie, 1778–81)—in which the narrator sets out to write about his father and grandfather but winds up talking mostly about himself and wandering in mazes of digressions and reflections—was never translated into English. Nor was what critics generally consider the most successful of the many German novels influenced by Sterne, “The Life Story of Tobias Knaut the Wise, Otherwise Called the Stammerer” (Lebensgeschichte Tobias Knauts des Weisen, sonst Stammler genannt, 1773–76), one of many interesting-sounding novels by Johann Karl Wezel (1747–1819).93 But Harvey Thayer, who examines it and numerous similar works in his Laurence Sterne in Germany, feels that Tobias Knaut fails to achieve the profundity of Sterne’s experimental masterpiece, which brings to mind Ezra Pound’s advice: one should certainly read Sterne, but “I don’t recommend anyone ELSE to try to do another Tristram Shandy” (89).
After that Sternean digression, let’s return to Wieland (who enjoyed Tobias Knaut). His own Psyche, the seraphic soul-mate he became engaged to at age 20 before she broke it off, was his cousin Sophie Gutermann (1731–1807). Twenty years later, by which time she was the married Sophie von La Roche, Wieland edited and arranged to publish her first novel, The History of Lady Sophia Sternheim (Die Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim, 1771), which can claim other firsts: the first German novel written by a woman, the first German epistolary novel, and the first German sentimental novel. Wieland must have published this for sentimental reasons, for it’s difficult to imagine a novel more different from his satirical, intellectual ones. Its eponymous heroine is a moral “enthusiast” (like young Agathon) who epitomizes piety, modesty, chastity, and generosity, exuding a sweet sentimentality redolent of Don Sylvio’s fairy princesses. A perfect child who loses her perfect parents in her teens, Sophia must stay with conniving relatives who push the country maiden into court life, hoping she will become the prince’s concubine and thereby settle a lawsuit in their favor. Too innocent to grasp their motives, she reluctantly shows herself at court and attracts the attention of not only the prince but two visiting Englishmen, my lords Seymour and Derby. The former, as high-minded as she is, falls in love with Sophia but stupidly assumes she is deliberately trying to seduce the prince, and sulks in sorrow. The libertine Lord Derby, on the other hand, cunningly takes advantage of Sophia’s naïveté to win her favor;94 he tricks her into a fake marriage and whisks her away from court, but quickly tires of the “ridiculously serious” prude (97) who threw all his porn novels into the fire while he was gone. Devastated by the news that their marriage is fake, humiliated after Derby strips her naked before abandoning her, she comes under the protection of a kindly rich lady, accompanies her to England, attracts the attention of Seymour’s older brother Lord Rich, then is kidnapped by Derby’s henchmen and spirited off to the Scottish Highlands. Her misreported death there upsets everyone, including Derby, who unrealistically falls ill with guilt and dies; but of course our beautiful heroine is eventually reunited with Seymour, marries him after his brother Rich gallantly but sadly steps aside, and is last seen e
ngaged in her beloved social work. All along she has been insisting true virtue consists not in being good but doing good, and throughout the novel she gently but firmly criticizes the rich for squandering their wealth on luxuries rather than on alleviating poverty and promoting education for les misérables.
Although the plot is trite and the tone treacly, the novel makes effective use of the epistolary form. La Roche was under the influence of two inspirational predecessors: Richardson’s Clarissa and Rousseau’s Julie; her Derby comes from the former, and Sophia’s educational schemes from the latter. Sternheim purports to be a document assembled by Sophie’s servant Rosina, who compiles all the letters and journals at her disposal for the benefit of a friend. Since they include letters by others in addition to Sophia’s, they offer multiple views of key events, dramatizing the problem of subjectivity that possessed Wieland (and which undoubtedly attracted him to the novel): the characters instinctively assume their own account of an event is the correct one, always generated by what they want to believe. (Interestingly enough, only Derby—consistently associated with the devil—investigates to learn what actually happens; the good characters trust their feelings, the bad one gets the facts.) Only by synthesizing the different accounts provided by editor Rosina does the reader understand what really happened—but even then, we don’t hear from all parties involved, which should gives us pause. But it didn’t give La Roche’s readers pause; they turned the novel into a best-seller in several languages and elevated Sophia into a secular saint, despite her admitted “self-love,” unearned confidence—the 20-year-old rube boasts, “I have come to know what is perfect in the arts” (148)—and her dangerously quixotic notion of virtue, which the worldly Derby plans to turn to his advantage (as he explains in a letter to a fellow rake in Paris): “Thus hemmed in by the armor of her virtue and entangled in the bonds of her vanity, she will be rendered unfit for combat with me, like the knight of old, dressed in fighting panoply, who finally collapsed under its weight and was trapped in his beautiful, tight armor” (143). Seymour confesses to “a misplaced zeal for virtue” (159) and Sophia admits her “excessive sensibility” (163) creates problems for her at times, but these subtle lessons seem to have been lost on La Roche’s sentimental audience. She wrote several other didactic novels after this, but none of them achieved the same success, nor have they been translated into English.
