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The Principle of the Dominant Metaphor in Goethe's Werther
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
“The affair of love, which, out of conformity with the Stoic philosophy, we shall here treat as a disease.”—Fielding's Tom Jones. IT has been pointed out that a motif or idea which plays an outstanding part in a poet's imagination and recurs frequently in his invention, is likely also to manifest itself in the form of his linguistic expression. It will crop up wherever the poet embellishes his discourse with simile, wherever emotional tension drives him to metaphoric expression, i.e., to the substitution of a word which carries more feeling than the word of common usage, or to an effort to express an idea which cannot properly be conveyed by the vocables at his disposal. This principle, it appears to me, becomes particularly significant from an æsthetic point of view when it manifests itself, as it sometimes does, with unusual strength within the scope of a single work. It may then give a very decided color and tone to the language of the whole work, producing metaphor after metaphor, simile after simile, all harping on one dominant theme throughout the book and so playing a continuous accompaniment, as it were, which keeps a major theme of the composition ringing in our ears as the story progresses through other motifs. This theme then becomes a style determinant, shaping the linguistic expression throughout a work of considerable length and making for a uniformity of tone.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1936
References
1 Hans Sperber, Motiv und Wort bei Gustav Meyrink (Leipzig: O. R. Reisland, 1918).
2 Metaphor, so J. G. Jennings has put it, “may be said to stand to the main theme of a poem as does the harmony to the air in music.” Cf. his Metaphor in Poetry, Glasgow and Bombay: Blackie and Son, Ltd. Cf. also E. G. Kolbenheyer, Kunstwart, xxv (1912). 188.
3 Line 1515 in the critical edition of August Sauer, Vol. iv, whose line numbering I am following, uses Schlingen here, but the edition of 1840, used by Stefan Hock (Bong & Co.), has Netz, 1498.
4 This figure seems to be an echo from Chapman's Fourth Sestiad:
Dumb sorrow spake aloud in tears and blood,
That from her grief-burst veins in piteous flood,
From the sweet conduits of her favor fell (ll. 262–264)
Cf. Christopher Marlowe, Works, ed. by A. H. Bullen (1885), iii, 67.—The influence of Marlowe-Chapman on Grillparzer seems to be underestimated. Other reminiscences of their poem can be found in Grillparzer's play: Fourth Sestiad, ll. 47 f.: “since the first breath that begun the wrack Of her free quiet from Leander's lips” (cf. MLW, 1171); and ll. 25 f.: “Her plenteous hair in curled billows swims On her bright shoulder” (cf. MLW, 631–633); Third Sestiad 209–210: “and her virgin waist The wealthy girdle of the sea embraced” (cf. MLW, 2053). Certainly in respect to the use of metaphor, there is an evident kinship between the two works, since the English poets also favor maritime imagery. Some two dozen of their numerous metaphors and similes are taken from the life of the sea; note especially i 107–112, 228, iii 100, 323–326, 339, iv 25, and verse 12 of the Argument of the Sixth Sestiad; also i 105, 333, ii 262, 276, 315, iii 35, 210–213, iv 25, 36, 50–53, vi 123–132, 140–141, 241 f. This is not enough, perhaps, to say that this type is dominant in their great mass of imagery (nor does the sea play such an outstanding rôle in their story as it does in Grillparzer's drama), but it is certainly very much more than is found in the other sources known to Grillparzer.—Of these sources, Ovid contains scarcely a trace of maritime metaphor; Backmann, in Sauer's critical edition of Grillparzer, iv, 255, cites “Heroides,” Paris to Helena, verse 25: “perstet (Cytherea) et ut pelagi, sic pectoris adiuvet aestum,” but the letters of Hero and Leander themselves contain nothing of the sort.—In Musæus' poem I find but three metaphors taken from the sea: Cypris is born of the ocean and governs the sea and our suffering:
; (249 f.).
Leander, swimming, is himself oarsman and pilot, a self-steered ship,
(255),
and wedlock has many waves: (291). In this poem it is rather the figures taken from light and fire which dominate the language, and Hero's torch is made an outstanding feature of the story, beginning with the invocation:
.
