Goethe's "Die Braut von Korinth": Anti-Christian Polemic or Hymn of Love and Death?

R. ELLIS DYE Goethe's "Die Braut von Korinth": Anti-Christian Polemic or Hymn of Love and Death? Goethes ballad "Die Braut von Korinth" has generally been allowed to interpret itself. More precisely, the heroine of the poem—the bride—has been accepted as the voice of authority on the meaning of her own story. Whatever set of opposites is considered to be the underlying polarity —whether Hellenism versus Christianity, nature versus culture, sensualism versus asceticism, humanism versus theism, or progressive materialism versus reactionary otherworldliness—most readers have been untroubled by doubt as to which antithesis is affirmed and which condemned.1 The judgment against Christianity or allied perversions in favor of the natural or classical or whatever else is deemed wholesome and healthy has been common if not quite unanimous—how could it be otherwise? Besides, this is the judgment passed by the bride herself. What follows is a reminder of the elementary point that readers of fiction are not obliged to accept the opinions of fictional characters as authoritative for the work in which they exist and a recommendation of the meanings conveyed by the Liebestod or love-death which is the central theme and event of Goethe's ballad. I will suggest that, despite an overlay of anti-Christian polemics, the primary emphasis in the poem is on the bridging of distance and difference, on conjunction and integration—and that its contrasting stress on opposition and the delineation of difference serves as much to heighten the love interest and the mythical import of the plot as to express Goethe's objections to the Christian religion. 84 GOETHE SOCIETY OF NORTH AMERICA We may begin by noting that Goethe derived his subject from an earlier source and that he claimed to have preserved it in his imagination for forty or fifty years. Only after repeated renewal and transformation in the crucible of his consciousness did it become purified and ripe for the re-presentation which we know as "Die Braut von Korinth."2 What potentialities Goethe saw in the inherited subject may be suggested by what it became and what it remained in his own rendition. His narrative tells of a young traveler from Athens who has come to the home of family friends in Corinth. While still children, the Athenian youth and the daughter of the Corinthian family had been betrothed by mutual agreement of the respective fathers, and the young man hopes that the early plan to link the families through marriage can now be realized. A troubling development since the betrothal, however, is the conversion of the family in Corinth to Christianity, which raises doubts in the youth's mind about how he will be received and whether, or at what price, love and lovers' vows will still be honored. Only the mother is awake when the young man arrives. She welcomes him, shows him to a well-appointed room, serves him a supper of bread and wine, and bids him good night. Without sampling either food or drink, the guest stretches out on the bed and dozes off, only to be awakened by the entrance of a maiden into the room, which she had thought unoccupied. She is embarrassed to have intruded upon him there and would withdraw, but the youth begs her to stay and partake with him of the gifts of Bacchus and Ceres which his hostess has provided. The gifts of Amor can be her own contribution and will make the evening complete. But things are not this easy. The maiden informs him that she is one of many sacrifices to the new religion and that she is now beyond the reach of earthly joys. This only makes the youth the more ardent, and, realizing that she is in fact the promised bride of his childhood, he redoubles his solicitations. She weakens and presents him with a necklace, while accepting not the silver chalice which he has brought, but only a lock of his brown hair. Again he demands love and, at her repeated refusal, throws himself upon the bed amidst tears of despair. When she points to the coldness of her limbs, his hardly exaggerated reply is that his love...