Typologies of Repetition, Reflection, and Recurrence: Interpreting the Novella in Goethe's Wahlverwandtschaften

Summary

Und doch bei aller Unvollständigkeit des Literarwesens finden wir tausendfältige Wiederholung, woraus hervorgeht, wie beschränkt des Menschen Geist und Schicksal sei.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Maximen und Reflexionen

In the tenth chapter of the second part of Die Wahlverwandtschaften Goethe inserts the novella “Die wunderlichen Nachbarskinder,” an intriguing puzzle whose solution elucidates his moral and lends added unity to the work Thomas Mann deems “de[n] kühnsten und tiefsten Ehebruchsroma[n], den die moralische Kultur des Abendlandes hervorgebracht hat.” The novella must be considered a puzzle, for although Goethe provides information throughout the novel that reveals the identity of the young officer of the insert, the character of the novel whose past presages the future of the other three principals, he challenges the reader to deduce the outcome of the episode and to determine why the vignette is included, why it appears where it does in the sequence of events, and how it relates to the work as a whole. Deciphering the correspondence between novella and novel affords the full understanding of both, as the one hinges on the other. Only by extrapolating the insert's untold conclusion can one know with certainty the untold fate of the novel's surviving principals and grasp the inevitability of that fate within a relentless continuum. As the novel's title suggests, the elemental symmetry of being is governed by immutable natural law. Accordingly, parallels of structure, setting, plot, character, and language between novella and novel allow the reader to fill in gaps in each.