[In the following essay, Edmunds contrasts the narrative structure and effects of Lenz with those of Goethe's novel Werther, asserting Büchner's tacit rejection of Goethe's literary worldview in his novella.]

In Dichtung und Wahrheit (Book XIV, published 1814) Goethe explicitly diagnoses Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz's anti-social self-absorption as a result of his Werther-like suffering: “[er] litt … im allgemeinen von der Zeitgesinnung, welche durch die Schilderung Werthers abgeschlossen sein sollte,”¹ but Goethe is careful to distinguish Lenz from the truly Werther-like “redliche Seelen” to the extent that Lenz's behavior seemed exaggerated and voluntary. Roughly twenty years later Georg Büchner also associates the Storm and Stress poet with Werther, although not so explicitly; and, whereas Goethe is openly critical of Lenz, Büchner is subtly critical of Werther. It is reasonable to assume, as others have, that Büchner wrote his Lenz against or at least in dialogue with Goethe's portrait of his former friend.² It is furthermore possible that Büchner exploits the familiarity of Werther to develop a foil (within his narrative) against which he can develop a subtle and sophisticated contrast between his conceptions of the individual self, fate and autonomy and those propounded in the “goethische Kunstperiode,”³ particularly by Goethe himself. A comparison of Lenz with the intertexts Die Leiden des jungen Werthers and passages from Dichtung und Wahrheit contributes not only to our understanding of Büchner's world view but also to our appreciation of his literary craft.

Discussions of the similarities and differences between Lenz and Werther are not infrequent. Most often scholars note Büchner's use of “Storm and Stress” diction and syntax, resounding of Werther, as a means to situate Lenz in his own time period.⁴ Very few authors are interested in comparing the structure of the two texts, probably because they are so obviously dissimilar.⁵ Also frequently acknowledged are the particular passages in Lenz which seem to be deliberate allusions to Werther, such as when it is said that Lenz “ging mit sich um wie mit einem kranken Kinde” (17).⁶ The protagonists have been contrasted in terms of secular martyrdom,⁷ self-awareness,⁸ ability to articulate,⁹ in terms of their relationships to nature as an aesthetic landscape,¹⁰ and in terms of the relative security each derives from a theistic world view on the one hand (pantheism and monotheism in Werther) or a weltanschauung based on human empathy, on the other hand.¹¹ Whereas these earlier studies argue for the similarity and dissimilarity of the two texts by pointing to the divergent use of common themes (e.g. nature, art, madness) and to the disparity between similar “protagonists,” I compare and contrast the two narratives as wholes and argue that Büchner's strong evocation of Werther allows a critical reception of “Goethezeit” values and assumptions to emerge. Büchner's method of using familiar language evocative of certain ideologies in a slightly iconoclastic and somewhat provocatively paradoxical way has been noted before;¹² here I add his manipulations of voice, plot and structure to his repertoire of subversive narrative tactics.

Such textual echoing is thus not viewed as merely an aesthetic or literary exercise but is rather seen as Büchner's deliberate attempt to highlight the disparity between his understanding of the socially and physiologically determined individual and the concept of the autonomous individual held by the Storm and Stress, pre-French-revolutionary writers and maintained by many, including the reactionary older Goethe, well into the nineteenth century. The aim of this article is not to seek out socio-historical or biographical influences on the two authors' thinking; instead, it aims to show how Büchner's political and philosophical agenda concerning the essential equality and ultimate insignificance (with respect to the fatalism of world history) of all people is carried out in his Lenz-fragment largely on the basis of intertextual allusions to an earlier popular text.

Before turning to Werther it is worth noting how Büchner works with the portrayal of Lenz from Dichtung und Wahrheit, where Goethe's confidence in the individual's ability to determine him- or herself is particularly pronounced. Goethe portrays Lenz as wilful but whimsical, talented but undisciplined; he is supposed to have been an irritating, scheming scoundrel: “er [pflegte] sich immer etwas Fratzenhaftes vorzusetzen, und eben deswegen diente es ihm zur beständigen Unterhaltung. … [M]it seinen Vorstellungen und Gefühlen verfuhr er willkürlich, damit er immerfort etwas zu tun haben möchte” (HA 10: 8; my emphases). What is remarkable is the degree to which Goethe attributes purpose to Lenz's antics; both “vorzusetzen” and “damit” indicate that Lenz decided to behave as he does, even if he—as Goethe surmised—had no other “Zweck” than his own perverse entertainment.

Where Goethe emphasizes Lenz's deliberate machinations, Büchner presents a man who usually does not know why he does what he is doing and who apologizes remorsefully for having done something he did not intend to do.

[Er] verwirrte sich ganz und dabei hatte er einen unendlichen Trieb, mit allem um ihn im Geist willkürlich umzugehen. … Er amüsierte sich, die Häuser auf die Dächer zu stellen, die Menschen an- und auszukleiden, die wahnwitzigsten Possen auszusinnen. Manchmal fühlte er einen unwiderstehlichen Drang, das Ding auszuführen, und dann schnitt er entsetzliche Fratzen. … Dann war er wieder tief beschämt.

(27-28; my emphases)

The “willkürlich” and “Fratzenhaftes” from Goethe's description of Lenz are echoed here, but the impish intentionality is absent; instead, Lenz is subject to a “Trieb” and a “Drang” stronger than he is. Unlike the portrait of Lenz presented by Goethe, Büchner's Lenz does not choose to entertain himself and others with deliberate tomfoolery and does not purposefully seek “durch die verkehrtesten Mittel … seinen Neigungen und Abneigungen Realität zu geben” (HA 10: 8). The following comparison of Lenz and Werther explores the ways in which Büchner's text plays off of Goethe's work so as to undermine Goethe's view not only of Lenz in particular but also of individual autonomy in general.

In Werther a fictional editor presents a collection of letters in a book which he hopes will provide comfort to his readers. As is well-known, each of the letters presents a coherent episode or emotion, such as an experience of union with nature (10 May 1771), Lotte at the well (6 July 1771), Werther's visit to the town in which he was born (9 May 1772), or Werther's encounter with the insane flower-seeking man (30 November 1772). Toward the end of the novel, the editor interrupts the sequence of letters in order to offer a third-person account of the last days before the letter-writer ends his own life. The plot of the Werther-story is a clear causal sequence of love, frustration, attempts at consolation, followed by despair and suicide. This is framed by the editor's comments which present his own loss of a friend as potential consolation for his Werther-like readers.

Werther's despair of possessing Lotte in this world is neutralized by his confidence that he will have her in heaven; similarly, the editor's sadness at the loss of his friend is tempered by his anticipation that his “Büchlein” will serve as a friend to others, that the death will not have been meaningless. The editor intends for Werther's “Leiden” and death, like Christ's, to benefit somebody. Similarly, the protagonist died with the tentative belief that Albert and Lotte's “Frieden” could be restored through his departure: “O daß ihr glücklich wäret durch meinen Tod!” (HA 6: 121). Although he admits with what may be feigned humility, “das ward nur wenigen Edeln gegeben, ihr Blut für die Ihrigen zu vergießen und durch ihren Tod ein neues, hundertfältiges Leben ihren Freunden anzufachen” (HA 6: 123), he seems in fact to count himself among these few. His last meal of bread and wine and his confidence that he goes “zu [s]einem Vater” and that he and Lotte “werden sein … werden [sich] wiedersehen” (HA 6: 117) indicate that he—in the context of Christianity—situates his suicide as martyrdom rather than as an unforgivable sin. In his letter of November 15, 1772, Werther manages (in an idiosyncratic, indeed blasphemous manner) to deny Christ's intervention for himself without denying his existence or his sacrifice for the rest of humanity: “Wenn ich nun ihm [Christ] nicht gegeben bin? Wenn mich nun der Vater für sich behalten will?” (HA 6: 86) and in his letter of November 30, 1772, he compares his suicide to the prodigal son's return to the father and argues that “[ihm] ist nur wohl” in the presence of God (HA 6: 91). These references to Christianity establish a positive teleological trajectory against the text's negative trajectory toward suicide.¹³ The trajectories give the novel direction and a goal. From the outset the reader knows that Werther will die, but she does not know the cause and course of his suffering; she reads in order to find out. Thus, the reader, the editor and the letter-writer all act according to purposes, and presumably they all succeed in achieving their respective goals.

