Kinship and Aesthetic Depth: The Tableau Vivant in Goethe’s Wahlverwandtschaften

ABSTRACT Johann Wolfgang Goethe famously includes performances of tableaux vivants in Die Wahlverwandtschaften. The tableau vivant bridges social classes, kinship models, and aesthetic media (painting, sculpture, and drama). This essay argues that the representation of tableaux vivants in Goethe’s novel invites reflections on shifting social forms in the Goethezeit. In dialogue with G.W.F Hegel’s expressed frustration with Goethe’s inclusion of the tableau vivant in his novel, the essay contends that a hybrid aesthetic informs Die Wahlverwandtschaften, complicating assumptions about the centrality of interiority and aesthetic depth in the novel. A semiotics of the tableau vivant is intrinsic to Goethe’s work, inviting a critical reflection on developing kinship structures in the nineteenth century and on the concomitant development of the interior subject in the modern novel.