Emilia Galotti

Emilia Galotti, a play Michael has to read for a school essay, becomes the first text he reads aloud to Hanna and the centerpiece of a recurring ritual in their affair. Through its place in their encounters, the play shifts from an assignment Michael struggles to remember into a performance Hanna listens to closely, while reading delays and redirects the couple’s desire.

The School Assignment

While Michael is sick, his class reads Emilia Galotti and Intrigue and Love and is assigned an essay on them. He reads both plays after finishing his other work, but it is late and he is tired; by the next day he has forgotten what he read and must begin again. The school text first appears as labor undertaken under fatigue, not as a chosen pleasure.

From Reading to Ritual

Hanna asks whether Michael has to learn anything in his own language as well as foreign languages. When he explains that the class reads texts, she asks him to read the play to her. The next day, as he arrives intending to kiss her, she holds him back until he reads first. She makes him read Emilia Galotti for half an hour before taking him into the shower and then to bed.

The order becomes a repeated pattern: Michael reads aloud, they shower together, make love, and lie beside one another afterward. Reading initially absorbs the desire he feels on arrival; it returns in the shower. The play therefore does not simply accompany their intimacy: it structures its timing, setting a pause between anticipation and physical closeness.

Hanna as Listener

Hanna follows the plot with evident attention. Her laughter, contemptuous sniffs, and angry or enthusiastic remarks register her responses, and she regards both Emilia and Luise as silly young women. When she asks Michael to continue, her impatience seems bound up with the hope that the characters’ foolishness will soon run its course. Her reactions make the reading an exchange rather than a recitation: Michael performs the different parts, while Hanna judges the action and urges it onward.

As the days grow longer, Michael reads for longer so that he can be with Hanna in bed in the twilight. After she falls asleep lying on him, the saw in the yard quiets and a blackbird sings; the kitchen’s colors fade into lighter and darker shades of gray. Michael remembers this shared stillness as a moment of complete happiness. The play’s significance thus extends beyond its plot: its performance helps form the rhythm and remembered atmosphere of their meetings.