Elective Affinities (2 page)

Now the point of expounding all this is to show that
Elective Affinities
not only began life as a
Novelle
, but remained one, that it differs from the classic
Novelle
only in respect of length. And the point of emphasizing that fact is to warn the reader in advance what kind of narrative to expect, so that when he finds it does not proceed as a novel usually proceeds he will not experience any discomfort or suppose the work to be an unsuccessful attempt at a form which is in fact not being attempted at all.

The narrative style is characterized by a strict economy; the characters are functions of the plot, and their characteristics are those demanded by the furtherance of the plot; they are given only forenames (Eduard, Ottilie, Charlotte), or titles (the Captain, the Count, the Baroness), or professional names (the schoolmaster, the architect, the gardener), or in one case an ironic surname (Mittler); the setting is not naturalistic and the scenes in which the action takes place (the mansion, the village, the moss-hut, the pavilion, the park, etc.) also possess
a symbolic function; the action itself is not naturalistic, it contains elements not susceptible to rational explanation, and it proceeds in a more orderly and symmetrical way than one would expect in a novel. Most important of all, it is narrated, not directly by the author, but by a narrator who is also an invented character, although he never appears. It may well be that Goethe chose to tell his story in the form of an expanded
Novelle
precisely in order that the reader should assume the existence of a narrator who is repeating something he has learned of but does not necessarily fully understand – a technique which makes possible the mystery and ambiguity underlying the action and permits the employment of an ironical tone without committing the author himself to an ironical view of that action.

3

The term
Wahlverwandtschaft
was a technical term of eighteenth-century chemistry, the German translation of a coinage of the Swedish chemist Torbern Olof Bergmann (1735–84) in the title of his book
De attractionibus electivis
(1775), first put into German by Heinrich Tabor in 1785. The English form, elective affinity, is closer to the original Latin than the German form and, although not self-explanatory, probably cannot be improved upon. Its meaning is described in the fourth chapter of Part One of
Elective Affinities
and need not be repeated here. What should be emphasized here, though, is its extraordinariness as the title of a novel. It is as if a contemporary novelist should call his book
The Principle of Verifiability
or
E Equals MC Squared
. The emotional and romantic connotations which the term subsequently acquired derived from the novel to which it was attached: at the time of the novel’s publication,
Wahlverwandtschaft
was a term used solely in chemistry.

Goethe was conscious of the risk involved in prefixing such
a title to the book, and in an advertisement published in Cotta’s
Morgenblatt
on 4 September 1809 he sought to explain that ‘this strange title’, which ‘it seems was suggested to the author by his continuing work in the field of physics’, was a ‘metaphor in chemistry’ whose ‘spiritual origin’ the novel would demonstrate. But this statement was altogether inadequate and was subsequently forgotten or frankly disbelieved: the almost universal view being that the book was intended to demonstrate the chemical origin of love. Such a thesis would, of course, be an immoral one, and
Elective Affinities
was generally charged with being an immoral book. Goethe was no stranger to such charges, but he was especially annoyed that they should be levelled at this particular work, for which he had an exceptional affection, and he angrily rejected every suggestion there was anything whatever in it that could be called reprehensible. Eventually he lost all patience with a stream of criticism that must to us today seem incredibly insensitive and pettifogging, and when his old friend Knebel started making moral objections to the novel he exploded: ‘But I didn’t write it for you, I wrote it for little girls!’ – which I take to be an assertion that the book is altogether wholesome and romantic and that only a moralizing old man could find anything in it to object to.

4

The story’s origin was clearly, as already suggested, the conflict between Goethe’s idea of marriage, the currently accepted idea of it, and the passions with which neither idea seems able to cope. But when he expanded it to its present size, Goethe also took the opportunity to embody in it a criticism of more of current society than its marriage customs, so that
Elective Affinities
is often referred to as primarily the earliest German social novel. The ironic tone already bestowed upon the narrator proved very useful in this regard, enabling the author
to paint a very unflattering portrait of his contemporaries without having to resort to explicit denunciation.

