In hmolscience, Karl Knebel (1744-1834) was a German poet noted for []Goethe: “What did you think of Elective Affinities?”
Knebel: “I couldn’t stomach it.”
Goethe: “I did not write the book for you, but for young girls.”
Goethe: “But I didn’t write it for you, I wrote it for little girls!”
| German | English |
| Ant wortete Knebel: “Nimm es nicht ubel, lieber Freund, ich kann sie nicht verdauen.” Goethe antwortete: “Ich habe sie auch nicht fur Dich, sondern fur die Madchen geschrieben, und verdenke es Dir nicht.” | Replied Knebel: “Do not take it amiss, dear friend, I can not digest it.” Goethe said, “I have written it not for you, but for the girls, and blame is not you.” |
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| Sketch (Ѻ) of a little girl, reading about frogs, retouched with the famous 1810 Goethe-Knebel dialogue on who Goethe claimed to have written Elective Affinities for, namely: for “die Madchen”, i.e. little girls (Hollingdale, 1971) or young women (Tantillo, 2001), translation depending. |
“Goethe’s statement that he wrote Elective Affinities for ‘young girls’ (as reported by Varnhagen von Ense, pg. 321), is one of the many cryptic comments made by Goethe. It is highly likely, according to Thims’ point of view, that Goethe wrote Elective Affinities, for young girls, as he says, for the same reason that Human Chemistry (a modern day Elective Affinities) was written, i.e. ‘for a young person 7-15 years of age’; namely that in Goethe’s time, as is the case presently, no one teaches a young person how the world really is. Moreover, past a certain age, people, on average, will no longer be malleable to correct teachings. As such, Goethe invariably wrote Elective Affinities so that young, un-biased, girls (persons) might know how the world really is, namely a [physico]-chemical one.”— Libb Thims (2007), Human Chemistry (Volume Two) [3]
