Goethe’s Stalker Snails

Abstract:“Crab and snail are both rare creatures to me,” reads an epigram by Goethe. This article takes the subjective character of the epigram as a point of departure to investigate the curious insistence of snail figures throughout Goethe’s oeuvre, with particular attention to their flexibility, reversibility, and ultimate incoherence. This incoherence has to do with the versatility of the snail as an asexual, trans, queer, but for Goethe, above all, female figure of victimhood (the persecuted maiden, the debauched lover), which in turn triggers feelings of persecution in the libertine. Yet, when Goethe himself is confronted with the female libertine Mme de Staël, he draws on metaphors of snail seclusion to express his own desire for autonomy as well as protection. The encounter between de Staël and Goethe presents an exemplary attempt of hegemonic masculinity to hijack victimhood and to treat it as the last coveted privilege patriarchy lacks.