In contrast with Werther, Lenz seems to lack a plot and a protagonist¹⁴ as these are commonly understood. The narrative doesn't have a particular goal or direction (other than to return to the point of departure); there is no particular story to tell, and therefore there is no suspense or anticipation.¹⁵ Lenz's condition improves and then worsens, so we are told, but the descriptions of his activities remain similar throughout. As in Werther there are several episodic “scenes” presented chronologically; these include scenes such as Lenz's walk through the mountains; his vision of his mother; his sermon; the “Kunstmonolog”; his attempt to resurrect the child; the episode with the cat; his profane rejection of God as a non-saviour; his complaints about the heaviness of the air and the loudness of the silence; and finally, his passive departure. Common motifs, such as the frequent use of the words “Ruhe”¹⁶ and “Gewalt” or the recurring attacks of “Angst” or “Wahnsinn,” run throughout the narrative, giving it unity, but not a unified plot. The beginning and end are determined by Lenz's arrival in and departure from the valley; thus time and space—not a specific “Handlung”—delimit the narrative.

Although it is argued that Lenz becomes progressively worse (after an initial period of apparent improvement), one can also assert that his condition does not substantially change. His sense of well-being rises and falls, alternating with phases of fear, ennui, madness, and desperation. Nothing is permanent: after his “Triumph-Gesang der Hölle” (22) he is still able to pray; after the complaint of “Langeweile” and his lack of “behaglichen Zeitvertreib” (25), he immediately asserts that it would be worthwhile (and therefore not “langweilig”) to investigate “ob [er] träume oder wache” (25); after the narrator describes him as “gleichgültig” and resigned, he is said to have tried to harm himself. Thematically, the emphasis is on regular cycles and irregular fluctuation, not on beginnings or ends: the waxing and waning of the moon, the shifting light and dark, the wave-like line of the mountain silhouettes, the ticking of a clock, the rise and fall of voices, the rhythm of imagined dressing and undressing. These rhythms are reinforced grammatically with pairs such as “auf- und ab-,” “an- und aus-,” “hin- und her-,” and “bald … bald.” Events themselves recur: Lenz bathes himself in the fountain at night on several occasions (8, 9, 24); he jumps from the window more than once (25, 30); he speaks of his beloved first with Frau Oberlin and later with Pastor Oberlin; his attempt to raise the dead child can be paired with the strange man's attempt to heal the sick girl; twice Lenz stays in bed for a long time and is visited there by Oberlin (24, 29); twice he is told to return home to his father—once by Kaufmann and once by Oberlin; twice Oberlin is irritated by Lenz's blasphemy (25, 29). These recurring events never lead us to believe that Lenz may recover and never allude to some sort of impending disaster, unlike the fairly frequent references to departure and suicide in Werther. In Lenz we don't anticipate anything; we observe. What we observe is not the story or “Schicksal” of one particularly extraordinary “Unglücklichen” but rather the pulses of nature as they are manifested in mountain landscapes, quiet valleys, small communities, and in the acts and thoughts of people.

The differences in the plots of the two works are emphasized by the differences in structure and narrative voices. The pronounced trajectories of the plot in Werther are supported by the linearity of the letter sequence and the neat, apparently arbitrary division of the book into two parts, “erstes Buch” and “zweites Buch.” The series of distinct dated letters (month and day) makes the passage of time into a heavily-highlighted structural feature, while the division into two parts means that there are two end points toward which the reader reads, thus enhancing the focus on goals or resolutions. The two parts of the novel echo one another and emphasize the themes of expectation and disappointment and of departure and loss. The fact that each part ends with Werther's decision to leave Lotte subordinates all other alternations of hope and loss to this dominant drama; similarly, the timeless, tableau-like nature of many of the letters is absorbed by the movement of the story viewed over time. The editor's foreword and his final report place the whole Lotte-complex, the story told through letters, in a context emphasizing both the editor's relationship to the reader and the protagonist's quasi-martyrdom for the sake of similarly passionate and introspective individuals.

In contrast with this highly structured and purposeful epistolary novel, Lenz appears loosely impressionistic. Where Werther is structured linearly, like the Old and New Testaments with the anticipation and fulfillment of certain events, Lenz is structured circularly: various, perhaps unrelated episodes and vignettes form points along the circumference of a circle beginning and ending in more or less the same place. The opening description of Lenz wandering through the mountains is echoed in the closing description of him being driven away from the mountains; the earlier images of red climbing up on top of blue, of the earth becoming “klein wie ein wandelnder Stern” (6) are picked up again at the end by the images of mountains rising up “wie eine tiefblaue Kristallwelle” (30) into the evening's red horizon and of the earth “wie ein goldner Pokal” (31).¹⁷ This subtle circularity is reinforced by Lenz's descriptions of the paintings mentioned in his conversation with Kaufmann.

Just as Werther's story of the young girl's suicide (August 12, 1771), or his stories of the “Bauerbursch” (May 30, 1771; September 4, 1772), and of the demented former-scribe (November 30, 1772) provide encapsulated versions of his own tragic drama, so too do the narrative-versions of Lenz's favorite paintings offer a small-scale pattern which the entire narrative follows. The description of the first painting begins “Es ist ein trüber, dämmernder Abend” (15) and ends, summarily, “so ist das Bild, mit dem einförmigen bräunlichen Ton darüber, dem trüben stillen Abend” (16). Before the description returns to this point of departure, Lenz presents a sequence of events, as if the painting had a temporal dimension: the stranger comes, speaks, breaks bread, the others recognize him, it becomes dark, “es tritt sie etwas Unbegreifliches an” (16), but this is not frightening. Lenz's description uses the same short paratactic clauses so characteristic of Lenz as a whole. The grammatical subject shifts from “er” (the stranger), to “sie” (the disciples), to the impersonal “es” in the same way that agency in the main narrative moves around among Lenz, other people, and impersonal forces.

The presentation of the second painting is quite similar. It begins, “Eine Frau sitzt in ihrer Kammer, das Gebetbuch in der Hand …” (16), and closes with this same image: “die Frau liest den Text nach” (16). Again the description consists of brief clauses; again Lenz “reads” more than could possibly be depicted visually—the woman couldn't go to church, but she could hear the bells and choir resounding over the landscape; again the presentation of the painting flows in a way similar to the flow of Lenz as a whole. The circularity of the narrative descriptions of the paintings undermines the strength of the temporal dimension (linearity) Lenz was able to project onto the atemporal scenes. This tension between linear chronology and a circularity resisting progression also characterizes Lenz as a whole, but because the first and final scenes of the essay are so similar, the tendency toward circularity dominates over the suggestions of progression.

