‘Direction, which thou canst not see’: Chance, Providence, and Faith in Lessing

Abstract

ONE of the most suggestive essays on Lessing to have appeared in recent years is that by Karl S. Guthke on 'Der Gliicksspieler als Autor'.1 In this article, Guthke observes that the well-attested biographical fact of Lessing's 'Spielsucht', familiar though the habit was in the circles in which he moved (albeit frequently denounced in eighteenth-century literature), introduces a discordant element into the general picture of a rationalist Lessing, believing (be he essentially Leibnizian or Spinozist) in a deterministic universe, governed by an all-wise, omnipotent and benevolent Providence, in which nothing occurs by chance or at random nor even through the caprice of a supposedly free human will, but all is directed for the best. The gambler commits himself, by contrast, to a world of contingency, uncertainty, incalculability, hope and disappointment, promise and threat (pp. 365 f.). Guthke points out Lessing's interest in such figures as Cardanus and Premontval who speculated on the role of chance in life. And he illustrates the overwhelming importance of chance and coincidence in Lessing's major plays: in Phi/otas 'das wunderbare Kriegsgliick ... alles andere als die verniinftige Vorsehung, vielmehr blind, stockblind gegen alles Verdienst' (p. 369); the play of chance arrivals and departures, of chance' delays and returns in Minna von Barnheim, Miss Sara Sampson and above all in Emilia Gaiotti, where the whole catastrophe turns upon the fortuitous arrival of Orsina at Dosalo and her supplying the otherwise weaponless Odoardo Galotti with the fatal dagger. The plays suggest a world of 'sinnfremder Zufall' (p. 375) rather than the coherent 'Schattenriss von dem Ganzen des ewigen Sch6pfers' called for by Lessing's dramatic theory: the latter is conceived under the aegis of that faith in providence upon which the plays, with their reflection of actual experience, cast an all too pervasive doubt. Nathan der Weise, it is true, demonstrates the omnipresence and justice of divine providence, but on this account, Guthke argues, should be classed with the theoretical rather than the dramatic works a surprising new version of the old chestnut that Nathan is a dramatized treatise rather than a fully autonomous work of art (p. 377). So, we are left with a 'Widerspruch dramatisch-gestalterischer Bevorzugung und theoretischer Ablehnung einer Welt, die der Lebenserfahrung des Spielers entspricht: einer 'fortunosen' Welt, flir die das ZufaIlige im Guten and Bosen, das