Goethe's 'Elective Affinities' and the Critics by Astrida Orle Tantillo (review)

Abstract

244 Reviews research, and points to areas on which much more work is needed, e.g. the extent to which members of the Deutsche Gesellschaft were also involved with other learned societies in Leipzig and elsewhere. The book concludes with a selection of source material: poems, speeches, and letters. There is an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary literature and an index of names. Institute of Germanic Studies, London John L. Flood Repertorium zu Albrecht von Hallers Korrespondenz 1J24-1JJJ. Ed. by Urs Boschung , Barbara Braun-Bucher, Stefan Hachler, Kathrin Ott, Hubert Steinke, and Martin Stuber. (StudiaHalleriana, 7) Basel: Schwabe. 2002. 2 vols. xlviii + io6ipp., with CD-ROM. ?ii9;SwFi98. ISBN 3-7965-1325-5 (hbk). Scholarly correspondences are an important source for our understanding of the circulation of ideas in early modern Europe and the constitution, both formal and informal, of the respublica eruditorum. The scientist and poet Albrecht von Haller (1708-77), Swiss by birth, but from 1736 to 1753 Professor of Anatomy, Botany, and Surgery at the University of Gottingen and editor of the Gottingische Gelehrte Anzeigen, was the author of one ofthe last great correspondences ofthe period, which he conducted in French, German, English and Latin. Among his correspondents were some of the most important scientists of his day, including Charles Bonnet and Horace-Benedict de Saussure. A multitudeof others testifyto his extensive scientific and literary contacts. Most ofthe surviving letters (approximately 13,300 from Haller, 3,700 to him) are in the Haller archive in Bern. Others are scattered across some 400 archives around the world. The present volumes offerscholars a commented location list which will enable them to pinpoint letters that might be of interest to them. Each correspondence is listed and brief summaries are given ofthe contents. For each letter,the archive, date, place, language, and number of pages are indicated, as is whether, and if so where, it has been published. Indices give the correspondents, other persons mentioned, places and subjects, and publications referred to. There is a chronological table of all the letters, and a table listing them by location of the correspondents. The introduction places the whole corpus in its context and gives a brief assessment of its significance. A CD (in PDF format) contains the entire text of the print edition, which can thus be searched electronically. At an astonishingly low price, it goes without saying that this will be an indispensable research tool for scholars working on Haller or any of his correspondents. But it should also be welcome and find more general use among those interested in the history of science, academic institutions, and literary culture in the eighteenth century. St Peter's College, Oxford K. F. Hilliard Goethe's 'Elective Affinities'and the Critics. By Astrida Orle Tantillo. (Literary Criticism in Perspective) Rochester, NY: Camden House. 2001. xxiv + 241 pp. ?45;?65. ISBN 1-57113-212-0 (hbk). Astrida Orle Tantillo offersus a thoughtful and generous documentation of critical responses to Goethe's Die Wahlverwandtschaften from the time of its firstappear? ance in 1809 to the present day. Particularly valuable are her full discussions of the MLRy 99.1, 2004 245 reactions of Goethe's contemporary readers (Rehberg, de Valenti, Abeken, Solger). As she rightly observes, Die Wahlverwandtschaften has from the outset proved an endlessly fascinating and elusive text. Time and again discussion centres on the ques? tion as to whether the novel is a moral work, condemning the inroads of passion into all forms of cognitive and social stability, or whether it ultimately insists on the deceptiveness and fragilityof all such comforting constructs. Tantillo also com? ments helpfully on the Hegelian readings of the mid-nineteenth century (Rotscher, Rosenkranz, Weisse) which suggest that Goethe's novel is seeking to reach a new conceptualization of human relationships and moral values, and, by that token, a new form of discursivity for the novel. The late nineteenth century sees the creation of a noble, heroic Goethe (Herman Grimm, Bielschowsky, Witkowski). Here biography serves both ethically and politically upliftingends. Die Wahlverwandtschaftenis linked to Goethe's relationship with Minna Herzlieb, and his renunciation of threatening passion in the name of a contained and orderly life is seen to inform not...