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{{short description|1774 novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe}}
{{short description|1774 novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe}}
{{Infobox book | <!-- See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Novels or Wikipedia:WikiProject_Books -->
{{Infobox book | <!-- See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Novels or Wikipedia:WikiProject_Books -->
| name = The Sorrows of Young Werther<ref name=Wellbery>{{Citation|pages=386–387|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kRWthlOI_34C&pg=PA387|title=A New History of German Literature|isbn=9780674015036|author1=Wellbery|first1=David E|last2=Ryan|first2=Judith|last3=Gumbrecht|first3=Hans Ulrich|year=2004}}</ref>
| name = The Sorrows of Young Werther<ref name=Wellbery>{{Citation |pages=386–387 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kRWthlOI_34C&pg=PA387 |title=A New History of German Literature |isbn=9780674015036 |author1=Wellbery |first1=David E |last2=Ryan |first2=Judith |last3=Gumbrecht |first3=Hans Ulrich |year=2004}}</ref>
| title_orig = Die Leiden des jungen Werthers<ref name=Wellbery/>
| title_orig = Die Leiden des jungen Werthers<ref name=Wellbery/>
| translator =
| translator =
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| genre = [[Epistolary novel]]<ref name=Wellbery/>
| genre = [[Epistolary novel]]<ref name=Wellbery/>
| publisher = Weygand'sche Buchhandlung, Leipzig
| publisher = Weygand'sche Buchhandlung, Leipzig
| release_date = 29 September [[1774 in literature|1774]], revised ed. [[1787 in literature|1787]]<ref name=Appelbaum>{{Citation|pages=VII–VIII|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XDVQt20sZFEC&pg=PR7|title=Introduction to The Sorrows of Young Werther|isbn=9780486433639|author1=Appelbaum|first1=Stanley|date=2004-06-04}}</ref>
| release_date = 29 September [[1774 in literature|1774]], revised ed. [[1787 in literature|1787]]<ref name=Appelbaum>{{Citation |pages=VII–VIII |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XDVQt20sZFEC&pg=PR7 |title=Introduction to The Sorrows of Young Werther |isbn=9780486433639 |author1=Appelbaum |first1=Stanley |date=2004-06-04}}</ref>
| english_release_date = 1779<ref name=Appelbaum/>
| english_release_date = 1779<ref name=Appelbaum/>
| pages = <!-- First edition page count preferred -->
| pages = <!-- First edition page count preferred -->
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==Plot summary==
==Plot summary==
[[File:Lotte an Werthers Grabmal.jpg|thumb|Charlotte at Werther's grave]]
[[File:Lotte an Werthers Grabmal.jpg|thumb|Charlotte at Werther's grave]]
Most of ''The Sorrows of Young Werther'' is presented as [[Epistolary novel|a collection of letters]] written by Werther, a young artist of a sensitive and passionate temperament, to his friend Wilhelm. These give an intimate account of his stay in the fictional village of Wahlheim (based on Garbenheim, near [[Wetzlar]]),{{Citation needed|date=January 2013}} whose peasants have enchanted him with their simple ways. There he meets Charlotte, a beautiful young girl who takes care of her siblings after the death of their mother. Werther falls in love with Charlotte despite knowing beforehand that she is engaged to a man named Albert, eleven years her senior.<ref>{{Citation | last= Robertson |first= JG |title= A History of German Literature | publisher = William Blackwood & Sons |page=268}}</ref>
Most of ''The Sorrows of Young Werther'' is presented as [[Epistolary novel|a collection of letters]] written by Werther, a young artist of a sensitive and passionate temperament, to his friend Wilhelm. These give an intimate account of his stay in the fictional village of Wahlheim (based on Garbenheim, near [[Wetzlar]]),{{Citation needed|date=January 2013}} whose peasants have enchanted him with their simple ways. There he meets Charlotte, a beautiful young girl who takes care of her siblings after the death of their mother. Werther falls in love with Charlotte despite knowing beforehand that she is engaged to a man named Albert, eleven years her senior.<ref>{{Citation |last=Robertson |first=JG |title=A History of German Literature |publisher=William Blackwood & Sons |page=268}}</ref>