Whereas in Werther the “wiederholte Spiegelungen” (HA 12: 322) pertain to the plot and themes, in Lenz they pertain to visual images, verbal motifs and narrative form. Of course, both paintings have a Christian theme, and Lenz's struggles with faith and blasphemy are a much-discussed aspect of Büchner's essay,¹⁸ but in Lenz's descriptions, as in the text as a whole, the specific content is significantly less important than “eine unendliche Schönheit, die aus einer Form in die andre tritt, ewig aufgeblättert, verändert” (15). Thus, although Werther and Lenz could be compared with regard to the role of religion for each of the protagonists, I am only concerned with the Christian aspects of Werther to the extent that they enhance the linear, goal-oriented effect of the text. The Christian aspects of Lenz, such as Oberlin's unchallenged faith in a transcendental care-taker, do not lend linearity to the text as a whole, since the narrator does not indicate any particular bias toward the idea that life and death are endowed with some sort of divine purpose.

Goethe's text emphasizes progression and the possibility for positively influencing society and its values: a given sequence of events is recognized as a story which culminates with a suicide and with the question as to whether the Christian God, if not the Church, can accept the misunderstood iconoclast; also questioned are the social factors leading to this death. Büchner's text emphasizes non-development but not stasis, change but not progression: the text has no particular story, it asks no questions and it provides no answers. For Büchner, form, “das Gesetz der Schönheit” (2: 292), is all we can hold onto. This “Urgesetz,” presented in “Ueber Schädelnerven” as a philosophical natural law, refutes the “Zweckmäßigkeit” of the teleological interpretation of phenomena. The “notwendige Harmonie” of Lenz results not from a uniform progression toward a known goal, but rather from the “einfachsten Rissen und Linien” (2: 292) of the narrated events and attitudes.¹⁹ Whereas the structure and intratextual resonances of Werther rely on the fact that an individual chooses to act in certain ways and anticipates the consequences of these choices, Büchner's text relies on nature's rhythms and cycles and on the fact that people—even if they perceive themselves as autonomous and distinct—are as subject to the impersonal laws of nature (including “das Gesetz der Schönheit”) as are all other phenomena.

Consistent with these disparate functions and effects of plot and structure are the differences in the narrative perspectives of Werther and Lenz. This stylistic variance has a profound effect on the way we view the content of the narratives, on the way we perceive the speakers, and, ultimately, on the way we understand the author's concept of self. Both Werther and the editor have fairly stable first-person points of view. The narrator of Lenz does not offer such stability of perspective, although he does offer some distance from Lenz.²⁰ Just as the editor comes in to “replace” Werther's voice once he is close to death, so too does the narrator of Lenz maintain a greater distance from the figure's perspective toward the end of the piece. However, the narrator of Lenz cannot be located and defined, which means that even though we move away from the dizzying perspective of Lenz, we are still not granted alternatively secure footing.

The extensive hypotactic sentence from the first paragraph of Büchner's generally paratactic text is frequently associated with Werther and encourages comparison and contrast of the two texts. Because the sentence is so long (twenty-five lines in Reclam) and because most readers are familiar with it, I do not cite it in full. Lenz, the person through whom the landscape is focalized, does not appear until quite late in the sentence (in the seventeenth of the twenty-five lines), in the impersonal clause, “riß es ihm in der Brust” (6). Lenz's passivity is emphasized not only by the frequent use of impersonal “es” constructions but also, as David Horton has observed, by the sentences where abstractions (e.g. “Angst” and “Schmerz”) act as subjects of transitive verbs.²¹ The less often Lenz appears as the grammatical subject, the less we are inclined to think of him as a philosophical subject. Moreover, the narrator anthropomorphizes inanimate phenomena so much that Lenz—even when he is the grammatical subject—does not appear distinct from the scene he observes: the voices on the cliffs “awaken” and seem to want to “sing” to the earth; the clouds “jump” like horses; the sun, armed with a sword, comes and goes; red climbs onto blue. Lenz's “dehnen” and “wühlen,” his “still stehen” and “Augen schließen” seem as premeditated or unpremeditated as the wind's lullaby or the storm's goading of the clouds. Because Lenz is described by a consciousness other than his own, he appears as elemental, as involuntary as other natural phenomena. While Raimar Stefan Zons, among others, argues that Lenz “versucht … am Anfang noch, einen Zugang zur Natur zu gewinnen,”²² I argue that Lenz is not presented as distinct from “nature” (wind, sunlight, mountains as non-sentient nature); rather, he is part of the landscape, part of the natural sublimity. The creative and destructive forces Werther observes so fondly and so despairingly in the landscapes may not necessarily be visible to Lenz, but they are visible in him.²³

In the clause “er meinte, er müsse den Sturm in sich ziehen” the verb “meinen” suggests consciousness and intention, but the “müssen” counters this by implying that Lenz felt compelled without choice and without reflection. We recall Büchner's passionate questioning after the “muß” of human nature: “Das muß ist eins von den Verdammungsworten, womit der Mensch getauft worden. … Was ist das, was in uns lügt, mordet, stiehlt” (2: 426). Something acts through Lenz; Lenz does not act.

The sobering sentence following the passionately accumulative one is this: “Aber es waren nur Augenblicke, und dann erhob er sich nüchtern, fest, ruhig, als wäre ein Schattenspiel vor ihm vorübergezogen, er wußte von nichts mehr” (6). The narrator's suggestion that Lenz arose as if a “Schattenspiel” had passed offers a parallel, as we shall see, to the “Schauspiel” Werther describes, but in Lenz the analogy to a performance is produced by the narrator, and it is unclear if the narrator is here “conceptualizing phenomena through the perspective of the protagonist”²⁴ or if he is organizing the phenomena in a way Lenz would be incapable of doing: as a coherent and meaningful performance. Here and throughout the text, the line between authorial and figural perspective is often blurred or obliterated, thus also blurring the distinction between subjectivity and objectivity, and even between subject and object. If, as Büchner's Lenz recommends, “man … senke sich in das Leben des Geringsten und gebe es wieder” (14), then what happens to one's own perspective and identity? Is selfhood something that comes and goes like light and shadow, or is it something fixed? In Lenz, such questions are solicited not only explicitly by statements referring to Lenz's loss of a single stable identity (e.g. “es war als sei er doppelt” [28]) but also—more subtly and more pervasively—by the narrator's tendency to slip in and out of Lenz's consciousness, as if there were no firm boundaries between the observer and the observed.

In Werther, on the other hand, readers are confident that Werther's identity is defined, even if he sometimes fears he has lost himself: “Wenn wir uns selbst fehlen, fehlt uns doch alles” (August 22; HA 6: 53).The stability of his identity results not from what he says and does, but from the narrative perspective of his letters and from the editor's comments. For contrast with the long “wenn”-sentence of Lenz just discussed, we can look at one of Werther's three extensive nature descriptions (May 10, 1771; August 18, 1771 and December 12, 1772):²⁵ the third offers, as Zons has noted,²⁶ the most similarities to Büchner's introductory description in Lenz:

Nachts nach eilfe rannte ich hinaus. Ein fürchterliches Schauspiel, vom Fels herunter die wühlenden Fluten in dem Mondlichte wirbeln zu sehen, über Äcker und Wiesen und Hecken und alles, und das weite Tal hinauf und hinab eine stürmende See im Sausen des Windes! Und wenn dann der Mond wieder hervortrat und über der schwarzen Wolke ruhte, und vor mir hinaus die Flut in fürchterlich herrlichem Widerschein rollte und klang: da überfiel mich ein Schauer und wieder ein Sehnen! Ach, mit offenen Armen stand ich gegen den Abgrund und atmete hinab! hinab! und verlor mich in der Wonne, meine Qualen, meine Leiden da hinabzustürmen, dahinzubrausen wie die Wellen … O Wilhelm! wie gern hätte ich mein Menschsein drum gegeben, mit jenem Sturmwinde die Wolken zu zerreißen, die Fluten zu fassen! …

