[Gutenberg 11123] • The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 01 / Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English.

Excerpt from The German Classics, Vol. 1 of 20: Masterpieces of German Literature Translated Into English

When that which should be a short story is expanded into a novel one can usually detect the padding and the embroidery. So it is certainly in this case. Those long descriptions of landscape-gardening; the copious extracts from Ottilie's diary, containing many thoughts which would hardly have entered the head of such a girl; the pages given to subordinate characters, whose comings and goings have no very obvious connection with the story, all these retard the narrative and tend to hide the essential idea. The strange title, too, has served to divert attention from the real centre of gravity. Had the tale been called, say, Ottilie's Expiation, there would have been less room for misunderstanding and irrelevant criticism; there would have been less concern over the moral, and more over the artistic, aspect of the story.

What then was the essential idea? Simply to describe a peculiar tragedy resulting from the invasion of the marriage relation by lawless passion. As for the title, it should be remembered that there was just then a tendency to look for curious analogies between physical law and the Operations of the human mind. Great interest was felt in suggestion, occult influence, and all that sort of thing. Goethe himself had lately been lecturing on magnetism. He had also observed, as no one can fail to observe, that the sexual attraction sometimes seems to act like chemical affinity: it breaks up old unions, forms new combinations, destroys pre-exis-ting bodies, as if it were a law that must work itself out, whatever the consequences. Such a process will now and then defy prudence, self-respect, duty, even religion, going its way like a blind and ruthless law' of physics. But if this is to happen the recombining elements must, of course, have each its specific character; else there is no affinity and no tragedy.

It is no part of the analogy that the pressure of sex is always and by its very nature like the attraction of atoms.