Elective Affinities Read Free

beginning of the nineteenth century. Three-quarters of all Germans lived on and by the land, and towns were still small and far apart. In this milieu there were three social classes: the nobility, who owned the land and occupied the leading positions in the army and the civil service; the ‘people’, who were still for the most part peasants; and between these two extremes the ‘middle class’, i.e. the professions. The two latter classes were mainly engaged in working for the first. There was almost no social discontent: everyone knew his place and kept to it.
    When the members of the landed nobility were not engaged in military or governmental activities they were idle, and it is in this state of idleness that the aristocrats of Elective Affinities are usually found. How they fill up their time is the subject of much of the narrative. Their activities vary very widely, but they are all characterized by the expenditure of a large amount of energy for what are at best inadequate results. The narrator leaves us in no doubt about what he thinks of Luciane and her crowd, and his sarcasm is particularly biting when he comes to describe their one attempt at artistic creativity: that this should be the reproduction of famous paintings as tableaux vivants speaks for the footling nature of their cultural interests. But it is a question whether he is very much more sympathetic towards the indubitably more useful occupations of the leading characters. What comes through, I think, is that, even when engaged in landscape gardening, the design and construction of a new building, or the improvement of the village, they are for the most part playing amateurishly at these things without any real objective except the consumption of time and the avoidance of boredom. The influence on these occupations of the periodical celebration of birthdays, and the very considerable additional effort andexpenditure devoted to these celebrations, would give the game away if it had not been given away already.
    The worst effect of this comfortable idleness in which they exist is, however, that which it exercises on their emotional lives: the emotional turmoil into which Eduard and Charlotte are thrown by the introduction into their home of two fresh faces is, according to contemporary testimony, in no sense a figment of the novelist’s imagination but, on the contrary, almost the normal thing. It is not only their hands and minds that are under-occupied, their nerves and vital spirits are so too, and any occasion for bringing them into activity is likely to be seized upon. It is at this point, where idleness undermines marriage, that Goethe’s social criticism and his romantic plot join forces.
    December 1969
    R.J.H.

PART ONE
    CHAPTER ONE
    E DUARD was the name of a wealthy baron in the prime of life and he had been spending the best hour of an April afternoon in his orchard nursery grafting new shoots he had just obtained on to the young trees. He had just finished and he was putting the tools back in their case and looking with satisfaction at the work he had done when the gardener came up. He was very pleased to see how interested and busy the master was.
    ‘Have you seen my wife about?’ Eduard asked him, about to move off.
    ‘She is over in the new park,’ the gardener said. ‘The mosshut she has had built by the cliff-face over against the mansion will be finished today. It’s all been beautifully done and you’re bound to like it, my lord. You get a marvellous view: the village down below, just to the right the church, and over the church tower you can see for miles. Then opposite, the mansion and the gardens.’
    ‘Quite so,’ said Eduard. ‘I could see the men at work.’
    ‘Then,’ the gardener went on, ‘to the right the valley opens up and you can see across the meadows and trees and far into the distance. The path up the cliff is laid out very fine. Her ladyship understands these things. It is a pleasure to work under