The Sorrows of Young Werther

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (September 2009)

The Sorrows of Young Werther (Die Leiden des jungen Werthers) is an epistolary and loosely autobiographical novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, first published in 1774; a revised edition of the novel was published in 1787. Werther was an important novel of the Sturm und Drang period in German literature, and it also influenced the later Romantic literary movement.

The book made Goethe one of the first true international literary celebrities. Toward the end of his life, a personal visit to Weimar became crucial to 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 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 (Charlotte), a beautiful young girl who is taking care of her siblings following the death of their mother. Charlotte 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 when he forgetfully visits a friend on the day when the entire aristocratic set normally meets there. He returns to Wahlheim 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 they are both overcome with emotion after Werther's recitation of a portion of "Ossian".

Werther had realized even before this incident that one of them — Lotte, Albert or Werther himself — had to die. Unable to hurt anyone else or seriously consider committing murder, 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 his two pistols, under a pretense that he is going "on a journey". Lotte receives the request with great emotion and sends the pistols. Werther then shoots himself in the head, but doesn't expire until 12 hours after he has shot himself. He is buried under a linden tree, a tree he talks about frequently in his letters, and the funeral is not attended by clergymen, Albert or his beloved Lotte.

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 Court 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. (She later married Kestner and had a son, August Kestner.) 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 28. 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. And, just like Werther, he left a copy of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's play Emilia Galotti on his cupboard in the room where he died.

Effect on Goethe

Werther was one of Goethe's few works in the Sturm und Drang movement, before he, with Friedrich von Schiller, began the Weimar Classicism movement.

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. He even denounced the Romantic movement which he is most associated with by calling it "everything that is sick."^[1]

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. He thought so highly of it that he wrote a soliloquy in Goethe's style in his youth and carried Werther with him on his campaigning to Egypt. It also started the phenomenon known as the "Werther-Fieber" ("Werther Fever") which caused young men throughout Europe to dress in the clothing style described for Werther in the novel. It reputedly also led to some of the first known examples of copycat suicide.

The "Werther Fever" was watched with concern by the authorities and fellow authors. One of the latter, Friedrich Nicolai, decided to create a satiric—and happier—ending called Die Freuden des jungen Werthers ("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.

Goethe, however, was not pleased with this version and started a literary war with Nicolai (which lasted all his life) by writing a poem titled "Nicolai auf Werthers Grabe" in which Nicolai defecates on Werther's grave,^[2] 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, and his play Faust.

Trivia

A major scene in the novel 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.

Alternative versions and other appearances

• 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 statistician 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 poem satirizing Goethe's story entitled Sorrows of Werther .

• Thomas Mann's 1939 novel Lotte in Weimar recounts a fictional reunion between Goethe and the object of his youthful passion Charlotte Kestner.

• An episode of History Bites features this book, with Bob Bainborough portraying Goethe.

• Ulrich Plenzdorf, a GDR poet, wrote a novel and a play called Die neuen Leiden des jungen W. ("The New Sorrows of Young W."). It has been called a modern-day Werther.

Translations

• The Sorrows of Young Werther - ISBN 0-8129-6990-1.

Translated by Burton Pike. 2004 Modern Library (Random House, Inc.)

• The Sorrows of Young Werther - ISBN 0-14-044503-X.

Translated by Michael Hulse. 1989 The Penguin Classics Library Complete Collection (Penguin Books Ltd.)

• The Sorrows of Young Werther - ISBN 0-486-42455-3.

Translated by Thomas Carlyle and R. Dillon Boylan. Originally published 1902 C. T. Brainard Publishing Company. Reissued 2002 Dover Thrift Editions (Dover Publications, Inc.)

• The Sorrows of Young Werther - ISBN 0-679-72951-8.

Translated by Elizabeth Mayer and Louise Bogan. Poems translated and foreword by W. H. Auden. Also contains Novelle. Originally published 1971 Random House, Inc.. Reissued June 1990 by Vintage Books as a Vintage Classics Edition.

• The Sufferings of Young Werther - ISBN 0-393-09880-X

Translated by Harry Steinhauer. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1970.

• The Hebrew translation יסורי ורתר הצעיר was extremely popular among youths in the Zionist pioneer communities in British Mandate of Palestine in the 1930s and 1940s and was blamed for the suicide of several young men who were considered to have emulated Werther.

See also

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Sturm und Drang
• Romanticism
• Epistolary novel
• William Render

References

• Auden, Wystan Hugh (1971), written at Toronto, Canada, Foreword, Random House, Inc.
• Phillips, Mary Elizabeth (1895). "A Handbook of German Literature". George Bell and Sons. http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC05512598&id=8Eep_q8oh78C&pg=RA1-PA75&lpg=RA1-PA75&dq=The+Sorrows+of+Young+Werther+date:1700-1900&as_brr=1. Retrieved 2007-03-16. 
• Wilkinson, William Cleaver (1887). "Classic German Course in English". Chautauqua Press. http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC00299752&id=qVARAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA173&lpg=PA173&dq=The+Sorrows+of+Young+Werther+date:1700-1900&as_brr=1#PPP12,M1. Retrieved 2007-03-16. 
• Herold, J. Christopher (1963). The Age of Napoleon. American Heritage Inc.

External links

• Die Leiden des jungen Werthers
• The Sorrows of Young Werther at Project Gutenberg
• GradeSaver study guide: The Sorrows of Young Werther
• Free Audiobook (in German) from LibriVox
• The-Sorrows-of-Young-Werther.com (personalised e-mail edition sending Werther's letters to your mailbox)
• Die-Leiden-des-jungen-Werthers.de (personalised e-mail edition sending Werther's letters to your mailbox, in German)
• William Makepeace Thackeray's Sorrows of Werther [1]

Wikisource has original text related to this article: The Sorrows of Young Werther

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: The Sorrows of Young Werther