Und wie ich wehmütig hinabsah auf ein Plätzchen, wo ich mit Lotten unter einer Weide geruht …—das war auch überschwemmt, und kaum daß ich die Weide erkannte! Wilhelm! Und ihre Wiesen, dachte ich, die Gegend um ihr Jagdhaus! wie verstört jetzt vom reißenden Strome unsere Laube, dacht' ich. Und der Vergangenheit Sonnenstrahl blickte herein, wie einem Gefangenen ein Traum von Herden, Wiesen und Ehrenämtern. Ich stand!—

(HA 6: 98-99)

Werther intentionally goes out into the storm during the “menschenfeindliche[] Jahrszeit”; his “ich” stands prominently as a voluntary witness to the performance. The first-person narration of Werther's letter suggests that he is aware of himself as actor in a staged scene. The environment is itself identified as “nächtliche[] Szenen”; Werther enters the stage. The details of how he stood, how he breathed, how he “wehmütig hinabsah,” all contribute to the impression that he is describing his own performance. The fact that he reports of a past event, in the past tense, undermines any suggestion of spontaneous expression appropriate to the actual moment of intense feeling; the exclamation “Wilhelm!” combined with this use of the past tense directs our attention as much to the reflective narrating letter-writer as to the pained wretch desperate on the cliff's brink. The most remarkable details of Werther's self-description are the direct quotation of his own past thoughts: “Und ihre Wiesen, dachte ich, … wie verstört jetzt vom reißenden Strome unsere Laube! dacht' ich.” If his intention were not self-dramatization, he would have at most reported his thoughts in indirect narration, or summary, if at all. The exclamatory expression of the thoughts (which is archetypical for Storm and Stress speech patterns) appears comical when set off with the sober inquit phrases “dachte ich.” The fact that he quotes his thoughts directly and describes himself in such detail reveals that he finds himself and his thoughts worthy of an audience.

The details of Werther's self-descriptions are always (here and throughout the novel) pregnant with meaning; his behavior and gestures are intended to communicate to Wilhelm and us his inner state, but because he is always aware of his behavior as an act of communication, we begin to question its genuineness; he could perform as if he felt and thought a certain way, without actually feeling this way. Whereas the gestures and facial expressions in Büchner's text are included for their own sake, as if the narrator were following the advice of the fictional Lenz by including the “Zuckungen … Andeutungen, [das] ganz[] feine[], kaum bemerkte[] Mienenspiel” (14), those in Werther's letters are “zweckmäßig” (like the teleological explanations of natural phenomena discussed in the Probevorlesung) and carry a message the addressee is invited to decode. When he picks flowers, arranges them in a bouquet and tosses it in the river (August 10, 1771), we are not to overlook this mime as a chance detail included in his self-description; rather, we are to read it as a meaningful communication, suggesting perhaps his despair at not being able to keep Lotte (his picked flowers) or foreshadowing his suicide (perhaps an allusion to Ophelia's suicide). Similarly, gnashing teeth indicate fury and anger or impatience; walking “auf und ab” communicates restless nervousness. A tear in his or Lotte's eye means strong and admirable emotion. Such gestures very well could appear as unreflected and spontaneous communication if they were to be reported by someone other than Werther. However, because Werther includes such details in his letters, we suspect that he is a script-writer aware of how such gestures will be interpreted; he performs accordingly.

Werther is observed by Schiller to be a sentimental character, but Büchner's Lenz (insofar as he might be considered as having a definite, describable personality at all) would have to be regarded as naive.²⁷ Werther's incessant self-awareness and habitual writing undermine his attempts to be the natural unaffected and spontaneous hero of his own narrative. When he says he is losing his mind (“ich soll nicht zu mir selbst kommen” [November 30; HA 6: 88]); “ich [habe] keine Besinnungskraft mehr” [December 14; HA 6: 100]) we are perplexed by the paradoxical nature of the claim: how can he display such ability to analyze himself and write of himself if he has lost control over or contact with himself? He would like to lose control, but cannot. This is the determining characteristic of Werther's “sentimental” personality; his outpourings imitate spontaneous bursts of emotion, but they are rhetorically designed with a view toward their effect on the audience. He is never without control.

Werther's “I” is lost neither in nature (landscapes) nor in the overpowering love for Lotte; he is always conscious of his condition. His self-awareness and reflexivity help establish him as a stable subject. Obviously, this stability does not result from a consistency in attitude and outlook—which are all too labile—but rather arises from or becomes evident in the permanence of the letter-writing “ich.” Because this “ich” is able to write effectively and well, the letters reflect the confidence from day to day and season to season that the “ich” is a definable self, with one consistent identity over time: “wie ich so wissentlich in das alles, Schritt vor Schritt, hineingegangen bin! Wie ich über meinen Zustand immer so klar gesehen … jetzt noch so klar sehe” (August 8; HA 6: 44). The fact that Werther reflects on his present behavior and relates it to his past behavior indicates a sense of continuous identity: “Bin ich nicht noch eben derselbe, der ehemals in aller Fülle der Empfindung herumschwebte [?] … und dies Herz ist jetzt tot” (November 3; HA 6: 84). As Peter Brenner observes in his study on the emergence, maintenance and disappearance of the subject in eighteenth century novels, “die Möglichkeit, sich zu sich selbst als einem immer Identischen zu verhalten, ist … eine Voraussetzung für das Erreichen nichtrestringierter Subjektivität.”²⁸ For Werther, the non-restricted subjectivity—this incessant consciousness of himself—resists the possible dissolution of the self through total union with nature or with another aspect of the object-world. This self-awareness paradoxically reflects a unified self even when the self claims to be fragmented. Although Büchner's Lenz is treated as a single person with a continuous history, he is not depicted as aware of himself as “ein[] immer Identische[r]” (Brenner), and his “history” is less a story of his loss of sanity than it is an account of the particular course of nature his life displays. Phases of lucidity and coherence alternate with phases of confusion, and each phase may be contaminated by traces of the other, just as for Werther perception of destruction and loss can be accompanied with a recollection of the previously perceived creativity and plenty. Werther, as letter writer, shows himself to be aware not only of his current reflection on the loss of previous joy but also of himself as the unifying constant linking the opposite perceptions in one consciousness: “Selbst diese Anstrengung, jene unsägliche Gelüste zurückzurufen, wieder auszusprechen, hebt meine Seele über sich selbst und läßt mich dann das Bange des Zustandes doppelt empfinden, der mich jetzt umgibt” (August 18; HA 6: 52). Büchner's Lenz, on the other hand, is presented as someone as victimized by his memories and intuitions as he is by the ephemeral circumstances determining his experience: “Ahnungen von seinem alten Zustande durchzuckten ihn, und warfen Streiflichter in das wüste Chaos seines Geistes” (20). Although one might argue that the mental chaos is responsible for Lenz's loss of a sense of identity, Büchner's text does not support the concept of an autonomous self-identified individual even apart from madness.

Werther's control and agency as a subject are primarily exercised and displayed linguistically. He is concerned with his ability to express himself and is impressed by the “Bauerbursch” because he has so much feeling in his “Erzählung” about his unattainable beloved (May 30, 1771). As if in order to acquire this force and fire of passion, Werther soon falls in love with Lotte and then writes about it to Wilhelm (June 16, 1771).²⁹ For Werther, Lotte's absence even more than her presence provides what he is looking for: an occasion to express his heartfelt joy and longing with language of his soul, with “den ganz wahren Ausdrücken der Natur” (May 4; HA 6: 7).