Sternheim is steeped in sadness, with sorrow and suffering portrayed as admirable qualities, signs of a sensitive soul. Sad Sophia suffers at the hands of fate and others throughout, going so far as to adopt the name Fräulein Leidens (Mrs. Suffering) after she’s dumped by Derby. Seymour’s sulky sadness is made to sound noble, as is that of his brother Rich. Baffled by her attraction to Seymour, Derby asks, “I wish I knew why this healthy young girl prefers that pale, sad fellow to me with my fresh color and sprightly figure, why she would rather listen to his croaking tones than to my lively voice, and why she seeks his dead glances and avoids my speaking eye” (114). This is one of the earliest novels to make moping melancholy cool and romantic, especially the sadness that results from unrequited love. This wasn’t lost on La Roche’s young friend Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), who loved her novel. He knew the sorrows of unrequited love firsthand, having been rejected by La Roche’s daughter Maximiliane as well as by a young woman named Lotte Buff. He and La Roche also discussed the case of a young diplomat named Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem who had recently killed himself out of love for a married woman, and La Roche encouraged the young author to get the details of the story and work them up into something. It took him only six weeks to write the greatest German novel of the 18th century.
The Sorrows of Young Werther (Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, 1774) is one of those old-fashioned classics that reveals itself as an audacious novelty when read in historical context, for “it was more radical and disturbing than anything its public had ever known before,” as one critic notes (Swales, 13). Novelist Jane Smiley includes Werther among the “fallen monuments” of classic fiction (56), as many readers today probably would, still visible but no longer held in high regard. I had read it when I was Werther’s age, thought it was OK, but rereading it on the heels of Gellert, Wieland, and La Roche, I was struck by how startlingly new and different Werther is from its predecessors, from its lyrical style and Romantic sensibility to its psychological depth and innovative use of epistolary form. The effect on readers in the 1770s must have been explosive, like rock ’n’ roll crashing onto the easy-listening Hit Parade in the 1950s. I can see why people went crazy over it.
Shortly after completing Werther, Goethe described it as the story of “a young person who, endowed with profound, pure feeling and true penetration of the mind, loses himself in rhapsodic dreams, undermines himself by speculation until he finally, ravaged by the additional effect of unhappy passions and in particular by an infinite love, shoots himself in the head.”95 It’s important to note that Goethe places Werther’s unrequited love for the engaged (and engaging) Lotte last: it is merely the tipping point (not the principal cause) that drives this sensitive, imaginative, uncompromising man to suicide. He is not a Romeo but a Hamlet, his noble mind o’erthrown by the impossibility of reconciling his great expectations with the way of the world.
The short novel takes the form of a series of letters written by Werther, most of them to a friend named Wilhelm, during the last year and a half of his life as he slowly loses self-control and spirals downward into alienation, solipsism, and despair. The one-sidedness of the correspondence keeps us trapped inside Werther’s head, experiencing his disintegration every step of the way. Near the end, the editor of these letters—who until then has contributed only a brief preface and a few footnotes, one calling Werther “unbalanced”96— reluctantly steps in to narrate the conclusion because Werther’s elegant letters have deteriorated into undated notes and rants: a brilliant example of form following content.97 Werther admits he is “suffering much, because I have lost what was the sole delight of my life, [not Lotte but] the holy vivifying power with which I created worlds around me” (3 November 1772), so the editor has to try to recreate his world. Like Rosina in La Roche’s novel, who also intervenes from time to time, the editor reports what he has learned from others in a documentary style markedly different from Werther’s rhapsodic style and from the overblown passages from Celtic poetry that Werther reads to Lotte near the end.98 The narrator, Lotte, and her husband Albert belong to the prosaic world, Werther (and his beloved Homer) to the poetic world, and the clash of languages is instructive, for the novel is as much about language and literature as it as about love and longing, which is what Werther often gets reduced to, as in Massenet’s opera.
