He had more to say, but Friedrich with a shout came jumping in. “What a garland have I earned!” cried he: “how will you reward me? Myrtle, laurel, ivy, leaves of oak, the freshest you can find, come twist them: I have merits far beyond them all. Natalia is thine! I am the conjuror who raised this treasure for thee.”
“He raves,” said Wilhelm; “I must go.”
“Art thou empowered to speak?” inquired Lothario, holding Wilhelm from retiring.
“By my own authority,” said Friedrich, “and the grace of God. It was thus I was the wooer; thus I am the messenger: I listened at the door; she told the Abbé everything.”
“Barefaced rogue! who bade thee listen?” said Lothario.
“Who bade her bolt the door?” cried Friedrich. “I heard it all: she was in a wondrous pucker. In the night when Felix seemed so ill, and was lying half upon her knees, and thou wert sitting comfortless before her, sharing the beloved load, she made a vow, that if the child died, she would confess her love to thee, and offer thee her hand. And now when the child lives, why should she change her mind? What we promise under such conditions, we keep under any. Nothing wanting but the parson! He will come, and marvel what strange news he brings.”
The Abbé entered. “We know it all,” cried Friedrich: “be as brief as possible; it is mere formality you come for; they never send for you or me on any other score.”
“He has listened,” said the Baron. — ”Scandalous!” exclaimed the Abbé.
“Now, quick!” said Friedrich. “How stands it with the ceremonies? These we can reckon on our fingers. You must travel; the Marchese’s invitation answers to a hairsbreadth. If we had you once beyond the Alps, it will all be right: the people are obliged to you for undertaking anything surprising; you procure them an amusement which they are not called to pay for. It is as if you gave a free ball; all ranks partake in it.”
“In such popular festivities,” replied the Abbé, “you have done the public much service in your time; but today, it seems, you will not let me speak at all.”
“If it is not just as I have told it,” answered Friedrich, “let us have it better. Come round, come round; we must see them both together.”
Lothario embraced his friend, and led him to Natalia, who with Theresa came to meet them. All were silent.
“No loitering!” cried Friedrich. “In two days you may be ready for your travels. Now, think you, friend,” continued he, addressing Wilhelm, “when we first scraped acquaintance, and I asked you for the pretty nosegay, who could have supposed you were ever to receive a flower like this from me?”
“Do not at the moment of my highest happiness, remind me of those times!”
“Of which you need not be ashamed, any more than one need be ashamed of his descent. The times were very good times: only I cannot but laugh to look at thee; to my mind, thou resemblest Saul the son of Kish, who went out to seek his father’s asses, and found a kingdom.”
“I know not the worth of a kingdom,” answered Wilhelm; “but I know I have attained a happiness which I have not deserved, and which I would not change with anything in life.”
ELECTIVE AFFINITIES
Translated by James Anthony Froude and R. Dillon Boylan
Goethe’s third novel was published in 1809. The title is a scientific term used to describe the tendency of chemical species to combine with certain substances in preference to others. The novel is based on the metaphor of human passions being governed by the laws of chemical affinity, and examines whether or not the laws of chemistry undermine or uphold the institution of marriage, as well as other social relations.
Elective Affinities is set in the city of Weimar and features the protagonists Eduard and Charlotte, an aristocratic couple, enjoying a peaceful, but lacklustre life on the grounds of their rural estate. They invite the Captain, Eduard’s childhood friend, and Ottilie, the beautiful, orphaned, coming-of-age niece of Charlotte, to live with them. The decision to invite Ottilie and the Captain is described as an “experiment”, preparing for the conflict of the novel.
Ever since the time of its first publication, Elective Affinities has roused many interpretations among critics, who debate the role of the chemical theory of elective affinities. Some argue that it suggests a philosophy of nature that is rooted in fate, whilst others maintain that the novel concerns the importance of free choice. Others believe that the chemical theory is merely a structural device that allows the author to foreshadow events, bearing no relevance to the greater issues of the novel.
The first edition
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
PART I
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
PART II
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
Late Eighteenth-Century Weimar — the setting of the novel
The 1996 film adaptation
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.
He imagines a middle-aged man and woman, Edward and Charlotte, who are, to all seeming, happily united in marriage. Each has been married before to an unloved mate who has conveniently died, leaving them both free to yield to the gentle pull of long-past youthful attachment. Their feeling for each other is only a mild friendship, but that does not appear to augur ill, since they are well-to-do, and their fine estate offers them both a plenty of interesting work. Edward has a highly esteemed friend called the Captain, who is for the moment without suitable employment for his ability and energy. Edward can give him just the needed work, with great advantage to the property, and would like to do so. Charlotte fears that the presence of the Captain may disturb their pleasant idyl, but finally yields. She herself has a niece, Ottilie, a beautiful girl whom no one understands and who is not doing well at her boarding-school. Charlotte would like to have the girl under her own care. After much debate the pair take both the Captain and Ottilie into their spacious castle.
And now the elective affinity begins to do its disastrous work. Edward, who has always indulged himself in every whim and has no other standard of conduct, falls madly in love with the charming Ottilie, who has a passion for making herself useful and serving everybody. She adapts herself to Edward, fails to see what a shabby specimen of a man he really is, humors his whims, and worships him — at first in an innocent girlish way. Charlotte is not long in discovering that the Captain is a much better man than her husband; she loves him, but within the limits of wifely duty. In the vulgar world of prose such a tangle could be most easily straightened out by divorce and remarriage. This is what Edward proposes and tries to bring about. The others are almost won over to this solution when the event happens that precipitates the tragedy: the child of Edward and Charlotte is accidentally drowned by Ottilie’s carelessness.
