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31st out of 48 books
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Elective Affinities
Baron Eduard and his second wife Charlotte enjoy a quiet, humdrum existence in their opulent castle. When he invites his friend the captain and she invites her niece Ottilie to stay with them, both hosts lives turn inside out when they begin to feel attracted to their guests. Juxtaposing social interactions with scientific principles, this unique novel illustrates the typi...more
Paperback, 220 pages
Published
November 1st 2009
by Oneworld Classics
(first published 1809)
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I read this beautiful novel in German. Though I might have objected to how structured it is, so full of symbols and echoes, in the hands of a master like Goethe it only contributes to the subtle atmosphere. What's more, the characters are individual and detailed, as comes out through their interactions and words. I found myself pitying Ottilie rather than being annoyed by her submissiveness (in any case, there's more to her than submissiveness); and Charlotte struck me as one of the most likable...more
Rich couple, pass middle-age. For both, their second marriage. The lady has a young, beautiful foster-daughter and the gentleman has a friend, a former military man (the Captain). Both come to live with them.
The gentleman and the foster-daughter fall in love with each other; the lady and the Major do likewise. From here, Goethe developed his story interspersed with quotable aphorisms about love, marriage, man, woman, relationships, religion and what not. It might have provided scanda...more
The gentleman and the foster-daughter fall in love with each other; the lady and the Major do likewise. From here, Goethe developed his story interspersed with quotable aphorisms about love, marriage, man, woman, relationships, religion and what not. It might have provided scanda...more
Elective Affinities comprises the exploration of a simple conceit -- that human relationships are governed by forces similar to those acting in chemical reactions -- executed meticulously and gloriously. Starting from the relatively stable equilibrium of an apparently happy marriage, new characters are introduced into the experiment (set in the crucible of the grounds and house of a German estate), and things fall apart.
The novel is impeccably structured and paced, and has some of th...more
The novel is impeccably structured and paced, and has some of th...more
It was interesting. Goethe wrote this book in part as a meditation and exploration of the scientific developments that were happening at the time. Specifically he was interested in chemistry and the law of attraction. "The tendency of those elements which, when they come into contact, at once take hold of, and act on one another, we call 'affinity', states one of the characters in the book. So Goethe applies these laws that are being discovered in chemistry to human relationships, and so cr...more
A very interesting approach to human relationships based on a chemical metaphor - and of course my immediate association with chemistry is explosions, which is indeed what occurs here. The main characters are all well-off and spend a lot of time making important building and landscaping improvements but this is not reflected in their relationships which become more and more chaotic. It is an unusual portrait of four people who at all times are respectful and pleasant to each other despite the st...more
I don't think the plot was quite believable. Charlotte and Edward at first appeared to be in a very good marriage only to have it turned upside down with the visits of the Captain and Ohileete. Edward falls in love with Ohilette and visa versa. Edward acts like an idiot and talks like one too. Poor Charlotte but than again she is an idiot as well for putting up with him. To make a long story short, Ohileete holds herself responsible for the death of Charlotte baby. I can't figure if it was reall...more
Pffffff.
I'm sure this is a masterpiece of sorts, and bristling with interesting metaphors and parallels and mirrored storylines. But fostering narrative interest, creating interesting characters, these, surely, are matters beneath the great German author's dignity.
And the works age is no excuse. He wrote this roughly in the same time Jane Austen started to write her novels, and Jonathan Swift, Henry Fielding and Laurence Sterne had already been celebrated for decades for the...more
I'm sure this is a masterpiece of sorts, and bristling with interesting metaphors and parallels and mirrored storylines. But fostering narrative interest, creating interesting characters, these, surely, are matters beneath the great German author's dignity.
And the works age is no excuse. He wrote this roughly in the same time Jane Austen started to write her novels, and Jonathan Swift, Henry Fielding and Laurence Sterne had already been celebrated for decades for the...more
Herr Goethe definitely had a passion for drama and tragedy. Except this time she dies but, don't cry yet, he joins her in death (gothic, right?) and "Thus the lovers lie sleeping side by side ; peace hovers above their resting-place ; fair angel faces gaze down upon them from aloft. And what happiness is in store for them at the moment of their common awakening!"
