The Art of Landscape Gardening in Goethe's Novel Die Wahlverwandtschaften

Abstract

The Art of Landscape Gardening in Goethe's Novel Die Wahlverwandtschaften MARLIS MEHRA When Goethe's third novel Die Wahlverwandtschaften appeared in 1809, it immediately gave rise to controversy and criticism. One as­ pect, which provoked negative comments from Goethe's contempo­ raries, was the importance given to landscape gardening. Some crit­ ics declared that the very subject of landscape gardening had become too prominent in the novel.1 Others maintained that Goethe had in­ corporated his own experiences in improving the Park of Weimar without molding them into an integrated and artistic whole.2 The most severe criticism in this respect was voiced by the Austrian play­ wright Franz Grillparzer in 1841 who, although he held Die Wahlver­ wandtschaften in high regard, disliked the importance given to gar­ dening activities in the beginning of the novel: Was in diesen Wahlverwandtschaften am meisten stort, ist gleich von vornherein die widerliche Wichtigkeit, die den Parkanlagen, kleinlichen Baulichkeiten und dergleichen Zeug, fast parallel mit der Haupthandlung, gegeben wird. Es ist als ob man ein Stck aus Goethes Leben lase, der auch seine unvergleichlichen Gaben dadurch zum Teil paralysiert hat, dap er fast gleichen Anteil an derlei Zeitverderb wie an den wichtigsten Angelegenheiten seines eigentlichsten Berufes nahm.3 239 240 / M E H R A From our present point of view this negative criticism from Goethe's contemporaries seems quite astonishing, because later crit­ ics have usually considered the gardening as well as the landscape descriptions a significant part of the novel's intricate symbolic de­ sign.4 The interpretations by Walther Killy, Keith Dickson, and H. G. Barnes have shown, moreover, how well integrated with the devel­ opment of the plot and the characters—either as a setting for the action, as a means of psychological insight into the characters and their developing love relationships, or as a technique of foreshad­ owing future events—the gardening and landscape descriptions really are.5 On closer examination, therefore, much of the criticism by Goethe's contemporaries has proved to be groundless. Yet the ques­ tion remains: why did they tend to perceive the treatment of land­ scape gardening in this novel so negatively? Since their opinions were based on subjective impressions rather than on a methodical literary analysis which relates specific features of the work to the en­ tire structure, the gardening descriptions may have seemed obtrusive because they conveyed so much obvious cultural information. Al­ ready K. W. F. Solger pointed out in his well-known letter about Die Wahlverwandtschaften that the novel contained so much that was in fashion at that time, such as the art of landscape gardening, the love for medieval art, and the representation of tableaux vivants.6 Solger also noticed the artistry with which these matters were treated but which other contemporary critics failed to see. They may have con­ sidered the cultural documentation of the novel as unnecessary bal­ last, as unmolded subject matter, as pure "Stoff," if we may apply Schiller's aesthetic terminology here.7 Most critics of Die Wahlverwandtschaften have concentrated their analyses on the symbolic significance of the setting and the descrip­ tions of nature rather than on the gardening descriptions per se. To my knowledge, there is no interpretation dealing specifically with their historical and cultural context as well as their symbolic implica­ tions. In the present study I propose to fill this gap. I proceed specif­ ically from the gardening and not from the landscape descriptions and attempt to situate the old gardens and the new landscape park, depicted in Goethe's Wahlverwandtschaften, in their historical and cul­ tural context. Contemporary descriptions of existing landscape gar­ dens in Weimar, Worlitz, Hohenheim, and Seifersdorf are used as references and the historical development of the English gardening movement, in England as well as in Germany, provides the necessary cultural background.8 From such a historical comparison the unique features of the garden descriptions in Goethe's novel should clearly Landscape Gardening in Die Wahlverwandtschaften / 241 emerge and allow us to draw well-founded conclusions about their symbolic implications. In order to examine the charge made by some contemporaries that Goethe had incorporated his own experiences in landscape garden­ ing in his novel, let...