The society we meet in the novel is that of the German countryside at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Three-quarters of all Germans lived on and by the land, and towns were still small and far apart. In this milieu there were three social classes: the nobility, who owned the land and occupied the leading positions in the army and the civil service; the ‘people’, who were still for the most part peasants; and between these two extremes the ‘middle class’, i.e. the professions. The two latter classes were mainly engaged in working for the first. There was almost no social discontent: everyone knew his place and kept to it.

When the members of the landed nobility were not engaged in military or governmental activities they were idle, and it is in this state of idleness that the aristocrats of
Elective Affinities
are usually found. How they fill up their time is the subject of much of the narrative. Their activities vary very widely, but they are all characterized by the expenditure of a large amount of energy for what are at best inadequate results. The narrator leaves us in no doubt about what he thinks of Luciane and her crowd, and his sarcasm is particularly biting when he comes to describe their one attempt at artistic creativity: that this should be the reproduction of famous paintings as
tableaux vivants
speaks for the footling nature of their cultural interests. But it is a question whether he is very much more sympathetic towards the indubitably more useful occupations of the leading characters. What comes through, I think, is that, even when engaged in landscape gardening, the design and construction of a new building, or the improvement of the village, they are for the most part playing amateurishly at these things without any real objective except the consumption of time and the avoidance of boredom. The influence on these occupations of the periodical celebration of birthdays, and the very considerable additional effort and
expenditure devoted to these celebrations, would give the game away if it had not been given away already.

The worst effect of this comfortable idleness in which they exist is, however, that which it exercises on their emotional lives: the emotional turmoil into which Eduard and Charlotte are thrown by the introduction into their home of two fresh faces is, according to contemporary testimony, in no sense a figment of the novelist’s imagination but, on the contrary, almost the normal thing. It is not only their hands and minds that are under-occupied, their nerves and vital spirits are so too, and any occasion for bringing them into activity is likely to be seized upon. It is at this point, where idleness undermines marriage, that Goethe’s social criticism and his romantic plot join forces.

December
1969

R.J.H.

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

E
DUARD
was the name of a wealthy baron in the prime of life and he had been spending the best hour of an April afternoon in his orchard nursery grafting new shoots he had just obtained on to the young trees. He had just finished and he was putting the tools back in their case and looking with satisfaction at the work he had done when the gardener came up. He was very pleased to see how interested and busy the master was.

‘Have you seen my wife about?’ Eduard asked him, about to move off.

‘She is over in the new park,’ the gardener said. ‘The mosshut she has had built by the cliff-face over against the mansion will be finished today. It’s all been beautifully done and you’re bound to like it, my lord. You get a marvellous view: the village down below, just to the right the church, and over the church tower you can see for miles. Then opposite, the mansion and the gardens.’

‘Quite so,’ said Eduard. ‘I could see the men at work.’

‘Then,’ the gardener went on, ‘to the right the valley opens up and you can see across the meadows and trees and far into the distance. The path up the cliff is laid out very fine. Her ladyship understands these things. It is a pleasure to work under her.’

‘Go to her,’ said Eduard, ‘and ask her to wait for me. Tell her I want to have the pleasure of seeing the new creation.’

The gardener hurried off and Eduard soon followed him.

He went down the terraces and inspected in passing the greenhouses and the hotbeds until he arrived at the water and then, crossing over a little wooden bridge, at the place where
the path to the new park divided into two branches. He ignored the one leading directly to the cliff in a straightish line through the churchyard and took instead the other branch to the left, which wound gently up through undergrowth and thickets. Where the two branches met again he sat down for a moment on a convenient bench, then set out on the actual ascent and the narrow path, now steep, now less steep, led him over steps and ledges of every kind finally to the moss-hut.

