This is one of Goethe's earliest works. He wrote it after a period of time when he fell in love with a woman engaged to another man he was friendly with; and also after he learned of the suicide of a young man over a failed love. It's written in the form of letters to an old friend but it seems quite dated. Having a man write another male friend bemoaning and sighing over his forbidden love seems very unlikely in this time.
His passion does ring true though Goethe didn't bring Lotte to life for me - she seems colourless and not very present.
Werther has a discussion with Albert (Lotte's fiancé) about love and passion.
[...] a man wholly under the influence of his passions has lost his ability to think rationally, and is regarded as intoxicated or insane.
Werther replies: Ah you sensible people! [...] Passions! Intoxication! Insanity! You are so calm and collected, so indifferent, you respectable people, tut-tutting about drunkenness and holding unreasonable behaviour in contempt, passing by like the priest and thanking God like the Pharisee that you are not as other men. I have been intoxicated more than once, my passions have never been far off insanity, and I have no regrets [...]
As Werther becomes more depressed about the futility of his love for Lotte (the lack of any future togetherness) he speaks about the transitory nature of much love and the relative unimportance of individuals. [26 October]
Your friends value you! You often make them happy, and your heart in turn feels it could not do without them; and yet - if you were to go, if you were to depart from this intimate circle, would they feel the void, how long would they feel the void that your loss tore open in their fate? - how long? - Oh Man is so transient a being that even where his existence is most secure, even where his presence makes its sole true impression felt, he must fade and disappear from the memories and souls of his loved ones, soon, oh so soon!
[27 October]
I could often tear my heart open and beat my poor head on seeing how little people can mean to each other. if I do not offer love and joy, happiness and warmth, ah! the other will not bring them to me either; nor will my heart, overflowing with rapture, move him at all if he is cold and listless.
Werther continues to love and pine after Lotte but after she marries Albert, he finds that he can't bear the idea, can't keep himself away from her and so he borrows Albert's pistols (such a passive-aggressive move though maybe it wasn't at that time) and shoots himself. Like the real model (Jerusalem), Werther doesn't die right away but lingers for a day or so before dying.
Goethe has some lovely descriptive phrases about the countryside where Werther spent most of his time, in the mountains. He speaks about sitting many hours at a table outside an inn, under the linden-trees.
The language is very over-wrought: beset hearts, floods of tears, tear my heart asunder, awesome majesty, torment, ardent pleasures, anguished spirit etc. High Romance.
It seems very different from the man who wrote Faust. Werther is very intolerant about reason, maturity and age. In Faust, the older Goethe is more sympathetic to aging, writing: "Old age doesn't make us childish, as they say, It finds the true surviving child in us." Though I didn't end up feeling connected to any of the characters or their problems, Werther's passion did seem strong and all-consuming and I felt this was a good introduction to an early Romantic novel. Exposing my lingering prejudices, I would probably have found Werther's emoting more bearable if he were a female - but then again, maybe not...he did go on and on.
His passion does ring true though Goethe didn't bring Lotte to life for me - she seems colourless and not very present.
Werther has a discussion with Albert (Lotte's fiancé) about love and passion.
[...] a man wholly under the influence of his passions has lost his ability to think rationally, and is regarded as intoxicated or insane.
Werther replies: Ah you sensible people! [...] Passions! Intoxication! Insanity! You are so calm and collected, so indifferent, you respectable people, tut-tutting about drunkenness and holding unreasonable behaviour in contempt, passing by like the priest and thanking God like the Pharisee that you are not as other men. I have been intoxicated more than once, my passions have never been far off insanity, and I have no regrets [...]
As Werther becomes more depressed about the futility of his love for Lotte (the lack of any future togetherness) he speaks about the transitory nature of much love and the relative unimportance of individuals. [26 October]
Your friends value you! You often make them happy, and your heart in turn feels it could not do without them; and yet - if you were to go, if you were to depart from this intimate circle, would they feel the void, how long would they feel the void that your loss tore open in their fate? - how long? - Oh Man is so transient a being that even where his existence is most secure, even where his presence makes its sole true impression felt, he must fade and disappear from the memories and souls of his loved ones, soon, oh so soon!
[27 October]
I could often tear my heart open and beat my poor head on seeing how little people can mean to each other. if I do not offer love and joy, happiness and warmth, ah! the other will not bring them to me either; nor will my heart, overflowing with rapture, move him at all if he is cold and listless.
Werther continues to love and pine after Lotte but after she marries Albert, he finds that he can't bear the idea, can't keep himself away from her and so he borrows Albert's pistols (such a passive-aggressive move though maybe it wasn't at that time) and shoots himself. Like the real model (Jerusalem), Werther doesn't die right away but lingers for a day or so before dying.
Goethe has some lovely descriptive phrases about the countryside where Werther spent most of his time, in the mountains. He speaks about sitting many hours at a table outside an inn, under the linden-trees.
The language is very over-wrought: beset hearts, floods of tears, tear my heart asunder, awesome majesty, torment, ardent pleasures, anguished spirit etc. High Romance.
It seems very different from the man who wrote Faust. Werther is very intolerant about reason, maturity and age. In Faust, the older Goethe is more sympathetic to aging, writing: "Old age doesn't make us childish, as they say, It finds the true surviving child in us." Though I didn't end up feeling connected to any of the characters or their problems, Werther's passion did seem strong and all-consuming and I felt this was a good introduction to an early Romantic novel. Exposing my lingering prejudices, I would probably have found Werther's emoting more bearable if he were a female - but then again, maybe not...he did go on and on.
“The Sorrows of Young Mike” recently published as a parody of “The Sorrows of Young Werther” by Goethe. I loved the aspects that were touched on in the updated version. John Zelazny, the writer of the parody, is in no way hiding from the original and makes this very clear. Zelazny’s protagonist is infatuated with Werther but lost and in love while he travels around the world with a copy of his favorite book. Everyone interested in Werther should check out “The Sorrows of Young Mike.”
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