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Novel The Sorrows of Young Werther is a loosely autobiographical novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, first published in 1774. It was Goethe's first major success, turning him from an unknown into a celebrated author practically overnight. The majority of the novel is presented as a collection of letters written by Werther, a young artist of a highly sensitive and passionate temperament, and sent to his friend Wilhelm. In these letters, Werther gives a very intimate account of his stay in the fictional village of Wahlheim (based on the town of Garbenheim, near Wetzlar), where he meets and falls in love with Lotte, a beautiful young girl who is taking care of her siblings following the death of their mother. Lotte is, however, already engaged to a man named Albert. Despite the pain this causes Werther, he spends the next few months cultivating a close friendship with both of them. Every day serves as a torturing reminder that Lotte will never be able to requite his love... |
The Sorrows of Young Werther (Die Leiden des jungen Werther, originally published as Die Leiden des jungen Werthers) is an epistolary and loosely autobiographical novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, first published in 1774. A major scene prominently features Goethe's own German translation of a portion of James Macpherson's Ossian cycle of poems, which were originally presented as translations of ancient works, and were later found to have been written by Macpherson. Werther was an important novel of the Sturm und Drang movement in German literature. It was one of Goethe's few works in the movement before he, with Friedrich von Schiller, began the Weimar Classicism movement. It also influenced Romantic literature that followed. The book made Goethe become one of the first true
literary celebrities. Towards the end of his life, a trip to Weimar and
a personal visit was crucial in any young man's tour of Europe. Plot summary The majority of The Sorrows of Young Werther is presented as a collection of letters written by Werther, a young artist of a highly sensitive and passionate temperament, and sent to his friend Wilhelm. In these letters, Werther gives a very intimate account of his stay in the fictional village of Wahlheim (based on the town of Garbenheim, near Wetzlar). He is enchanted by the simple ways of the peasants there. He meets and falls instantly in love with Lotte, a beautiful young girl who is taking care of her siblings following the death of their mother. Lotte is, however, already engaged to a man named Albert, who is in fact 11 years her senior. Despite the pain this causes Werther, he spends the next few months cultivating a close friendship with both of them. His pain eventually becomes so great that he is forced to leave and go to Weimar. While he is away, he makes the acquaintance of Fräulein von B. He suffers a great embarrassment, he forgetfully visits a friend on the day when the entire aristocratic set normally meets there. He returns to Walheim after this, where he suffers more than he did before, partially because Lotte and Albert are now married. Every day serves as a torturous reminder that Lotte will never be able to requite his love. Out of pity for her friend and respect for her husband, Lotte comes to the decision that Werther must not visit her so frequently. He visits her one final time, and there, both overcome with emotion after Werther's recitation of a portion of Ossian, they kiss. Werther had realized even before this incident that one of them--Lotte, Albert, or Werther himself--must die. Unable to hurt anyone else, Werther sees no other choice but to take his own life. After composing a farewell letter (to be found after he commits suicide), he writes to Albert asking for two pistols, under a pretence that he is going hunting. Lotte receives the request with great emotion and sends the pistols, despite understanding what he will do with them. Werther then shoots himself. Inspiration and Parallels As Goethe mentioned in the first version of his Römische Elegien, his "youthful sufferings" played a part in the creation of the novel. Having concluded his law studies in the spring 1772, Goethe found himself working for the Imperial Chamber of the Holy Roman Empire in Wetzlar . He befriended the secretary Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem and, on June 9, 1772, they attended a ball where Goethe was introduced to the 19-year old Charlotte Buff and her older fiancé, Johann Christian Kestner. Goethe is said to have instantly fallen in love with Charlotte. Goethe pursued Charlotte and the relationship varied between friendship and rejection. Charlotte was honest with Goethe and told him there was no hope of an affair. On September 11 Goethe left without saying goodbye. The parallels between this incident and the