Bettina von Arnim (1785–1859)

On the face of it, this is a rather creepy book: by making friends with his elderly mother, a gushing young woman of 22 gets an introduction to a distinguished poet, who is married and in his fifties. She bombards him with letters setting out her passionate feelings for him, describing her erotic fantasies, and so on, to which he replies, briefly, in the ratio of about 1:5 letters. Even when he breaks off the correspondence, she goes on writing unsent letters. And after his death she publishes the whole thing, editing where necessary to make it all look less one-sided, and rededicating one or two sonnets he wrote for other women to herself...

But of course, it isn't quite like that. For one thing, Bettina might not have known Goethe personally in 1807, but she hardly needed an introduction: he'd been in love with her mother and at least a close friend of her grandmother (the novelist Sophie von La Roche), whilst his parents and the Brentanos were part of the same small world of Frankfurt high-bourgeoisie. Moreover, even though it draws on the real Bettina's friendship with the real Goethe, this isn't the authentic correspondence it purports to be, but a carefully structured work of auto-fiction, in which a fictional Bettina (unimpeded by trivialities like the fact that the real Bettina got married in the middle of all this...) pours her heart out to an idealised Goethe whilst his dutiful wife withdraws to a discreet distance and watches indulgently (in real life, Bettina almost came to blows with Christiane Goethe at an exhibition in Weimar in 1811...).

Also, we're probably not entitled to jump to the conclusion that this is all about sexual obsession. The Bettina of the letters and diaries recklessly seems to mix up the language of platonic friendship, religious ecstasy and erotic love when she's talking about her feelings in the abstract, but when she talks directly about what she imagines or wishes for between Goethe and herself, it's normally at the level of deep spiritual connection, and the explicit physical images never go beyond a bit of cuddling. The only time things ever get really steamy is in some of the early letters addressed to Goethe's mother in which she's remembering her friendship with the poet Karoline von Günderrode - she manages to write Karoline's lover Friedrich Creuzer out of the story and manipulate us so far that we jump to the conclusion that poor Karoline killed herself out of frustrated passion for Bettina. Hmm.

Bettina's meditations about love and longing are beautifully characteristic of the whole German Romantic movement, but there are an awful lot of them, and the book (over 600 pages!) would be all but unreadable if that's all there was to it. Fortunately, she knows exactly what she's doing, and turns the dial back from 11 from time to time to give Goethe (i.e. us) a bit of emotional relief with lively descriptions of where she is and what she's doing, or reminiscences of her childhood (or Goethe's - she has memorised his mother's anecdotes as well). And whatever the real Bettina was like, the Bettina of this book is always entertaining and enterprising, whether she's climbing trees, mountains, convent walls or ruined castles, riding bare-back, boating, hopping from ice-floe to ice-floe across frozen rivers, shooting, dressing up in men's clothes to travel through a war-zone, rescuing wounded soldiers, passing secret papers to revolutionaries, or lobbying crown-princes and slapping distinguished poets. She certainly makes herself sound like the Calamity Jane of Romanticism! These adventures in turn are often tied rather beautifully into "Wordsworth-moments" where she shifts into a kind of prose-poem register, perceiving some deep philosophical truth after staying up all night to watch a thunderstorm, getting rescued from an island by an ancient mariner, listening to a nightingale, etc.

Definitely not for everyone, and I probably wouldn't have tackled it if I'd realised how long it would take me to read it, but still quite rewarding.… (lisätietoja)

Goethe's Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde (Engl. "Goethe's correspondence with a child") is not a real correspondence with Goethe, although many contemporary readers in the early nineteenth century thought it was. Goethe's Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde by Bettina von Arnim is an epistolary novel, which includes some of Goethe's poetry and an occasional authentic letter from Goethe. It is, however, a largely fictional work, written in the style of Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) and passed off as authentic. It is written is the same style of over-sentimentality.

In 1774, Goethe published Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (Engl. The Sorrows of Young Werther), which sparked a wave of idolatry known as the Werther-Fieber ("Werther Fever"). It made Goethe an international celebrity, a status he thoroughly resented.

In 1806, Goethe received a letter from the young Bettina von Arnim, which he left unanswered, as he felt she idolized him. von Arnim struck up a friendship with Goethe's mother, and through her was introduced to meet Goethe in 1807, which led to a friendship and correspondence from 1807 through 1811. In that year, Bettina von Arnim had a row with Goethe's wife, which made Goethe decide to break off their correspondence and friendship, or any form of contact, even ignoring von Arnim and her husband Achim von Arnim.

Goethe's Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde was appeared in 1835, three years after the death of Goethe, and was published in three volumes. It appeared in a 2-volume edition in English two years later, in 1837, in a translation made by the author, Bettina von Arnim, herself. Volume 1 consists of a (fictional) correspondence between Bettina von Arnim and Goethe's mother, followed by the (fictional) correspondence between von Arnim and Goethe. Volume 2 consists entirely of (fictional) correspondence with Goethe, and volume 3 is a diary.

All three volumes are written are written in the style of "Storm and Stress" giving free expression to individual subjectivity and extremes of emotion. Volume 1 contains a scene in which Von Arnim can barely persuade her friend Günderode to refrain from suicide with a dagger. All three volumes consist of endless idolization of Goethe. As Goethe's (fictional) replies are sparse and far between, most of the text is composed of Bettina's letters, full of musings on her moods, philosophical fads of the day, and descriptions of natural scenes, bordering over into the style of the early Romantics. Although the poetry by Goethe appearing in the text is genuine, the poems were not addressed to Von Arnim as is suggested.

While descriptions are very beautiful, the overbearing style, typical for the period, makes the reading (of well over 680 pages) a heavy fare. The one-volume paperback edition by the German publisher DTV is the first to appear unabridged, and restoring characteristics of von Arnim's orthography.

Bettina von Arnim has been criticised for the publication of Goethe's Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde. Some critics blame her for passing of the fictional epistolary novel purporting to be an authentic correspondence. There are also critics who claim that the young von Arnim stole up to celebrities, starting friendships and correspondences with the premeditated aim of using them to further her fame, and use letters in her literary work. Whether or not the 21-year old Bettina was infatuated with Goethe, or was simply calculating to make use of Goethe's fame, is hard to tell. Goethe's Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde was her first book. Her second book, Die Günderode (1840), was written following the same muster, published as a fictualized correspondence with her friend, the German poet Karoline von Günderrode, who died in 1806.

Bettina von Arnim, born Bettina von Bretano, came from an artistic family. The novelist Sophie von La Roche was her grandmother, while her brother Clemens Brentano was a poet in his own right. Bettina married Achim von Arnim, a famous Romantic poet, in 1811, and one of their children, Gisela von Arnim became a writer, too. Elizabeth von Arnim belongs to the same family of the Von Arnims.… (lisätietoja)