THE DEATH OF DIONYSOS - ETD - Vanderbilt University

observation of the world, of objects and activity in nature and society. Yet Wilhelm has
been entirely preoccupied with his imagination and feelings; his “Vorempfindung der
ganzen Welt” [“presentiment of the whole world”] finds its substance and expression in
poetry and on stage. So engrossed is Wilhelm in his subjective blueprint of life, that
Aurelie speaks with the sanction of the narrator when she asserts that nothing enters him
from outside. He is a monad without windows. Rather than walking in the light of day,
he follows instead–to echo the words of a blinded Faust–the light within. 7 He looks to his
Schicksal or fate as to the author of his life, such that all events and relationships of his
personal plot are assumed to fit into a higher design, and as such will lead to an inevitable
conclusion, be it comic or tragic. In Wilhelm’s Weltanschauung, all the world really is a
stage, and his life is a drama composed by destiny. 8 More than once in the Lehrjahre
Wilhelm will anticipate a dramatic reappearance of his long lost love, Mariane–as if he
were the hero of a fantastic romance rather than . . . of a modern, realistic novel. 9
7 After he has been blinded by the breath of Sorge, the always care-free Faust reflects, “Die Nacht
scheint tiefer tief hereinzudringen, / Allein im Innern leuchtet helles Licht” [“The night seems
deeper, deeply to intrude / Only within is shining radiant light”] (v. 11499-500; DWH).
8 Wilhelm’s faith in and fidelity to destiny even silences his conscience with respect to filial piety,
as he imposes his own agenda on his first solo business trip: “So groß war seine Leidenschaft, so
rein seine Überzeugung, er handle vollkommen recht, sich dem Drucke seines bisherigen Lebens
zu entziehen und einer neuen, edlern Bahn zu folgen, daß sein Gewissen sich nicht im mindesten
regte, keine Sorge in ihm entstand, ja daß er vielmehr diesen Betrug für heilig hielt. Er war gewiß,
daß ihn seine Eltern und Verwandte in der Folge für diesen Schritt preisen und segnen sollten, er
erkannte den Wink eines leitenden Schicksals an diesen zusammentreffenden Umständen” (42, my
italics). [“He was so passionately convinced that he was doing the right thing in escaping from the
burden of his present form of life by embarking on a new and nobler course that he did not have
the least pangs of conscience or anxiety: Indeed, he felt that this deception was somehow
sanctioned by Heaven. He was sure that his parents and relations would eventually approve the
step he was about to take. He perceived in this concatenation of circumstances the guiding hand of
fate” (EAB 21, my italics).] He anticipates that his own little bourgeois melodrama will be
resolved in a happy (and undoubtedly tear-filled) denouement.
9 Margaret Doody has obliterated the willful modern distinction drawn between the romance and
the (supposedly new) novel in her important study, The True Story of the Novel (New Brunswick,
N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1996). Doody traces the lengthy prose narratives we call novels to
ancient narrative ancestors. These include Greek and Roman romances in which Doody has
identified a religious interest centering on various goddesses or goddess-figures. In fact, we will
see that Goethe’s novel itself undertakes (under the auspices of the Tower) to cure the unheroic
hero of what, following Doody, may be called Wilhelm Meister’s romantic fatalism: his passive
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