A Bildungsroman Kind of Summer

Johann Wolfgang Goethe wrote the first European Bildungsroman in 1796, titled Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. Bildungsroman is probably best translated as “novel of development.” You can also think of it as “novel of education” or “novel of formation.” But actually (and pretentiously), Bildungsroman is a universally used word for the genre. So, like many loanwords of German origin in English, we can now slap a lowercase letter onto it and sound sophisticated, like schadenfreude, gestalt, or zeitgeist.

To best explain what a bildungsroman is and what Wilhelm Meister is about I’ll recount the recent trials of soccer star Samuel Eto’o. First, Eto’o went on a journey this summer to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where the soccer club Kuruvchi was offering his current employer FC Barcelona forty million euros for his transfer. Goethe’s protagonist Wilhelm also went on a journey while conducting business and joined up with a band of carefree actors.

Barça reported that Eto’o was redundant and he could vamoose, for all they cared. Faced with a career at a low-tier club in Central Asia, Eto’o journeyed on to Barça’s training camp in Scotland, crestfallen and undesired. Wilhelm was also scorned, or at least his paranoid mind thought, by the actress Marianne. He destroyed all his writings and carried on, feeling rejected by the art world.

In preseason training for Barça, still barely hanging on to his job, Eto’o collided with a reserve player and suffered a blow to the head. Wilhelm, after finally landing the young male lead in a play, was ambushed by robbers and badly wounded.

Suddenly, after weeks of a miserable summer, Barça reported that five big European clubs were interested in signing Eto’o. Meanwhile Barça claimed they never really wanted Eto’o to go. Likewise Wilhelm experienced unexpected fortune. He enrolled in a new troupe, learned about an inspiring playwright called Shakespeare, and discovered he had a bright three-year-old son by the now-dead Marianne.

In August Barça’s new coach, who in June said he could see no role for Eto’o on his team, changed his mind and called Eto’o “one of the world’s best.” He now starts each game for Barça and has already scored a few goals. In the eighth and last book of Goethe's long novel, Wilhelm finds out that his entire journey had been watched over by the Turmgesellschaft, a secret society. He weds the beautiful woman who nursed his wounds after the ambush, the secret society declares his “apprenticeship” over, and he can enter the bourgeois world as a tried and tested artist.

The stories of the tumultuous summer for Eto’o and the years of wandering in Goethe’s Wilhelm contain four elements typically found in a bildungsroman: a journey, a major setback, rescue or deliverance, and becoming an adult with a role in society.

Of Titillating Team Titles

The Merseburg Incantations were written sometime around AD 900 on a type of medium that all medievalists today are grateful for: a spare page within a Latin religious codex. Every now and then, in a busy scriptorium, an overworked monk would get bored of copying the sixty-six books of the Bible, flip the page, then start scrabbling something probably sung by a minstrel the night before in front of an exalted audience. Today we call that Old High German literature.

The Merseburg Incantations comprise two charms, one to liberate prisoners and a longer one to cure a horse. The god “uuodan” (Wodan or Odin) and the goddess “friia” (Frija) make an appearance. Rusty with your Teutonic/Norse mythology? It’s hard to keep the pantheons straight. But Wodan and Frija should look familiar, especially on a Wednesday or Friday.

One noticeable difference between verses in Old High German and verses in the later Middle High German is the change from alliteration (begin-rhyme) to rhyme (end-rhyme). The Merseburg Incantations exhibit a little of both kinds of rhyme, but are much more alliterative than the modern reader is comfortable with. I recently griped to poet Paul Spinger that alliteration had all but disappeared in Western literature, perhaps too hastily. He replied with an alliterative poem he wrote twenty years ago. Lucky for us, he’s allowed me to share it. Students of German philosophy will especially appreciate Paul's inclusion of "Das dämmernde Dasein":

Das Glas

Weil Wein mit Wasser
Sanft säuselnd
Kühl die Kehle kitzelt
Schlaf Sanfte, schlaf
Sinne singen süß
Sonnen sengen schwer
Schwere säumt Süße
Sinne sengen sanft
Schlafe Selbst, schlafe
Kühl kitzelt die Kehle
Das dämmernde Dasein
Ist immer

(Paul Spinger)

Soccer fans might guess that my tie-in to the Merseburg Incantations would be the rampant cases of juju at stadiums worldwide. Instead I'm sticking with the alliteration. Its very memorable effect can best be seen in the alliterative names of these soccer clubs:

Wolverhampton Wanderers (England)
Alemannia Aachen (Germany)
Figueirense Florianopolis (Brazil)
Seattle Sounders (USA)
Cracovia Krakow (Poland)
Kemi Kings (Finland)

Duplicitous Hats

In AD 1280 Wernher der Gärtner penned Meier Helmbrecht and gave the world a medieval (late medieval for us hairsplitters) update of the prodigal son. A peasant farmer’s son named Helmbrecht is given a hat that signifies nobility to the public. This wakes desires in him for the easy and comfortable life of a noble knight, and a new name, because who would want to have the name Helmbrecht. The one he chooses for himself is even worse: Slintezgeu – go ahead, say it out loud. Right? Slintezgeu-née-Helmbrecht runs away, puts together a band of thieves, plunders and marauds as a noble knight is wont to do, and all the while mimics noble greetings and sayings.

