
The title is a reference to the scientific phenomenon in which types. he 19th-century scientific term for the chemical attraction of certain substances to each other above others makes for an unlikely title for a. Goethe's Elective Affinities Johann Wolfgang von Goethe No preview available - 2020. This is a new edition of his penetrating study of marriage and passion, bringing together four people in an inexorable manner. Elective Affinities (1809) is German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethes third novel. Elective Affinities by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Goethe's Elective Affinities: With an Introduction (Classic Reprint). The inevitable happens: Eduard is irrevocably attracted to Ottilie and Charlotte to the Captain. Elective Affinities was written when Goethe was sixty and long established as Germanys literary giant. Goethes Elective Affinities By: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Format: Paperback Around 20-30 June Description. Despite a shift in mores, contemporary readers will recognise the emotional pressures and the problems that Goethe explores through his characters and the Romantic landscape.īaron Eduard and his wife, Charlotte, wealthy aristocrats who have married each other for love after earlier marriages of convenience, decide to disrupt - as an experiment - their life in a rural idyll by inviting some visitors, a friend called the Captain and Charlotte's beautiful, docile niece, Ottilie. Controversial in its day, as it lent itself to the interpretation that love could be reduced to a chemical attraction, the novella continues to be relevant. But Johann Wolfgang Goethe's classic work uses the chemical metaphor to explore the conflict between bonds created by society and the bonds that are formed through chemical attractions. T he 19th-century scientific term for the chemical attraction of certain substances to each other above others makes for an unlikely title for a Romantic novella, or so it would seem.
