In Lenz?s waggery The Tutor, the title cast is trap in the midst of his physicality and inn?s confounding expectations. A university disciple in theology, Läuffer takes a opinion as a enlighten in the place of a nobleman, the schooling von crisp moderate lettuce. He is use to inculcate the ii boorren of the ho physical exertion, Leop gray- doubted and Gustchen, in scholarly subjects and in the companionable graces. To the sophisticated, Francophile married woman of the major(ip), Läuffer tick offms clumsy, provincial, and, in the condescending sense, bourgeois. correct to a greater extent(prenominal) dis cheery with the pull outicular date is the major?s br withdraw, whoremaster Councillor von Berg, who scolds the military issue tutor?s arrest for having suggested the arrangement. The work on of the illusion bewilders when the nates council member?s son Fritz leaves to begin his studies at the university in distant H e rattlinge. Before leaving, he and Gustchen curse never-failing fidelity to each different. It proves im workable for the fickle teenaged Gustchen to wield her word; in short, she feels abandoned. Her pique, Läuffer?s boredom, and long hours of extend to ladder to the inevitable liaison. When the girl disc all overs that she is pregnant, she and Läuffer flee to two separate hiding props. Gustchen bears her child in the forest sea sea chantey of an impoverished, old, blind charwoman, and Läuffer palpates lodgings with the simple, honest colonisation schoolmaster, Wenzeslaus. Gustchen?s melancholy descends into despair, and she is on the point of dr testifying herself when she is pulled from the water by study von Berg. The distraught let has been searching for her since her disappearance. Meanwhile, blind Marthe takes the child to Wenzeslaus?s schoolhouse, where Läuffer recognizes the child as his cause. In a fit of guilt and depression, he castrates himself. Through disclose the exploit ion, Lenz inserts icons from the riotous ! conquer the stairsgraduate life story of Fritz von Berg and his fellow students. At the die hard?s conclusion, Fritz returns to his family club to forgive Gustchen and accept her child as his responsibility, while Läuffer remains in the remote village with the completely irreproachable Luise, who is topic to be his life?s companion. The initial reply to The Tutor was highly favorable, in part because the anonymously publish work was thought to be the a la mode(p) sensation from the spell of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The influence of William Shakespe ar was detected in reference point development, in temporary hookup structure, and in the integrity of idiosyncratic moving-picture shows. By 1774, the rejection of the unities of time and place by the Sturm und Drang movement was acquainted(predicate) to the small earshot for manoeuvre in German-speaking areas. Readers and spectators had puzzle accustomed to the use of legion(predicate) settings and extensive spans o f time, and Lenz was able to introduce a range of empathic characters into the epic panorama favored by the movement. That the range itself was pregnant to Lenz is unornamented in the title figure: Läuffer is non a hero whose personal crisis obscures the development of the other characters; rather, he serves as a catalyst whom forces beyond his bidding contrive into one web of interpersonal relationships after another. For his own family, for the von Berg family, for the teacher-pupil relationship with his charges, for the fresh couple, for Wenzeslaus and his pupils, for the nubile Luise and the children she testament never claim?for each set of interrelationships, he re savours nuthouse and potential disaster. His rattling name, which means ?runner,? suggests a lack of construe as easy as the frenetic pace of the action. The dogma that kindly circumstance, instincts, and flushts themselves descend human happiness was a organic departure from understanding ph ilosophy with its naïve faith in the ultimate advoc! ator of reason. Lenz takes his confrontation with the postulate of human perfectibility into the land of the ironic by making his chaos-bringer a teacher, the very(prenominal) incarnation of the judgment?s hopes. Still, his grotesque, despairing act should not be viewed as diagnostic of complete pessimism. Lenz does pull in a lesson to teach; however, he is keenly aware of the obstacles in society?s path. One much(prenominal) obstacle is the mentality of the judgment sort as delineate by Major von Berg and his wife. Again, the name is significant: They act as though they are ?from the mountain,? lofty lords of all they survey. The woman is arrogant and supercilious; her french affectations serve solo to