'Es hat niemand Gewissen als der Betrachtende': Reflections on Hans Eichner's Analysis of Character Configuration in Goethe's Works

摘要

[...] the ironic temper of the happy ending, the hastily contrived closure with which the novel finishes. To that orthodoxy Eichner would, I suspect, have replied that we neither do, nor can, nor should read that way. [...] the second reflection is that the upshot of Eichner's typology of character in Goethe is not a template for fixing the characters once and for all (like a collection of impaled butterflies) but rather an invitation to us to reflect on the manifold possibilities of human beings in the world.