Art. Emilia Galotti

Emilia GalottiAuthor(s): Frank G. RyderSource: The German Quarterly, Vol. 45, No. 2 (Mar., 1972), pp. 329-347Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Association of Teachers of GermanStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/404324 .

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EMILIA GALOTTI

FRANK G. RYDER

The denouement of Emilia Galotti is an event of almost gratui- tous psychological horror: a beautiful and apparently innocent young woman dies, on what was to be her wedding day, murdered by her

father, a man (we have been assured) of rectitude and highest moral standards. Her death is also willed by the girl herself, thus the moral

equivalent of suicide. This coincidence of purpose does not mitigate the enormity of the ending, any more than the intent of suicide elimi- nates the crime of murder. The end of the play, indeed the whole

play, cries out for logical explanation and finds none. We face an endless clash of contradictory interpretations.

Only a multiplicity of readings can evoke the Protean implications of a Faust, and in this sense divergent interpretations may be mutually illuminating and concurrently tenable. Readings of Emilia are not

simply varied, but antithetical:

The play is political, in tyrannos (Miiller). It is political, yes, but more an attack on middle class passivity (Heitner). It seems

misguided to regard the play as political at all (Angress).

The play is psychological (Lamport). Hardly, characters and their psychology are secondary, action is paramount (Hatfield). No, the focus of the play is religious: it deals, e.g., with the relation of Odoardo to his God (Guthke).

The tragedy is Aristotelian (Hatfield). It is not Aristotelian

(Nolte).

The titular heroine is the actual heroine (Weigand). Not Emilia but Odoardo is the protagonist (Hillen). Emilia and Odoardo to-

gether constitute the protagonist (Stahl). Emilia is a creature of emerging sexuality and, given the right

circumstances, will inevitably "fall" (Schneider). She is only normally tempted, but exaggeratedly "repressive" (Bostock). She has no trace of undue sensuality (Steinhauer) -which in any case the eighteenth century would not accept as tragic flaw but reject as depravity (Hat- field). Emilia uses the pretense of sexuality to secure her death

(Weigand, Steinhauer, Hatfield).

The reading proposed here accepts the conclusion implicit in such a wealth of conflicting judgments: the play is not internally

329



330 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY

consistent (which does not keep it from being a great play and a

fascinating one). Its illogicality proceeds from an ambivalence lo- cated elsewhere, an ambivalence which forces the play to respond to

contradictory pressures, preventing dramatic unity. This "elsewhere" consists of the playwright and his time. At the more encompassing level-play, poet, and period taken together-a fuller understanding of the work is possible, though the discontinuity will remain.

The world of the play constitutes a remarkably complete repre- sentation of contemporary society. Durzak calls it "ein Gesellschafts-

modell, das gewissermal~en einen vertikalen Querschnitt durch die historische Gesellschaft des Feudalabsolutismus ... darstellt" (p. 64). It is almost documentary in its range of persons and classes, and it is almost completely self-enclosed. No one, except in a sense Appiani, comes from anywhere else (cf. Nathan, Minna) or has anywhere else to go. The symbolic and actual center of authority is the Prince.

Within this tightly defined body politic, a situation of manifest

injustice is created, to which the appropriate response is rebellion. The

playwright created this situation, and he created the Prince who is

ultimately to blame for it. But he was not prepared to generalize the

imperative of aggressive opposition or total condemnation implicit in his creation. This is Lessing's dilemma, and from it stems the dis-

continuity of the play. One person confronts and defies authority: Appiani. Others like Orsina may, in belated awareness, threaten

vengeance, or, like Claudia, see the truth too late to act at all. The basic fact remains: resentment and hostility exist or are warranted, yet all "aggression" is sublimated (in acceptance of the oppressive social structure: Claudia as social climber) or internalized, that is turned inward against the persons themselves or the ones they love.

Again, the playwright was not prepared for the frontal assault upon despotism implicit in blaming society for such cruel internalization. Whether out of political conformism or indecision, timorousness or

simply disinclination to draw drastic consequences, he was moved to

suggest a number of purely personal motives, without establishing either priority or exclusivity for them. He is too honest to derive the fate of Emilia wholly from the private sphere, once he has set the action in the political sphere. That would exculpate the "system," which he was no more prepared to do than he was to propose tearing it down.

The play thus remains profoundly political, but in a more elusive and "distanced" way than any reading in tyrannos implies. It also



EMILIA GALOTTI 331

remains psychologically astute, but with qualifications and limits which invalidate any exclusively psychological interpretation. The play is not at harmony with itself. The gap can and must be described with some accuracy, but it cannot be bridged by any single overall statement. At most, one might say that in Emilia Galotti society is shown

imposing upon its individual members constraints so severe as to distort normal human reactions to crisis. Significantly, this statement

applies not only to the play but (it will be argued) to Lessing and to the Germany of his time.

That, in broad outline, is the argument of the present interpretation.

The conflicting demands, under the pressure of which the play must operate, are most apparent in certain of its structural features. A palpable discontinuity exists, for example, between the beginning and the end, between Act I and the denouement: the beginning of the play establishes the centrality and authority of the Prince in

determining the fate of his subjects, while the denouement decides the fate of his subjects without overt reference to the Prince.