Despite the pain it causes him, Werther spends the next few months cultivating a close friendship with them both. His sorrow eventually becomes so unsupportable that he is forced to leave Wahlheim for Weimar, where he makes the acquaintance of ''Fräulein'' von B. He suffers great embarrassment when he forgetfully visits a friend and unexpectedly has to face there the weekly gathering of the entire aristocratic set. He is not tolerated and asked to leave since he is not a nobleman. He then returns to Wahlheim, where he suffers still more than before, partly because Charlotte and Albert are now married. Every day becomes a torturing reminder that Charlotte will never be able to requite his love. She, out of pity for her friend and respect for her husband, decides that Werther must not visit her so frequently. He visits her one final time, and they are both overcome with emotion after he recites to her a passage of his own translation of ''[[Ossian]]''.
Despite the pain it causes him, Werther spends the next few months cultivating a close friendship with them both. His sorrow eventually becomes so unsupportable that he is forced to leave Wahlheim for Weimar, where he makes the acquaintance of ''Fräulein'' von B. He suffers great embarrassment when he forgetfully visits a friend and unexpectedly has to face there the weekly gathering of the entire aristocratic set. He is not tolerated and asked to leave since he is not a nobleman. He then returns to Wahlheim, where he suffers still more than before, partly because Charlotte and Albert are now married. Every day becomes a torturing reminder that Charlotte will never be able to requite his love. She, out of pity for her friend and respect for her husband, decides that Werther must not visit her so frequently. He visits her one final time, and they are both overcome with emotion after he recites to her a passage of his own translation of ''[[Ossian]]''.
Line 35: Line 35:
''Werther'' was one of Goethe's few works aligned with the aesthetic, social and philosophical ideals that pervaded the German proto-[[Romanticism|Romantic]] movement known as ''[[Sturm und Drang]]'', before he and [[Friedrich von Schiller]] moved into [[Weimar Classicism]]. The novel was published anonymously, and Goethe distanced himself from it in his later years,<ref name=Appelbaum/> regretting the fame it had brought him and the consequent attention to his own youthful love of [[Charlotte Buff]], then already engaged to [[Johann Christian Kestner]]. He wrote ''Werther'' at the age of twenty-four, and yet this was all that some of his visitors in his old age knew him for. He even denounced the [[Romanticism|Romantic]] movement as "everything that is sick."<ref>Hunt, Lynn. ''The Makings of the West: Peoples and Cultures''. Bedford/St. Martins Press</ref>
''Werther'' was one of Goethe's few works aligned with the aesthetic, social and philosophical ideals that pervaded the German proto-[[Romanticism|Romantic]] movement known as ''[[Sturm und Drang]]'', before he and [[Friedrich von Schiller]] moved into [[Weimar Classicism]]. The novel was published anonymously, and Goethe distanced himself from it in his later years,<ref name=Appelbaum/> regretting the fame it had brought him and the consequent attention to his own youthful love of [[Charlotte Buff]], then already engaged to [[Johann Christian Kestner]]. He wrote ''Werther'' at the age of twenty-four, and yet this was all that some of his visitors in his old age knew him for. He even denounced the [[Romanticism|Romantic]] movement as "everything that is sick."<ref>Hunt, Lynn. ''The Makings of the West: Peoples and Cultures''. Bedford/St. Martins Press</ref>