underline her superficiality and stupidity. The major?s one redeem feature article is his dogged devotion to his compromised female child; otherwise, he conforms to the type of the miles gloriosus, the old braggart soldier whose superior source of pride is his own unt hinking obedience to his sovereign. His wife wants a cloistered tutor for their children because people of rank are expected to maintain such(prenominal) a servant. The major is implicated that his son receive the hail of instruction necessary to keep company in his become?s footsteps. Whenever the two are to generateher, the honest-to-goodness man barks orders to keep the head high, the sit bolt upright. In the major and his doll, Lenz mounts a scathing count on back of two major components of the upper crystallise?the ships office plump forer corps and the Frenchified lady of leisure. Yet the presence of the privy councillor indicates that the countwright was not prepared to dismiss the nobleness as being completely without merit. Nor was he content to give up on the teaching profession. Wenzeslaus is offered as an alternative to the half-educated, obsequious Läuffer. The village schoolmaster?s dedication to his duties is made very apparent, as are the pretentiou sness and depth of his preparation. He is a solitary ! old knight bachelor who lives in rural simplicity, border by books from which he loves to refer from memory?indeed, all too fluently. The price of isolation has been pedantry and selfish ways. Still, Wenzeslaus?s humanity and endurance shine forth when he confronts a party of fortify men who are in pursuit of the fugitive Läuffer. The Tutor finds fault with some(prenominal) aspects of 18th century German society. The nobility supports an educational insertion, the private tutor, that is truly deleterious to its children. The academic preparation and pedagogical ability of a tutor is lilliputian as long as he is willing to accept to his employer?s every whim. In the major, the hypermasculine loutishness of the blindly loyal officer corps is on intro. In this context, what was at this point in the history of German literature a commonplace portraying of wild student life takes on added significance. The atmosphere in Halle cannot be counted on either to meliorate the nobility or to reorder society. One major, pervasive caper is the ambivalent, and all the selfsame(prenominal) fearful worldview of the middle class. It is a tri furthere to the playwright?s receptive understanding of the labyrinthianity of the real world that he uses an sorry character to point out this state of affairs. The privy councillor?s conversation with Läuffer?s father in act 2, impression 1, is calculated to make Lenz?s modern middle-class audience very uncomfortable. That social direct prided itself on its university education. Not so secretly, it viewed itself as superior to a ruling class that was tied to a fading knightly and mired in superficial attitudes concerning human potential. The middle class longed for a truly meritocratic social order. Nevertheless, the privy councillor charges, it lacks the courage to renounce the means of its own exploitation, means such as the institution of the private tutor. Implicit in the critique is Lenz?s belief that the stage should be used to heart and soul tilt wit! hin society. His determination to remedy social ills is even more apparent in The Soldiers. The SoldiersThe last(a) exam scene of The Soldiers, Lenz?s other famous comedy, offers a discussion between two characters that mystify previously had choral functions. A countess who has tried to avert the sadal sequence of events speaks with the colonel of the regiment served by the officers referred to in the play?s title. In the bunk of their conversation, the playwright offers one pellucid ancestor to the social problem he has dramatized. Then, brieflyly after terminate work on The Soldiers, Lenz wrote a short essay that contains a second possible remedy. The action of The Soldiers is set in 3some garrison towns in Flanders: Lille, Armantières, and Philippeville. Marie and Charlotte are the daughters of Wesener, who sells notions and fancy goods at his dress up in Lille. The beautiful Marie is near to receive a married couple proposal from Stolzius, a cloth merchant i n Armantières. The very first scene shows the young woman to be sooner interpreted with the faddish love for all things French. She is composing a letter to Stolzius and peppering it with French borrowings that she cannot spell. The necessitous pretentiousness of a infantile girl sets in motion a calamitous business leader train of events when she attracts the attention of Baron Desportes, an army officer base at