Act I, in its revelatory or expositional function, centers wholly upon the Prince. Emilia is only spoken of. She is an objet d'art and an object of sexual desire. We know two facts about her: she is beautiful and she is engaged. We hear that her father is "stolz und

rauh; sonst bieder und gut." About her own character we know ab-

solutely nothing. We expect that the character of the Prince, amply portrayed in Act I, will play a significant role throughout the play. Amazingly, at the denouement in V. 7, the Prince is not only not

present, he is not even referred to by name or title (cf. meine Mutter, der Graf, Grimaldi). That he may be there by implication is not the issue. A remarkable conspiracy of silence removes him from our direct awareness. The entire catastrophe is played out between Emilia and

Odoardo, all attention is centered on their relationship, and all direct evidence as to motivation restricted to the fateful words of their

exchange. Even if (understandably) we refuse to assess the denouement in terms restricted to the girl and her father, we are left only with questions which Lessing studiously avoids answering. The situation has surely been caused by the Prince--or was it by Marinelli? In either case, in what part caused? If either Emilia or Odoardo is

thinking of Hettore Gonzaga (or his chamberlain), with what

thoughts? What bearing does the Prince now, in extremis, have upon their lives? We assume that the seduction Emilia ostensibly (or really)




fears is by the Prince. Or do we? She mentions only the Grimaldis' Haus der Freude. What precisely does it have to do with him? Any answers we give are wholly conjectural, all evidence circumstantial.

By contrast, we know appallingly much about Odoardo and are told or asked to believe devastating things about Emilia. Structural analysis of anything must take account of absence as well as occurrence. What we face here is surely conspicuous absence.

If the Prince is absent from the decisive action of V. 7 he is

emphatically present in the retrospective view of V. 8, speaking the last words of the play. This is an opposite kind of motif, one of

explicit circularity. It contradicts the feature of discontinuity we have

just discussed. His absence functioned at least to obscure his role in the catastrophe. His presence in the last scene makes abundantly clear his continuing role in the situation as it exists after the catastrophe. The killing of Virginia was prelude to drastic political change in Rome. No such prospect can be discerned for Guastalla. The play begins with the Prince, and it ends with him. He and his dominion are the only constants. Emilia and Appiani are dead, Claudia bereft, Orsina abandoned, Marinelli banished, and Odoardo alive and present but destroyed utterly. The Prince may be appalled by what has happened, but we have no evidence for that assumption. The extent of his

outrage is the denial of another person's right to kill himself. He shows no trace of the mortification archetypically displayed by another mis-

guided head of state, Oedipus. Only such insight can lead to better- ment. The worst he can say about himself and the situation is that it is unfortunate for others that sovereigns are people. To urge that the Prince will have to live with the responsibility for Emilia's death on his conscience is sentimentality. The only evidence we have for his

feelings must remain what he says. This too is circular-depressingly so. As the curtain rises, he expresses tedium and feels sorry for himself: "Die traurigen Geschdiffte; und man beneidet uns noch." As it

falls, upon a considerably more deplorable scene, he is still sorry for

himself--or so I would contend. Princes are victimized by evil coun- selors. "Ist es, zum Ungliicke so mancher, nicht genug, daB3 Fiirsten Menschen sind: miissen sich auch noch Teufel in ihren Freund verstellen ?"

If the absence, in V. 7, of all reference to the Prince functions

implicitly to obscure his responsibility, the words of V. 8 also serve

explicitly to exculpate him, by fixing blame on the scapegoat Marinelli. In light of the discontinuity which affects the former case,



EMILIA GALOTTI 333

it would be well to look at Act I to see whether Marinelli deserves the- blame he gets in the latter. A similar disparity obtains, although the evidence is in content rather than structure. Act I establishes, beyond doubt it would seem, the Prince's ultimate responsibility in spirit for a

virtually limitless range of possible consequences. However, it also sets

up the subtle machinery by which Marinelli can be assigned the letter of the blame. In this aspect of the first act, Lessing seems consciously to prepare the ambiguity which will allow him to accuse the Prince, then pardon him; to attack the society, yet accept its unchallenged survival.

Superficially, the spoiled and infatuated Prince is so distraught at the news of Emilia's engagement that he can neither explain his state of mind nor think for himself: "Retten Sie mich, wenn Sie kinnen, und fragen Sie dann." The mechanism is clear. The Prince asks

nothing specific but evinces the most desperate urgency and helpless- ness, inviting commitment from his counselor. The mechanism is

repeated: "Liebster, bester Marinelli, denken Sie fiir mich." Only in the third context of aid sought and proffered does Marinelli take the initiative: "Wollen Sie mir freye Hand lassen, Prinz?" We cannot assume disingenuousness on the part of the Prince; we cannot assume the opposite. Lessing gives us no basis for judgment. What he does

give is an unsparing depiction of the Prince's infinite capacity for

compromising his own principles. The invitation to "think for him" comes after Marinelli has grossly insulted Emilia and derogated the Prince's relation to her ("Waaren aus der zweyten Hand").