Goethe described the powerful impact the book had on him, writing that even if Werther had been a brother of his whom he had killed, he could not have been more haunted by his [[vengeful ghost]]. Yet, Goethe substantially reworked the book for the 1787 edition<ref name=Appelbaum/> and acknowledged the great personal and emotional influence that ''The Sorrows of Young Werther'' could exert on forlorn young lovers who discovered it. As he commented to his secretary in 1821, "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." Even fifty years after the book's publication, Goethe wrote in a conversation with [[Johann Peter Eckermann]] about the emotional turmoil he had gone through while writing the book: "That was a creation which I, like the pelican, fed with the blood of my own heart."<ref>{{cite book|title=The Story of Civilization Volume 10: Rousseau and Revolution|author=Will Durant|publisher=Simon&Schuster|page=563|year=1967}}</ref>
Goethe described the powerful impact the book had on him, writing that even if Werther had been a brother of his whom he had killed, he could not have been more haunted by his [[vengeful ghost]]. Yet, Goethe substantially reworked the book for the 1787 edition<ref name=Appelbaum/> and acknowledged the great personal and emotional influence that ''The Sorrows of Young Werther'' could exert on forlorn young lovers who discovered it. As he commented to his secretary in 1821, "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." Even fifty years after the book's publication, Goethe wrote in a conversation with [[Johann Peter Eckermann]] about the emotional turmoil he had gone through while writing the book: "That was a creation which I, like the pelican, fed with the blood of my own heart."<ref>{{cite book |title=The Story of Civilization Volume 10: Rousseau and Revolution |author=Will Durant |publisher=Simon&Schuster |page=563 |year=1967}}</ref>


==Cultural impact==
==Cultural impact==
{{See also|Copycat suicide}}
{{See also|Copycat suicide}}
''The Sorrows of Young Werther'' turned Goethe, previously an unknown author, into a literary celebrity almost overnight. [[Napoleon Bonaparte]] considered it one of the great works of European literature, having written a Goethe-inspired soliloquy in his youth and carried ''Werther'' with him on his campaigning to Egypt. It also started the phenomenon known as the "Werther Fever", which caused young men throughout Europe to dress in the clothing style described for Werther in the novel.<ref name=NYT>{{cite web|work=[[The New York Times]]|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/18/nyregion/pattern-of-death-copycat-suicides-among-youths.html|date=March 18, 1987|title=Pattern Of Death: Copycat Suicides Among Youths|author=Goleman, Daniel}}</ref><ref>A. Alvarez, ''The Savage God: A Story of Suicide'' (Norton, 1990), p. 228.</ref> Items of merchandising such as prints, decorated [[Meissen porcelain]] and even a perfume were produced.<ref name="Furedi" />
''The Sorrows of Young Werther'' turned Goethe, previously an unknown author, into a literary celebrity almost overnight. [[Napoleon Bonaparte]] considered it one of the great works of European literature, having written a Goethe-inspired soliloquy in his youth and carried ''Werther'' with him on his campaigning to Egypt. It also started the phenomenon known as the "Werther Fever", which caused young men throughout Europe to dress in the clothing style described for Werther in the novel.<ref name=NYT>{{cite web |work=[[The New York Times]] |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/18/nyregion/pattern-of-death-copycat-suicides-among-youths.html |date=March 18, 1987 |title=Pattern Of Death: Copycat Suicides Among Youths |author=Goleman, Daniel}}</ref><ref>A. Alvarez, ''The Savage God: A Story of Suicide'' (Norton, 1990), p. 228.</ref> Items of merchandising such as prints, decorated [[Meissen porcelain]] and even a perfume were produced.<ref name="Furedi" />