Armantières. darn Desportes is callous, cynical, and self-aggrandizing among his peers, he knows how to turn the head of a naïve bourgeois girl with exaggerated flattery. Marie is taken in by the cascade of compliments and agrees to a private rendezvous. Although her father is outraged at first, he soon comes to look on the nobleman?s attentions as a social coup in the making for Marie and the entire family; he even suggests that she hold off Stolzius while she determines the seriousness of Desportes?s intentions. in short, Stolzius has heard of Desportes?s appe arance and writes a mildly warning(prenominal) lette! r to Marie. At first the girl is upset, but Desportes soon has her express emotioning at her former suitor in the course of the teasing and coquetry that lead to her seduction. From this point, the playwright accelerates the action by using short scenes that switch back and forth among the three towns. The third and quaternate acts together boast twenty-one scenes, some(prenominal) of them consisting of a star speech. Desportes?s fellow officers continue to fuck up themselves in fleeting love affairs and to evince wee or no concern for the feelings of others. Stolzius sinks into a state of despair. passing Marie to fend for herself, Desportes steals out of Lille to avoid his creditors. The officer bloody shame thence tries to smooth the feathers that his champion has badly ruffled. Stolzius takes a job as adjutant to Mary. Soon it is clear that Mary has designs on Marie and that she is walkway the path to mourning for a second time. The Countess La Roche tries to engage her as a lady?s companion with the swear purpose of returning(a) Marie to a virtuous, ordered cosmos. Marie, however, decides that she can win over Desportes, writes him a letter announcing her intentions, and sets out on foot for Armantières. Wesener likewise decides to find Desportes in order to force payment of enceinte debts. On receiving the letter, Desportes is horrified at the thought of the scene that he imagines Marie will make in front of his father and orders a rifleman under his command to intercept her and rape her. Soon thereafter, Desportes and Mary have a conversation at lunch about Marie, to whom Desportes refers as a ?whore.? The meal is served by Stolzius, who promptly poisons Desportes and himself. Meanwhile, on the lane to Armantières, Wesener is accosted by a shabby, starving woman whom he takes for a prostitute. Then comes the moment of recognition as father and daughter sink into each other?s arms. The problem discussed by Countess La Roche and the re gimental colonel in the net scene is the code that ! officers remain unmarried. In order to protect innocent young girls during peacetime, the colonel suggests that the army might support groups of volunteer concubines, courtesans for the officers. In the later essay, Lenz suggested instead that officers be allowed to marry and that they be corporate into society as respected burghers. Although the biz of The Soldiers is more complex than that of The Tutor, the tragic consequences for the middle class are the same: The lives of a young woman and a young man are destroyed.
In both plays, the agile cause is amorality within the aristocracy; neither Desportes and Mary nor Major von Berg and h is wife display any sense of duty to the wider community. A specific get on?the institution of the private tutor, the rule of celibacy for commissioned officers?illuminates the absence seizure of morality among society?s elite. The high degree of poignancy in The Soldiers, the addition of a decidedly anticlimactic final scene, and the constitution of a follow-up essay mark Lenz as an écrivain engagé. That inscription to progressive causes does not blind him to the faults of his own put-upon stratum. The audience must finally decide whether the practical remedies suggested could have salve Stolzius and Läuffer from personal calamity. Their actions do suggest a strong suit of passivity in the face of the immutable dictates of destiny. This passivity on the part of his characters can be read as authorial acceptance of the system of social stratification of the day. either that could be hoped for would then be some amelioration of the crueler consequences of the system. m uch(prenominal) a reading would stand in contrast to ! the posture of the regular(prenominal) Sturm und Drang hero with his brash self-confidence, his willingness to flaunt convention. The heroes of Klinger and Friedrich Schiller may succumb to overpowering forces, but they struggle mightily to the bitter end. In the final analysis, Läuffer and Stolzius are at the beck and call of aristocratic masters. atomic number 18 the events and attitudes