The Prince has in effect maneuvered someone else into doing a

nasty job for him-and has subtly preserved the right to hold him

culpable. A similar ambivalence characterizes the execution of the

plot. In III. 1 the Prince gives Marinelli a curious negative agreement to a hypothetical abduction. Marinelli worries that in such under-

takings accidents may happen. The Prince replies, "Und es ist meine

Art, daB ich Leute Dinge verantworten lasse, wofiir sie nicht

kinnen!" This is ambiguity within irony. It functions almost as a

signal of the shift to another, later ascription of motive or character.

Nominally the words are an ironic reversal: "You mean to say I do this kind of thing?-You know better!" They are presumably de-

signed to reassure Marinelli. They do so. Yet they are to become literally true: he is blamed for what he really could not help doing, or was encouraged to do.

The shot is heard. The hypothetical deed for which ambiguous




permission was granted--or reaffirmed-has already happened. Mari- nelli reminds the Prince: "Ich habe nochmals Ihr Wort." The Prince

expresses vague reservations. Marinelli: "Nicht wahr, nun hab' ich zu viel gethan; und vorhin zu wenig?" The Prince: "Das nicht." In Act I Gonzaga gave a villain carte blanche. Here he confirms his word, but obscurely. In IV. 1 he will cry, "Ich bin unschuldig an diesem Blute." The Prince's growing reservations and recriminations are not a testimony of increasing self-awareness and assumption of responsibility-in V. 8 he will make Marinelli responsible for everything. Rather they are a witness of Lessing's gradual relaxation of the case

against the Prince.

Lessing's indecision in assessing blame or ascribing motives seems at times to manifest itself in a subtle complementarity: where his treatment of overt words and actions tends gradually to dilute the

political evil or obscure the pattern of motivation, he may use structural relationships to identify his "real" judgment. In a striking device of parallelism Lessing suggests an explicit indictment of Hettore

Gonzaga.

The first act begins and ends with the signing of documents. The first is a petition for unspecified personal favors. The second is a death sentence. Each is approved impetuously, arbitrarily, capriciously. This is terrible, and Rota tells us so: "Es geht mir durch die Seele dieses

grilfiche Recht gem!" The implicit connection between the two is reinforced by the Prince's mention (to Rota in I. 8) of the petition, and by his lapsus ("eine Bittschrift einer Emilia Galot ... Bruneschi"). The petition already bears his signature. In his impatience to intercept Emilia at church, he is eager to sign the sentence too. Are we not asked to complete the equation? As the Prince grants the favor of the

petition not to the person named in the letter of the document but, in spirit, to Emilia, so in ironic reversal of effect he would here condemn to death not only the person identified by the letter of the

sentence, but Emilia Galotti herself. On the surface we can only assert that the native impetuosity of the Prince manifests itself in frightening capriciousness on the one hand and arbitrary cruelty on the other, and that the possible bearing such behavior may have upon a person already demeaned (as an object of purchase) is sinister enough. To

go no further ignores both the abundance of symmetries in other areas of the play and the important fact of the poet's free choice of motifs.

Why a death sentence? There are other ways to establish callousness,



EMILIA GALOTTI 335

if the choice of means has no predictive function. Why not ruin a merchant or declare a pointless war?

Within this same act there are three other instances of symbolic transfer of meaning or reference, involving Emilia. One equation is solved for us on the spot. Conti says he brings (1) the portrait re-

quested; (2) another, not requested. The Prince inquires (naturally) about the former. It is Orsina, who has already been discarded. He asks to see both. The identity of the "unknown" in the second part of the equation is not in doubt, even at the first reading of the play.

Another anticipatory symbol is almost obtrusively prominent. In the scene with Marinelli (I. 6) which launches the intrigue, Gonzaga has (apparently in pique) snatched the portrait of Emilia from Marinelli and thrown it aside ("wirft es bey Seite") -actually, on the floor. In the next scene, he finds it: "Auf der Erde? das war zu arg!"

Finally, the Prince buys the portrait, but the concept of pur- chasability extends to the person portrayed. In all four of these

metaphoric structures, Emilia is the reference. All four point to her

suffering or downfall; all four identify the responsible party.

What of Emilia herself? As we have seen, her fate and that of her father are decided in an environment where all mention of the Prince is absent or suppressed, giving at least superficial credence to the notion of psychological, not political motivation. The two patterns are of course in conflict. The more plausible or appropriate Emilia's death becomes-in Aristotelian terms, or as warranted self-punishment, or as the result of filial disillusionment-the less the play is a political play. This is inescapable. Given the delicate balance of intent we have now postulated, given the ambivalence of his attitude toward authority and the Establishment, how does Lessing walk the motivational

tightrope?

With Emilia as with the Prince, the first and final portraits differ. But there is a striking disparity in the amount of detail in each. To

judge Emilia we need more detail and we get less. The effectiveness of

any inquiry into her character, indeed the very possibility of under-

standing her, is drastically limited by a remarkable structural fact, never (as far as I know) adequately noted or explained: Emilia de- livers not a single soliloquy. With the exception of the first dozen words of II. 6 (before she lifts her veil and sees her mother), every syllable she utters is spoken to someone and subject to the demands and discounts of situational context. This does not imply disingenuous-




ness. It is a fact of language, as both dramatists and linguists know. In the eighteenth century and for a long time thereafter, soliloquy functions to provide direct access into the thoughts of the speaker. We are denied this access in the case of Emilia.