It started promising, a not-so-young couple's life is disturbed by 2 newcomers and using the chemical process of ...more
It started promising, a not-so-young couple's life is disturbed by 2 newcomers and using the chemical process of ...more
Elective Affinities starts out in the midst of a perfectly comfortable country house inhabited by a perfectly content couple. However, the intrusion of each partner's guest starts the process of unwinding the marriage in slow and heartbreaking clarity. The delicate, sensitive portrayal of duty versus emotion is made even more poignant by the autobiographical aspect, derived from Goethe's torment between his wife and mistress. The thought that such a well-suited couple can be turned against each ...more
“Kindred by choice” isn't a decision to take lightly. Goethe's title reflects the mindset of married couple, Eduard and Charlotte. Their own kindred ties seem to have loosened, which could explain the longing for companionship of friends. Charlotte brings Ottilie, a foster-daughter from her first marriage to live with them, and Eduard invites The Captain, an old friend as well. Their elective affinities are welcomed by each partner at first, and then natural human attraction can't be denied ...more
Mike
rated it
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review of another edition
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review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Germanists, fans of modern lit, Shakespeare
Recommended to Mike by:
Kora Battig, by way of the filmic version
Goethe's big works have left a strong imprint on modern literary field: Faust's endless ambition, Werther's primal despondency, and the Roman elegies' outright eroticism all set the stage for later authors to flesh out the Romantic worldview. Goethe's poetry doesn't translate to English comfortably, however, and so if one is to approach him as a casual reader, one must do so in an indirect way. Happily I came upon first his Italian Journey, a good start for anyone looking to venture beyond the L...more
Eduard and Charlotte are the wealthy and idle couple who dwell together, undisturbed in marital felicity. Their lives are altered strangely by the temporary addition to their household of Eduard's old friend, The Captain and Charlotte's niece, Ottilie. Their presence threatens that marriage and, eventually, all possible happiness.
Hopes and results do often differ, but there are also surprises to replace the former hopes with unsought for results. Less intense than his Werther, more lei...more
Hopes and results do often differ, but there are also surprises to replace the former hopes with unsought for results. Less intense than his Werther, more lei...more
Reading this for the first time when I was a little older, it still didn't fare better with me than Werther did.
From those I have read, I must admit that I don't see Goethe as a great novellist.
"Die Wahlverwandtschaften" - "Elective Affinities" is Goethe's marriage novel, of a couple that married relatively late in life but now finds that both partners fall in love with somebody else. In its day, the novel caused an outcry because of the clearly mentioned and de...more
From those I have read, I must admit that I don't see Goethe as a great novellist.
"Die Wahlverwandtschaften" - "Elective Affinities" is Goethe's marriage novel, of a couple that married relatively late in life but now finds that both partners fall in love with somebody else. In its day, the novel caused an outcry because of the clearly mentioned and de...more
I liked this book. I liked experiencing the two different affairs and their consequences. It made me reflect on how I make decisions and why. One of the characters says in making decisions she asks herself "How will it be tomorrow?" Good idea. It felt kind of like Anna Karenina in showing the effects of entertaining ideas that are probably not appropriate.
This is a beautiful novella; it is written on levels metaphor. The main characters work on their property to sculpt their experience therein and to amp up its symbolic references. All the while the 4 principle players are deeply affecting one another so that no one person acts independently but rather in reaction to the emotional events of his companion, guest or neighbor. Twisted and crossed affections ... This is definitely one of those books about people with luxury problems- however it is mu...more
Goethe writes - “Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished” - and uses the novel to explore the ideal of Romantic Love and free choice...
It is a timeless story and very modern theme, engaging from page one and it keeps the attention throughout.
It is a timeless story and very modern theme, engaging from page one and it keeps the attention throughout.
Alle heißen Otto! Und wirklich toll ist eh nur der Architekt. Der hat aber leider kaum was zu sagen, noch ist es eine wichtige Figur. Hingegen zu viel dummes Zeug zu sagen haben der Mittler & der Gehülfe. Die braucht keiner.
Un clásico de Goethe, que se atreve a explorar situaciones por entonces escandalosas. Un cuadro milimétrico de sensaciones y sentimientos... quizás demasiado para mi...
this library copy doesn't have the translator's name or any of that information. weird!
i was expecting a melodrama from the plot outline, but it's really ... level-headed. quite liked it.
i was expecting a melodrama from the plot outline, but it's really ... level-headed. quite liked it.
