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German Literature Companion:

Die Leiden des jungen Werthers

Leiden des jungen Werthers, Die, a novel in two parts (Erstes Buch and Zweites Buch) written by Goethe within three months (March until May) in 1774, and published in the same year. Some prefer the title Die Leiden des jungen Werther, which Goethe himself chose for the last edition of 1824. It was substantially revised for a new edition in 1787, and it is now usually read in this later form. Apart from the ‘editor's’ introductory note eliciting the reader's admiration and sympathy for Werther's individuality, and emphasizing the cathartic effect which his fate is meant to produce, the first part of the novel is told mainly in letters (see Briefroman) dated from May until September 1771; the second part, in the latter half of which a fictitious narrator takes up the story, is dated from October 1771 to December 1772. The letters are written by Werther, and are addressed to his friend Wilhelm, who figures indirectly in the letters as a man of contrasting character.

At the opening of Bk. One Werther, a highly strung young man of great sensitiveness, is sent on a journey by his mother to deal with a legacy. The district is new to him, and he is carried away by the idyllic beauty of the rural scene in spring. After a few weeks he meets Lotte, a young woman, the eldest of a family of motherless young children, to whom she herself has become a mother. He accompanies Lotte to a ball and falls deeply in love with her. She is, however, promised to another, named Albert, and Werther, though he apprehends the situation, is unable to separate himself from Lotte. For a time a curious triangular state persists, in which each endeavours to be fair to the others. At the beginning of September Werther at last tears himself away and leaves Lotte and Albert.

In Bk. Two, which begins a month later, Werther is on the staff of a legation, ill at ease and restless. In March he sustains what he feels is an unmerited snub and hands in his resignation. In May, a year after his first arrival, he is back in Lotte's town. His passion soon dominates his life, and the awareness of being in an impasse from which there is no escape awakens destructive impulses. Distraught to the point of utter despair he takes a last leave of Lotte and shoots himself with Albert's pistol. It is the tragedy of a man who is not only disappointed in love, but also feels himself alienated from the world around him.

Although the novel is not autobiography, Goethe's experiences in Wetzlar in the spring and summer of 1772 are vividly recalled. Lotte Buff, with whom Goethe fell in love, and J. C. Kestner, her fiancé, are reflected in Lotte and Albert, and the details of the death of Werther follow very closely the suicide of K. W. Jerusalem at Wetzlar in October 1772.

By its intense sensibility and astonishing lifelikeness Werther conquered the reading public, not only of Germany, but of Europe. Probably the best-known work of the Sturm und Drang, it made Goethe famous overnight and generated a wave of imitation. Young men of means found it de rigueur to wear the Werther dress of blue coat and yellow breeches, and Napoleon is said to have read the work seven times. In some quarters it was attacked as deleterious to morals, and it was parodied by F. Nicolai in Die Freuden des jungen Werthers (1775) and by J. F. Kringsteiner in Werthers Leiden (1806). Some suicides were attributed to it, notably that of Christel von Laßberg, who in January 1777 drowned herself in the Ilm near Goethe's house with a copy of Werther in her pocket. The melancholia of V. L. Plessing, with whom the poem Harzreise im Winter is linked, was also attributed to his reading this powerful novel. (See also Plenzdorf, U.)

The French opera Werther was composed in 1892 by Jules Massenet (1842-1912) to a libretto by Edouard Blau and others. Tender and exquisitely scored, it turns the epistolary novel into a more conventional drama, yet remains remarkably faithful to Goethe's original as regards the characters, the general atmosphere and the sequence of events.

 
 
Wikipedia: The Sorrows of Young Werther
The Sorrows of Young Werther
Author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Original title Die Leiden des jungen Werthers
Country Wetzlar
Language German
Genre(s) Epistolary novel
Publisher
Publication date 1774
ISBN NA

The Sorrows of Young 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 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 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 pretense that he is going "on a journey." Lotte receives the request with great emotion and sends the pistols, despite understanding what he will do with them. Werther then shoots himself, but he lasts long enough for those who love him to assemble by his side. A Christian funeral is denied to him.

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. (She later married Kestner and their son was 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 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 (Warning: may spoil plot)

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 a satiric - and more happy - 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.

However, Goethe 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, 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.

Alternative versions and other appearances

  • The statistician Karl Pearson's first book was "The New 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 unrequited love that inspired the tale of Young Werther.
  • An episode of History Bites features this book, with Bob Bainborough portraying Goethe.


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

See also

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. 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.

External links



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