The opposite condition is most apparent in Odoardo. In the last act three major soliloquies give us full insight into what should long since have been recognized as psychic collapse. The soliloquies stand in counterpoint and contrast to the speeches he addresses to someone else, and the relative degree of "truth" in the two kinds of utterance gives some notion of what Emilia does not tell us-in its scope if not in its nature. All the other major figures and most of the minor ones "speak their minds," and not merely in asides: Odoardo of course, the Prince, Claudia, even Rota; to a lesser degree Marinelli (III. 2 and 5), Appiani (II. 11), Orsina (IV.3). The closest we get to un- mediated access into Emilia's consciousness is the re-narrated dream of the pearls.

For that matter, the sum of Emilia's direct involvement in the dialogue is strikingly small: she appears in only six of the forty-three scenes of the play and is heard off-stage in one other. These limitations frustrate our attempt to understand Emilia, but that is not all. Ther are a sort of metaphor of her existential situation. People talk about, around, and behind her, determining or discussing her fate as if she were an object, not a human being. Only at the last does she assert self-knowledge and self-mastery, and even then-or precisely then- we do not know what she really means.

It is perhaps unfair to say that this indeterminacy suits Lessing's purpose. The fact remains that no unilinear interpretation of the heroine or the play can account for such structural peculiarities, while they are appropriate and understandable in the light of our hypothesis of dilemma, of necessary ambivalence. The diametrical division of critical opinion on Emilia's sensuality is a sign that he struck exactly the right balance.

The sixth scene of Act II gives us our first evidence concerning the "psychology" of the heroine, and its relation to her acceptance or choice of death. Ambiguity and critical divergence begin immediately. Her words of dismay-"nie ist [meine Andacht] weniger gewesen, was sie seyn sollte"; "und siindigen wollen, auch siindigen"-are vari- ously interpreted: (1) as evidence of the sensual attraction she already feels for the Prince, (2) as indicating awareness of potential vul-



EMILIA GALOTTI 337

nerability, perhaps slight, but still disturbing in the context of her father's moral standards, (3) as an expression of simple fear of the

Prince, since no girl of her character would, on her wedding day, entertain thoughts of a liaison.

The fact is that Emilia's response to the encounter in the church was largely formed and defined before she had any idea who her

importunate "admirer" was. What relationship can the identity of the Prince have to her first impressions and moral judgments? Of course her thoughts may incorporate retrospective awareness of the Prince's

identity, but Lessing goes to remarkable lengths in having her express dismay quite unoriented to a given person. She explicitly places before the recognition, for example: the approach of the other person ("dicht hinter mir etwas"), presumably there to worship ("eines andern Andacht"); the sigh and the mention of her name; the pro- testation of "love" and the reference to her wedding day-her day (perhaps) of happiness, "his" of misery; her wish to be struck deaf rather than to hear such words. Whatever we assume as to Emilia's view of her virtue and her nature, we cannot at this point speak of attraction specifically and primarily to the Prince. At most he is an addendum to the triple sense of blasphemy involuntarily endured: the disruption of her churchly worship, the defamation of her wedding day, the insult to her principles.

It is more likely that the identity of her accoster influences her in her recognition of Laster and Schuld, for the Prince is obviously a notorious libertine. On the other hand, she takes back explicitly any implication of fault, when in spirit she confronts the strictest of all

judges, her father: "Was hiitt' er an mir Strafbares finden k6nnen?" The alternative to conceding that she means this is to call her dis-

ingenuous (which is far-fetched) or anxiously self-defensive. This latter does not accord with the frankness of admission that pervades the scene.

At this point all we can assume is that Emilia is horrified at being "propositioned" and doubly so at when and where it was done-and

(later) by who did it. The reaction is not unnatural and does not

encourage the notion that she is on the way to becoming "a character

striving for fulfillment as a biological being" (Schneider, p. 354). A

degree of retrospective self-incrimination is possible, but the evidence is scanty.

Later in the scene the fragmentary quality of our evidence is

made explicit. Precisely when the context of recall involves the Prince,




we are deprived of insight into Emilia's reactions: "Was er sprach, was ich ihm geantwortet"-all this she has forgotten but will tell her mother if she should remember. We get our only information on this "conversation" from the Prince (111.3 and 111.5) and one can only say that at least he did not detect latent sensuality, much as he would have liked to.

We have seen the Prince move from explicit and implicit guilt to the denial of blame. We know that Emilia will move from relative innocence to self-accusation. In each case the first stage is marked by certain lacunae, ambiguities, or even contradictions. They are few in number and not conspicuous, but present nonetheless, and they tend in the same direction. Cautiously formulated: certain strands of justi- fication seem to be taken from what will be the ultimate pattern (at the end of the play) and implanted in the earlier scenes. Here they have an ambiguous quality. Seen in the sequence of unfolding action, one aspect of such an ambiguity in Act I or II is developed into the dominant trait in Act V. The process is most nearly transparent in the insertion in Act I of hints that Marinelli will be blamed; in II, of

profession of guilt by Emilia ("siindigen wollen" prefiguring "Verfiih-

rung," etc. in V). Emilia's "admissions" are, as we have seen, ex-

pressly contradicted on the spot. But Lessing has set the stage, potentially, for an amplification of either quality, guilt or innocence.

