THE DEATH OF DIONYSOS - ETD - Vanderbilt University

that Wilhelm lacks even into Book Eight. This would seem to suggest that those
experiences that he has enjoyed, experiences of the heart and mind, might be ascribed to
the subjective side of the cognitive equation. While the few instances of the word Subjekt
in the novel offer no guidance in this regard, the correspondence of Goethe and his
Kantian reader, Schiller, does not leave us empty-handed. Specifically it is a commentary
made by Goethe on his writing of the Confessions that is of interest to us. He remarks that
the entirety of what he calls the religious book of his novel is founded “auf der zartesten
Verwechslung des Subjektiven und Objektiven” [“on the most delicate confusion of the
subjective and the objective”], implying that what she perceives as the experience of her
invisible Friend–an Other sensed by the soul–is in reality the experience of something
within, and part of, her self. 32 Goethe goes on to say that the content of the Confessions
refers to what both precedes and follows that book in the novel This key position and
function of Book Six might be supposed to open the way for Wilhelm into the Tower,
since the book that follows begins with Wilhelm’s journey to the family of the schöne
Seele and closes with his gothic initiation into its secret society.
But in fact, it is not until Book Eight that any reference is made to the saintly old
maid or to her Confessions; and Wilhelm has entered the home, not of Lothario and his
spiritual father, the Abbé, but of the Oheim and his priestly progeny, Natalie. Wilhelm
smells the sacral air of the house almost as soon as he steps through the doorway. When
he finds his Amazone in the Palladian mansion, he exclaims, “‘Es ist kein Haus, es ist ein
Tempel, und Sie sind die würdige Priesterin’” (519). [“‘it isn’t a house, it’s a temple, and
you are ist noble priestess’” (EAB 318).] Soon thereafter he mistakes a portrait of the
schöne Seele for one of her niece, whereupon he confesses the influence of the aunt’s
Confessions “‘auf [s]ein ganzes Leben’” [“‘on (his) whole life’”] (518; DWH). Even if
one adjusts for his habitual enthusiasm, or for the lover’s wish to strike a sympathetic
32 Goethe to Schiller: “Ich bekam Lust, das religiose Buch meines Romans auszuarbeiten; und da
das Ganze auf den edelsten Täuschungen und auf der zartesten Verwechslung des Subjektiven und
Objektiven beruht, so gehörte mehr Stimmung und Sammlung dazu als vielleicht zu einem andern
Teile.” [“I had the desire to expand on the religious book of my novel; and since the whole of it is
founded on the most delicate confusion of the subjective and objective, it required the right mood
and more concentration than perhaps any other part.”] See the letter of March 18, 1795 (HA VII,
624).
27