The book reputedly also led to some of the first known examples of [[copycat suicide]]. The men were often dressed in the same clothing "as Goethe's description of Werther and using similar pistols." Often the book was found at the scene of the suicide.<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/13-reasons-why-and-suicide-contagion1/.|title=13 Reasons Why and Suicide Contagion|last=Devitt|first=Patrick|work=Scientific American|access-date=2017-12-04|language=en}}</ref> [[Rüdiger Safranski]], a modern biographer of Goethe, dismisses the Werther Effect 'as only a persistent rumor'.<ref>{{cite journal | url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/12/21/super-goethe/ | title=Super Goethe | author=Ferdinand Mount | journal=The New York Review of Books | year=2017 | volume=64 | issue=20}}</ref> Nonetheless, this aspect of "Werther Fever" was watched with concern by the authorities – both the novel and the Werther clothing style were banned in [[Leipzig]] in 1775; the novel was also banned in Denmark and Italy.<ref name="Furedi">{{cite journal | url=https://www.historytoday.com/frank-furedi/media%E2%80%99s-first-moral-panic | title=The Media's First Moral Panic | author=Furedi, Frank | journal=History Today | year=2015 | volume=65 | issue=11}}</ref> It was also watched with fascination by fellow authors. One of these, [[Christoph Friedrich Nicolai|Friedrich Nicolai]], decided to create a satirical piece with a happy ending, entitled ''Die Freuden des jungen Werthers'' ("''The Joys of Young Werther''"), in which Albert, having realized what Werther is up to, loaded chicken's blood into the pistol, thereby foiling Werther's suicide, and happily concedes Charlotte to him. After some initial difficulties, Werther sheds his passionate youthful side and reintegrates himself into society as a respectable citizen.<ref>Friedrich Nicolai: ''Freuden des jungen Werthers. Leiden und Freuden Werthers des Mannes. Voran und zuletzt ein Gespräch''. Klett, Stuttgart 1980, {{ISBN|3-12-353600-9}}</ref>
The book reputedly also led to some of the first known examples of [[copycat suicide]]. The men were often dressed in the same clothing "as Goethe's description of Werther and using similar pistols." Often the book was found at the scene of the suicide.<ref>{{Cite news |url=http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/13-reasons-why-and-suicide-contagion1/.|title=13 Reasons Why and Suicide Contagion |last=Devitt |first=Patrick |work=Scientific American |access-date=2017-12-04 |language=en}}</ref> [[Rüdiger Safranski]], a modern biographer of Goethe, dismisses the Werther Effect 'as only a persistent rumor'.<ref>{{cite journal |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/12/21/super-goethe/ |title=Super Goethe |author=Ferdinand Mount |journal=The New York Review of Books |year=2017 |volume=64 |issue=20}}</ref> Nonetheless, this aspect of "Werther Fever" was watched with concern by the authorities – both the novel and the Werther clothing style were banned in [[Leipzig]] in 1775; the novel was also banned in Denmark and Italy.<ref name="Furedi">{{cite journal |url=https://www.historytoday.com/frank-furedi/media%E2%80%99s-first-moral-panic |title=The Media's First Moral Panic |author=Furedi, Frank |journal=History Today |year=2015 |volume=65 |issue=11}}</ref> It was also watched with fascination by fellow authors. One of these, [[Christoph Friedrich Nicolai|Friedrich Nicolai]], decided to create a satirical piece with a happy ending, entitled ''Die Freuden des jungen Werthers'' ("''The Joys of Young Werther''"), in which Albert, having realized what Werther is up to, loaded chicken's blood into the pistol, thereby foiling Werther's suicide, and happily concedes Charlotte to him. After some initial difficulties, Werther sheds his passionate youthful side and reintegrates himself into society as a respectable citizen.<ref>Friedrich Nicolai: ''Freuden des jungen Werthers. Leiden und Freuden Werthers des Mannes. Voran und zuletzt ein Gespräch''. Klett, Stuttgart 1980, {{ISBN|3-12-353600-9}}</ref>


