Zusammenfassung
This essay considers Storm’s novelle in terms of several approaches to poetic realism, and the problem of realism and representation in terms of repetition, or rather of resisting repetition. It analyzes four major “romande” topoi of the novelle, insofar as each incorporates the problem of representation: that of the second wife, who is made to repeat, or become, the dead first wife; of the living portrait, which threatens to overwhelm the narrative world; of the dead beloved as Muse, and of the haunted garden.
Abstract
Am Beispiel von Storms Novelle wird das Problem von Realismus und Repräsentation unter dem Aspekt von Wiederholung bzw. Widerstand gegen die Wiederholung untersucht. Vier “romantische” Hauptmotive nehmen das Problem auf: das Motiv der zweiten Frau, die die tote erste Frau wiederholen bzw. werden soll, das lebendige Portrait, das die Erzählwelt zu überwältigen droht, die tote Geliebte als Muse und der verspukte Garten.
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References
Theodor Fontane, cited by Peter Goldammer (ed.) Theodor Storm, Sämtliche Werke, 4 vols. (1972), II, 749.
Storm also referred to the novelle as a “Muster.” See Gerd Eversberg, Erläuterungen zu Theodor Storm. Viola tricolor. Beim Vetter Christian, Königs Erläuterungen und Materialen, 199 (1984), p. 47.
Cf. his essay “Theodor Storm” in Theodor Fontane, Sämtliche Werke, ed. Walter Keitel (1969), series 3,1, 273.
Cf. Rene Wellek, Concepts of Criticism (1963), p. 238: “In Germany everybody is on his own and looks for realism wherever he wants to find it.” The tendency is by no means entirely regrettable.
Wolfgang Tschorn, Idylle und Verfall: Die Realität der Familie im Werk Theodor Storms, Abhandlungen zur Kunst-, Musik- und Literaturwissenschaft, 271 (1978), p. 115 f.
All parenthetical references are taken from Theodor Storm, Sämtliche Werke, ed. Albert Köster (1919), vol. III. They refer exclusively to Viola tricolor.
For a recent sociological approach to the question of the second wife, see the excellent discussion of David des Granges’ painting of the Saltonstall family (1636/1637) in Arthur E. Imhof, Die Lebenszeit: Vom aufgeschobenen Tod und von der Kunst des Lebens (1988), p. 148 f.
This is the approach assumed by, e.g., Johannes Klein in his afterword to Theodor Storni, Sämtliche Werke (1951), II, 1030. Klein writes, “Mit leisen Verwandlungen ist der Stoff unmittelbar aus Storms Leben gewonnen.” Cf. Goldammer, II, 748.
Roman Jakobson, “On Realism in Art,” Readings in Russian Poetics: Formalist and Structuralist Views, ed. L. Matejka and K. Pomorska, Michigan Slavic contributions, 8 (1978), pp. 38–46.
Hildegard Lorenz, Varianz und Invarianz. Theodor Storms Erzählungen: Figuren konstellationen und Handlungsmuster, Abhandlungen zur Kunst-, Musik- und Literatur wissenschaft, 363 (1985).
Robert C. Holub, “Realism and Recollection: The Commemoration of Art and the Aesthetics of Abnegation in Aquis submersus,” Colloquia Germanica, 18, No. 2 (1985), 122
Fritz Martini, Deutsche Literatur im bürgerlichen Realismus 1848–1898, Epochen der deutschen Literatur, V/2 (1962), p. 631.
Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, in her article “The Paradoxical Status of Repetition,” Poetics Today, 1, No. 4 (1980), 151–159, formulâtes this idea somewhat differently as “Paradox 2: Constructive repetition emphasizes difference, destructive repetition emphasizes sameness (i.e. to repeat successfully is not to repeat)” (p. 153).
Roland Barthes, “Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives,” lmage-Music-Text, trans. Stephen Heath (1977), p. 124.
E.g., Terence Hawkes, Structuralism and Semiotics, New Aspects (1977), pp. 39–49.
Robert C. Holub, “Realism, Repetition, Repression: The Nature of Desire in Romeo and Julia auf dem Dorfe,” MLN, 100, No. 3 (1985), 461–497.
Roman Jakobson, “Two aspects of language and two types of aphasie disturbances,” Roman Jakobson and Morris Halle, Fundamentals o f Language, Janua Linguarum, Series Minor, 1 (1956), pp. 69–96.