Lenz, in contrast, cannot be said to do anything so purposefully. The thought of his beloved does not haunt him until the maid's song of her distant “Schatz” unexpectedly recalls Friederike (not named in the text) to his mind: “Das fiel auf ihn, er verging fast unter den Tönen. … Er faßte sich ein Herz, er konnte nicht mehr schweigen, er mußte davon sprechen” (20).³⁰ Although the love-triangle mentioned very briefly in Lenz (“sie liebte noch einen anderen”) might offer a point of comparison to Werther with regard to the protagonists' relative skill in coping with desire and guilt,³¹ of more significance is, in my opinion, the fact that Werther chooses to fall in love, chooses to develop and sustain an obsession with Lotte, while Lenz responds apparently (in Büchner's text) without much reflection and without an awareness of optional responses to whatever stimulus presents itself: a vision of his mother incites the desire to preach; learning of the child's death compels him to try to resurrect her; hearing about a maid's distant beloved reminds him of his own.

When compared to Werther's control over his heart and his language, Lenz's difficulties with verbal expression are especially striking. Again, the fact that Werther writes and Lenz is written about plays a significant role in our perception of the characters and, in Lenz, of the narrator. Another hypotactic sentence from Lenz seems to echo one of Werther's highly controlled sentences, and serves, in its context, to highlight the contrast between Werther and Lenz with respect both to language and to the sense of lack. In the letter to Lotte of January 20th Werther writes: “Der Sauerteig, der mein Leben in Bewegung setzte, fehlt; der Reiz, der mich in tiefen Nächten munter erhielt, ist hin, der mich des Morgens aus dem Schlafe weckte, ist weg” (HA 6: 65).

Werther is capable of describing lack in language and syntax which reveal a fair amount of pleasure and finesse. The three parallel hypotactic clauses are measured and controlled: the subjects of the first two main verbs are metaphors for Lotte (“Sauerteig” and “Reiz”) and the fact that the third main verb lacks its own distinct subject rhetorically recreates the situation described: “der Reiz” “ist weg.” Werther's manifest pleasure in language belies the supposed apathy and emptiness.

A sentence from Lenz echoes this one of Werther's and resounds with the now familiar oscillating cadence:

… alles was er an Ruhe aus der Nähe Oberlins und aus der Stille des Thals geschöpft hatte, war weg; die Welt, die er hatte nutzen wollen, hatte einen ungeheuren Riß, er hatte keinen Haß, keine Liebe, keine Hoffnung, eine schreckliche Leere und doch eine folternde Unruhe, sie auszufüllen. Er hatte nichts.

(27)

The hypotaxis of the first clause imitates the first two clauses of Werther's statement cited above. The second clause exchanges the predicate expressing absence (“fehlt”) in Werther's sentence for a predicate paradoxically expressing possession and deprivation simultaneously (“hatte” + “Riß,” insofar as “Riß” is defined as a hole or rip). The Lenz-narrator then deserts the hypotactic syntax but continues with this model of “haben” plus negative (the three adjectives “kein,” the paradoxical substantive “Leere,” and the prefix “un-”), culminating with the “nichts” of the following sentence. Lenz's situation is fundamentally different from that of Werther both because that which is missing is much more comprehensive than an absent beloved, and, more significantly, because he can't talk about it. The narrator is responsible for the careful organization of the sentence; the narrator is capable, as is Werther, of achieving a stable perspective on the current mental climate and of communicating this perspective in an orderly, controlled manner. As if in deliberate contrast with Werther's linguistic expertise, the Lenz-narrator describes Lenz's disturbed relationship to speech: “Im Gespräch stockte er oft, eine unbeschreibliche Angst befiel ihn, er hatte das Ende seines Satzes verloren; dann meinte er, er müsse das zuletzt gesprochene Wort behalten und immer sprechen …” (27). Moreover, Lenz is said to mistake his own voice for that of another person and to mistake himself for the chance people he thinks about. With the disturbed, uncontrolled relationship to language comes an inability to hold onto oneself as a definable, stable self.

While these close readings from each text point out differences between passages in Werther's voice and passages in the voice of the Lenz-narrator, they do not address the passages written in the voice of the fictional editor in Werther. The editor's section at the end of the Die Leiden des jungen Werther is, from a narratological standpoint, much closer to Lenz than are Werther's letters. The editor, like the narrator of Büchner's text, not only uses direct and indirect speech, but also occasionally uses a “dual voice” which merges his and his protagonist's voices. The following excerpts provide examples of this dual voice; the sentences which could express either Werther or the editor's thoughts are in italics:

Da er durch die Linden mußte, um nach der Schenke zu kommen, wo sie den Körper hingelegt hatten, entsetzt' er sich vor dem sonst so geliebten Platze. Jene Schwelle, worauf die Nachbarskinder so oft gespielt hatten war mit Blut besudelt. Liebe und Treue, die schönsten menschlichen Empfindungen, hatten sich in Gewalt und Mord verwandelt.

(HA 6: 95; my emphasis)

Because our perspective was determined for so long by what Werther reports in his letters, we are now inclined to view such evaluative assertions (e.g. “die schönsten menschlichen Empfindungen”) as Werther's own. Once Werther arrives at the scene of the crime, we see through his eyes. Similarly, when Werther encounters the captured murderer we enter his thoughts: “Werther sah hin und blieb nicht lange zweifelhaft. Ja! es war der Knecht, der jene Witwe so sehr liebte …” (HA 6: 95; my emphasis).

Despite the fact that the editor of Werther uses some of the same techniques as the narrator of Lenz will use, we are not inclined to consider him or Werther as dreamy and borderless as Lenz and the narrator seem to be. This results primarily from the fact that the editor refers to himself and to his project, and he gives us direct access to his thinking and to his process of gathering information. Thus the editor of Werther's letters does not hide, while the narrator of Lenz refers to himself only once and in the first person plural (“uns” 9,9) as if he didn't mean himself specifically but rather all of humankind. If the Lenz-narrator unobtrusively “sinks” into the essence of those people and places he presents, the fictional editor of Werther, like Werther himself, projects ideas onto those he tries to understand. In the case of Lotte, for instance, he decides that he can project his own version of a female soul onto her in order to figure out what her thoughts would have been: “eine schöne weibliche Seele sich in die ihrige denken” (HA 6: 101). Büchner's Lenz, on the other hand, would become completely confused, were he to attempt to imagine or project a “soul” for another person: “dachte er an eine fremde Person, oder stellte er sie sich lebhaft vor, so war es ihm, als würde er sie selbst” (27). The fact that both Werther and the editor have well-defined identities and each speaks, at times, in the first-person means that in the few instances in which the editor allows his perspective to coalesce with Werther's we do not feel we have lost either person as a definable and defined self.

Werther, even in his most extreme conditions of self-alienation, even when the editor presents him as the victim of abstractions (“unüberwindlich bemächtigte sich die Teilnehmung seiner und es ergriff ihn eine unsägliche Begierde, den Menschen zu retten” [HA 6: 96]), even then Werther is in control and acts logically, with forethought. Sometimes this forethought is presented explicitly by the editor: “er hatte sich gesagt, es [suicide] solle keine übereilte, keine rasche Tat sein, er wolle mit der besten Überzeugung, mit der möglichst ruhigen Entschlossenheit diesen Schritt tun” (HA 6: 100). But sometimes the logic of Werther's thinking and actions is communicated through the simple conjunction “daß”: “Er fühlte ihn so unglücklich, er fand ihn als Verbrecher selbst so schuldlos, er setzte sich so tief in seine Lage, daß er gewiß glaubte, auch andere davon zu überzeugen” (HA 6: 96; my emphasis). The “daß” presents Werther's confidence in persuading others as a result of his own strong feelings of empathy. In Lenz a remarkably parallel passage does not include the “daß,” suggesting that Lenz's feelings and actions are not linked by deliberation and by awareness of cause and effect, but rather only temporally as consecutive experiences and grammatically as paratactic clauses of the same sentence: “Das Kind kam ihm so verlassen vor, und er sich so allein und einsam; er warf sich über die Leiche nieder; der Tod erschreckte ihn, ein heftiger Schmerz faßte ihn an, diese Züge, dieses stille Gesicht sollte verwesen, er warf sich nieder …” (22). While we are inclined to see Lenz's actions, like Werther's, as a result of his feelings, the causality is not explicitly stated.³² Surprisingly, this lack of explicit causality (“daß”) creates the effect of an even stronger causal relationship: throwing himself down on the small corpse is an automatic, instinctive response to the sense of aloneness, the child's and his. A “daß” would imply a moment of reflection, a pause during which he could decide what to do.