Goethe, however, was not pleased with the ''Freuden'' and started a literary war with Nicolai that lasted all his life, writing a poem titled "Nicolai auf Werthers Grabe" ("Nicolai on Werther's grave"), in which Nicolai (here a passing nameless pedestrian) defecates on Werther's grave,<ref>{{citation|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=T-77IXHlsUgC&pg=PA27&lpg=PA27&dq=nicolai+at+werther%27s+grave#PPA28,M1|title=Goethe: with plain prose translations of each poem|author=Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, David Luke |accessdate=1 December 2010|language=German|isbn=9780140420746|year=1964}}</ref> so desecrating the memory of a Werther from which Goethe had distanced himself in the meantime, as he had from the ''Sturm und Drang''. This argument was continued in his collection of short and critical poems, the ''[[Xenien]]'', and his play ''[[Goethe's Faust|Faust]].''
Goethe, however, was not pleased with the ''Freuden'' and started a literary war with Nicolai that lasted all his life, writing a poem titled "Nicolai auf Werthers Grabe" ("Nicolai on Werther's grave"), in which Nicolai (here a passing nameless pedestrian) defecates on Werther's grave,<ref>{{citation |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=T-77IXHlsUgC&pg=PA27&lpg=PA27&dq=nicolai+at+werther%27s+grave#PPA28,M1 |title=Goethe: with plain prose translations of each poem |author=Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, David Luke |accessdate=1 December 2010 |language=German |isbn=9780140420746 |year=1964}}</ref> so desecrating the memory of a Werther from which Goethe had distanced himself in the meantime, as he had from the ''Sturm und Drang''. This argument was continued in his collection of short and critical poems, the ''[[Xenien]]'', and his play ''[[Goethe's Faust|Faust]].''


Rüdiger Safranski, who wrote a biography of Goethe, dismisses the Werther Effect 'as only a persistent rumor'.
Rüdiger Safranski, who wrote a biography of Goethe, dismisses the Werther Effect 'as only a persistent rumor'.
Line 64: Line 64:


==Translations==
==Translations==
*{{citation | title = The Sorrows of Young Werther | isbn = 978-0199583027 | others = tr. [[David Constantine]] | year = 2012 | series = [[Oxford World's Classics]] | publisher = [[Oxford University Press]]}}.
*{{citation |title=The Sorrows of Young Werther | isbn=978-0199583027 |others=tr. [[David Constantine]] |year=2012 |series = [[Oxford World's Classics]] |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]}}.
*{{citation | title = The Sorrows of Young Werther | isbn = 0-486-42455-3 | others = tr. [[Thomas Carlyle]], R. Dillon Boylan | origyear = 1902 | year = 2002 | series = [[Dover Thrift Edition]]s | publisher = [[Dover Publications]]}}; originally publ. by CT Brainard.
*{{citation |title=The Sorrows of Young Werther |isbn=0-486-42455-3 |others=tr. [[Thomas Carlyle]], R. Dillon Boylan |origyear=1902 |year=2002 |series=[[Dover Thrift Edition]]s |publisher=[[Dover Publications]]}}; originally publ. by CT Brainard.
*{{citation | title = The Sufferings of Young Werther | isbn = 0-393-09880-X | others = tr. Harry Steinhauer | place = [[New York City|New York]] | publisher = WW Norton & Co | year = 1970}}.
*{{citation |title=The Sufferings of Young Werther |isbn=0-393-09880-X |others=tr. Harry Steinhauer |place=[[New York City|New York]] |publisher=WW Norton & Co |year=1970}}.
*{{citation | title = The Sorrows of Young Werther, & Novelle | isbn = 0-679-72951-8 | others = tr. Elizabeth Mayer, Louise Bogan; poems transl. & foreword [[W. H. Auden]] | origyear = 1971 | date = June 1990 | publisher = [[Vintage Books]] | series = Classics Edition}}; originally publ. by [[Random House]].
*{{citation |title=The Sorrows of Young Werther, & Novelle |isbn=0-679-72951-8 |others=tr. Elizabeth Mayer, Louise Bogan; poems transl. & foreword [[W. H. Auden]] |origyear=1971 |date=June 1990 |publisher=[[Vintage Books]] |series=Classics Edition}}; originally publ. by [[Random House]].
*{{citation | title = The Sorrows of Young Werther | isbn = 0-14-044503-X | others = tr. [[Michael Hulse]] | year = 1989 | series = [[The Penguin Classics Library Complete Collection|Classics Library Complete Collection]] | publisher = [[Penguin Books]]}}.
*{{citation |title=The Sorrows of Young Werther |isbn=0-14-044503-X |others=tr. [[Michael Hulse]] |year=1989 |series=[[The Penguin Classics Library Complete Collection|Classics Library Complete Collection]] |publisher=[[Penguin Books]]}}.
*{{citation | title = The Sorrows of Young Werther | isbn = 0-8129-6990-1 | others = tr. [[Burton Pike]] | year = 2004 | series = [[Modern Library]] | publisher = [[Random House]]}}.
*{{citation |title=The Sorrows of Young Werther |isbn=0-8129-6990-1 |others=tr.[[Burton Pike]] |year=2004 |series=[[Modern Library]] |publisher=[[Random House]]}}.
*The [[Hebrew]] translation {{citation | title = יסורי ורתר הצעיר}} was popular among youths in the Zionist pioneer communities in [[Mandatory Palestine|British Mandate of Palestine]] in the 1930s and 1940s and blamed for the suicide of several young men considered to have emulated Werther.
*The [[Hebrew]] translation {{citation |title=יסורי ורתר הצעיר}} was popular among youths in the Zionist pioneer communities in [[Mandatory Palestine|British Mandate of Palestine]] in the 1930s and 1940s and blamed for the suicide of several young men considered to have emulated Werther.