See Elisabeth Bronfen, “The Other Woman from the Other World,” Elisabeth Bronfen and Sarah Webster Goodwin (eds.), Departures: Representation and Death (forthcoming 1991), which also discusses Gustave Rodenbach’s Bruges-la-Morte and Arthur Schnitzler’s Die Nächste and focuses on the thematic constant of the death of the second wife. Bronfen’s seminai analysis takes place within the context of a larger, ongoing project on the conjunction between femininity, death, and aesthetic production, and I would like to thank her for many stimulating conversations that contributed to this essay.
For the relation of doubles, revenants, and repetition to the uncanny, see Freud, “Das Unheimliche,” Studienausgabe, IV, 257–274. For a reading of the uncanny in Storm, see Andrew Webber, “The Uncanny Rides Again: Theodor Storm’s Double Vision,” The Modern Language Review, 84, No. 4 (1989), 860–873.
We might take this as an acute instance of Lacan’s dictum, “man’s desire is the desire of the Other.” See Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis, trans. Alan Sheridan (1977), p. 38.
Robert C. Holub, “The Paradoxes of Realism: An Examination of the Kunstgespräch in Büchner’s Lenz” DVjS, 59, No. 1 (1985), 119.
See Hartmut Vinçon, Theodor Storni mit Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten, Rowohlts Monographien (1972), p. 136.
For dog symbolism in Storm’s novelles, see Julia C. Rohwer, “Das Tier als Leitmotiv in den späten Novellen Theodor Storm’s,” Acta germanica, 10 (1977), 245–263. Although she links the figure of the dog with a certain primai, animalistic vitality, Rohwer unnecessarily makes an exception for Viola tricolor.
For the methodology to the analysis of literary dreams, see Dorrit Cohn, “Wilhelm Meister’s Dream: Reading Goethe with Freud,” The German Quarterly, 62, No. 4 (1989), 459–472. She explains that the decoding method is an essentially rigorously intra-textual one: “to interpret each oneiric image in its relationship to the life of the fictional dreamer, as it is presented in the surrounding text as a whole” (460).
Franz Stuckert, Theodor Storm: Sein Leben und seine Welt (1955) misses this crucial distinction: he writes, “Nesi, deren scheues Liebeswerben die neue Mutter schon immer sehnsüchtig gesucht hatte, findet wie von selbst in der Erschütterung der Stunde den so lange verweigerten Mutternamen” (p. 313).
See Elisabeth Bronfen, “Dialogue with the Dead: the Dead Beloved as Muse,” Regina Barreca (ed.), Sex and Death in Victorian England (1990), 241–259.
In the preface to the first edition of their fairy-tales, the Grimm brothers call special attention to the topos of the “harte Stiefmutter” and add the footnote, “Selbst Blumen haben davon ihren Namen erhalten, die Viola tricolor heißt Stiefmütterchen, weil jedes der gelben Blätter unter sich ein schmales, grünes Blättchen hat, wovon es gehalten wird, das sind die Stühle, welche die Mutter ihren rechten lustigen Kindern gegeben; oben müssen die zwei Stiefkinder, in dunkelviolett trauernd stehen und haben keine Stühle.” Kinder- und Hausmärchen, gesammelt durch die Brüder Grimm, ed. Heinz Rölleke (1812/15; rpt. 1986) I, ix. I would like to thank Maria Tatar for this reference.
As Thomas Mann gladly reminds us, the sexual attraction to girl children of thirteen and even ten years of âge was very much a part of the biography of Storm himself. See Thomas Mann, “Theodor Storm,” Gesammelte Werke in zwölf Bänden (1960), IX, 256.
But see his poem, “Geschwisterblut,” Sämtliche Werke, ed. Albert Köster (1919), I, 157ff., and Vinçon’s account of its inception and reception (pp. 62–66).
This is true with reservations: see Leonard L. Duroche, “Like and Look Alike: Symmetry and Irony in Theodor Storm’s Aquis submersus,” Seminar, 7, No. 1 (1971), 1–13.
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Downing, E. Repetition and Realismi the ‘Ligeia’ impulse in Theodor Storm’s Viola tricolor. Dtsch Vierteljahrsschr Literaturwiss Geistesgesch 65, 265–303 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03396372
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03396372