Werther is not the only character the editor presents as an autonomous, purposeful individual, just as Lenz is not the only person presented in Büchner's text as lacking autonomy. In his discussion of Lotte's dilemma the editor presents her as someone aware of her freedom and able to make a choice: “Wie sollte sie ihrem Mann entgegengehen?” (HA 6: 118). The fact that the editor is able to speculate on a different outcome for the story reinforces the fact that he, at least, believes that people's free choices can affect the course of events: “Hätte eine glückliche Vertraulichkeit sie [Albert and Lotte] früher wieder einander nähergebracht … vielleicht wäre unser Freund noch zu retten gewesen” (HA 6: 119). In Lenz we are not invited to speculate in such a way about how events could be altered by the actions of the individuals affected by them: we have no convincing etiology for Lenz's illness, no clear motivation for his actions, and no suggestion as to how his situation could be improved. In fact, in Lenz, we are rarely shown alternatives or decisions at all. The result is that people as well as circumstance appear to be guided by “de[r] gräßliche[] Fatalismus der Geschichte”—the force Büchner felt operated behind the ineffectual revolutionary efforts of reformers during the French Revolution and which he felt destined all individuals to “eine entsetzliche Gleichheit.”³³

Because Lenz is going mad, it is perhaps invalid to combine observations concerning how the narrator presents him with those concerning how the narrator presents other people.³⁴ Nevertheless, it is important to consider the others in order to assess what might be considered “healthy” or mentally stable in this (con)text. If madness is solely responsible for the elusiveness of a defined self, then we could not argue that Büchner questions the autonomy and individual essence of all people. Oberlin is the most significant person in the text other than Lenz. In analyzing the presentation of Oberlin it should be recalled that Büchner's primary source was a first-person account written by Oberlin and that several passages from Büchner's text follow Oberlin's wording almost exactly, switching only the first-person focalization to the third-person. The effect of this switch is, above all, to suggest at least superficially that the narrator has no more or less access to Oberlin's consciousness then he does to Lenz's, since now both men are presented in the third-person. In Oberlin's text, we are given his thoughts and impressions directly, and we are not given Lenz's other than in what he is reported as having said. In Büchner's text this is almost reversed, such that we are allowed much more access to Lenz's mind than we are to Oberlin's. However, Oberlin's thoughts and actions are reported carefully, although without as much detail as are Lenz's and without as much coalescing of authorial and figural perspective.

Oberlin responds to whatever comes his way and he interprets the events according to his own world view, as if he were not even aware that there may be other ways of looking at things. He is said to have seen Lenz's arrival in Steintal as a “Schickung Gottes” (13); he accepts him and responds to him. Oberlin, like Lenz, is not depicted as having much autonomy: he draws lots to determine what he should do (10). In his own record Oberlin presents decisions in detail, explaining or suggesting why he chose as he did. His record is essentially an apology: he wants to explain why he took in Lenz and why he had him sent away. He explains that he knew Lenz (a theologian) was coming before Lenz actually arrived, and he explains how he makes sense initially of Lenz's bizarre behavior: “Herr K … liebt das kalte Bad auch, und Herr L … ist ein Freund von Hn. K …” (36);³⁵ he explains his need for a break from weekly preaching, before he says that Lenz held the sermon; he presents several instances of how Lenz was not in control of himself, thus justifying his decision to have Lenz guarded and then eventually transported to Strassbourg. In Büchner's text Oberlin is presented as responding but not as deciding to respond in a specific manner.

The only instance in Büchner's text in which Oberlin is aware of a choice is when he may choose whether or not to go with Kaufmann to Switzerland; even here the narrator says that Oberlin's desire to meet Lavater “bestimmte ihn,” thus making Oberlin the grammatical object and minimizing the suggestion of actual volition (17). Otherwise Oberlin is presented as responding invariably, as if automatically, in accordance with what he regards as God's plan. In other words, I argue that he does not choose to reprimand Lenz for his aimless, godless life-style and does not choose to regard it as sinful. Rather, he simply does regard it as sinful, and he perceives it as his obligation to admonish Lenz: this is what the conditions of his upbringing and experience have made into necessity for Oberlin. Thus, I do not think that Büchner intends to criticize Oberlin any more than he intends to criticize Lenz.³⁶ Büchner's text does not pass judgment: it presents people as the involuntary and “necessary” products of nature and society.

Such refraining from judgment is not possible in Werther; here individuals are considered responsible not only for their actions and inactions (e.g. if only Lotte and Albert had talked with each other), but also, to a large extent, for their moods (cf. the discussion about “üble Laune,” July 1; HA 6: 32). Werther presents the individual as unique and autonomous, capable of decisions whether they be influenced by strong emotion or by reason. The well-delineated voices and perspectives of the editor and the letter-writer reinforce the underlying confidence in distinct, largely self-determining selves. These selves are not viewed entirely as products of external, or even internal circumstance, but as beings with souls—some aspect of which is inexplicably independent of natural and social influences—contributing voluntarily to their surroundings. Lenz, narrated by a perplexingly anonymous voice and from an instable perspective sometimes within and sometimes distanced from Lenz's consciousness, reinforces the elusiveness of what a previous generation might have called a self.

In “Aus Goethes Brieftasche” the young author of Werther mentions “de[r] geheime[] Punkt” where the necessary “Gang des Ganzen” and “das Eigentümliche unsres Ichs, die prätendierte Freiheit unsres Wollens” confront each other (HA 12: 226). Büchner's Lenz, in keeping with the thoughts of the historical model he represents, also mentions the realist's desire to find and depict this individual core of his subject: “in das eigenthümliche Wesen jedes einzudringen” (15). The Storm and Stress authors in general were unusually focused on the significance of the individual self and particularly horrified by the thought of its dissolution or annihilation through death or oblivion: “Für nichts gerechnet! Ich! Der ich mir alles bin, da ich alles nur durch mich kenne!” (HA 12: 224). However, Büchner himself, convinced that “wir durch gleiche Umstände wohl Alle gleich würden” (2: 422), not only rejects the notion of “Freiheit unsres Wollens” but also challenges the idea that there is an essential, innate quality specific to each being. Whereas Werther's letters and “Leiden” reflect “sein[en] Geist und sein[en] Charakter” (HA 6: 7), Lenz's wanderings and sufferings, as depicted by Büchner, are not to be read as specific to Lenz's character, but rather as indicative of the fact that the “Gang des Ganzen”—in this case the aberrant, but natural course of madness—does not encounter any meaningful or effective resistance from what might be called “das eigenthümliche Wesen” of Lenz's self. Where Goethe (in Dichtung und Wahrheit) had intended to present Lenz's “Charakter” in terms of his accomplishments (“Resultaten”), Büchner presents Lenz less as a particular man than as a sample human being, less as an odd case study of mental illness, than as a sample of nature's patterns and permutations. The frequent allusions to Werther and the less frequent evocations of Goethe's descriptions of Lenz establish a strong presence in Lenz of the very tradition Büchner's text rejects. The text does not present “the sufferings of young Lenz”³⁷; in fact, it does not present Lenz as an individual at all: it presents “das Gesetz der Schönheit,” the rhythms of which subject us, at times, to “Angst” too measureless for words and to voids, nadirs so “entsetzlich” when considered in isolation, but so paradoxically beautiful when viewed as the involuntary signature of animate and inanimate, conscious and oblivious nature.

