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RITUAL AND THEATRICALITY IN GOETHES WILHELM MEISTER
ously side by side with Wilhelm’s expectation that life in the theater will enable
him finally to take as good only what truly is good and find beautiful only what
truly is beautiful (HA 7.5.4, 292, E 175). As Bruford comments, “We can only
understand the emphasis [Goethe] makes Wilhelm lay on these externals and
Wilhelm’s extraordinary expectation that as an actor he will, though a mere
‘Birger’, find in displaying himself on the stage a similar satisfaction in his
own all-round development, if we take Goethe’s attitude toward his hero as
ironical, here as in so many other places.”'! Wilhelm has long since come face
to face with the faults and foibles of actors, and in Book 3, his first encounter
with actual nobility (in the form of a count who invites the troupe to stayin
his mansion and prepare a performance for his guests) has also made painfully
clear that aristocracy does not necessarily bring with it either good taste or
genuine cultivation. Nevertheless, at a critical crossroads, a point at which his
father’s death has freed him from parental expectations, and at which both the
commercial possibilities represented by Werner and the theatrical life offered
to him by Serlo lie equally open, Wilhelm opts for the theater.
It is only in Book 7 that these dreams finally appear to him as illusions.
Jarno, as usual, makes fun of Wilhelm’s enterprise: “How is it now with that old
fancy of yours of achieving something good and beautiful in the company of
gypsies?” (HA 7.7.3, 433, E 265). This time, Wilhelm responds savagely: actors
are full of themselves; each wants to be the one and only, and doesn’t see that
even as a band they can achieve very little; they expect to receive the utmost
respect from others and cannot bear the slightest fault in their fellows; they
are self-deceived and utterly lack self-understanding. Jarno, overcome with
laughter, for once takes the part of the actors. Wilhelm has offered a wonder¬
ful account of human nature itself, and these qualities are amply displayed by
every social class: “I would gladly excuse an actor for any fault that arose from
self-deception and a desire to please, for if he does not appear as something
to himself and others, he is nothing at all. His job is to provide appearances
[Schein], and he must needs set high store on instantaneous approval, for he
gets none other. He must try to delude and dazzle, for that’s what he’s there
for” (HA 7.7.3, 435, E 266). But the same is not to be said of human beings as
such: “I can readily forgive an actor all the human failings, but not humans for
an actor’s failings.” Hard-nosed realism must not become an excuse for moral
failing; off-stage, Jarno’s words imply, Sein — being, precedes Schein — shin¬
ing appearances. Self-deception and egoism must be replaced by a genuine
self-knowledge that allows also for genuine respect and concern for others.
The play here on Sein and Schein has been introduced earlier, back in Wil¬
helm’s Book 5 letter to Werner, defending his decision to opt for the theatrical
life. Here Schein is seen as a special attribute of the nobility, which the middle
1 Bruford: Ibid.
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