Procurator or Procreator: Goethe's Unterhaltungen as Ironic Genre Praxis

HANS J. RINDISBACHER Procurator or Procreator: Goethe's Unterhaltungen as Ironic Genre Praxis If the extensive, lasting, and multivoiced discourse about the modern German Novelle has produced one point of more or less general agreement among the practitioners as well as the critics of the genre, it is the claim that the Novelle in German starts with Goethe's Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten in 1795.l Only occasionally and relatively recently has this canonical view been challenged.2 The approaching 200th anniversary of the publication of Goethe's text seems an appropriate moment to reread the "Prokurator" tale, the first story presented by the old Abbé to the assembled group of listeners as a model and sample of the kind previously agreed upon as best suited for a civilized audience in the circumstances of the time.3 The proposed reading of this tale aims at steering the discussion of novellas away from Goethe's own dictum of the "unerhörte, sich ereignete Begebenheit " in the direction of the Schlegels' understanding of the Novelle as a fundamentally ironic narrative form. It attempts to destabilize further than has already been the case the traditional scholarly Novelle debate by showing the profound irony permeating the Unterhaltungen , one of the genre's perceived foundational narratives. Friedrich Schlegel's remark that a Novelle is "eine Geschichte. . . , die streng genommen, nicht zur Geschichte gehört, und die Anlage zur Ironie schon in der Geburtsstunde mit auf die Welt bringt" (Polheim 12), meets our postmodern sensitivities rather well. August Wilhelm Schlegel agrees with his brother in calling the Novelle "eine Geschichte außer der Geschichte," adding that it narrates an event "gleichsam hinter dem Rücken der bürgerlichen Verfassungen und Anordnungen" (Polheim 21). These aspects fit, as I hope to show, the Goethe Yearbook 63 "Prokurator" story quite nicely. The analysis has two parts: first, a brief outline of the French novella number 100 from the Cent nouvelles nouvelles that served as Goethe's model5; and second, a critical reading of Goethe's version of the story, emphasizing the changes he effected in the process of translating and adapting the French material. The suggested reading produces an ironic foil for the surface events of the tale as they have been read traditionally and in accordance with the terms provided in the frame of the narrative itself, where the "Prokurator" receives praise as a moral tale. I. By and large Erich Trunz is correct in stating that when one compares this novella's "früheste Fassung mit Goethes Erzählung, so sieht man, daß die Struktur der Novelle völlig die gleiche geblieben ist." Whenever there is a turn in the story, there is a "Selbstgespräch, rhetorisch geformt. . . oder es steht ein Dialog. . . . Dies alles hat Goethe genau dem romanischen Vorbild nachgebildet" (603-4). The structure of both the French story and Goethe's German version is, briefly, the following: Im Mittelpunkt: die Hungerkur durch den Prokurator. Vom Beginn bis zum Schluß finden mehrere Wendungen des Geschehens statt. Jede Wendung ist bezeichnet durch einen längeren Monolog oder Dialog. Das Geschehen selbst wird dazwischen knapp und kühl berichtet . . . . Der Aufbau ist also: Bericht: Leben des Kaufmanns— Selbstgespräch: Entschluß zur Ehe—Bericht: Hochzeit und Ehe— Selbstgespräch: Entschluß zur Reise—Dialog: Regeln für die Zur ückbleibende—Selbstgespräch: Sehnsucht der Einsamen—Bericht: der Prokurator wird geholt—Dialog: der Prokurator und die Schöne —Bericht: die Entsagungskur—Rede: die Erfahrung der Frau. (606) A careful reading, however, cannot overlook the fact that in the process of translating and arranging the story, Goethe takes considerable liberties in shifting thematic and psychological motivational aspects. The French tale is the account of a Genoese merchant's sudden wish for children, his subsequent marriage and change of life style, the provisions regarding a planned, longer absence from his young wife, and how these provisions turn out. The story is explicit about the merchant's late wish for heirs, which is the cause for ending his bachelorhood in the first place.7 This fifty-year-old man is said to be so involved with his business that he has never even given "the least passing thought to marrying, in order to...