At the end of the play we are confronted with a young woman

accepting or forcing her own death, at the hand of her father and moral preceptor, a fate which she either deserves because of her sin- fulness or thinks she can guarantee only by the false pretense of imminent sinning. (This subsumes all psychological interpretations of the ending.)

The evidence we have as to her motivation floods in upon us, in the briefest scene, under the utmost stress and urgency. It is fine if one can make a merit of this, as Stahl does: "Lessing wollte den ganzen Charakter der Heldin erst im entscheidenden Augenblicke . . . als

notwendiges Glied in ihrer Motivierung enthiillen," etc. (p. 104). The reader or spectator is more likely to be dumbfounded at the shocking "revelations": no one can force his will upon me, or upon us; my innocence is indeed "iiber alle Gewalt."

Aber nicht tiber alle Verfiihrung ... Verfiihrung ist die wahre Gewalt.-Ich habe Blut, mein Vater, so jugendliches, so warmes Blut, als eine. Auch meine Sinne, sind Sinne. Ich stehe fiir nichts. Ich bin fiir nichts gut. [One hour in the Grimaldis'



EMILIA GALOTTI 339

house] und es erhob sich so mancher Tumult in meiner Seele, den die strengsten Uebungen der Religion kaum in Wochen besiinftigen konnten.

And most devastating, her words as she is about to die: "Eine Rose

gebrochen, ehe der Sturm sie entblittert."

Suicide can certainly stem from the emotional shock occasioned

by the sudden awareness of terrible fault, witness Jocasta. But are we

given sufficient evidence in the portrayal of Emilia, in her words, in her attitude toward people and situations, to make sensuality credible? The literal force of her final words is almost the only "proof" of

seducibility, immanent or imminent. On the other hand, if she is

feigning guilt as the only way of securing death we must identify the terrible realization that leads to this decision.

Determination to find further support for sexuality produces the most extravagant readings. Schneider's represented in its time some-

thing of a climax: "dark undercurrents of non-rational vital powers . storm of natural passion" (p. 354). Durzak claims to find con-

crete evidence that the seduction is not only potential but well under

way: the Gequieke and Gekreische Orsina hears in the adjoining room, where ostensibly the Prince and Emilia are closeted. These are said to be the sounds of "vorbereitendes Liebesspiel ... , in dem die Schranken konventioneller Scheu und Zuriickhaltung allmdihlich iiberwunden werden" (p. 82). This "evidence" is dubious and trivial, and the supporting analysis of III.1 is demonstrably wrong. Durzak claims that the Prince's statement "O, es gieng alles nach Wunsch" is to be taken at face value. The context, and especially the stage direc-

tions, prove the exact opposite. These and related words are not self-

congratulatory; they are an ironic admission of failure. The under-

lying dialogue is this:

Nothing went as I wished. You know I can't claim success, witness your invidious question about how well I did on my own. You want to force me to admit I failed. I am not going to give you that literal satisfaction, but I will confirm your skepticism by saying in impotent irony what I wish I could say in boastful reality: 'Sie kam meinem Verlangen, mehr als halbes Weges, entgegen.'

The pity is that placing such a construction upon Emilia's character and behavior contradicts or weakens the rest of Durzak's argument, which is in many ways the most helpful presentation of the social and political background of Emilia.




The manifest error of such exaggerated views-Lessing in Wedekind's clothing-should not blind us to the fact that the "truth" of Emilia's sensual vulnerability has been accepted, in whatever de-

gree, by a majority of critics, even the "moderates." Few of them will concede that this contention places severe constraints on their inter-

pretation of the play. With absolute inevitability, the more literally we take Emilia's protestations of sexuality, the more her death becomes

comprehensible, not an outrage. And the more it becomes immaterial whether the would-be seducer is a prince--or just anybody. And con-

sequently the less the play has to do with the social system or politics, since it is a domestic tragedy.

What alternative motives can be found? The most convincing case is Lamport's. Whether or not we accept it as a whole, important elements of it must be incorporated in any interpretation.

Odoardo, says Lamport, "has come face to face with that evil which he would rather evade than resist.

.... He has surrendered un-

conditionally and abandoned Emilia to the enemy. The discovery of this fact is a terrible shock to her" (p. 306). Emilia has believed that Odoardo's

arrival means her deliverance. But when she discovers that he is not going to take her away from her persecutor, but to surrender her to him, she is dumbfounded. The shock is twofold. Firstly, it arouses again all her fears of the Prince, her fears for her own future. These fears are irrational, for she has proved quite able to defend herself, but their reawakening at this moment is entirely natural. But secondly, and more fundamentally, the shock destroys the whole moral foundation of her life, for it shatters her faith in her father . . . (p. 308).

Lamport denies that it is Emilia's conscious or primary intent to

provoke her father into killing her. "She has lost all her faith in him, and here expresses the depth of her disillusionment" (in comparing him with Virginius, who acted on his principles). In sum: "She wants to die because the moral basis of her life has been destroyed" (p. 311).

