"The Monstrous Angel: On the Figure of Mignon in Goethe’s" Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship

Abstract

The article places the figure of Mignon in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre in the context of the emergence of a new hermeneutic concept of “life” –“life” understood as an invisible force that shapes living creatures from within– at the end of the eighteenth century. Explicitly introduced as a “riddle”, Mignon’s enigmatic character is shown to embody problems of differentiation –man/woman, living/mechanical, spirit/letter– created by vitalism’s attempt to conceive of nature and culture as manifestations of a single “life”. The article suggests that Mignon’s function is not to symbolize a higher aesthetic or moral-political ideal but to mark out the limits of biological and social form in Goethe’s novel. The essay ends with critical reflections on Goethe’s attempt to turn Mignon’s normative eccentricity into the source of aesthetic fascination.