The Adventure of the German Student - Washington Irving

 The Adventure of the German Student - Washington Irving

Irving has a lot to recommend him, but I’m not a big fan of this story. Nonetheless, it has frequently been included in anthologies, perhaps because of the foreshadowing.

We have already looked at the word ‘adventure’, that which comes to us. Certainly, the events in Irving’s story come to the student. The structure of the event is clear. The student encounters, responds and the event unfolds as a truth procedure. The final fate of the student is such that, for him, the truth procedure is over. The truth contained in the story may open differently for different readers. However, if we are to approach a Badiouian form of criticism, certain aspects of the event reveal an unchanging truth. I would suggest that fear of women and fear of revolution are combined in the story, suggesting male event thresholds in categories of love and politics. How should the student have responded to the Event? Is his fate a consequence of accepting or of denying the truth within the Event?

The Student of the title is, of course, one who studies. The meaning of study is drawn from the qualities of eagerness and diligence, of striving toward something. It is debatable how far this may apply to the student in the final analysis. However, he does, indeed, press forward with his hopes and desires after meeting the woman. In fact, he is, like Romeo, too eager in moving toward a denouement that his behaviour makes inevitable.

I found it puzzling when I first thought about the nationality of the student. It makes sense for the student to be a little unfamiliar with Parisian society, but why German? Germans and Dutch frequently appear in Hawthorne’s tales of Old New York and, for a while, I wondered if he had exported his stereotypes to a European setting. The origins of the word are unhelpful. The word in English comes from the Roman designation of a group of tribes, though it is uncertain whether the word relates to ‘brothers, having the same parents’ from Latin or if it comes from a Celtic word meaning both ‘noisy’ and ‘neighbour’. But then, of course, at the time of writing, Germany was the centre of a European movement of Romanticism. Overly passionate figures are to be found in Romantic German literature, from Goethe, to Kleist, to Hoffmann. 

Irving’s own relationship to Romanticism was an ambiguous one. Certainly, this tale lacks the humour that we might more commonly associate with him. And, perhaps, that is his point. The Romantic narrative of love leads the student to his destruction. By this stage in his life, Irving was a confirmed bachelor, having lost the love of his life before they could marry. The truth in this tale is a warning against the over eagerness of Romantic love.