Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre as an Allegory of Reading

BIRGIT BALDWIN Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre as an Allegory of Reading Hermann Broch's assessment of Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre as "[der] Grundstein der neuen Dichtung, des neuen Romans" suggests that Goethe's novel poses a challenge to theories of narrative.1 This paper will examine the Wanderjahre as a novel about its own being as a novel. At issue are the ways in which this novel's plot seems to have more to do with how novels are read than with plots themselves, and the tension that arises as a consequence between these two aspects of narrative. Secondary literature has not sufficiently stressed the fact that Goethe's novel explicitly privileges reading and writing. At the Oheim's estate, for example, Hersilie tells Wilhelm "daß bei uns viel gelesen wird." To prove it, she gives him the manuscript of the inserted novella "Die pilgernde Törin" for bedtime reading. She explains that from his reading he will be able to judge his new friends and participate in their circle: "Hiernach werden Sie uns beurteilen, hiernach teilnehmen, einstimmen oder streiten" (5O).2 Again, after having read the internal correspondence between the various members of that household, Wilhelm writes to Natalie: "Wie viel die Menschen schreiben, davon hat man gar keinen Begriff (78), where wie viel has the force not only of factual description but also of rhetorical exclamation. This heightened emphasis on reading and writing could of course be partly explained by the constraints of the Entsagung plot, the fact that the characters, having renounced the company of their loved ones, are separated from one another and forced to wander, never remaining in the same place for more than three days. Nevertheless, we the readers are also constantly made aware of the fact that we are reading a novel. At one point the narrator even explains his own procedure in these terms: "Unsere Freunde haben einen Roman in die Hand genommen" (118). The privileged status of textual issues is evident even in the opening scene of the novel, in which Wilhelm is already writing and the discussion centers around problems of naming and the relation of fiction to reality. Wilhelm is sitting in the shadow of a mighty rock, "an grauser, bedeutender 214 Birgit Baldwin Stelle": "Er bemerkte eben etwas in seine Schreibtafel, als Felix, der umhergeklettert war, mit einem Stein in der Hand zu ihm kam. 'Wie nennt man diesen Stein, Vater?' sagte der Knabe." Although Wilhelm does not know, he remembers that people call it Katzengold, presumably, as he explains, since it is false and so are cats. "Das will ich mir merken," says Felix (J). Felix's question deals with meta-critical issues: what does the metaphor of the stone's name signify? How do appearances which deceive fit into reality? These questions immediately take on a certain seriousness when, moments later, St. Joseph the Second passes by with his wife Mary and her baby on a mule. Wilhelm gets confused about reality and history, and asks what is under the circumstances a rather strange question: "ob ihr wirkliche Wanderer oder ob ihr nur Geister seid" (10). It is indeed an ominous spot, a "frightening, significant place," which allows Wilhelm to be more surprised and awed by real wanderers — who, although they may look like the holy family, are at least human — than by "mere ghosts." In dealing with the novel as an allegory of reading, my paradigmatic example will be the Kästchen, taken as both impediment and impetus to reading. By reading this and other examples, I will try to elaborate a strategy of reading that would be capable of accounting for the self-reflexive status of the novel, beginning from the concept of renunciation referred to in the subtitle of the Wanderjahre, "oder die Entsagenden." The "renunciante" can be understood as model readers — readers willing to renounce the certainty that comes with assigning meanings to symbols. Entsagung, as a strategy of reading, would seek to maintain rather than to flatten out the conflicting clues the text offers for its interpretation. Such a model of reading can best be approached by dealing with irony, for, as I will argue, it is irony that makes the Wanderjahre a...