On the Mythos and Dianoia of the Bildungsroman in Moretti’s The Way of the World as it relates to Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship
In his The Way of the World, Franco Moretti approaches the Bildungsroman first by qualifying it as a “symbolic form,” representative of and peculiar to modernity (5), and then proceeding in an attempt to qualify the aspects of this form themselves. In these proceeding analyses, touching greatly upon history, philosophy, and literature, Moretti establishes a certain mythos, the content as a matter of plot, and a certain dianoia, the content as a matter of structure, for the form of the Bildungsroman. In essence, he divides the mythos into two principles or “plot differences:” that of classification and that of transformation, which differ in terms of how the plot communicates meaning (Moretti 7). He then portrays the dianoia fundamentally as an imbalance between “autonomy and socialization” (Moretti 28). The mythos and dianoia taken together in this sense, then, illustrate the approximate form of the Bildungsroman as it progresses linearly to a conclusion or lack thereof though its structure of interconnection and imbalance. Using Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship as a focus as Moretti does in his description of the “classical Bildungsroman,” these points might be given context.
Beginning with the Bildungsroman’s mythos, Moretti defines the classification aspect thereof as a plot sequence in which “the meaning of events lies in their finality” (7). That is, the inevitable conclusion of events is the most important thematic aspect of such a plot. This idea is elaborated upon by dealing with the classical Bildungsroman and by setting up a conflict between meaning and time: “[I]n the classical Bildungsroman the ending and the aim of narration coincide. The story ends as soon as an intentional design has been realized” (Moretti 55). This emphasis on time as the vehicle of plot and as the defeated adversary of meaning is very characteristic of this classification principle of the mythos of the Bildungsroman. In Wilhelm Meister, Wilhelm’s beloved Mariana faces a struggle that is illustrative of this very point, saying “‘I love him, and he loves me; yet I see that I must part with him...Norberg comes, to whom we owe our whole subsistence, whom we cannot live without” (Goethe; I, XII, 46). With the destined approach of Norberg, all that she develops with Wilhelm shall come to nothing; all shall be meaningless; however, in this conflict the narrative itself gains meaning. Thus the passage of time, though potentially destructive of meaning, is in fact the only way for a plot to create meaning. This then brings about the opposed “plot difference,” transformation.
The transformation aspect of the Bildungsroman’s mythos is summed up in Moretti’s statement, “what makes a story meaningful is its narrativity, its being an open-ended process” (7). As stated before, plot is driven by the passage of time, and it is the transformation principle’s treatment of this passage in the creation of meaning that creates its antithesis with the classification principle, for where classification concerns itself with ends, transformation concerns itself with process, as their names rightly suggest: “[Events] become meaningful….It becomes so because someone…gives it meaning” (Moretti 45). Whereas it has been shown that the classification principle dominates the age of the classical Bildungsroman, it is the transformation principle that rules the post-Napoleonic Bildungsroman: “Reality then—such is the plain but disturbing discovery of this [post-Napoleonic] age—is characterized by mere existence, independent of any symbolic legitimacy” (Moretti 95), that is, teleology is not much of a concern. Again, Wilhelm Meister shall give a small embodiment of both plot differences when Wilhelm and Werner discuss Wilhelm’s abundance of unfinished theatrical works. Wilhelm says, “‘To finish is not the scholar’s care; it is enough if he improves himself by practice,’” to which Werner responds “‘But also completes according to his best ability’” (Goethe; I, X, 38). Wilhelm here cares only for the process, transformation, and Werner cares only for the end result, classification.
Now, the stratification of classification and transformation into separate classes of Bildungsroman should be a simple and consequently attractive idea, but the Bildungsroman thrives on paradox and conflict. Moretti explicitly states that “while both are always present in a narrative work, these two principles usually carry an uneven weight, and are actually inversely proportional” (7). This “uneven weight” is essential; without it, Moretti explains, either both principles balance and cancel one another, or their conflict is not present, which is clearly evident in Wilhelm and Werner’s conversation cited earlier. In any event, in both these eventualities the Bildungsroman fails to exist: “[T]his symbolic form could indeed exist, not despite but by virtue of its contradictory nature” (Moretti 9). Thus both eras’ Bildungsromans contain both these principles; it is merely that classification rules the classical period and transformation dominates the post-Napoleonic period. An imbalance in the form of paradox, therefore, is essential for the existence of the Bildungsroman’s mythos, but it goes further by being the very essence of its dianoia.