==See also==
==See also==
Line 79: Line 79:
{{Reflist|30em}}
{{Reflist|30em}}


*{{Citation | surname=Auden | given=Wystan Hugh | authorlink=W. H. Auden | title=Foreword | publisher=[[Random House|Random House, Inc]] | place=[[Toronto, Ontario]], Canada | year=1971 }}.
*{{Citation |surname=Auden |given=Wystan Hugh |authorlink=W. H. Auden |title=Foreword |publisher=[[Random House|Random House, Inc]] |place=[[Toronto, Ontario]], Canada |year=1971}}.
*Herold, J. Christopher (1963). ''The Age of Napoleon''. American Heritage Inc.
*Herold, J. Christopher (1963). ''The Age of Napoleon''. American Heritage Inc.
<!-- GoogleBooks entry is defective – the wrong book is returned for this title.
<!-- GoogleBooks entry is defective – the wrong book is returned for this title.
*{{Citation |last=Phillips |first=Mary Elizabeth |title=A Handbook of German Literature |work= |publisher=George Bell and Sons |year=1895 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6aw7AAAAcAAJ |doi= |accessdate=2012-11-11}}
*{{Citation
| last = Phillips
| first = Mary Elizabeth
| title = A Handbook of German Literature
| work =
| publisher = George Bell and Sons
| year = 1895
| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6aw7AAAAcAAJ
| doi =
| accessdate = 2012-11-11 }}
-->
-->
*{{Citation |last=Wilkinson |first=William Cleaver |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Classic German Course in English |work= | publisher=Chautauqua Press |year=1887 |url=https://books.google.com/?id=qVARAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA173 |doi= |accessdate=2007-03-16}}
*{{Citation
| last = Wilkinson
| first = William Cleaver
| authorlink =
| coauthors =
| title = Classic German Course in English
| work =
| publisher = Chautauqua Press
| year = 1887
| url = https://books.google.com/?id=qVARAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA173
| doi =
| accessdate = 2007-03-16 }}


==External links==
==External links==

Revision as of 10:03, 9 June 2019

The Sorrows of Young Werther[1]
First print 1774
AuthorJohann Wolfgang von Goethe[1]
Original titleDie Leiden des jungen Werthers[1]
LanguageGerman
GenreEpistolary novel[1]
PublisherWeygand'sche Buchhandlung, Leipzig
Publication date
29 September 1774, revised ed. 1787[2]
Publication placeGermany
Published in English
1779[2]

The Sorrows of Young Werther (Template:Lang-de) is a loosely autobiographical epistolary novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, first published in 1774. A revised edition followed in 1787. It was one of the most important novels in the Sturm und Drang period in German literature, and influenced the later Romantic movement. Goethe, aged 24 at the time, finished Werther in five-and-a-half weeks of intensive writing in January–March 1774.[1] The book's publication instantly placed the author among the foremost international literary celebrities, and was among the best known of his works.[1][2] Towards the end of Goethe's life, a personal visit to Weimar became a crucial stage in any young man's Grand Tour of Europe.[citation needed]