Werder Bremen’s star player Diego is also a runaway. He’s gone to the Olympics in Beijing to play for Brazil’s national junior squad. Diego was banned by his club from leaving his job for the Olympics. At first he agreed to stay, but then he absconded and Bremen are now taking legal action against him.

Like Helmbrecht, Diego has run off to play something he’s not. Helmbrecht’s hat signified nobility; Diego’s Olympic hat signifies amateur youth sport and up-and-comer status. But he’s already a multimillionaire in the Bundesliga, the league with the most fans per game on average in Europe. It appears that Diego is a noble who has run away to play the humble peasant.

Hopefully the outcome of Diego’s getaway will also be the inverse of the outcome for Helmbrecht. Helmbrecht was easily caught, had an eye gouged out, returned to his parents for scorn and derision, then hung by a mob of other peasants. By inverse logic Diego will return to the good life in Bremen.

A Second or Third Chance

In 1929 Alfred Döblin wrote Berlin Alexanderplatz, the first great, modernist novel in German not by a guy named Kafka or Hesse. The plot is pretty straightforward; the protagonist is a construction worker released from prison after a four-year sentence for an involuntary murder. (Involuntary murder - Did someone say modernist?) Fate deals him blow after blow despite his firm intention of becoming an honest citizen in bumpin' Berlin. He becomes an alcoholic, joins a gang of criminals, ends up a pimp, loses an arm through treachery, a jealous thug murders his new girlfriend, and he’s re-arrested and thrown into a psych ward.

Another recent release from prison is Joey Barton, who returns to his role as midfielder at Newcastle United in the English Premiership after serving part of a sentence for assault. He was caught in a drunken late-night fistfight in Liverpool, then while on parole he was re-arrested for beating up a former teammate at the training grounds. Before he disappeared behind bars last year, Barton was a fantasy owner’s dream. Now few clubs are interested in him and the media criticize Newcastle for the huge risk in taking him back.

Redemption is not a popular theme nowadays. Novels from the intervening war years of the Weimar Republic are likewise cynical, but they often end with the typically expressionist motif of rebirth and renewal. Döblin’s protagonist has had it rough, but with every setback he gains new insight, and he can make a final comeback of sorts. At the end of the novel we find him working as an assistant caretaker at a factory, unbothered by any crooks. Newcastle’s manager Kevin Keegan apparently also believes in redemption. He said about signing Joey Barton to his team this year, “People have opinions, and you must respect those, but mine is to give him another chance and back him” (AFP July 29, 2008).

Two Sons, One Gold Ball

Every year a player is chosen for the Ballon d’Or prize and dubbed “World Footballer of the Year.” This year two possible laureates are backed by increasingly heated debate among managers, retired stars, and fifa bureaucrats. One side is for Cristiano Ronaldo, an attacking midfielder at Manchester United with more goals than most strikers in any league. The other side is for Iker Casillas, a goalkeeper at Real Madrid who only allowed two goals in the Euro 2008 tournament.

The situation is a singularly Schillerean dialectical dead end for both players. Let me explain using Schiller’s Die Räuber, a play in five acts, 1781.

But first, some information about the play's plot line. Karl and Franz are feuding brothers. While Karl is away at school, Franz falsifies a letter to their father listing off a bunch of entertaining ways that Karl is supposed to have sinned. Ashamed, the father writes Karl out of the will. Long story (written in tense, impassioned prose) short: Now Franz is expecting the inheritance, rebuffed Karl joins a band of thieves, Franz hides his father in a dungeon, Karl commits a lot of crimes he will soon resent, Franz commits suicide, Karl turns himself in to the authorities, and Schiller foreshadows his Classicism period during his Storm-and-Stress period. Fin.

C. Ronaldo is like Karl – tradition dictates that an offensive player should get the Ballon d’Or, just as primogeniture guarantees that Karl will get his father’s wealth. If he wins, people will see the outcome as tradition upheld; a goalkeeper hasn’t won the Ballon d’Or since 1963. Which brings me to Casillas, who is like Franz. Franz breaks moral and civil conventions to ascend to his father’s throne. If he wins, people will see it as an unfair, undeserved affront to a stable world (soccer) order. It’s the kind of metanarrative binary opposition of one revolution against the other revolution, one kind of self-individuation against the other kind of self-individuation, a failure to achieve harmony, all of which is totally Schiller’s niche in world literature.