Lamport draws the inevitable conclusion as to the balance of elements in the play, a conclusion which, I believe, constitutes a serious flaw in this cogently argued reading: "The story does not permit the element of class conflict to be completely eliminated, but Lessing has thrust it completely into the background" (p. 311). This is a dis-

turbing proposition. No social or political outrage is in order. We have



EMILIA GALOTTI 341

a self-enclosed domestic tragedy, in which the "enemy" could just as well be elsewhere in the middle class, say a greedy bank clerk. Must we then allow the Prince to preside over the catastrophe as a sort of moderator or commentator, mildly chastizing princes in general, but

mostly their advisors, for letting such things happen?

Accepting the insights Lamport has provided, and adding to

them, we may see what the depth of Emilia's existential disillusionment really is. Hatfield's reading provides an important further dimen- sion. Explaining that Emilia's reference to her latent seducibility "represents a means to an end," he speculates briefly on her reasons for wanting to die: "One basic motive is obvious: her life is in ruins"

(p. 293). If we survey systematically the world of Emilia we gain an even

more devastating impression of the extent of these ruins. Her world, as far as we have access to it, is defined by the persons to whom she relates or by whom she is (consciously) affected: her mother and

father, her fiance; her sovereign, his chamberlain and principal ad-

visor, and his chancellor (Grimaldi).

All but the last appear on stage, and each shares the stage with

Emilia, but for a remarkably brief time-Odoardo, for example, only in the scene of her death. This is appropriate to her role in the play, as we have seen, but it makes interpretation exceedingly difficult.

Consider now the state of this world as it is revealed to her in the short time span of the play's action: her father used to be, for her and for practically everybody else, a model of rough-hewn integrity and strength of principle. He has now lost control of himself and the situation, being unable to prevent what he must view as an abduction for the most illicit purposes. Or worse, he has turned against his

daughter or abandoned her.

Her mother has revealed herself as a woman of tireless social ambition, unswervingly blind to the pitfalls of the road she would travel. Only at the last moment-too late-is she aware of the crisis her ambition and folly have in part engineered. For that moment, to be sure, she offers a welcome contrast to the prevailing spinelessness in word and deed: "erkaufte M6rder," "Bubenstiick," "zu Befriedigung eines fremden Kitzels zu morden" (111.8). There is no time to act on the basis of these perceptions, even if she were so inclined. We can

only grant our sympathy to her last words in the play, dramatic irony of the most painful kind: "Ich trenne mich ungern von dem Kinde"




(IV.8). Perhaps we can read reconciliation and understanding into her last action, the embrace of mother and daughter, reported by the Prince: "Dariiber vergaBl die Mutter ihre Wuth." We should recall, however, that the Prince is not a fully reliable source. The fact that Marinelli's assessment is contemptuous does not prove it wrong: "wie zahm sie auf einmal ward, bey dem ersten Anblicke von Ihnen"

(IV.1). What Emilia thinks of her mother we can only guess. She can

scarcely know of her mother's belated horror at the court life she once

yearned for. She does know that it was her mother who discounted the seriousness of the encounter in church and persuaded her not to tell Appiani.

In the political hierarchy, Emilia has suddenly been exposed to a

devastating combination of moral chaos and unmitigated power. The

sovereign, "temporal equivalent of God," has turned out to be a libertine and a hypocrite. In the light of what she knows, then or later, the

protestations of III.5-"Kein Wort, kein Seufzer soll Sie beleidigen"- must burn in her mind. His chamberlain and principal advisor (who was no stranger to her: "Wie? Sie hier, mein Herr?" III.4) is a moral

vacuum, a cynical murderer. His chancellor runs a notorious Haus der Freude. For the play, which is all we know, these people define the world in which she and her family must exist. That world is a shambles.

As for Appiani, he is killed, and her silence may in part be

responsible.

Related to the above is an aspect of the play that has at most received piecemeal attention. It is one which our students, familiar with Sartre and Camus, Marcuse or Buber, will grasp immediately. Emilia is a victim par excellence of the crime of treating a human

being as an object.

Here, we said, lies the deeper significance of her drastically limited role and the absence of soliloquy. She simply has no chance to

express her self. At issue now is how she is regarded by others.

The Prince treats all people as objects, discardable like Orsina, maneuverable like Marinelli. The metaphor for Emilia is cruelly ex-

plicit. She is purchasable. Marinelli carries it to its cynical depths: "Waaren, die man aus der ersten Hand nicht haben kann, kauft man aus der zweyten:--und solche Waaren nicht selten aus der zweyten

umrn so viel wohlfeiler . . . auch umn so viel schlechter" (1.6). (For this

crudity he receives only the mildest rebuke.) But it was the Prince



EMILIA GALOTTI 343

who started the distasteful analogy. The pronoun reference in the Prince's "Dich hab' ich fiir jeden Preis noch zu wohlfeil" (1.5) is

ambiguous, but the linking metaphor between portrait and person is

"possession," the concept of buying is transferred from Conti to

Odoardo, and ultimately to the image of self-sale: "Am liebsten kauft' ich dich, Zauberinn, von dir selbst."