From the opening pages, it is obvious something is wrong with Werther. Although he’s delighted by the beautiful landscape surrounding the small town where he has gone to attend to his mother’s legacy, he can’t shake his guilt over a woman he recently rejected in favor of her livelier sister, but promises Wilhelm to avoid his habit of morbid introspection. “The sufferings of men would be less if they did not so busily engage their imagination—God knows why they are so constituted—in recalling the memory of bygone ills, rather than bear an indifferent present” (4 May 1771). He learned that his aunt is not the ill-tempered woman others make her out to be, and he approves of a garden that seems to have been “planned not by a scientific gardener but by an impressionable soul.” Like the overture to a opera, this initial letter announces all of Werther’s themes and conflicts: unrequited love, the dangers of excessive introspection and imagination, the shortsightedness of public opinion, and Werther’s preference for sentiment over science. In his next letter, written almost a week later, he waxes even more rhapsodic over nature but laments his inability to encompass it in art (he’s an amateur painter) or language: “I am so happy, so absorbed in the sensation of a tranquil existence, that my art is suffering.99 . . . I am often consumed with longing and think, ah! would that I could express it, wou
ld that I could breathe on to paper that which lives so warm and full within me, so that it might become the mirror of my soul . . . but it is beyond my power, and I succumb to the splendour of what lies before me” (10 May). And a few days later he tells us of his wild moodswings and one final, crucial item of self-diagnosis: “Dear friend! do I need to tell you who have so often borne the burden of my transition from grief to excessive joy, from gentle melancholy to devastating passion? I treat my heart like a sick child and gratify its every whim” (13 May).
Werther is a “sick child” from the moment we meet him, before he meets and falls in love with a local woman named Lotte, and before he tries to forget her by taking an administrative post in another town where, one night, he is publicly humiliated by the local aristocracy. (He uses illness metaphors throughout the novel, especially in his argument with Albert over suicide in the long, prognostic letter of 12 August 1771.) These disappointments—like Hamlet’s over his mother’s hasty remarriage—exacerbate a damaged soul who is already at odds with the world and with other less sensitive, better balanced people. Goethe has so effectively set up Werther’s conflicted feelings within the first four pages that we don’t read further to see what will happen—he will obviously “succumb” to the world, not triumph over it—but how it will happen.
It is tragic that Werther doesn’t realize that though he may be a failed painter, he is one hell of a writer, able to convey the wonders of nature and the delights of love with stunning results. (The suicidal young Goethe realized this about himself, which is why he survived and his alter-ego didn’t.) Every page of his letters contains perceptive observations, telling details, lyrical descriptions of nature, or emblematic incidents he records without further comment, trusting (as only a superbly confident writer does) that they will speak for themselves. For example, his letter of 28 August 1771 concludes: “The summer is glorious and I often sit in the fruit trees in Lotte’s orchard, picking pears from the highest branches with a long rod. She stands there below and receives them when I reach them down.” He doesn’t say another word, allowing us to marvel at what an effective symbol of their relationship that is: joined together in an activity but literally separated, Werther reaching for the heavens while Lotte remains earthbound, he perilously balanced on a limb, she safely grounded. He is attuned to the complexity of human motives: “In this world it is rarely possible to settle matters with an ‘either, or’ since there are as many gradations of emotion and conduct as there are stages between a hooked nosed and one that turns up” (8 August 1771). His nature writing is superb, surpassing Rousseau’s, but it too registers his mental deterioration: initially he welcomes nature for pouring “the fulness of its warmth into my oft-shivering heart” (4 May 1771), but three months later he recoils from “the consuming force latent in universal Nature, that has formed nothing that has not destroyed its neighbour and itself, which saps my soul. And so I reel along in anguish, surrounded by earth and sky and all the weaving forces of Nature. I see nothing but a monster, eternally devouring, eternally chewing the cud” (18 August 1771).