Mimesis (77 page)

This agrees with the fact that his other works of a serious nature, insofar as they depict contemporary social conditions, present the destinies of their characters on a solid basis of bourgeois class-consciousness without giving us much of an impression of the underlying political and economic movements of the period. Time and place are often alluded to in the most general way, and the reader feels that in spite of the graphic concreteness of many details he is—as far as the political and economic whole is concerned—being conducted through an indeterminate and unidentifiable landscape. By far the most realistic is
Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre
. Jacobi—as Goethe tells us in his Annals for 1795—thought that in that work “the realism, pertaining as it does to an inferior social stratum, is not edifying.” Other contemporaries and later readers were charmed by just that realism; but we must not let this blind us to the fact that it is confined to a very
narrow domain. Concrete political and politico-economic conditions receive no expression. The contemporary reshuffling of social strata hardly appears. To be sure, it is mentioned in one place. The occasion is as follows: A group of upper-class people is taking precautionary measures against revolutionary disturbances. Since “at this time it is extremely inadvisable to own property in only one place, to invest one’s money in only one locality,” they scatter to all parts of the world, acquire holdings everywhere, and “guarantee each other’s existence in case a state revolution should definitely drive one or another of them from his estates” (book 8, chapter 7). Such precautionary measures can hardly be understood in terms of the novel itself, for the other and especially the earlier parts give no inkling of a politico-social unrest which could justify a plan for security so unusual at the period. The middle-class world lies before the reader’s eyes in an almost timeless calm. As we read of Wilhelm’s father, his grandfather, the father of his friend Werner, their habits, their collections, their affairs, their views, we have the impression of a perfectly peaceful society which changes only very gradually, in the course of successive generations. It is a completely undisturbed and unshaken class structure which appears, for example, in the letter which young Wilhelm writes to his friend Werner to justify his intention of becoming an actor. There we read (book 5, chapter 3):

… I do not know how it is in other countries, but here in Germany only the nobleman has the possibility of a certain generalized personal culture, if this term is permissible. A bourgeois can achieve great merit; at a pinch he can even cultivate his mind; but his personality will be lost, try as he may. …

Since the nobleman in ordinary life knows no barriers, since he can be turned into a king or a kinglike figure, it follows that he can everywhere appear before his equals with a calm mind. He can press ahead in all spheres, whereas nothing is more becoming to the bourgeois than a pure and settled awareness of the limits set for him. He may not ask himself, “What are you?” but only, “What have you? What understanding, what knowledge, what skills, what fortune?” While the nobleman gives everything by presenting his person, the bourgeois gives nothing through his personality and is not supposed to. The former may and should “appear to be”; the latter must only “be” and what he attempts to “appear to be” is ridiculous or insipid. The former is expected to
act a part, perform a function, the latter must do his share and produce results; he must develop specific skills to make himself useful, and it is taken for granted beforehand that his nature is not and should not possess harmony, because, in order to make himself useful in
one
way, he must neglect everything else.

This differentiation is not the fault of the noblemen’s arrogance or of the bourgeois’ conformability, but results from the very structure of society. Whether or not this state of affairs is going to change and if so, what it is that is going to change, is of little interest to me. However that is, as things now stand I must think of myself and of how I can protect and realize what I feel as an irreplaceable need.

I happen to have an irresistible propensity for the very kind of harmonious development of my nature which is denied me by my birth. …