It is a very dubious link in Goethe’s fiction that this child, while the genuine offspring of Edward and Charlotte, has the features of Ottilie and the Captain. From the moment of the drowning Ottilie is a changed being. Her character quickly matures; like a wakened sleep-walker she sees what a dangerous path she has been treading. She feels that marriage with Edward would be a crime. She resists his passionate appeals, and her remorse takes on a morbid tinge. It becomes a fixed idea. Happiness is not for her. She must renounce it all. She must atone — atone — for her awful sin. For a moment they plan to send her back to school, but she cannot tear herself away from Edward’s sinister presence. At last she refuses food and gradually starves herself to death. The wretched Edward does likewise.
Any just appreciation of Goethe’s art in The Elective Affinities must begin by recognizing that it is about Ottilie. For her sake the book was written. It is a study of a delicately organized virgin soul caught in the meshes of an ignoble fate and beating its wings in hopeless misery until death ends the struggle. The other characters are ordinary people: Charlotte and the Captain ordinary in their good sense and self-control, Edward ordinary in his moral flabbiness and his foolish infatuation. His death, to be sure, is unthinkable for such a man and does but testify to the unearthly attraction with which the girl is invested by Goethe’s art. The figure of Ottilie, like that of her spiritual sister Mignon, is irradiated by a light that never was on sea or land. She is a creature of romance, and we learn without much surprise that her dead body performs miracles. One is reminded of that medieval lady who is doomed to eat the heart of her crusading lover and then refuses all other food and dies. That Edward is quite unworthy of the girl’s love, that the death of the child is no sufficient reason for her morbid remorse, is quite immaterial, since at the end of the tale we are no longer in the realm of normal psychology. A season of dreamy happiness, as she moves about in a world unrealized; then a terrible shock, and after that, remorse, renunciation, hopelessness, the will to die. Such is the logic of the tale.
PART I
CHAPTER I
Edward — so we shall call a wealthy nobleman in the prime of life — had been spending several hours of a fine April morning in his nursery-garden, budding the stems of some young trees with cuttings which had been recently sent to him.
He had finished what he was about, and having laid his tools together in their box, was complacently surveying his work, when the gardener came up and complimented his master on his industry.
“Have you seen my wife anywhere?” inquired Edward, as he moved to go away.
“My lady is alone yonder in the new grounds,” said the man; “the summer-house which she has been making on the rock over against the castle is finished today, and really it is beautiful. It cannot fail to please your grace. The view from it is perfect: — the village at your feet; a little to your right the church, with its tower, which you can just see over; and directly opposite you, the castle and the garden.”
“Quite true,” replied Edward; “I can see the people at work a few steps from where I am standing.”
“And then, to the right of the church again,” continued the gardener, “is the opening of the valley; and you look along over a range of wood and meadow far into the distance. The steps up the rock, too, are excellently arranged. My gracious lady understands these things; it is a pleasure to work under her.”
“Go to her,” said Edward, “and desire her to be so good as to wait for me there. Tell her I wish to see this new creation of hers, and enjoy it with her.”
The gardener went rapidly off, and Edward soon followed. Descending the terrace, and stopping as he passed to look into the hot-houses and the forcing-pits, he came presently to the stream, and thence, over a narrow bridge, to a place where the walk leading to the summer-house branched off in two directions. One path led across the churchyard, immediately up the face of the rock. The other, into which he struck, wound away to the left, with a more gradual ascent, through a pretty shrubbery. Where the two paths joined again, a seat had been made, where he stopped a few moments to rest; and then, following the now single road, he found himself, after scrambling along among steps and slopes of all sorts and kinds, conducted at last through a narrow more or less steep outlet to the summer-house.
Charlotte was standing at the door to receive her husband. She made him sit down where, without moving, he could command a view of the different landscapes through the door and window — these serving as frames, in which they were set like pictures. Spring was coming on; a rich, beautiful life would soon everywhere be bursting; and Edward spoke of it with delight.
“There is only one thing which I should observe,” he added, “the summer-house itself is rather small.”
“It is large enough for you and me, at any rate,” answered Charlotte.
“Certainly,” said Edward; “there is room for a third, too, easily.”
“Of course; and for a fourth also,” replied Charlotte. “For larger parties we can contrive other places.”
“Now that we are here by ourselves, with no one to disturb us, and in such a pleasant mood,” said Edward, “it is a good opportunity for me to tell you that I have for some time h
ad something on my mind, about which I have wished to speak to you, but have never been able to muster up my courage.”
“I have observed that there has been something of the sort,” said Charlotte.
“And even now,” Edward went on, “if it were not for a letter which the post brought me this morning, and which obliges me to come to some resolution today, I should very likely have still kept it to myself.”
“What is it, then” asked Charlotte, turning affectionately toward him.
“It concerns our friend the Captain,” answered Edward; “you know the unfortunate position in which he, like many others, is placed. It is through no fault of his own; but you may imagine how painful it must be for a person with his knowledge and talents and accomplishments, to find himself without employment. I — I will not hesitate any longer with what I am wishing for him. I should like to have him here with us for a time.”
“We must think about that,” replied Charlotte; “it should be considered on more sides than one.”
Works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Page 77