The Promises of Childhood: Autobiography in Goethe and Jean Paul

Summary

The observation and inscription of one's own childhood always comes too late. Unlike the study of child development or child behavior, the writing of one's own past necessarily falls under the rubric of belatedness. Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy exemplifies one dilemma of this law of autobiographical belatedness: as Tristram fiercely strives to write to the present,each stroke of the pen dedicated to the past and each detail secured only further remove him from his goal. In writing his past, Tristram only falls further behind the present time. Goethe's Aus meinem Leben. Dichtung und Wahrheit and Jean Paul's Selberlebensbeschreibung avoided Sterne's paradox of the ever-proceeding present: Goethe commenced his autobiographical project in 1811 and intended to write only up to his move to Weimar in 1775;time relieved Jean Paul of this problem—he died before he could finish writing the twelfth year of his life.

Both Goethe and Jean Paul were confronted, however, with a series of other questions intrinsic to the belatedness of autobiography, particularly of the childhood years before one could write, before one kept a record of oneself, and before the thought ever arose that one, in the words of Goethe, “sich selbst historisch wird.” Where does recollection end and fiction or fantasy begin? How does historical narration relate to literary narration, especially when a certain claim to accuracy is made? More decisively, what does childhood—especially when it may well be one's fiction of childhood—signify for the now adult writer?