The fire of love is seen in conflict with the water of the sea:
(245 f.)
and the sea itself seems to be seething with fire, (204). There are more than two dozen such light and fire metaphors in this poem, which is not, like that of Marlowe and Chapman, otherwise rich in metaphor.—Schiller's ballad contains a reminiscence of Musæus' conflict of fire and water: “Auch durch des Gewässers Fluten Mit der Sehnsucht feur'gen Gluten Stachelt sie Leanders Mut” (41–43). This poem is rich in metaphors for the sea, but it does not use the sea as metaphor for other things.—Wieland gives us one striking figure of the sort, in which he makes the waves of the turbulent Hellespont the bearers of Hero's emotions: “… und nun auf einmal stürmt Der Wirbelwind daher, wie Fels auf Fels getürmt Stürzt Well' auf Well', und ach, in jeder stürmt der schreckliche Gedank', vor dem ihr Blut erstarret: Ha! wenn ihn dieser wilde Sturm ergriffen hat!” (Schach Lolo, quoted in Reinhold Backmann's introduction to the fourth volume of the critical edition of Grillparzer, p. x.)
5 Quoted by Sauer, Franz Grillparzer (1887), p. lxii.
6 Not counting in this, or in any of the following examples dealing with antiquity, the use of Greek mythology as metaphor.
7 Ehrhard-Necker, Franz Grillparzer, 2nd ed. (München, 1910), p. 274; Erich Calow, Grillparzer und die Bühne, Greifswald Diss. (1914), pp. 88 f.; Ernst Alker, Franz Grillparzer (Marburg, 1930), p. 238.
8 August Sauer has collected a dozen of them in Anz. f. d. A., xix, 325 f.
9 The symbolic use of light and darkness is, of course, a favorite metaphor of the eighteenth century, but Goethe's use of it here also has its roots in his source; the contrast between night and light is given in an outstanding metaphor of Euripides, where Orestes says:
(975),
outstanding, because metaphors are very rare in Euripides' style. There is another light metaphor in the wish of his chorus to return home on the brilliant path of the sun: (1086), if this can be called metaphor. There is a certain relationship to light and darkness also in the theme of the covered head, which recurs so often in Goethe's play (256, 427, 539, 615, 899, 1107, 1124, 1581 f., 1955 f., 2109); it also has its beginnings in Euripides' l. 1154, where Iphigenia covers the heads of the matricides against the face of the sun, . Much is also made in Euripides' play, by way of subterfuge to be sure, of the cleansing of the sacrificial victims and Diana's statue, 986, 1100–80, which magic rite serves as a basis for this favorite among Goethe's images, and which he fills with new metaphoric meaning in making it Iphiginia's mission to cleanse the house of Tantalus of its inherited curse.
10 Hermann Hettner, Kleine Schriften (1884), p. 465, cites a letter to Charlotte von Stein, calling “jene Sonne, in welcher Orest in der Nähe der Schwester von der Qual seines nächtlichen Wahnsinns gesundet, die eigentliche Achse des Stücks.” This letter I have not been able to locate. In his “Italienische Reise,” Weimar edition, xxxi, 48, ll. 17–27, Goethe calls “den Moment, da sich Orest in der Nähe der Schwester und des Freundes wiederfindet” the axis of the play, but without the use of the metaphor, which, if it was supplied by Hettner, shows that the latter had certainly caught the spirit of the dominant metaphor of Goethe's play.
11 Among the greater plays which have no nocturnal scenes (Minna, Emilia, Nathan, Tasso, Natürliche Tochter, Maria Stuart, Penthesilea and Grabbe's Friedrich Barbarossa—none of the plays of Grillparzer, Büchner, Hebbel), Penthesilea is the only one which plays entirely in the open.
