Cornelia Goethe (review)

Goethe Yearbook 275 The oscillations here are due in part to Kontje's method. As a consequence of his determination to read the text slowly, "giving particular attention to each shift in the argument" (79), the reading proceeds so closely to the text that it has difficulty reaching general conclusions. Such practices are in contrast to the more recent example of Juliet Sychrava, Schiller to Derrida: Idealism in Aesthetics (Cambridge UP, 1989) 22-34, who reads the Aesthetic Education in ways similar to Kontje, but is also able to link the text clearly to a more general set of problems across the history of aesthetics. Despite such misgivings, Constructing Reality is an impressive performance and exhilarating to read. Each of the five chapters states the argument concisely, bases conclusions on convincing evidence, and defends points ciearly in contrast to other scholars. There are a number of typographical errors, but the format is compelling enough that one is eager to read through it. Given the promise of this volume, one leaves it eager to read what Todd Kontje will produce next. University of Washington Steven Taubeneck Damm, Sigrid, Cornelia Goethe. 4th ed. Frankfurt/Main: Insel, 1989Despite her prominence in Dichtung und Wahrheit and in psychoanalytic studies of her brother and his works, Cornelia Goethe (1750-1777) has always remained obscure — more a family statistic in the great poet's biography than a woman with thoughts and opinions. With this volume, originally published in 1987 and now in its fourth edition, J.M.R. Lenz scholar Sigrid Damm attempts to extract Cornelia's life history from the large shadows cast by her father, brother, and husband, with the intention of making her emerge as a person in her own right. Siblings of the great often turn out to be unimpressive men and women, even when they have the genes of genius and share the same educational opportunities as their illustrious brothers and sisters. The reasons for their faifure to reach the same fevef of achievement are both numerous and various. Most relevant to this discussion — though not for obvious reasons — are Virginia Wooff s findings in her discourse on Shakespeare's hypothetical sister in A Room of One's Own-, societies devise strategies of containment which either frustrate or ostracize women who possess great talent. Damm would like to find that Cornelia was such a frustrated genius, a woman who would have accomplished a great deal more if only she had not been so thoroughly discouraged by the men in her life. But Cornelia disappoints in this respect, displaying neither unusual talent nor the desire to express herself in any but the most ordinary of ways, and Cornelia Goethe is as much an account of Damm's struggle to come to terms with her disappointment as it is a chronicle of the life of the elusive Cornelia. The narrative begins with Damm standing before Cornelia's tombstone in Emmendingen, musing on the viability of her project. Her greatest reservation is the lack of documen tation. As she informs us, Cornelia lived a "Nicht-Leben" and died at twenty-six, leaving only some diary pages and a few letters (10). Other personal papers were destroyed. A full biography with insight into her 276 Book Reviews personality and the events of her life is therefore only possible if Damm fifis in the gaps in available data with "psychologischer Einfühfung und Phantasie" (dust jacket). This method, the interpretive historian's standard practice carried to extremes, has both advantages and disadvantages. Where sufficient documentation exists, Damm is expert at weaving together related bits of history — much in the manner of W.H. Bruford — to produce a compelling account of life in the later eighteenth century. She complements Bruford, however, by focusing on the lives of women, specificalfy upper-middle-class women. Cornelia Goethe was a wealthy and extraordinarily well-educated young woman whose youthful diaries (written in French) contain sensitive and endearing reflections on life, love and the self-doubt arising from her lack of beauty (as perceived by herself and others close to her). On her eighteenth birthday, she wrote that all that she could expect of life was "Unglück [...], das ich noch...