Confessions of a beautiful soul

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Confessions of a Beautiful Soul is the title of the 6th book of Johann Wolfgang Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre , which was published 1795–1796. It is a story that is loosely inserted into the novel at the point where Wilhelm leaves the theater group to visit the late Aurelie's former friend. Wilhelm receives the text from the doctor who took care of Aurelie.

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The first-person narrator tells the story of her life, from her first formative experience of a hemorrhage at the age of eight, her first love experiences with her friend "Narcissus" and her relationship with the man called Philo , to her life as a morally stable woman. In doing so, she tells of her secular educational path with entertainment and dance as well as of her spiritual educational path, in that she repeatedly describes her turning to and distance from God.

“I soon found that the straight direction of my soul was disturbed by foolish distraction and preoccupation with unworthy things; the how and where was soon clear enough to me. But how do you get out? In a world where everything is indifferent and great. "

The protagonist finds this way out in a life as a Herrnhut sister . At the end of the novel, however, this life path no longer appears unreservedly positive in the eyes of niece Natalie: “Very poor health, perhaps too much preoccupation with yourself, and at the same time a moral and religious fearfulness they didn't let the world be what they did under different circumstances could have become. It was a light that only shone particularly well to a few friends and me. ”The story is based on the model of pietistic epistemological literature. A manuscript by Susanne von Klettenberg , a canoness and friend of his mother's, was available to Goethe for this purpose.

literature

  • First publication in the third volume of the four-volume first edition of Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. A novel as his sixth book. Frankfurt and Leipzig 1795. p. 205 books.google to p. 371, deutschestextarchiv.de
  • Johann Wolfgang Goethe: All works according to the epochs of his work. Vol. 5. Wilhelm Meister's apprenticeship years . Edited by Hans-Jürgen Schings, Munich 1988. pp. 360-422.
  • Ortrud Gutjahr: Introduction to the Bildungsroman. Darmstadt 2007. p. 84. ISBN 3-534-17912-9 .

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Johann Wolfgang Goethe: All works based on the epochs of his work. Vol. 5. Wilhelm Meister's apprenticeship years. ed. v. Hans-Jürgen Schings. Munich 1988. p. 379.
  2. ↑ Johann Wolfgang Goethe: All works based on the epochs of his work. Vol. 5 Wilhelm Meister's apprenticeship years. ed. v. Hans-Jürgen Schings. Munich 1988. p. 400.
  3. ↑ Johann Wolfgang Goethe: All works based on the epochs of his work. Vol. 5. Wilhelm Meister's apprenticeship years . Edited by Hans-Jürgen Schings. Munich 1988. p. 519.
  4. ^ Ortrud Gutjahr: Introduction to the Bildungsroman. Darmstadt 2007. p. 84.