We shall put the rest of the case at its most extreme, but the evidence is real. For her mother Emilia provides-and is-another avenue of access to the social world in which she would like to move. For Odoardo she occasionally appears less a daughter, a human being to whom he owes love and respect and protection, than a symbol of his probity, a reification of his way of life, a source of pride (for him), or negatively, a source (for him) of possible vulnerability. Learning of Emilia's encounter with the Prince, he expresses shock and dismay, accuses Claudia of vain naivete, and in his first substantive response to the dangerous situation considers not Emilia but himself: "Das

gerade wiire der Ort, wo ich am t6dtlichsten zu verwunden bin!"

(II.4). Lessing was demonstrably absorbed by the concept of father- much of Angress's article goes to this point-and he forces us here to ask the question implicit in Emilia's words under more desperate circumstances: "Oder Sie sind nicht mein Vater" (V.7).

The one person who sees Emilia as a human being is Appiani. Appropriately, the aspect of appearance (the beautiful object, which she also is) is countered by explicit reference to qualities of "essence": "fromm" but not proud of being so. Or it is used as symbol for their

unchanged relationship (as she chooses to wear for the wedding what she wore when they first met).

There are two dangers in pursuing this vein of interpretation. The first is that we tend to lose sight entirely of what Lessing meant

only to leave obscure: Emilia's sensuality. It has never been argued here that she doesn't say what she says in V.7, only that we cannot

fully credit her words. More fundamentally, with these insights we would seem to approach an interpretation of "sufficient cause" in the

psychological domain (something we labelled contradictory). We see

Emilia choosing death because her father and moral preceptor has

abandoned his principles and her, because her world is in ruins, and because she sees now that her very existence and dignity as a human

being are nil. Added to the death of her fianc6 and whatever she faces with the Prince, this would Seem to suffice for mortal despair.




Not because we are determined to rescue the political hypothesis, but for internal reasons, we must modify the argument. The asking of a simple question will help: are these attitudes and developments- even assuming we grant them full validity-internal to the characters involved or externally determined?

Let us take Odoardo as a touchstone. Either we move with

Lamport in the direction indicated, in which event we feel unmiti-

gated condemnation and repugnance. Or-and Lessing, in his am- bivalent retreat from the political sphere of meaning, leaves this

open-we regard it as somehow logical, and agree with Angress (and so many others): "Odoardo represents absolute, rigid probity" (p. 21). The unilinear interpretation, with its assumption of internal con-

sistency, condemns us to contradict one another in this fashion. Is either abomination or reluctant assent our response to

Odoardo? What do the agonized soliloquies of the last act show if it is not the terrible pity of a mind breaking under intolerable strain? His language images his mental state: the fatal dialectic of hopeless inner conflict, his mind literally disintegrating as he moves into his terrible huis clos. To some extent we sympathize with Odoardo, as we

sympathize with any person under intolerable and unwarranted pressure. Odoardo is not the strict paterfamilias of Stoic virtue-would

Virginius talk like this?-nor is he a hollow man. In the latter case, he would have fled the scene. The fact is, he is a man of serious but common shortcomings, whose high principles are in part a mask for

apprehensiveness. Under ordinary circumstances these flaws would not have ended in tragedy. The extraordinary circumstances-this is the crux-are not internally determined, in him or in his relationship to Emilia, but by the evil system in which he is forced to live-a

compulsion which (alas!) he accepts.

Here indeed the possible readings seem to converge in a larger view. We can accept the most perceptive diagnoses of flaw, while

denying them exclusive validity or entire consistency. We can do this, however, only under the aegis of an earlier observation: the political and social world of despotism, once accepted, places impossible constraints upon all human action, distorts all human motivation, mag- nifies into potential enormity every human shortcoming. The action is psychological, the determinants are political. Lessing showed the

only way out: Appiani's refusal and defiance. He also showed his own ambivalence or his pessimism by giving Appiani his extra advantage: "Ich bin der Vasall eines grfr1ern Herrn" (II.10). And Lessing shared



EMILIA GALOTTI 345

to some degree the imprisonment of his characters. He too was not

prepared to shake off despotism.

This is the ultimate meaning of our original observation that all

legitimate "aggressions" are internalized, turned not against the system, but inward against self or those closest and vulnerable (as the

system is not). More or less in passing, Hatfield attaches an important label to Emilia's tendency to "exaggerate her own weaknesses" (p. 294): "intrapunitive." The diagnosis certainly applies to her (and in a larger and more terrifying sense). It applies more subtly, through the mechanism of self-destructive acquiescence, to Claudia; it applies potentially to Orsina, who brought not only the dagger but poison; and of course it names the condition of Odoardo in his extremity. Beyond that it applies to Lessing himself and to the society of his time.

Nothing has been said about the notion that Emilia Galotti is, by primary intent and in its own terms, a drama of political protest. It was long so regarded and incredibly it sometimes still is. Erich

Schmidt, in his Lessing (Berlin, 1899), characterized the tradition without comment:

Odoardo wurde als Typus des Heldenvaters so ma8gebend wie Michel Angelos Jehova als Gottvatertypus. Er hat den grauen Alten der deutschen Tragddien und Ritterstiicke seine Ziige geliehen, den wiirdigen Greisen, die noch keine Triine geweint haben, die nicht den kleinsten Makel an ihrer und der Ihrigen Ehre leiden und als Freie im Kampfe gegen Tyrannei und Laster siegen und fallen (II, 51).