This too is a significant fragment of the great confession. Goethe too was a burgher’s son in that class-conscious social order. He too was irresistibly inclined toward such a harmonious development of his nature. His ideal of personal development too was rooted in the classconscious and aristocratic concept of a lofty and unspecialized universality and of “appearance,” although in his hands it became an all-inclusive dedication to individual details. He too, like Wilhelm Meister, sought his own particular way out of his bourgeois class, without concerning himself with whether and how the constitution of society might one day change. And he found the way that corresponded to his desires much more quickly and surely than Wilhelm Meister, who hoped to attain his goal by becoming an actor; he found it when, in opposition to his father’s instinctive mistrust, he obeyed the summons of the Duke to Weimar and there, within the narrowest frame, created for himself a universal position which was perfectly suited to him. When, seventeen years later, he was on his way back from the campaign in France—where he had most impressively been made aware that “from here and today a new epoch in the history of the world begins”—he received in Trier a letter from his mother: an uncle of his, who had been a magistrate (in consequence of which his closest relatives had not been eligible for the Frankfurt council), had died; and now the question was presented to him whether he would accept the position of a Frankfurt city councillor if he should be elected. There could be no doubt in his mind; he must refuse—he had long since decided
otherwise about his life. It is instructive to read the arguments he presented on this occasion and the reasons he gave (
Kampagne in Frankreich
, Trier, October 29). The passage concludes with the following sentences:

For how was I to prove myself actively effective in the very special circle for which—possibly more than for any other—a man must be trained loyally and step by step? For so many years I had accustomed myself to affairs commensurate with my talents and furthermore of a kind which were hardly likely to be demanded for urban needs and purposes. Indeed, I was justified in adding that, if only burghers are received into the Council, that condition was now so foreign to me that I had to consider myself essentially a non-native. …

The immobility of the social background in the
Wahlverwandtschaften
is even more pronounced than in
Wilhelm Meister
. In contrast, the most vivid contemporary movement is to be found in the autobiographical works. The most varied scenes, events, and conditions of public life are presented with sensory truth. But their succession is determined by the course of Goethe’s own life and development, and each of them becomes a subject of representation less for its own sake than by virtue of its importance for Goethe. The real interest—manifest in dynamic and genetic treatment—attaches especially to personal matters and the intellectual movements in which Goethe participated, while public conditions are seen, though often graphically and vividly, as established and quiescent.

We are left with the conclusion that Goethe never represented the reality of contemporary social life dynamically, as the germ of developments in process and in the future. Where he deals with the trends of the nineteenth century, he does so in general reflections, and these are almost always value judgments: they are predominantly mistrustful and disapproving. The technical development of machinery, the progressively conscious participation of the masses in public life, were distasteful to him. He foresaw a shallowing of intellectual life; he saw nothing to make up for such a loss. He also, as we know, remained aloof from the political patriotism which, if conditions had been more favorable at the time, might well have led to a unification of the social situation in Germany. If that had happened then, perhaps too the integration of Germany into the emerging new reality of Europe and the world might have been prepared more calmly, have been
accomplished with fewer uncertainties and less violence. He deplored the political condition of Germany, but he did so dispassionately and accepted it as a fact. In a polemic essay (
Literarischer Sansculottismus, Jubiläumsausgabe
, 36, 139) he explains that classical national works can arise only where the author “finds in the history of his nation great events and their consequences in a felicitous and significant union.” In Germany, he continues, this is not the case. “One need but consider our position [i.e., the position of German writers] as it was and is, and examine the conditions under which German writers pursue their careers, one will then easily find the point of view from which they should be judged. Nowhere in Germany is there a center of social
savoir vivre
where authors might congregate and, in their several domains, develop in one common manner and in one common direction. Born in scattered places, subjected to most different forms of education, generally left only to themselves and the impressions of very different conditions. …” Yet his regret over this state of affairs is only half-hearted, for in a passage which occurs shortly before, he had said: “But on the other hand the German nation should not be blamed if its geographic situation holds it closely together while its political situation partitions it. We shall not wish for upheavals which might prepare classical works in Germany.” This essay, it is true, was written before 1795, but in later years too he would not have “wished for upheavals” which might have been able to create “a center of social
savoir vivre”
in Germany.

It is utterly silly to wish that Goethe might have been different from what he was. His instincts, his inclinations, the social position which he created for himself, the limits which he imposed upon his activities, all these things are part of him. None of them can be thought away without disrupting the whole. But as we look back upon all that has happened since, we are yet tempted to imagine what effect might have been exerted upon German literature and German society, if Goethe, with his vigorous sensuality, his mastery of life, his far-reaching and untrammeled vision, had devoted more interest and constructive effort to the emerging modern structure of life.