Notes

1. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Werke, ed. Erich Trunz et al. (Hamburg: Wegener, 1958) 10: 8. All subsequent references to Goethe's works will be cited in the text and will refer to this edition (HA); in the case of Werther's letters both the dates of the letters and the page numbers will be given. The 1787 version is used here; it seems much more likely that Büchner would have read this later edition. References to Georg Büchner's works other than Lenz are to Sämtliche Werke und Briefe, ed. Werner R. Lehmann (Hamburg, Wegener, 1967). The quotations from Lenz are based on the “Studienausgabe,” ed. Hubert Gersch (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1984).

2. For example, Hubert Gersch also sees Büchner's Lenz as a response to Goethe's description in Dichtung und Wahrheit; in “Georg Büchners Lenz-Entwurf: Textkritik, Edition und Erkenntnis-perspektiven. Ein Zwischenbericht,” Georg Büchner Jahrbuch 3 (1983): 15-24; for this reference p. 24.

3. The term is Heinrich Heine's (9). It refers to an “aristokratische Zeit der Literatur” (9) in which Goethe, “ein Indifferentist” (46), had reigned and which had ended with Goethe's death, only three years prior to when Büchner may have begun work on Lenz. Cf. Die Romantische Schule, ed. Helga Weidmann (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1976). In Büchner's Lenz even the literary period spanning the early part of Goethe's productive life is labeled as the “idealistische Periode” and is presented as aristocratic, although Goethe is himself acknowledged as having some tendencies toward real compassion and as being able to depict “Möglichkeit des Daseins” (14).

4. The similarities in style, diction (e.g. Storm and Stress and pietistic vocabulary) and syntax (e.g. “wenn-Periode”) are discussed by many, including Gerhart Baumann, Georg Büchner, Die Dramatische Ausdruckswelt (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1961) 32-49; Peter Hasubek, “‘Ruhe’ und ‘Bewegung’: Versuch einer Stilanalyse von Georg Büchners ‘Lenz,’” Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 50 (1969): 33-59; Roy Pascal, “Büchner's Lenz-Style and Message,” Oxford German Studies 9 (1978): 68-83; and Dennis F. Mahoney “The Sufferings of Young Lenz: The function of Parody in Büchner's Lenz,” Monatshefte 76 (1984): 396-408.

5. Baumann is an exception to this generalization. He notes that the “Rückbezüge” and “Durchblicke” of Werther's letters create a highly structured text with thematic links allowing the organizing “Geist des Dichters” (124) to be visible, while Lenz, according to Baumann, lacks “Spannung” (135) and emphasizes the present moment rather than connections between similar moments (124). This is discussed further below.

6. This representative allusion to Werther is noted by Benno von Wiese, “Lenz” in Die deutsche Novelle II (Düsseldorf: Bagel, 1962) 117. Walter Hinderer further notes that both protagonists express interest in “die geringen Leute” (166) that both combat feelings of indifference (168), and that the health of each progressively worsens (170) (Büchner-Kommentar zum Dichterischen Werk [München: Winkler, 1977]). The common theme of “Wahnsinn” is noted by Paul Landau, among others (Paul Landau, “Lenz” [1909], rpt. in Georg Büchner, ed. Wolfgang Martens [Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1965] 32-49). Other points of comparison are the facts that both protagonists are involved in an unhappy love triangle; both emphasize the importance of “Mitleid”; both may be described as a homeless “Wanderer”; both express a desire for “Ruhe” and fear the threat and experience of nothingness; both display paranoid and masochistic behaviors; both may be identified as “artists”; and both fear separation from the stabilizing person (Lotte; Oberlin) to whom they cling. These similarities in personality assume that the characters and authors share a common existential confidence in “identity” and “individual”; as soon as we see that Büchner's text assumes no such thing, the points of similarity become points of contrast.

7. Walter Hinderer, “Pathos oder Passion: Leiddarstellung in Büchners ‘Lenz,’” Wissen aus Erfahrung, ed. Alexander Bormann (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1976) 484.

8. Baumann 121.

9. Ilse Stephan and Hans Gerd Winter, “Ein vorübergehendes Meteor”? J. M. R. Lenz und seine Rezeption in Deutschland (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1984) 82 ff.

10. Raimar Stefan Zons, “Ein Riß durch die Ewigkeit/ Landschaften in ‘Werther’ and ‘Lenz,’” literatur für leser 4 (1981): 65-78.

11. Mahoney 404. While Mahoney's argument may be compelling on some levels, it appears severely flawed by the apparent hypothesis that the historical Lenz modeled his behavior on Werther's. In this paper it is assumed that the Werther-Lenz parallels are invented by the author and that the similarities of Lenz's activities in Waldbach as recorded by Oberlin to those presented in Werther's letters are only coincidental.

12. Rosemarie Zeller discusses Büchner's perception of the ambivalence, equivocalness, and “Widerspruch” of language and his method of using (in Dantons Tod and Leonce und Lena) this inherent ambiguity to contrast words with the disparate reality they are supposed to signify; cf. “Das Prinzip der Äquivalenz bei Büchner,” Sprachkunst 5 (1974): 211-30. Heinrich Anz speaks of “ein poetisches Verfahren der Umdeutung” (164) with which Büchner uses pietistic terminology to criticize the theology usually expressed with these very terms; cf. “‘Leiden sey all mein Gewinnst’ Zur Aufnahme und Kritik christlicher Leidenstheologie bei Georg Büchner,” Georg Büchner Jahrbuch 1 (1981): 160-68. Büchner's criticism of the freedom-championing “Formeln der Aufklärung” (146) is observed to be carried out by using these very phrases in contexts revealing how little they have to do with political and social reality; cf. Silvio Vietta, “Sprachkritik bei Büchner,” Georg Büchner Jahrbuch 2 (1982): 144-56. Peter Horn speaks of how the “Volk” depicted in Büchner's Dantons Tod must resort to blasphemous “Umfunktionier[ung]” of the “vorgegebenen Diskurs” (216) in order to achieve any insight into its desperate situation; cf. Peter Horn, “‘Ich meine für menschliche Dinge müsse man auch menschliche Ausdrücke finden’: Die Sprache der Philosophie und die Sprache der Dichtung bei Georg Büchner,” Georg Büchner Jahrbuch 2 (1982): 209-26.

13. Herbert Schöffler disputes the Christian interpretation of this text and argues instead that it is the first piece of pantheistic literature in the German language. Herbert Schöffler, Deutscher Geist im 18. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1956) 155-81. I argue, however, that while the last line, “Kein Geistlicher hat ihn begleitet,” may be a criticism of the Church, it is not necessarily a criticism of the faith. It seems more likely, in fact, whatever Goethe's own beliefs may have been, that this last sentence—consistent with the editor's desires to apotheosize Werther—would serve to point out how the Church (like most social institutions) fails to recognize the extraordinary value of this unorthodox individual, while God, who is beyond mundane rules and who might serve as an imagined role model for the “gute Seele” reading the novel, would not reject Werther.