The fallacy of this view is profound, and it is hard to be temper- ate in speaking of it. If literature and criticism have bearing on life, one of the effects of reading Emilia should be to warn against such confusion. The play shows abundant cause to protest against tyranny, but it is not itself such a protest. This disparity is the source of

Dilthey's oft-quoted frustration: when the Prince, who is perfidiously and cynically about to take his daughter from him, wishes Odoardo were his "Freund . . . Fiihrer ... Vater" (V.5), Odoardo ought to have run him through. Sooner or later any serious reader must feel

(more acutely than Dilthey did) this sense of frustration. Excepting Appiani, to see in any character of the play, as he acts in the play, above all to see in the actions of Odoardo the behavior of a free man in the struggle against tyranny is to mistake pathos for conviction and settle for a truncated view of liberty--and certainly to make the world safe for tyrants.




Lessing's attitude toward absolutism was compounded of hostility and acceptance (for whatever reason). In this lies the immediate

source of the necessary discontinuity of the play. He saw clearly the evils of petty despotism and portrayed their effects on normal human character. But he did not choose to state the answer inherent in his

perception. Indeed, he felt compelled to muffle the political implications of the play by suggesting internal psychological motivations.

Lessing denied political intent in Emilia. The citations are amply familiar: the play isn't political at all, just "die alte Ramische Geschichte der Virginia in einer modernen Einkleidung," "von allem Staatsinteresse befreit" (Heitner, p. 481). We have been reminded often enough of this denial. We should also remember his elaborate

attempt to avoid committing his play to its first production. More

substantially, we should remember, with Durzak, that Lessing ex-

pressed himself more clearly when he was not trying to cover up for Emilia. Try, he tells Nicolai in 1769, to do what Sonnenfels did in

Vienna, try "dem vornehmen Hofpobel . . . die Wahrheit zu

sagen . . . ; lassen Sie einen in Berlin aiuftreten, der fiir die Rechte der Untertanen, der gegen Aussaugung und Despotismus seine Stimme erheben wollte . . . ; und Sie werden bald die Erfahrung machen, welches Land bis auf den heutigen Tag das sklavischste Land von

Europa ist" (Durzak, p. 63). Is it irreverent to suggest that he might have addressed the challenge to himself? Or that he did, and gave an indecisive answer?

By our reading, the inconsistency of Emilia Galotti is not re- moved. It is, however, transferred where it really belongs, to the playwright and his time, appearing in this light not as a flaw particular to one work, but as a revelation of a pervasive disharmony in the

political life and thought of a country, an age. It has already been

suggested that this is not derogatory to the play, nor to the skill of its author. Emilia is not only a fascinating work of art, it is an historical document of eloquence and depth.

University of Virginia



EMILIA GALOTTI 347

Footnotes

Citations are according to Lachmann-Muncker. To facilitate use of commonly available texts, references are to act and scene.

Contemporary reaction and earlier criticism is conveniently available in E. Dvoretzky, The Enigma of Emilia Galotti (The Hague: 1963). Also helpful is the Diesterweg volume Lessing, Emilia Galotti, ed. W. Fischer (Kiel: n.d.). K. Guthke's Der Stand der Lessing-Forschung (Stuttgart: 1965) is an essential review of more recent criticism. Emilia occupies pp. 50-54.

Among the important interpretations are the following (referred to in the present study by author's name) :

Angress, R., "The Generations in Emilia Galotti," GR, 43 (1968), 15-23.

Bostock, J. K., "The Death of Emilia Galotti," MLR, 46 (1951), 69-71.

Durzak, M., "Das Gesellschaftsbild in Lessings Emilia Galotti," Lessing Yearbook, 1 (1969), 60-87.

Hatfield, H., "Emilia's Guilt Once More," MLN, 71 (1956), 287-96.

Heitner, R., "Emilia Galotti: An Indictment of Bourgeois Pas- sivity," JEGP, 52 (1953), 480-90.

Hillen, G., "Die Halsstarrigkeit der Tugend .. ." Lessing Yearbook, 2 (1970), 115-34.

Lamport, F., " 'Eine biirgerliche Virginia'," GL&L, 17 (1964), 304- 12.

Miiller, J., "Lessings Emilia Galotti," in his Wirklichkeit und Klassik (Speyer: 1957), pp. 53-62.

Nolte, F. 0., "Lessings Emilia Galotti in the Light of his Ham- burgische Dramaturgie," Harvard Studies and Notes, 19 (1937), 175-97.

Schneider, H., "Emilia Galotti's Tragic Guilt," MLN, 71 (1956), 353-55.

Stahl, E. L., "Lessing. Emilia Galotti," in B. von Wiese, Das deutsche Drama (DUsseldorf: 1958), pp. 101-12.

Steinhauer, H., "The Guilt of Emilia Galotti," JEGP, 48 (1949), 173-85.

Weigand, H., "Warum stirbt Emilia Galotti?" in Herman J. Weigand. Fihrten und Funde. Aufsiitze zur deutschen Litera- tur, ed. A. L. Willson (Bern: 1967), pp. 39-50.

A more extensive bibliography appears in Durzak's article.



Documents

Art. Emilia Galotti