Elective Affinities

ELECTIVE AFFINITIES

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE was born in Frankfurt-am-Main in 1749. He studied at Leipzig, where he showed an interest in the occult, and in Strasbourg, where Herder introduced him to Shakespeare’s works and to folk poetry. He produced some essays and lyrical verse, and at twenty-four wrote Götz von Berlichingen, a play which brought him national fame and established him in the current Sturm und Drang movement. Werther, a tragic romance, was an even greater success. Goethe began work on Faust, and Egmont, another tragedy, before being invited to join the government at Weimar. His interest in the classical world led him to leave suddenly for Italy in 1786, and the Italian Journey recounts his travels there. Iphigenie auf Tauris and Torquato Tasso, classical dramas, were begun at this time. Returning to Weimar, Goethe started the second part of Faust, encouraged by Schiller. During this late period he finished the series of Wilhelm Meister books and wrote many other works, including The Oriental Divan and Elective Affinities. He also directed the State Theatre and worked on numerous scientific theories in evolutionary botany. Goethe was married in 1806. He finished Faust before he died in 1832.

R. J. HOLLINGDALE translated eleven of Nietzsche’s books and published two books about him; he also translated works by, among others, Schopenhauer, Goethe, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Lichtenberg and Theodor Fontane, many of these for Penguin Classics. He was the honorary president of the British Nietzsche Society. R. J. Hollingdale died on 28 September 2001. In its obituary the Guardian paid tribute to his ‘inspired gift for German translation’.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

Elective Affinities

Translated with an Introduction by
R. J. HOLLINGDALE

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First published 1809
This translation first published 1971
Reprinted with a new Chronology and Further Reading 2005
19

Translation and introduction copyright © R. J. Hollingdale, 1971
Chronology and Further Reading copyright © David Deissner, 2005
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EISBN: 9781101491041

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

ELECTIVE AFFINITIES

Part One
Part Two

CHRONOLOGY

FURTHER READING

INTRODUCTION

1

GOETHE had lived with Christiane Vulpius for more than eighteen years and had had five children by her before, on 19 October 1806, he married her in the sacristy of the Hofkirche at Weimar. He was fifty-seven, she was forty-one. To Weimar society marriage was a contract not a ‘sacrament’, and divorce was a normal element of civilized life; but, like any society which still has the will to survive in it, Weimar society preserved and valued the social forms, and Goethe’s irregular household was an embarrassment. But he put an end to the irregularity only under external pressure. On 14 October the battle of Jena was fought and lost and was followed by the entry of the French army into Weimar: plundering and other inconveniences occurred, Goethe’s house was invaded, and it appears that the author of Faust was saved from a manhandling only by the valiant interposition of his Gretchen, who drove the soldiers away. The following day Napoleon arrived in the town and regularized military occupation commenced.