As previously noted, Moretti seems to put a great deal of weight on imbalance in defining the dianoia of the Bildungsroman. Chief among these imbalances is the imbalance between autonomy and socialization. Like the conflicting nature of the two aspects of the mythos, these play much the same role for the dianoia. In terms of autonomy, Moretti chooses to discuss the personality, saying that “it would…prefer that each activity lose its autonomy and objective consistency to become a mere instrument of its own development” (40). The personality, being the essence of the individual, seeks to subjugate action to itself, rather than to be subjugated by action. Assuming that the socialization of the individual entails the socialization of the personality, it is evident why autonomy and socialization should be in conflict. With the further development of the Bildungsroman in the post-Napoleonic age, however, a new variety of protagonist finds autonomy the dominant factor of the dianoia’s imbalance to the end: “the individual’s formation is not identified here with the hero’s insertion within the rules of society, but with his attempt to undermine them” (Moretti 106). Wilhelm Meister gravitates in this direction with the example of the harper, a relic of an age long past but one that touches Wilhelm with great immediacy: “he brought feelings near and distant, emotions sleeping and awake, pleasant and painful, into a circulation, from which, in Wilhelm’s actual state, the best effects might be anticipated” (Goethe; II, XIV, 124). Wilhelm uses the communication of days long dead, as opposed to his world’s favor the written word. This, in turn, demonstrates the importance of the dianoia of the Bildungsroman, which “creates a continuity between external and internal” (Moretti 30). How does it achieve this, though? How does the nature of the Bildungsroman allow the internal being, desiring autonomy, coexist with the external factors that would limit such autonomy?
Socialization in the Bildungsroman is classically the result of an autonomous decision. Such is the great synthesis of these two oppositions of the dianoia. Moretti details the classic model for such an occurrence, marriage, which is the necessary ending of many a Bildungsroman. He refers to marriage as “that ‘pact’ between the individual and the world, that reciprocal consent…” (Moretti 22). By way of marriage, two individuals surrender freedoms to one another, and together surrender freedoms upon entering the social institution. This, interestingly, is very much a compromise, to freely will the loss of a degree of free will. Moretti also addresses this issue directly in discussing the final line of Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, “‘I know I have attained a happiness which I have not deserved, and which I would not change with anything in life” (Goethe; IV, X, 508). Moretti summarizes Wilhelm’s position saying, “I exist, and I exist happily, only because I have been allowed access to the plot patiently weaved ‘around me’….I exist ‘for myself,’ because I have willingly agreed to be determined from without” (21). Freely does the protagonist choose socialization, leaving both autonomy and normalcy to some degree intact. Without such a conclusion, though, socialization cannot complete, and the protagonists of the post-Napoleonic Bildungsromans always seem to find themselves facing unhappy endings: “[Happy endings] portray the harmony of values and events, while the new image of reality is based on their division” (Moretti 120). In the Bildungsroman, the shaping of the individual is largely defined by his or her surroundings and all the other individuals therein, whether in socializing the individual or in effecting the individual’s rejection of socialized values. This then begs the question, can autonomy exist without socialization, or at least attempts at such? Again imbalance and conflict become essential in understanding the Bildungsroman.
On the whole, Moretti appears to view the mythos and dianoia of the Bildungsroman as, taken together, yet another conflicting dichotomy that arises among the many paradoxes involved in defining the genre. By their very definitions, they discern meaning by opposed methods, but together and only together can they effectively describe the Bildungsroman. Thus, through the conflict of the two, the Bildungsroman can be defined neither by plot nor structure, but by both of them related and conflicting. As Moretti notes, “it is as if the structure of the classical Bildungsroman consisted of two large planes partially superimposed. The common area is the domain of synthesis…” (17). Looking at Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, one observes clearly many of the ideas to which Moretti refers, especially when one consideres the prominence with which it is cited in his description of the classical Bildungsroman. From that alone, the strong leanings of the mythos and dianoia toward classification and ultimately socialization might be discerned, but its nuances require analysis. At the last, it is only by synthesizing the contradictions of mythos and dianoia and determining just how they might compare in balance can one find their vast importance in defining the Bildungsroman as a genre.
Bibliography
Goethe, Johann. Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship. Aegypan, 1917.
Moretti, Franco. The Way of the World: The Bildungsroman in European Culutre. New Edition. Verso, London: 2000.
No comments:
Post a Comment