THE DEATH OF DIONYSOS - ETD - Vanderbilt University

[(Goethe’s) portrayal reflects not how Pietism understood itself, so much as the
progressive perspective opened up by its experience of inwardness. The commencement
of a new–worldly–religion distinguishes itself on the basis of an aesthetic-moral self-
awareness.”] To the aunt’s disappointment, the patriarchal Oheim and his Abbé will
strictly limit her contact with her nieces and nephews. It is not just because they are
conducting a grand human experiment–the generation of a new race of godlike humans in
an aesthetic paradise–which, like all experiments, requires strict control of the
environment. 27 Rather, her otherworldly orientation presents a danger to their humanistic,
life-affirming creed. Even her memoirs will be administered, like a sedative, to hysterical
women such as Aurelie, rather than find their way with the other Lehrbriefe into the
pedagogical archive of the Tower. Lovesickness in the novel, as all other forms of
longing, is a derailment of the self from its natural course through self-awareness and
individuation to active autonomy in the world.
Due first to poor health and later to conviction, the schöne Seele never advances so
far. She never becomes a productive member of society. Even acts of charity were
performed out of duty, as a way of “buying [her]self off” (418; EAB 254)–a rare
exception, perhaps, to her otherwise characteristic, concluding assertion: “Ich erinnere
mich kaum eines Gebotes, nichts erscheint mir in Gestalt eines Gesetzes, es ist ein Trieb,
der mich leitet und mich immer recht führet” (420). [“I can scacely remember any
commandment, nothing compels me in the form of law; I am guided by an instinct that
always leads me right” (DWH).] Her lifelong voyage of discovery to harmonious and
beautiful self-awareness constitutes another’s Lehrjahre within Wilhelm Meisters
Lehrjahre. It too, then, is a story of Bildung in the form of a confession, just as she
observes of her first childhood romance with a sickly boy: “soviel trug er zur Bildung
meines Herzens bei” (362). [“it influenced greatly the development of my emotional life
27 Schiller, in a letter to Goethe, describes “Meisters Lehrjahre”, the novel itself, that is, as “eine
Art Experiment” [“a kind of experiment”] , rather than “[e]ine bloß blinde Wirkung der Natur”
[“just a blind force of nature”]. His matter of fact observation goes on to suggest that “die Mächte
des Turms” [“the powers of the Tower”] are the agency or “verborgen wirkender höherer
Verstand” [“hidden but active, higher understanding”] that introduces the experimental character
into what otherwise would be an entirely natural course of development. See letter of July 8, 1796
(HA VII, 640).
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