THE DEATH OF DIONYSOS - ETD - Vanderbilt University

to Mariane as he describes his childhood reading from Jerusalem Delivered: “‘Ich konnte
nie die Worte aussprechen: “Allein das Lebensmaß Chlorindens ist nun voll, / Und ihre
Stunde kommt, in der sie sterben soll”, daß mir nicht die Tränen in die Augen kamen, die
reichlich flossen’” (27). [“‘I could never, without tears coming to my eyes, utter the
words: “But now the measure of Clorinda’s days is full / The hour draws near, the hour
when she must die”’” (EAB 12).] Wilhelm’s tears are the emblem of his identification
with the tragic heroine. What is more, in the Lehrjahre such affective experience of art is
not limited to drama. In Book Two sexual frustration leaves Wilhelm in vexed agitation
(“[i]n der verdrießlichen Unruhe”); he finds peace at last only as he listens to the dark
songs of the Harfner:
Wilhelm stand an dem Pfosten, seine Seele war tief gerührt, die Trauer des
Unbekannten schloß sein beklommenes Herz auf; er widerstand nicht dem
Mitgefühl und konnte und wollte die Tränen nicht zurückhalten, die des
Alten herzliche Klage endlich auch aus seinen Augen hervorlockte. Alle
Schmerzen, die seine Seele drückten, lösten sich zu gleicher Zeit auf, er
überließ sich ihnen ganz [. . .] (137, my italics).
[Wilhelm stood by the door, deeply moved, his own constricted heart
opened up by the immense grief of the stranger. He was overcome by such
fellow feeling that he did not, could not, restrain the tears brought to his
eyes by the old man’s bitter lamentation. The sorrows oppressing his heart
all came out into the open. He abandoned himself completely to them (. . .)
(EAB 78, my italics).]
Listening to the harpist, Wilhelm feels the same eleos (“Mitgefühl”, i.e. pity) to which
Aristotle had ascribed in part the power of tragedy: an experience made possible only if
the audience identified with the tragic fate of the hero. Wilhelm is receptive to the old
man’s songs, because his own frustrated desire lets him sympathize with the voice behind
their hopeless content.
Nonetheless, by the time Serlo offers him the title role in Hamlet, Wilhelm has an
altered view of acting and the stage. Explaining to Werner his decision to become an
actor, he writes: “‘mich selbst, ganz wie ich da bin, auszubilden, das war dunkel von
Jugend auf mein Wunsch und meine Absicht’” (290). [“‘Even as a youth I had the vague
without the important intermediary figure, Friedrich Schiller. I consider the latter’s categories of
beauty, a schmelzende Schönheit and an anspannende Schönheit (a “melting” and a “rigidifying”
beauty), to be an anticipation of Nietzsche’s categories of tragedy. Nevertheless, Goethe and
Schiller clearly preferred the enobling character of what Nietzsche would loathe as the Apollonian
drama of Euripides.
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