De aquí tomo Weber el concepto de "afinidad electiva" (obviamente, mutándolo) que usó para describir la relación entre la ética protestante y el espíritu capitalista.
I found it boring and slow so I didn't finish it at the end. I borrowed the film but it was the same...
Begins slow but eventually becomes hard to put down, drawing to a dramatic end where everyone worth something croaks over locks of hair and old letters.
I never doubted Goethe's sense and touch with words. He's good with agony without every saying the word. But it's written like all sorts of books in an aged language I've almost forgotten could have existed (and boy, was I into this sort of thing a few years ago). That is, I mean, written the same way a man in a tuxedo would play socc...more
I never doubted Goethe's sense and touch with words. He's good with agony without every saying the word. But it's written like all sorts of books in an aged language I've almost forgotten could have existed (and boy, was I into this sort of thing a few years ago). That is, I mean, written the same way a man in a tuxedo would play socc...more
the book itself is not extraordinary, but the idea it tries to illustrate is of reference...
after 26 years of being unable to choose a favorite book, this is my favorite book of all time
38343 GER: Advanced Topics in German Studies
Topic: The Birth of German Studies
Topic: The Birth of German Studies
Beautiful writing, but it seems a bit overwrought in our non-Romantic times.
Not at all what I expected, but nevertheless an experience to read. Gripping and disturbing at times, Goethe manages to grab the reader's heartstrings with his insights into the human condition. The ending seemed a bit strange, causing me to read the foreword - I have to admit, I didn't get any of the complexities explained there; they might account for the odd ending and be true to Goethe's ideas, but I don't think it's necessary to take the book as academically as that foreword would have it i...more
An interesting novel in its own right, although a little strange for my taste.
I finished this novel in a bathtub hours before a wedding.
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer. George Eliot called him "Germany's greatest man of letters... and the last true polymath to walk the earth." Goethe's works span the fields of poetry, drama, literature, theology, humanism, and science. Goethe's magnum opus, lauded as one of the peaks of world literature, is the two-part drama Faust. Goethe's other well-known literary works...more
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“BUT I DIDN'T WRITE IT FOR YOU, I WROTE IT FOR LITTLE GIRLS!" - Goethe on his so-called "immoral" novel, Elective Affinities.
Introduction from Penguin Classics:
"...in an advertisement published in Cotta's Morgenblatt on 4 September 1809 he saught to explain that 'this strange title', which 'it seems was suggested to the author by his continuing work in the field of physics', was a 'metaphor in chemistry' whose 'spiritual origin' the novel would demonstrate. But this statement was altogether inadequate and was subsequently forgotten or frankly disbelieved: the almost universal view being that the book was intended to demonstrate the chemical origin of love. Such a thesis would, of course, be an immoral one, and Elective Affinities was generally charged with being an immoral book. Goethe was no stranger to such charges, but he was especially annoyed that they should be levelled at this particular work, for which he had an exceptional affection, and he angrily rejected every suggestion there was anything whatever in it that could be called reprehensible. Eventually he lost all patience with a stream of criticism that must to us today seem incredibly insensitive and peggifogging, and when his old friend Knebel started making moral objections to the novel, he exploded: 'But I didn't write it for you! I wrote it for little girls...”
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Introduction from Penguin Classics:
"...in an advertisement published in Cotta's Morgenblatt on 4 September 1809 he saught to explain that 'this strange title', which 'it seems was suggested to the author by his continuing work in the field of physics', was a 'metaphor in chemistry' whose 'spiritual origin' the novel would demonstrate. But this statement was altogether inadequate and was subsequently forgotten or frankly disbelieved: the almost universal view being that the book was intended to demonstrate the chemical origin of love. Such a thesis would, of course, be an immoral one, and Elective Affinities was generally charged with being an immoral book. Goethe was no stranger to such charges, but he was especially annoyed that they should be levelled at this particular work, for which he had an exceptional affection, and he angrily rejected every suggestion there was anything whatever in it that could be called reprehensible. Eventually he lost all patience with a stream of criticism that must to us today seem incredibly insensitive and peggifogging, and when his old friend Knebel started making moral objections to the novel, he exploded: 'But I didn't write it for you! I wrote it for little girls...”
