“Pfeile mit Widerhaken”: On the Aphorisms in Goethe’s Wahlverwandtschaften and Wanderjahre

In a letter to Wilhelm in which she describes how she found the key to the mysterious “Kästchen,” Hersilie includes a sketch of the object along with a remarkable commentary:

Hier aber, mein Freund, nun schließlich zu dieser Abbildung des Rätsels was sagen Sie? Erinnert es nicht an Pfeile mit Widerhaken? Gott sei uns gnädig!

(FA 10:599)¹

In the Middle Ages, barbed arrows were used for killing horses in battle; if one accidentally wounded a knight, the only way to prevent serious damage was to push the arrow further through his body and remove it when it emerged on the other side.² The protagonist of Goethe’s Torquato Tasso describes his rejection by the princess as precisely such a barbed arrow, and begs his friend Antonio to pull on it so that he can feel all the more keenly the force that tears him apart (V:5). In contrast, Hersilie’s exclamation “Gott sei uns gnädig!” is not meant so earnestly. After all, she knows that the key is not really a barb, but simply “ein winzig kleines, stachlichtes Etwas” that she has found in the jacket of Felix’s friend Fitz (FA 10:598).

Most critics interpret Hersilie’s description of the key as a barbed arrow by visualizing it as an arrow shot by Cupid that sticks fast and cannot be pulled out.³ I would like to show, however, that the metaphor goes well beyond this familiar cultural reference. The puzzling key is one of three objects in the Wanderjahre that have, as it were, two aspects: Wilhelm’s medical kit, described as “halb Brieftasche, halb Besteck” (FA 10:299), the casket itself, at once a “Kästchen” and a “Prachtbüchlein” (FA 10:302), and the key whose shape resembles “Pfeile mit Widerhaken” (FA 10:599). These hybrid objects, I argue, are connected in crucial ways with the aphorisms that are included at the end of books two and three of the Wanderjahre. What ties them together is their fundamental ambiguity and the challenge it poses for the reader of the novel.

Before approaching the aphorism collections in the Wanderjahre, it will be helpful to look first at those in Die Wahlverwandtschaften. As Gerhard Neumann has demonstrated, the aphorisms in Ottilie’s “Tagebuch” are artfully composed: on the one hand, they form “ein festes Schema” and on the other, they contain “arationale Momente.”⁴ “Die ‘intendierte Ganzheit’ der Erkenntnis,” he continues, “beruht paradoxerweise gerade auf der Offenheit und inneren Beweglichkeit der Gruppe.”⁵ Building on Neumann’s insight, I see this paradox of the aphorisms as at once a reflection of Ottilie’s nature and a structure she is fundamentally incapable of grasping. In essence, her diary is a commonplace book in which she notes thoughts and observations and, in the later parts of the novel, copies other people’s aphorisms from a book someone has given her. Copying out aphorisms and maxims was a technique frequently used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to familiarize pupils with Latin vocabulary and syntax; gradually, the learner acquired a differentiated understanding of entire thematic fields.⁶ In discussions about the usefulness of commonplace books during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, proponents of the method argued that it served to inculcate rational principles of memorization.⁷ Ottilie, however, is incapable of learning in this way, as the assistant at her boarding school explains, because she needs to have connections spelled out explicitly: “Sie steht unfähig, ja stöckisch vor einer leicht faßlichen Sache, die für sie mit nichts zusammenhängt. Kann man aber die Mittelglieder finden und ihr deutlich machen, so ist ihr das Schwerste begreiflich” (FA 8:294). Copying aphorisms is precisely the wrong method to induct her into the educated culture of her day, because these highly condensed reflections depend on the learner’s ability to perceive connections at which they only hint.

This becomes apparent when Ottilie copies well-known aphorisms and explains them in a subtly skewed ways. Puzzled by the interest those around her take in...