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| Still from the Taviani brothers' 1996 film of "Elective Affinities" |
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| Movie poster for the film |
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| 1811 illustration of characters from the novel |
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| Recent book cover for Elective Affinities |
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| Portrait of Goethe, 1828, by Stieler |
From pages 311-312 of the book: "Seeing Sarah and Mme. Cendre together, and the tear-falling exuberance that Sarah felt for the old woman, gave me pause to reflect on how changed Sarah was, on how lovely both these women, at opposite ends of the age spectrum, looked and felt and talked. I thought of the book Owen was reading at the time of our arrival here in the Vaucluse, when in the graveyard Ebert came upon him reading Goethe's Elective Affinities, and I thought of the young ward, Ottilie, who falls in love with the lord of the manor, and I remembered trying to identify her emotion, which was head-over-heels in love times ten, and knowing the emotion was so strong that it overcame her ability to express it, to eat, to sleep, to function normally. And I remembered how she began to shake, she cried, she was besotted by the terror of her love."
(From Michael Dirda, Barnes & Noble Review.com-- "Elective Affinities" refers to the chemical attraction of elements. [It] is, above all, an elegant book, with something of the stylized formality of a baroque opera by Gluck or one of Watteau's paintings.... The modern reader will need to slow down to appreciate its somewhat austere beauty. The narration is unemotional, heavily descriptive, and by contemporary bestseller standards, even somewhat colorless and flat. ...Goethe keeps his overall tone serenely august.)
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