THE DEATH OF DIONYSOS - ETD - Vanderbilt University

concludes that he has just begun to learn. As for the Abbé’s solemn declaration, it seems
to imply nothing more than that fathering a child means school is over. But what school?
What has been the substance of Wilhelm Meister’s Lehrjahre? Our analysis would appear
to have led us right into one of the thorniest problems that has occupied scholarship of the
Lehrjahre. If nineteenth-century readers simply assumed that Wilhelm’s adventures result
in the harmonious development of his personality, scholarship of the novel in the
twentieth century proved more skeptical–or, in the case of the faithful, more frustrated–
about the status of the novel as a Bildungsroman. A few scholars, notably Karl Schlechta
and Stefan Blessin, have finally broken down Wilhelm’s story into separate spheres or
worlds, connected to one another by little more than chronology or concept, while sharing
no mythos that would be centered in the experience of the hero. 22 Be that as it may, our
interest in the meaning of Erfahrung in the novel provides another thread of continuity
between the spheres. We recall that Wilhelm, while lacking experience of Gegenstände
(objects) in the world, could at least lay claim to experiences of the heart and mind. These
may seem of little importance in the eyes of Jarno or Lothario: paragons of restless, manly
activity; but they are not without consequence in the course of Wilhelm’s own
development. The Abbé had, after all, assured him that all episodes of one’s life
contribute imperceptibly to one’s Bildung (422). The pedagogue would even declare the
advantage of Wilhelm’s erring education: “‘Kein glücklicheres Schicksal kann einem
Menschen werden’” (495). [“‘No man could have a happier fate’” (EAB 303).] Did he
say Schicksal?! The same fate that he earlier had dismissed?
22 Blessin describes the structure of the Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre thus: “Der erste Meisterroman
ist seiner Entstehung und inneren Logik nach aus drei Romanen gebildet: der Mariane-Handlung,
der Theatralischen Sendung und den Lehrjahren”(89). [“In terms of the production and inner logic
of the first Meister novel, it is comprised of three novels: the Mariane-story, the Theatric Mission
and the Apprentice Years.] Regarding the content of Book One, the Mariane-romance, he
concludes, “[Es] ist ein selbständiges Buch und aus mehreren Gründen nicht völlig in den Roman
integriert” [“(It) is a separate book and for several reasons not fully integrated into the novel”]
(Ibid.). Blessin finally traces the unity of the novel to the world it presents–rather more like a
universe, really, that encompasses the particular worlds of the characters: “Wir sehen darin die
eigentliche Leistung der Lehrjahre, die eine Welt aus lauter Welten sind” (207). [“We recognize
the actual achievement of the Lehrjahre, that is a world made up of separate worlds.”] Compare
also the first and lengthiest part of Schlechta’s study, GoethesWilhelm Meister (Frankfurt a/M:
Klostermann, 1953), titled “Die Sphären”, which dissects the two Wilhelm Meister novels into
spheres, or loosely related clusters of plot and meaning. We will see, however, that the separate
story of Mariane is indeed woven carefully into the thematic matrix of Goethe’s novel.
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