12 Hermann Pongs, Das Bild in der Dichtung, i. Band (Marburg, 1927), pp. 286–288.
13 Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Richard Wagner, 6. Aufl. (1919), p. 429.—The metaphoric element in the compound Todesnacht lies in the second half. The antithesis of Tod is Leben, which also occurs several times in Wagner's text: “gib Vergessen, dass ich lebe” (1248); “wie könnte die Liebe mit mir sterben? Die ewig lebende mit mir enden” (1334 f.); “So stürben wir um ungetrennt, ewig einig … der Liebe nur zu leben” (1358–67; line numbering according to the edition of Julius Kapp. Leipzig: Hesse und Becker Verlag). But life and death, though the recurrence of the latter, as Chamberlain points out, is extremely frequent (the words Tod and sterben and their equivalents occur about 120 times in this short text), and though it is often personified, often implied in such concepts as Sühne, Rache, etc., are rarely, if ever, used strictly as metaphors in the sense that they are substituted for other concepts.—Tod is so used, however, by Gottfried von Strassburg, who makes Brangäne say in her dismay over the drinking of the love potion: “owî! daz selbe glas, und der tranc, der darinne was, der ist iuwer beider tôt” (12491 ff.), where death is, of course, not to be taken literally; and Tristan takes up the figure and elaborates it playfully: “nu walte es got! ez wære tôt oder leben [der tranc]: ez hat mir sanfte vergeben. i'ne weiz, wie jener werden sol: dirre tôt der tuot mir wol. solte die wunneclîche Isôt immer alsus sin min tôt, sô wolte ich gerne werben umb ein êweclîchez sterben” (12498 ff.; cf. also ll. 18472, 18481, and Isolde's speech ll. 18500–20).—The substitution of the “Todestrank” for the “Minnetrank” is, therefore, not so “entirely Wagner's own poetic invention” as Chamberlain seems to believe (The Wagnerian Drama [London, 1923], p. 94; also op. cit., p. 415). What really has happened here, is that Wagner has taken a Gottfriedian metaphor, death for “love potion,” and transformed it into a real theme, thereby indeed, as Chamberlain says, metamorphosing the story in its fundamental structure.
14 Even the comparison of Isolde to the sun, a simile of which Gottfried is very fond (Tristan und Isolde, ll. 9456–64, 10899 ff., 11025 ff., 12569 ff.), is reversed by Wagner's Tristan into negative meaning: “Der Tag! der Tag! Der dich umgliss, Dahin, wo sie Der Sonne glich In hehrster Ehren Glanz und Licht Isolde mir entrückt!” (1063–69). But this mystic glorification of night and its corollary, the negation of light and day, this reversing of the traditional value of these metaphors, runs counter to the habit and spirit of the language and is difficult to carry through consistently. Neither Wagner nor Novalis, to whom Wagner is indebted for this his Tristan-dominant, have succeeded entirely, but have occasionally slipped into the manner of giving to light its positive value. Thus Isolde bursts into a glorification of the light and fire of love: Die im Busen mir die Glut entfacht, Die mir das Herze brennen macht, Die mir als Tag der Seele lacht, Frau Minne will, es werde Nacht, Dass hell sie dorten leuchte (946–955), just as Novalis uses Sonne for his beloved and for God's countenance at the end of the first, third and fifth of the “Hymnen an die Nacht.”—For Wagner's indebtedness to Novalis' Hymnen, cp. Arthur Prüfer, “Novalis' Hymnen in ihren Beziehungen zu Wagner,” Wagner-Jahrbuch, hrsg. von Ludwig Frankenstein, I. 1906, pp. 290 ff. and Rosemary Park, “Das Bild von Richard Wagners Tristan und Isolde in der deutschen Literatur,” Deutsche Arbeiten der Universität Köln, Nr. 9, 1935.
15 Gottfried uses a very different signal l. 14427. On the other hand, he has a similar motif in the hiding of the lights with a chess-board or curtains (13510, 13590, 15140), and this may have suggested Wagner's invention.
16 This seems to be a favorite type with Kleist, according to Minde-Pouet, Heinrich von Kleist, seine Sprache und sein Stil (Weimar, 1897), pp. 158 f., 167 f.
17 The relation of the metaphor to this hallucination is pointed out by Fritz Kanter, Der bildliche Ausdruck in Kleists “Penthesilea” (Jena Diss., 1913), pp. 55 f. So also Helene Hermann, Zs. f. Ästh. u. allg. Kunstw., xviii, 297, points out that the hound metaphor anticipates the final horror.
18 Page and line numbering according to Vol. xix of the Weimar edition.
19 Grimm and Sanders give: Anfechtung, Angst, Durst, Frost, Gewalt, Hitze, Hohn, Hunger, Kälte, Krankheit, Kränkungen, Mangel, Nachteil, Not, Pein, Plagen, Schaden, Schiffbruch, Schimpf, Schmach, Schmerzen, Schrecken, Strafe, Streiche, den Tod, Trübsal, etwas Unangenehmes, Unannehmlichkeiten, eine Unbill, Ungemach, Unglück, Unrecht, Verachtung, Verfolgung, Verlust, Verspottung, Weh.—Exactly one-half of these are physiological and half spiritual.
