Elective Affinities 1, 2
1: Part 1, chap. 7: Eduard and Ottilie, mill scene. After asking her to entrust to him the portrait of her father that she was wearing on her chest, he hesitates to press it to his lips. He grasps her hand and presses it to his eyes.
2: Part 1, chap. 8: Eduard and Ottilie, Charlotte and the Captain. Domestic circle, cozy room, reading at a table. Eduard moves closer to Ottilie that she may see the book better. Charlotte and the Captain communicate their observations with their eyes. The attraction of affine personalities, to and fro.
(Illustrations and text from Urania: Taschenbuch für Damen auf das Jahr 1812.
Elective Affinities 3, 4
3: Part 2, chap. 3: The finished chapel. Ottilie visits it alone, sits down on one of the choir benches. She looks around and has the sense that she both exists and does not exist, as if what she perceives around her might disappear just as she might herself.
4: Part 2, chap. 8: The birth of the newborn child. Mittler speaks. The weak pastor sinks lifeless to the floor. Charlotte taken aback. Ottilie melancholy. Premonition of fate.
Elective Affinities 5, 6
5: Part 2, chap. 13: Ottilie reading in the park, the infant on her lap. Magnificent twilight scene. A gentle ray of light from the setting sun illuminates the reflective girl. Trees and flowers seem beneficently to observe her. Eduard then surprises her.
6: Part 2, chap. 13: Ottilie in the unsteady boat with the child, driven far from shore. She holds the child up, entreating succor from the stars; her bosom is open, her tears fall on the rigid face of the child, to whom she futilely tries to breathe new warmth and life with her own handsome body.
Elective Affinities 7, 8
7: Part 2, chap. 18: Ottilie, dying, Eduard, entreating her to live. After lengthy silence and with a gentle countenance, her lips move in a final farewell. After this exertion, her body sinks lifelessly back, her delicate feet still on the beloved box.
8: Part 2, chap. 18: Ottilie, deceased, the architect and Nanny. Ottilie’s coffin. Nanny resolutely demands to keep the wake. She is not long alone. At dusk, the architect enters the chapel. Nanny sits to the left of the coffin. Without speaking she points to her deceased mistress. The architect stands on the other side, reflecting with lowered gaze and hands folded in grief, head inclined toward the deceased.