THE DEATH OF DIONYSOS - ETD - Vanderbilt University

that his middle-class origins reduce his personal worth to specialized knowledge and
skills, and to the bottom line of a balance sheet. Of middle-class merit Wilhelm
complains, “‘[Der Bürger] soll einzelne Fähigkeiten ausbilden, um brauchbar zu werden,
und es wird schon vorausgesetzt, daß in seinem Wesen keine Harmonie sei, noch sein
dürfe, weil er, um sich auf eine Weise brauchbar zu machen, alles übrige vernachlässigen
muß’” (291). [“‘(The burgher shall) develop() some of his capabilities in order to be
useful, but without it ever being assumed that there is or ever can be a harmonious
interplay of qualities in him, because in order to make himself useful in one direction, he
has to disregard everything else’” (EAB 175).] What good is it, he wonders, to have
material affairs under control, “‘wenn ich mit mir selber uneins bin?’” [“‘if I am at odds
with myself?’”] (290; DWH). His fear, we see, is that vocational specialization will
alienate him from himself.
Wilhelm’s anxiety, that a conventional vocation will jeopardize his harmonious
identity, may be traced to the middle-class separation of public and private life, a
distinction virtually absent in the representative world of the aristocracy. 16 He fears that,
amid the hustle and bustle of providing goods or services, his self will get neglected.
What use is it to him if he manufactures good iron, he asks Werner, if his inner self is
“‘voller Schlacken’” [“‘full of slag’”]? (289-90; EAB 174). He worries that his
personality will get lost somewhere between production and consumption; that it needs
conscious cultivation if he is to realize the Bildung (literally, formation) of his self or
personality. His theatrical ambition has been fueled at this point in the novel by his recent
16
Jürgen Habermas has analyzed “bürgerliche Öffentlichkeit” [“burgher publicity”] and has shown
how it distinguished itself from the “repräsentative Öffentlichkeit” [“representative publicity”] of
the nobility. According to Habermas, this was due in part to the fact that the public life of the
burgher was constituted in its relation to a private life, notably absent in the society of the court,
and the exclusion of the same from public interest only signified its characteristic intimacy and
ideality in middle-class consciousness. See Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit: Untersuchungen zu
einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellchaft [The Structural Transformation of Publicity:
Investigations into a Category of Burgher Society], 6
11
th ed. (Frankfurt a/M: Suhrkamp, 1999). See
especially chapter 6, “Die bürgerliche Familie und die Institutionalisierung einer
publikumsbezogenen Privatheit” [“The Burgher Family and the Institutionalization of a Public-
Oriented Private Life”], pp. 107-16. Of the philosophical literature that comes under consideration
in this study, Habermas’s analysis has unique relevance, as it includes a brief excursus treating
Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre as a model of the competing visions of aristicratic vs. middle-class
public life. See “Exkurs: Das Ende der repräsentativen Öffentlichkeit, illustrated am Beispiel
Wilhelm Meister” [“Excursus: The End of Representative Publicity, Illustrated with the Example
of Wilhelm Meister”], pp. 67-69.