20 Werther himself compares his suffering to that of the Savior: “Und ward der Kelch dem Gott vom Himmel auf seiner Menschenlippe zu bitter, warum soll ich grosstun und mich stellen, als schmeckte er mir süss?” (130.22, cf. also 131.5).
21 By which I do not mean that Werther is not a neurotic person; the pathological character of his mind has been recognized from Goethe on down, and is analyzed in detail by Ernst Feise, “Werther als nervöser Charakter,” Germanic Review, i, 185–253.
22 Among the early readers of the book, the double meaning of the word is immediately sensed, for instance, by Wieland, who informs his readers in the Teutsche Merkur, Dec. 1774, that they will find here “nicht Leiden in dem Sinne, wie sonst die Romanhelden zu Wasser und zu Lande tausend Fährlichkeiten auszustehen hatten, sondern ein Gemälde eines inneren Seelenkampfes”—quoted by J. W. Appell, Werther und seine Zeit, 4th ed. (1896), p. 130. The English translators, on the other hand, who have consistently used the word “sorrows”—see B. Q. Morgan, Bibliogr. of German Lit. in Eng. Translation, Univ. of Wisconsin Studies, No. 16 (Madison, 1922)—instead of “suffering,” in spite of the fact that the earliest among them seem to have worked from French texts, where Baron de S(eckendorf) at least, had given them a good lead with the word “souffrances” (Goedekes Grdr. iv, 3d ed., pp. 201 ff.), have missed this semi-metaphoric effect.
23 “Die Symbolik verwandelt die Erscheinung in Idee, die Idee in ein Bild und so, dass die Idee im Bild immer unendlich wirksam bleibt …”—Sprüche in Prosa, Weimar ed., xlviii, 206.
24 The whole discussion, and the sickness simile in particular, are an imitation of the suicide debate in Rousseau's Nouvelle Héloise, Part iii, 21st and 22nd letter, but Werther's argument is made on a different stand from Rousseau's debaters. The unhappy St. Preux also considers himself in the light of a sick man, who would end his pains by death: “Le congé n'est-il pas dans le mal-être? En quelque lieu qu'il (dieu) me place, soit dans un corps, soit sur la terre, c'est pour y rester autant que je suis bien, et pour en sortir dès que j'y suis mal.” But for Werther death is the result of the disease, for St. Preux it is the cure: “En effet, pourquoi seroit-il permis de se guérir de la goutte et non de la vie? … S'il est pénible de mourir, qu'est-ce à dire? Les drogues font-elles plaisir de prendre? Qu'on me montre donc comment il est plus permis de se délivrer d'un mal passager en faisant de remèdes que d'un mal incurable en s‘ôtant la vie, et comment on est moins coupable d'user de quinquina pour la fièvre que d'opium pour la pierre.”—As for Bomston, Werther reverses his argument completely in his equation of moral and physical ills, for Bomston had made it a point to cite them as opposites: “Considère un moment le progrès naturel des maux de l‘âme directement opposé au progrès des maux du corps, comme les deux substances sont opposées par leur nature. Ceux-ci s'invétèrent, s'empirent en vieillissant, et détruisent enfin cette machine mortelle. Les autres, au contraire, altérations externes et passagères d'un être immortel et simple, s'effacent insensiblement et le laissent dans sa forme originelle que rien ne sauroit changer.”—These similes form only one argument among many for St. Preux and Bomston, while Werther concentrates entirely on his one idea, so that it has a much greater importance in the discussion.
25 Hans Gose, Goethe's “Werther” (1921), pp. 46, 89 f., sees in this “ethischen Naturalismus” a basic idea of the book.
26 Mixed metaphor (Joch, aufgärt, Ketten zerreisst) is another symptom of Werther's unconscious use of metaphor.
27 Personen im Gleichgewicht (25.12); eine Leidenschaft wie in ein Gefäss aufnehmen … dieses neue Ingrediens verursacht Gärung und schwillt schäumend über den Rand (80.16); wie ein Sauerteig, der seine Ansteckung fortpflanzt (106.27 f.); Anziehung (287.10); Anziehungskraft (396.7).
28 Paul Feldkeller in Zs. f. Ästh. u. allg. Kunstw., xxii, 147 f.