Charlotte met her husband in the doorway and had him sit in such a position that he could at a single glance view the different aspects of the landscape through the door and windows as though they were pictures in a frame. He said he was pleased by the prospect and hoped that spring would soon render it even more animated than it was at present. ‘The only thing I would say,’ he said, ‘is that the moss-hut seems to me a little too small.’

‘And yet there is room for us two,’ Charlotte replied.

‘That is so, indeed,’ said Eduard. ‘And I do not doubt that there would be room for a third.’

‘Why not?’ Charlotte replied. ‘And for a fourth too. And for any larger company we would want to use somewhere else.’

‘As we are here quietly by ourselves,’ said Eduard, ‘and in an altogether cheerful and relaxed frame of mind, I have to confess I have had something weighing upon me for some time which I have to confide to you, and want to, but which I cannot bring myself to speak of.’

‘I have noticed something of the kind,’ Charlotte said.

‘And I have to admit,’ Eduard went on, ‘that if I was not pressed by the post tomorrow morning, and we did not have to come to a decision today, I might still have kept silent.’

‘Well,’ Charlotte asked, smiling and meeting him halfway, ‘what is the matter?’

‘It concerns our friend the Captain,’ Eduard answered. ‘You know of the sad situation in which he, like so many others, has through no fault of his own been placed. It must be very painful for a man of his acquirements, of his talents and accomplishments, to find himself out of employment and – but I shall no longer keep back what it is I want for him. I should like us to have him here with us for a time.’

‘That needs considering,’ Charlotte replied, ‘and looking at from more than one point of view.’

‘Well, I am ready to tell you what I think,’ Eduard said. ‘His last letter was a silent expression of the profoundest despondency; not that he is lacking for anything, for he knows how to limit his wants and, as for real necessities, I have taken care of them; nor does it trouble him to have to accept them from me, for we have during our lifetime become so much indebted to one another we can no longer compute how our credit and debit stand – that he is without occupation, that is what really torments him. His only pleasure – indeed, it is his passion – is daily and hourly to employ for the benefit of others the many abilities he has developed in himself. And now to sit idly with arms folded, or to go on studying and acquiring further skills because he cannot employ those he already possesses in full measure – in short, my dear, it is a painful situation, and he feels it doubly and trebly being all alone.’

‘But I thought he had received offers from various quarters,’ said Charlotte. ‘I myself have written on his behalf to many active friends of mine and so far as I know not without effect.’

‘Quite so,’ Eduard replied; ‘but even these opportunities, these offers, bring him fresh torment and discontent. None of the positions is suited to him. He would not be productive; he would have to sacrifice himself, his time, his convictions, his whole way of life, and that he finds impossible. The more I think about all this, and the more I feel it, the stronger grows my desire to see him here with us.’

‘It is very good and kind of you,’ Charlotte replied, ‘to consider your friend’s position with so much sympathy; only let me invite you to consider your own position, our own position.’

‘I have done so,’ Eduard said. ‘His presence would promise nothing but profit and pleasantness for us. I will not speak of the expense, which will in any case be slight, especially when I consider his presence will not inconvenience us in the slightest. He can live in the right wing of the house and we shall easily see to everything else. Think how this will help him, and how much pleasure we shall have from his company! Indeed, we shall profit from it. For a long time now I have wanted to have the estate and the neighbourhood surveyed; he will take care of that. You intend to administer the estate yourself in the future, as soon as the leases of the present tenants have expired. That is a hazardous undertaking! We should benefit very much from his instruction! I feel only too well how I lack a man of his sort. The country people possess the knowledge, but the information they give is confused and not honest. The people from the town who have studied the subject are clear and straightforward, but they lack direct discernment in this particular business. I promise myself both from our friend; and I can imagine a hundred other circumstances which will then arise which will concern you too and from which I anticipate much good. You have listened very patiently; now tell me what you have to say, don’t be afraid to speak freely and to the purpose: I shan’t interrupt.’