THE DEATH OF DIONYSOS - ETD - Vanderbilt University

attachment to Mariane and the theater, Schlechta traces through the rest of the novel a
constant and ever farther departure of Wilhelm from the immediate experience of life.
Pulling no punches, Schlechta lays the blame for this decline squarely on the Abbé and his
secret Society of the Tower. While we will have our differences with Schlechta, his
accusing finger nevertheless points to the pivot on which the fate of Goethe’s protagonist
undoubtedly turns. The novel that was the subject of a lengthy correspondence with
Schiller was, we now know, based on a lengthy fragment from Goethe’s pre-Italy
production. Since the discovery in the twentieth century of a fragment now known as
Wilhelm Meisters theatralische Sendung (Wilhelm Meister’s Theatric Calling), we can
compare the fragment with the parallel first five books of the Lehrjahre.
Without doubt, what sets the first five books of the Lehrjahre apart from the last
three is the introduction and significant presence in the latter of the Tower Society.
Moreover, even as he reinscribed Wilhelm’s youthful attachment to the theater, turning
the theatric vocation of the fragment into a mistake that Wilhelm must learn to recognize
as such–Goethe inserted into Wilhelm’s vacation from middle-class respectability
encounters with characters who later turn out to be associated with the Tower. These drop
sometimes small, sometimes bigger hints that Wilhelm is pursuing life on the wrong track;
that his understanding of his life and the world around him is mistaken. In view of the
central, if partly hidden conceptual significance of the Tower in the Lehrjahre, we will
have to consider in what relation it stands to Wilhelm’s evolving consciousness. This
does not mean that we must share Schlechta’s assumptions about what value should be
placed on Wilhelm’s early love and views, or about how (and why) these change in the
course of his experiences and development. It does mean, though, that both the symbolic
significance and real influence of the Tower will have to be addressed and accounted for.
I have chosen to begin with an exploration of the very concept of experience
(Erfahrung) in the novel, especially as it relates to the nature and quality of Wilhelm’s
experiences. Edmund Husserl has taught us that consciousness is not simply the passive
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