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Discipline and Theatricality: Tableaux Vivants and the Vicissitudes of Movement in Goethe's Die Wahlverwandtschaften
- Edited by Patricia Anne Simpson, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Birgit Tautz, Bowdoin College, Maine
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- Book:
- Goethe Yearbook 29
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 15 June 2023
- Print publication:
- 14 June 2022, pp 229-246
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Summary
Abstract: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's 1809 novel Die Wahlverwandtschaften depicts two tableaux vivants scenes featuring contrasting female characters: Luciane and Ottilie. As the relationship of these scenes to the rest of the novel has proved enigmatic, I read them in conjunction with Goethe's Regeln für Schauspieler (Rules for Actors) as well as the aesthetic categories of absorption and theatricality from Michael Fried's work of the same name. Since tableaux vivants present a unique theatrical mode that maintains absolute stillness, I claim that it is the theme of movement that attests to their significance. Luciane's tableaux vivants scene is revealed to be an augmented form of actor discipline to restrain her disorderly and unpredictable personality. For Ottilie, the tableaux vivants scene demonstrates how restraining movement is implicated in the established societal norms for behavior.
Keywords: tableaux vivant, movement, Goethe, Michael Fried, theatricality, Elective Affinities
Introduction
IN GOETHE's DIE Wahlverwandtschaften (Elective Affinities), unforeseen and unpropitious movements have the tendency to occasion disorientation, wonder, or even tragedy. Charlotte's attempts to reposition the gravestones in the churchyard are met with opposition by the family members of the deceased, who assert that they would lose the ties to their ancestors if the burial plots were not marked properly. Movement can appear miraculous, as when Ottilie's mere presence sets suspended metals into motion as if acted upon by some arcane force. A single, unexpected movement can also result in near disaster, as seen in the collapse of the bridge at Ottilie's birthday party that causes a young boy to almost drown.
The threat of disturbance produced by an inopportune movement, however, does not always manifest so conspicuously as in these instances. The tableaux vivants scenes in Die Wahlverwandtschaften reveal an aesthetic variation on the significance of unplanned motion. As an artistic medium predicated on absolute stillness, tableaux vivants demand performers’ complete corporeal obedience to produce a motionless work of art. These scenes juxtapose the expectation of aesthetic motionlessness with forces of potential movement in two of the performers: Luciane and Ottilie. Given how the narrator goes to great lengths to accentuate her volatility and relentless movement, Luciane appears to be a poor candidate to engage in a kind of performance that demands virtually uninterrupted corporeal paralysis on the stage. Yet when the time comes to perform, the seemingly inevitable conflict between Luciane and the tableaux vivants fails to manifest, confounding the reader's expectations.
Projection and Concealment: Goethe's Introduction of the Mask to the Weimar Stage
- Edited by Patricia Anne Simpson, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Birgit Tautz, Bowdoin College, Maine, Sean Franzel, University of Missouri, Columbia
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- Book:
- Goethe Yearbook 28
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 15 June 2023
- Print publication:
- 15 June 2021, pp 89-106
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- Chapter
- Export citation
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Summary
Abstract: Around 1800, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe conducted a series of theatrical experiments involving masks on the Weimar Stage. Such experiments were considered highly innovative at the time and were met with both praise and skepticism. This article examines the eighteenth-century European discourse on theatrical masks to contextualize the largely unprecedented nature of Goethe's use of masks. Thinkers ranging from Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Jean-Baptiste Dubos to August Wilhelm Schlegel and Karl August Böttiger considered the unique advantages and disadvantages that masks contribute to staged performances. Each of these thinkers is forced to contend with the fact that masks necessarily conceal an actor's facial affective expressions, thereby appearing to deprive actors of a fundamental means of expressing their art. Such observations are situated in conjunction with Goethe's staging of masked performances at Weimar. Goethe's use of the mask is viewed as a means for him as a director to exert control over the bodies of actors to diminish their artistic agency. The theatrical mask is thus conceptualized as an extension of his Rules for Actors, a series of prescriptions for subjugating an actor's body to the aesthetic of the directorial vision.
Keywords: Masks, Weimar, Theater, Actors, Bodies, Affect
IN WEIMAR AROUND 1800, the date of October 24 would rarely pass by unobserved. The birthday of Anna Amalia was routinely celebrated in a variety of both public and private festivities befitting the dowager duchess’ status as a generous patroness of the arts. Often a theatrical production marked the annual occasion. The tradition dates back at least to her arrival in Weimar in 1756, when Karl Theophilus Döbbelin's acting troupe performed for her seventeenth birthday. This tradition continued during Goethe's tenure at the Weimar Theater with elaborate productions such as Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro and Goethe’s own Palaeophron und Neoterpe. Yet in 1801 the festivity itself overshadowed its occasion when Goethe staged the Roman dramatist Terence's Adelphi. Terence's drama, appearing in a new translation from Friedrich Hildebrand von Einsiedel as Die Brüder (The Brothers), stole the show by debuting masked actors, a remarkable deviation from standard theatrical practices.