14. Maurice Benn regards Lenz as an “unconventional protagonist” in a text which seems as much like a scientific study as a work of literature (Maurice Benn, The Drama of Revolt [London: Cambridge UP, 1976] 200 ff.). However, for lack of a better term, I refer to Lenz as the protagonist, despite the fact that this term implies (as a result of its usual connotations in today's usage) both that the person is a particular “character” and that the text in which he appears has a delineable plot.

15. This argument is disputed by those who regard the essay as a novella or a “Halbnovelle” and who seek the “Wendepunkt” in the sermon, in the “Kunstgespräch” or in Oberlin's departure (cf. Pongs, Neuse, Jansen) or the “sich ereignete unerhörte Begebenheit,” which some (cf. Himmel) locate prior to the beginning of the “Halbnovelle” with the onset of Lenz' madness. Cf. Hermann Pongs, “Büchners ‘Lenz,’” in: Georg Büchner, ed. Wolfgang Martens (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1967) 138-50; Erna Kritsch Neuse, “Büchners Lenz, Zur Struktur der Novelle,” The German Quarterly 43 (1970): 199-209; Peter K. Jansen, “The Structural Function of the Kunstgespräch in Büchner's Lenz,” Monatshefte 67 (1975): 145-56; and Hellmuth Himmel, Geschichte der deutschen Novelle (Bern, 1963) 152 ff. For a thorough survey of approaches to the structure and plot as well as themes of Lenz, see Walter Hinderer “Lenz. ‘Sein Dasein war ihm eine notwendige Last,’” in: Interpretationen. Georg Büchner (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1990) 70-82.

16. For discussions of the central motif of “Ruhe” see Hasubek and Mark Roche, “Die Selbstaufhebung des Antiidealismus in Büchners Lenz,” Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 107 “Sonderheft” (1988): 136-47.

17. Both Heinz Fischer (Georg Büchner, Untersuchungen und Marginalien [Bouvier: Bonn, 1972] 37) and Zons compare the first and last nature descriptions. They argue that Lenz is unable to appreciate the landscape during his departure and that this loss marks the most advanced stage of his illness presented in the text. Although it is true that Lenz is described as apathetic and that the narrative perspective here is not through Lenz as it was in the beginning, it seems presumptuous to assume that this final episode is meant to depict a terminally extreme condition. Rather, I contend that the oscillations which have been presented throughout the narrative will continue, and that the “so lebte er hin” refers not to Lenz's indifference, but to the pronounced oscillations between states of indifference and engagement, unrest and tranquility.

18. Cf. Walter Hinderer (1976) and Dieter Sevin, “Die existentielle Krise in Büchners Lenz,” Seminar, 15 (1979): 15-26. Obviously not only the question of Lenz's faith (as presented by Büchner) is discussed; Büchner's own attitudes toward organized religion, particularly Christianity, are a favorite topic for Büchner-scholars, and thus Lenz is often regarded as the showcase in which Büchner displays his own criticism of religion.

19. Zons applies these concepts from the Probevorlesung to his discussion of the landscapes in Werther and Lenz. Lenz does not view nature as aesthetically pleasing for him (which would correspond to the teleological purpose of nature's beauty); rather nature is beautiful “an sich,” while Lenz is “unendlich abgesondert” from nature, because of his “Geist” and his “ästhetischen Blick” (73ff.). Zons reads Lenz as “Exposition des Naturverlusts” (77). However, I argue that Lenz is presented as part of nature, not distinct from it, and that the “Gesetz der Schönheit” is shown to work through him as well as through the other natural phenomena presented in the text.

20. For analyses of the narrator in Lenz see Martin Swales's “Lenz” in The German Novelle (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1977) 105 ff.; Pascal; and, particularly, David Horton “Modes of Consciousness Representation in Büchner's Lenz,” German Life and Letters 43 (1989): 34-48.

21. David Horton, “Transitivity and Agency in Georg Büchner's Lenz: A contribution to a stylistic analysis,” Orbis Litterarum 45 (1990): 236-47.

22. Zons 74.

23. The episode in which Lenz and the cat lock each other's gazes until Madame Oberlin physically interferes provides a particularly clear example of how Lenz is nature, and of how scholarly discussions of his maintaining or losing his contact with or appreciation of the landscapes and nature are essentially irrelevant. In this context it is worth noting Wackenroder's description of one of the artists in Herzensergießungen eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders. (That Lenz reflects influence by Novalis, Tieck and Wackenroder is discussed [among others] by Raleigh Whitinger, “Echoes of Novalis and Tieck in Büchner's Lenz,” Seminar 25 [1989]: 324-38.) In the section about the peculiar artist Piero di Cosimo one reads: “Der Künstlergeist soll, wie ich meyne, nur ein brauchbares Werkzeug seyn, die ganze Natur in sich zu empfangen, und, mit dem Geiste des Menschen beseelt, in schöner Verwandlung wiederzugebähren. Ist er aber aus innerem Instinkte, und aus überflüssiger, wilder und üppiger Kraft, ewig für sich in unruhiger Arbeit; so ist er nicht immer ein geschicktes Werkzeug,—vielmehr möchte man dann ihn selber eine Art von Kunstwerk der Schöpfung nennen” (Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder, Sämtliche Werke und Briefe, ed. Silvio Vietta and Richard Littlejohns. [Carl Winter: Heidelberg, 1991] 1: 105; my emphases). Like Cosimo, Büchner's Lenz is presented not so much as a mimetic artist turning nature into art, but as himself an aesthetically pleasing, if powerfully disturbed and disturbing, natural phenomenon.

24. Horton (1989) 43.

25. This letter is December 12 in the 1787 edition. In the 1774 edition (the edition Zons uses for his study) it is dated December 8 and precedes the interruption by the editor. The displacement of this letter in Goethe's revision is significant, but is beyond the scope of this paper.

26. Zons 69: “Diesen letzten Naturbezug Werthers … zitiert Büchner herbei, aber nicht als End-, sondern als Ausgangspunkt einer Entwicklung. …”

27. Friedrich Schiller, Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung, in: F. S. Werke und Briefe VIII: Theoretische Schriften, Rolf-Peter Janz. (Frankfurt a.M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1992) 772 and passim.

28. Peter Brenner, Die Krise der Selbstbehauptung (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1981) 114.

29. Peter Pütz also observes that the relationship of Werther to the “Bauerbursch” is like his relationships to literature; he forms himself consciously according to an external model; “Werthers Leiden an der Literatur,” Goethe's Narrative Fiction, ed. W. J. Lillyman (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1983): 55-68 (here p. 67).

30. This scene in which Lenz sits with Madame Oberlin and plays with her child evokes the letter of December 4, 1772, in which Werther, with one of Lotte's siblings on his knee, listens to Lotte play on the piano the melody which apparently throws Werther into a fit.

31. Cf. Baumann 134.

32. Baumann refers to the fact that in Lenz “kausale Verbindungen [werden] ausgespart” (144), by which he means that there are often no logical connections between the distinct episodes of the essay.

33. Büchner, letter to Minna Jaeglé (March 10, 1834; II, 425).

34. Not everyone agrees that Lenz is depicted as mad or as going mad. For alternative perspectives see Janet K. King, “Lenz viewed sane,” The Germanic Review 49 (1974): 146-53, and Pascal 76, note 2.

35. Oberlin's report is reprinted in the “Studienausgabe” of Lenz (cf. note 1). The page reference refers to this edition.

36. Sabine Kubik, however, argues that Büchner criticizes Oberlin for not being sensitive to Lenz's individual needs; Krankheit und Medizin im literarischen Werk Georg Büchners (Stuttgart: M & P Verlag für Wissenschaft und Forschung, 1991) 60-61; passim.

37. Mahoney.