Kunsterfahrung als Weltverstehen: Die ästhetische Form von "Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre." (review)

Dennis F. Mahoney 237 Schödlbauer, Ulrich, Kunsterfahrung als Weltverstehen: Die ästhetische Form von "Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre." Heidelberg: Winter, 1984. More than just a new reading of Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Schödlbauer's study represents the attempt to uncover the compositional elements in that novel which produce in the reader the sense of the wholeness of the work. And while the results of this effort do not, in this reviewer's opinion, live up to the expectations generated by Schödlbauer's learned and demanding theoretical reflections, they do stimulate the reconsideration of a work Goethe himself once described as well-nigh incommensurable. The first half of this modified version of Schödlbauer's 1981 Heidelberg dissertation involves a perceptive critique of previous directions in Wilhelm Meister research as well as aesthetic theory. While acknowledging the debt his own study owes to the tradition of "Kunstkritik" founded by the early Romantics, Schödlbauer repudiates the notion of art, specifically the Lehrjahre, being a representation of artistic subjectivity. Although willing to consider the Lehrjahre as a "Bildungsroman," he contends that the use of this term as a conveyer of the novel's content still leaves unanswered the specifics of its form. And his survey of theories of narration likewise disputes the assertion, particularly as advanced by structuralistic or generative grammatical critics, that these have supplanted traditional aesthetic criticism. Schödlbauer develops his own model based on the concept of presentation—a unity of depiction and the thematicizing of depiction—as being the factor which brings about aesthetic satisfaction and knowledge of the world in the reader. Günther Müller's notion of "Erzählmorphologie" plays a role in his deliberations; but rather than relying on analogies to biological phenomena, as did Müller, he develops his theory with the aid of Goethe's reflections on artistic form in works such as "Einfache Nachahmung der Natur, Manier, Stil" (1789), "Der Sammler und die Seinigen" (1799) and "Über Wahrheit und Wahrscheinlichkeit der Kunstwerke" (1798). The most novel—and in my mind, most questionable—aspect of Schödlbauer's model, however, is his attempt to elucidate Goethe's "gegenständliches Denken" in the Lehrjahre with the aid of four concepts from the thinking of the late Goethe: "das Absolute," "die moralische Weltordnung," "Systole und Diastole" and "das Dämonische" (pp. 78 f). Acting on the premise that Faust and the Wilhelm Meister novels represent Goethe's attempts to render a totality of aspects of reality, Schödlbauer understands the Lehrjahre as the first of Goethe's poetic works where the above four "Urworte" are completely present as form paradigms. As was true for Hannelore Schlaffer's recent study of Wilhelm Meister—with which other significant parallels exist, to be discussed at a later point in this review—Schödlbauer takes issue with an isolated treatment of either WilhelmMeister novel, though he does admit that a discussion of the form paradigms of the Wanderjahre oversteps the task of his own investigation. By this point, the reader should be curious to learn what Schödlbauer himself has to say about Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. The discussion of "Herkules am Scheidewege," with which the second half of the study commences, represents a promising investigation of a form paradigm in Book I of the novel: while Wilhelm would like to see himself as a young Hercules, battling for a National Theater, his depiction of the Muse runs contrary to traditional iconography and takes the form of Pleasure, not Virtue (p. 85); a rather ironic use of motifs from the Hercules myths has Norberg's present to Mariane assume the 238 GOETHE SOCIETY OF NORTH AMERICA function of the cloak of Nessus, causing Wilhelm to consign not himself, but rather his poetic products to the flames (p. 95 f) and signaling the failure of his attempt to combine heroism with success in love. Had Schödlbauer traced interrelationships between this paradigm and motifs such as Tancred and Chlorinde, Hamlet and Ophelia and the "kranker Königssohn" throughout the course of the novel, a significant complement to the work of Christoph Schweitzer and Erika Nolan on the "kranker Königssohn" might have resulted. Instead, Schödlbauer attempts to apply to...