here is that of the performance of fiction. The narrative act must exist in the time allotted for its telling, and the reader-accomplice (in this case the listener-accomplice) must not jump forward to the text’s conclusion, since this would shorten, as it were, the life of the story. (That conclusion is the forbidden last page of the magic book in fairy tales. … )
MIDNIGHT
In Turkish, the word
muhabbet
means both “conversation” and “love.” You say for both, “To do
muhabbet.”
I like the idea of conversation being a window into one’s heart or mind.
SUNDAY
I’ve looked at two translations of
Elective Affinities
in English: one by David Carradine, published by Oxford University Press; the other by Judith Ryan, published by Princeton. Neither is fully satisfying but both, as the French say,
se laissent lire
. Goethe suggested, in one of hismany letters to Wilhelm von Humboldt, that national languages reflect the national character, and that English writers share with the Germans the same ways of thinking and the same sense of what is precious. This would explain why Shakespeare is part of the German tradition; it does not explain why Goethe never became part of the English tradition. Somehow, “Gouty” (to use Joyce’s disrespectful epithet) hasn’t lodged in the English-reading canon in his successive incarnations. Even though the first full-length biography of Goethe in
any
language was written by the multitalented George Henry Lewes in 1855, and in spite of Goethe’s influence on writers such as Lewes’s partner, George Eliot (I remember the
Elective Affinities-like
ending of
The Mill on the Floss)
, he has few English readers.
In Buenos Aires, when I was growing up in the late fifties and early sixties, many of my friends came from German Jewish families. Goethe and Schiller were conventional staples of the ancient, all-embracing German
Kultur
that the immigrants had brought in their cardboard suitcases and knotted bundles. In Germany, Schiller (and Goethe) had long lost their dreadful local accents; in the Diaspora, Goethe (and Schiller) had acquired the tone and humour of the shtetl. Whenever a discussion broke out among the German parents of my friends, the one about to lose the argument would shout, ‘ “O
aza nar,’ sagt Goethe”
(“ ‘Oh, what a fool!’ says Goethe”), to which the other would counter,
“ ‘Nebisch,’sagt Schiller”
(“ ‘You nitwit,’ says Schiller”), and the battle would end with a comforting laugh.
Perhaps the void in the English-speaking world exists because Goethe must be entered culturally: not book by book, dipping one’s toe in his writings, but rather by plunging into his vast influence, his oceanic scope, his echoing waves, his horizon-reaching vistas of the world. “I’ll goethe you lot,” our teacher told us on the first day of class at the Pestalozzi Schule (the German school in Buenos Aires, which I attended for a single year), and made us learn by heart “Erlkönig” and
“Es war ein König in Thüle”
and “Gingo Biloba.”
Nietzsche, seldom generous in his praise, saw Goethe as uniquely above nationalities and national literatures. “Goethe,” he wrote in
Human, All Too Human
, “is not just a good and great human being but a civilization in himself.” If that is so, then
Elective Affinities
, written in the last years of his life, reads like a kind of etiquette manual of Goethean civilization.
Note: Goethe wanted to give his son August a toy guillotine for his twelfth birthday. August’s mother, Christiane, was indignant.
EVENING
The mock-mathematical formulations to outline human behaviour that Goethe puts in Eduard’s mouth (“Look out, my friend, for D! What will B do when C is taken away from him? He’ll go back to his A, his alpha and omega!”) echo in the tests published in our lifestyle magazines. Are you a good lover? Are you a dutiful citizen? Are you a happy person? Tick the boxes and find the formula that
MIDNIGHT
In Turkish, the word
muhabbet
means both “conversation” and “love.” You say for both, “To do
muhabbet.”
I like the idea of conversation being a window into one’s heart or mind.
SUNDAY
I’ve looked at two translations of
Elective Affinities
in English: one by David Carradine, published by Oxford University Press; the other by Judith Ryan, published by Princeton. Neither is fully satisfying but both, as the French say,
se laissent lire
. Goethe suggested, in one of hismany letters to Wilhelm von Humboldt, that national languages reflect the national character, and that English writers share with the Germans the same ways of thinking and the same sense of what is precious. This would explain why Shakespeare is part of the German tradition; it does not explain why Goethe never became part of the English tradition. Somehow, “Gouty” (to use Joyce’s disrespectful epithet) hasn’t lodged in the English-reading canon in his successive incarnations. Even though the first full-length biography of Goethe in
any
language was written by the multitalented George Henry Lewes in 1855, and in spite of Goethe’s influence on writers such as Lewes’s partner, George Eliot (I remember the
Elective Affinities-like
ending of
The Mill on the Floss)
, he has few English readers.
In Buenos Aires, when I was growing up in the late fifties and early sixties, many of my friends came from German Jewish families. Goethe and Schiller were conventional staples of the ancient, all-embracing German
Kultur
that the immigrants had brought in their cardboard suitcases and knotted bundles. In Germany, Schiller (and Goethe) had long lost their dreadful local accents; in the Diaspora, Goethe (and Schiller) had acquired the tone and humour of the shtetl. Whenever a discussion broke out among the German parents of my friends, the one about to lose the argument would shout, ‘ “O
aza nar,’ sagt Goethe”
(“ ‘Oh, what a fool!’ says Goethe”), to which the other would counter,
“ ‘Nebisch,’sagt Schiller”
(“ ‘You nitwit,’ says Schiller”), and the battle would end with a comforting laugh.
Perhaps the void in the English-speaking world exists because Goethe must be entered culturally: not book by book, dipping one’s toe in his writings, but rather by plunging into his vast influence, his oceanic scope, his echoing waves, his horizon-reaching vistas of the world. “I’ll goethe you lot,” our teacher told us on the first day of class at the Pestalozzi Schule (the German school in Buenos Aires, which I attended for a single year), and made us learn by heart “Erlkönig” and
“Es war ein König in Thüle”
and “Gingo Biloba.”
Nietzsche, seldom generous in his praise, saw Goethe as uniquely above nationalities and national literatures. “Goethe,” he wrote in
Human, All Too Human
, “is not just a good and great human being but a civilization in himself.” If that is so, then
Elective Affinities
, written in the last years of his life, reads like a kind of etiquette manual of Goethean civilization.
Note: Goethe wanted to give his son August a toy guillotine for his twelfth birthday. August’s mother, Christiane, was indignant.
EVENING
The mock-mathematical formulations to outline human behaviour that Goethe puts in Eduard’s mouth (“Look out, my friend, for D! What will B do when C is taken away from him? He’ll go back to his A, his alpha and omega!”) echo in the tests published in our lifestyle magazines. Are you a good lover? Are you a dutiful citizen? Are you a happy person? Tick the boxes and find the formula that
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