The fragmentation and limitation in the realm of realism which we have noted remained the same in Goethe’s younger contemporaries and in the following generations. Until toward the end of the nineteenth century the most important works which undertook to treat contemporary social subjects seriously at all remained in the
genres of semi-fantasy or of idyl or at least in the narrow realm of the local. They portray the economic, the social, and the political as in a state of quiescence. This applies equally to such different and important writers as Jean Paul, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Jeremias Gotthelf, Adalbert Stifter, Hebbel, Storm—the social realism in Fontane still does not go very deep, and the political current in Gottfried Keller is pronouncedly Swiss. Perhaps Kleist, and Büchner later, might have been able to bring about a change in direction, but they had no opportunity to develop freely and they died too young.

*
For this new version the translator is indebted to his friend Dr. Alexander Gode v. Äsch, his gratitude to whom for admirable advice and unstinted assistance on this and other occasions he welcomes this opportunity of acknowledging.

18

IN THE HÔTEL DE LA MOLE

J
ULIEN
S
OREL
, the hero of Stendhal’s novel
Le Rouge et le Noir
(1830), an ambitious and passionate young man, son of an uneducated petty bourgeois from the Franche-Comté, is conducted by a series of circumstances from the seminary at Besançon, where he has been studying theology, to Paris and the position of secretary to a gentleman of rank, the Marquis de la Mole, whose confidence he gains. Mathilde, the Marquis’s daughter, is a girl of nineteen, witty, spoiled, imaginative, and so arrogant that her own position and circle begin to bore her. The dawning of her passion for her father’s
domestique
is one of Stendhal’s masterpieces and has been greatly admired. One of the preparatory scenes, in which her interest in Julien begins to awaken, is the following, from volume 2, chapter 14:

Un matin que l’abbé travaillait avec Julien, dans la bibliothèque du marquis, à l’éternel procès de Frilair:

—Monsieur, dit Julien tout à coup, dîner tous les jours avec madame la marquise, est-ce un de mes devoirs, ou est-ce une bonté que l’on a pour moi?

—C’est un honneur insigne! reprit l’abbé, scandalisé. Jamais M. N… l’académicien, qui, depuis quinze ans, fait une cour assidue, n’a pu l’obtenir pour son neveu M. Tanbeau.

—C’est pour moi, monsieur, la partie la plus pénible de mon emploi. Je m’ennuyais moins au séminaire. Je vois bâiller quelquefois jusqu’à mademoiselle de La Mole, qui pourtant doit être accoutumée à l’amabilité des amis de la maison. J’ai peur de m’endormir. De grâce, obtenez-moi la permission d’aller dîner à quarante sous dans quelque auberge obscure.

L’abbé, véritable parvenu, était fort sensible à l’honneur de dîner avec un grand seigneur. Pendant qu’il s’efforçait de faire comprendre ce sentiment par Julien, un léger bruit leur fit tourner la tête. Julien vit mademoiselle de La Mole qui écoutait. Il rougit. Elle était venue chercher un livre et avait tout entendu; elle prit quelque considération pour Julien. Celui-là n’est pas né à genoux, pensa-t-elle, comme ce vieil abbé. Dieu! qu’il est laid.

A dîner, Julien n’osait pas regarder mademoiselle de La Mole, mais elle eut la bonté de lui adresser la parole. Ce jour-là, on attendait beaucoup de monde, elle l’engagea à rester. …

(One morning while the Abbé was with Julien in the Marquis’s library, working on the interminable Frilair suit:

“Monsieur,” said Julien suddenly, “is dining with Madame la Marquise every day one of my duties, or is it a favor to me?”

“It is an extraordinary honor!” the Abbé corrected him, scandalized. “Monsieur N., the academician, who has been paying court here assiduously for fifteen years, was never able to manage it for his nephew, Monsieur Tanbeau.”