portrayed intended as a lesson? Lenz?s immediate predecessors in the genre of comedy were judiciousness dramatists whose typical play is structured around a break upish central character. The plot affords the audience ample opportunity to laugh at the fool and the chaotic situations his presence creates. Whether the weakness in his personality is recovered(p) at the conclusion of the play is of secondary importance. The insight?s primary concern is that the spectator return home more sensitive to the dangers of one pattern of behavior, whether it be furtiveness, greed, intolerance, or hyp ocrisy. While the amount of death in its final scene equals that present in many a tragedy, The Soldiers is faithful to the surmisal of comedy set forth in the Anmerkungen übers Theater nebst angehängten übersetzten Stück Shakespears: It is a study of social institutions and the actions and situations that they generate among everyday people. At the same time, Lenz makes use of spectator expectations nurtured during the Enlightenment in his presentation of proscribe examples. Wesener and his wife are fools worthy of derision for placing their desire for social overture before Marie?s virtue. Marie is herself a fool on several counts: Her ambition is less reprehensible than Wesener?s provided because of her age. A deficient education has leftover her with superficial concepts of stopping point and maturity. In addition, she is insensitive to the feelings of one who is close to her, and she does not necessitate from her mistakes. however Stolzius is guilty of a small measu re of blind behavior; after all, he has chosen to at! tach himself to this family of fools. Still, his tragedy is roughly as unavoidable as it is undeserved. In the Weseners, Lenz shows a debt to the prescriptive stage of the Enlightenment; but in Stolzius, as in Läuffer, he presents a dimension of existence that is beyond the individual?s power to control. For Lenz, that dimension is created not by existential or metaphysical forces and pressures but by society. That Lenz was a reformer rather than a revolutionary is evident in his treatment of the aristocracy. The young officers are presented in the vanquish possible light; however, as is the case in The Tutor, it is left to members of the aristocracy to identify the social problem and suggest solutions. Lenz was content to see caring, creative nobles such as the colonel and the Countess La Roche at the superlative of the social pyramid. The Sturm und Drang movement is often linked to the ramble of egalitarianism most evident in the American and French Revolutions, but nascent r epublicanism should not be imputed to Lenz; he was satisfied with the class structure of his time. bibliographyDiffey, Norman R. Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Bonn: Bouvier, 1981. Diffey examines the influence of Rousseau on Lenz?s work. Includes bibliography. Guthrie, John. Lenz and Büchner: Studies in Dramatic Form. New York: Peter Lang, 1984. Guthrie compares the techniques used by Lenz and Georg Büchner in their outstanding works. Includes bibliography. Kieffer, Bruce. The Storm and var. of lecture: Linguistic Catastrophe in the Early whole shebang of Goethe, Lenz, Klinger, and Schiller. University special K: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1986. Kieffer examines Lenz?s work, along wit h that of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Maximilian Klinger, and Friedrich Schiller, in the context of the Sturm und Drang movement. Includes bibliography and index. Leidner, Alan C., and Helga S. Madland, eds. Space to puzzle out: The Theater of J. M. R. Lenz. Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1993. A collec! tion of essays about the Sturm und Drang playwright from a symposium on Lenz held at the University of O klahoma in 1991. Includes bibliography and index. Leidner, Alan C., and Karin A. Wurst. Unpopular Virtues: The tiny Reception of J. M. R. Lenz. Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1999. The authors look at the critical reception of Lenz?s dramatic works. Contains bibliography and in dex. Madland, Helga Stipa. Image and Text: J. M. R. Lenz. Atlanta, Ga.: Rodopi, 1994. Madland offers an interpretation and critique of the Sturm und Drang playwright?s works. Includes bibliography and index. O?Regan, Brigitta. Self and Existence: J. M. R. Lenz?s Subjective tiptop of View. New York: Peter Lang, 1997. O?Regan examines the dramatic works of Lenz with an spunk to his portrayal of the self and the philosophy that p ervades his works. Includes bibliography. If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website:
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