novel are evident. Charlotte Buff, like her counterpart in the novel, was the daughter of a widowed official and had many siblings. Goethe, like Werther, often found it difficult to complete work. Both Goethe and Werther celebrated their birthdays on August the 28th and both left Charlotte on September 10. However, the novel also depicts a number of events that have close parallels to the life of Goethe's friend Jerusalem who, like Werther, committed suicide. Goethe was told that the motive for the deed was unrequited love for another man's wife. Jerusalem had also gone on long moonlight walks that reflected his sad mood and had also borrowed pistols to carry out his suicide. Effect on Goethe Goethe distanced himself from The Sorrows of Young Werther in his later years. He regretted his fame and making his youthful love of Charlotte Buff public knowledge. He wrote Werther at the age of twenty-four and yet, most of his visitors in his old age had read only this book of his and knew him mainly only from this work, despite his many others. Goethe described his distaste for the book, writing that even if Werther had been a brother he had killed, he could not have been more haunted by the vengeful ghost. Nevertheless, Goethe acknowledged the great personal and emotional impact that The Sorrows of Young Werther could exert on those forlorn young lovers who discovered it. In 1821, he commented to his secretary, "It must be bad, if not everybody was to have a time in his life, when he felt as though Werther had been written exclusively for him." Cultural Impact The Sorrows of Young Werther was Goethe's first major success, turning him from an unknown into a celebrated author practically overnight. Napoleon Bonaparte considered it one of the great works of European literature, thinking so highly of it that as a youth, he wrote a soliloquy in Goethe's style, and that as an adult carried Werther with him on most of his campaigns. It also started the phenomenon known as the "Werther-Fieber" ("Werther Fever"): Young men throughout Europe began to dress in the clothing described for Werther in the novel. It also led to some of the first known examples of copycat suicide; supposedly more than 2,000 readers committed suicide. The "Werther Fever" was watched with concern by the authorities and fellow authors. One of the latter, Friedrich Nicolai, decided to create an alternative - and more happy - ending called Die Freuden des jungen Werther ("The Joys of Young Werther"), in which Albert, having realized what Werther is up to, had loaded chicken blood into the pistol, thereby foiling Werther's suicide, and happily concedes Lotte to him. And after some initial difficulties, Werther sheds his passionate youthful side and reintegrates himself into society as a respectable citizen. However, Goethe was not pleased with this version and started a literary war (which lasted all his life) with Nicolai by writing a poem titled "Nicolai auf Werthers Grabe" in which Nicolai defecates on Werther's grave, thus desecrating the memory of Werther from which Goethe had distanced himself in the meantime (as he had from the Sturm und Drang). This was continued in his collection of short and critical poems, the Xenies. Alternative versions and other appearances * The Sorrows of Young Werther is mentioned in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Frankenstein's monster finds the book in a leather portmanteau, along with two others--Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, and Milton's Paradise Lost. He sees Werther's case as similar to his own. He, like Werther, was rejected by those he loved. * The statistican Karl Pearson's first book was "The New Werther". * It was the basis for the 1892 opera Werther by Jules Massenet. * William Makepeace Thackeray wrote a somewhat comical poetic version of Goethe's story titled Sorrows of Werther that captures the desperation, sadness, and also the humor behind this bildungsroman tale. * Thomas Mann's 1939 novel Lotte in Weimar recounts a fictional reunion between Goethe and the object of his youthful passion Charlotte Kestner, an unrequited love that inspired the tale of Young Werther. * An episode of History Bites features this book, with Bob Bainborough portraying Goethe. * The book is on Deadpool's list of required reading. * Olivera Kjorvezirovska, a young Macedonian author wrote a novel comically entitled "The Sorrows of the Young Lecturer" References Auden, Wystan Hugh (1971), Foreword, Toronto, Canada: Random House, Inc. Phillips, Mary Elizabeth (1895). A Handbook of German Literature. George Bell and Sons. Retrieved on 2007-03-16. Wilkinson, William Cleaver (1887). Classic German Course in English. Chautauqua Press. Retrieved on 2007-03-16. Herold, J. Christopher (1963). The Age of Napoleon. American Heritage Inc. (Source: Wikipedia.org) |
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