The Elective Affinities - (1809)  Texto: http://gutenberg.aol.de/goethe/wahlverw/wahlv001.htm (En alemán)

Resumen:
Countess Charlotte and Baron Edouard, once madly in love, meet by chance twenty years after having last seen each other. They decide to marry and devote their time to their relationship and the development of their land. The couple are joined by Otto (an architect and close friend of Edouard's) along with Charlotte's goddaughter, Ottilie. After a communal reading of a treatise on 'elective affinities' - the inexplicable law that seperates paired elements and makes them change partners - the two couples experience the same results. After a passionate night between Edouard and Charlotte a child is born that mysteriously resembles Ottilie and Otto. The life and death of the child dramatically marks the parallel progression of the two love stories.

El URL del resumen precedente es http://filmscouts.com/films/aff-ele.asp

Citas de Las afinidades electivas:

Del "Diario" de Otilia:
"Una vida sin amor, sin la proximidad del amado, es sólo una comédie a tiroir, una mala folla.  Se saca un cajón trás otro, se le vuelve a cerrar y se pasa apresuradamente al que sigue.  Todo lo bueno e importante que sucede no está más que muy pobremente enlazado"  (697)

Otilia y Carlota hablan:
OTI. "-Una criatura humana, extrañamente desgraciada, aunque lo fuera sin su culpa, está marcada para todos de temible manera.  Su presencia provoca una especie de espanto en cuantos la ven, en cuantos la observan.  Todos pretenden descubrir en ella lo monstruoso que le ha sido impuesto.  Todos sienten a un tiempo curiosidad y temor.  (. . .)

CAR. -Pero, querida niña -replicó Carlota-, en ninguna parte podrás sustraerte a la mirada de los hombres.  Ya no tenemos conventos en los que en otro tiempo podía encontrarse refugio para tales sentimientos.

OTI. -(. . .) La soledad no hace el refugio, querida tía -repuso Otilia-.  El refugio más precioso hay que buscarlo donde podamos ejercer nuestra actividad."  (732)
 

Otras citas de Goethe:

All suffering has something divine: because, so far as it is really suffering, it means that it can be endured, hard though it may be. A nature that collapses under suffering or has ceased to feel it does not suffer any more.  (To Riemer, 1810)
 

Our physical life as well as our social life, our morality, manners, worldly wisdom, philosophy, religion, even the accidents that befall us, all cry out that we must learn to renounce.  So much that belongs to the very core of our being we can never develop in this world;  what we need from it in order to fulfill ourselves is taken away, while what is alien and distasteful is forced upon us.  Suddenly, we are deprived of what we have won by hard work or what has been freely granted, and before we can understand what has happened  we find ourselves forced to surrender, bit by bit, our whole personality.  In addition, no one respects the man who cannot behave himself because of this:  on the contrary custom insists that the bitterer the cup the sweeter must be the face of the drinker, so that the leisurely onlooker need not be disturbed by any grimace.

But to fulfill his heavy task, Nature has given man a store of strength, activity and tenacity.  Most of all he is helped by a certain volatility which he can never lose.  This enables him to renounce any one thing at any moment if only he can grasp at something new the next.  And thus unconsciously we renew the whole of our life.  We replace one passion by another:  occupations, affections, predilections, hobbies, we try them all in turn only to cry in the end that all is vanity.  No one is indignant at this blasphemous lie, on the contrary, we think we have said something wise and incontrovertible.  There are only a few who can foresee these intolerable experiences and, in order to escape piecemeal resignation, resign themselves once for all.  They grow convinced of eternal and necessary law, and they try to reach an idea of it which can never be shaken, never overthrown, nay, confirmed by their observation of the transitory.  (Poetry and Truth, 1811-31)

El URL de las citas precedentes es http://www.econ.jhu.edu/People/Fonseca/goethe/goethe.suf