Song or Narration?: Goethe's Mignon

Summary

This short piece wishes to engage a large question, namely, the question of how the specific story a poem tells relates to the ways in which poetry emotionally engages its readers. Obviously, this is too large a question to allow for a clear and satisfactory answer. And yet, poetry stands at a peculiar intersection since it usually contains some specific story or rudimentary narrative while also evoking sentiments in the reader or listener who can recognize himself or herself in the poem. I do not wish to suggest that empathy or identification is the key mechanism we need to consider. instead I want to ask why and how poetry is able to address everyone, even while telling a rather discrete tale. How can poetry speak to all when telling about only one? More simply: How can the universal and the singular come together in reading poetry? I believe that the answer to this question lies in effects prior to or outside of mechanisms of empathy—at least this is what I will suggest by means of example. The example, of course, is not a neutral one, for there are no neutral examples. The example or case I will discuss is that of Goethe's Mignon, and more specifically her song “Kennst du das Land.”

Everything about Mignon suggests simplicity, but it is precisely her simplicity that makes her most mysterious. Her simplicity may be the result of a mixing of opposites and extremes, as in child and adult, male and female, naïve and wise, nature and culture.