Plot summary

Charlotte at Werther's grave

Most of The Sorrows of Young Werther is presented as a collection of letters written by Werther, a young artist of a sensitive and passionate temperament, to his friend Wilhelm. These give an intimate account of his stay in the fictional village of Wahlheim (based on Garbenheim, near Wetzlar),[citation needed] whose peasants have enchanted him with their simple ways. There he meets Charlotte, a beautiful young girl who takes care of her siblings after the death of their mother. Werther falls in love with Charlotte despite knowing beforehand that she is engaged to a man named Albert, eleven years her senior.[3]

Despite the pain it causes him, Werther spends the next few months cultivating a close friendship with them both. His sorrow eventually becomes so unsupportable that he is forced to leave Wahlheim for Weimar, where he makes the acquaintance of Fräulein von B. He suffers great embarrassment when he forgetfully visits a friend and unexpectedly has to face there the weekly gathering of the entire aristocratic set. He is not tolerated and asked to leave since he is not a nobleman. He then returns to Wahlheim, where he suffers still more than before, partly because Charlotte and Albert are now married. Every day becomes a torturing reminder that Charlotte will never be able to requite his love. She, out of pity for her friend and respect for her husband, decides that Werther must not visit her so frequently. He visits her one final time, and they are both overcome with emotion after he recites to her a passage of his own translation of Ossian.

Even before that incident, Werther had hinted at the idea that one member of the love triangle – Charlotte, Albert or Werther himself – had to die to resolve the situation. Unable to hurt anyone else or seriously consider murder, Werther sees no other choice but to take his own life. After composing a farewell letter to be found after his death, he writes to Albert asking for his two pistols, on the pretext that he is going "on an adventure". Charlotte receives the request with great emotion and sends the pistols. Werther then shoots himself in the head, but does not die until twelve hours later. He is buried under a lime tree that he has mentioned frequently in his letters. The funeral is not attended by any clergy, or by Albert or Charlotte. The book ends with an intimation that Charlotte may die of a broken heart. "I shall say nothing of... Charlotte's grief.... Charlotte's life was despaired of."

Effect on Goethe

Goethe portrait in profile

Werther was one of Goethe's few works aligned with the aesthetic, social and philosophical ideals that pervaded the German proto-Romantic movement known as Sturm und Drang, before he and Friedrich von Schiller moved into Weimar Classicism. The novel was published anonymously, and Goethe distanced himself from it in his later years,[2] regretting the fame it had brought him and the consequent attention to his own youthful love of Charlotte Buff, then already engaged to Johann Christian Kestner. He wrote Werther at the age of twenty-four, and yet this was all that some of his visitors in his old age knew him for. He even denounced the Romantic movement as "everything that is sick."[4]

Goethe described the powerful impact the book had on him, writing that even if Werther had been a brother of his whom he had killed, he could not have been more haunted by his vengeful ghost. Yet, Goethe substantially reworked the book for the 1787 edition[2] and acknowledged the great personal and emotional influence that The Sorrows of Young Werther could exert on forlorn young lovers who discovered it. As he commented to his secretary in 1821, "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." Even fifty years after the book's publication, Goethe wrote in a conversation with Johann Peter Eckermann about the emotional turmoil he had gone through while writing the book: "That was a creation which I, like the pelican, fed with the blood of my own heart."[5]

Cultural impact

See also: Copycat suicide

The Sorrows of Young Werther turned Goethe, previously an unknown author, into a literary celebrity almost overnight. Napoleon Bonaparte considered it one of the great works of European literature, having written a Goethe-inspired soliloquy in his youth and carried Werther with him on his campaigning to Egypt. It also started the phenomenon known as the "Werther Fever", which caused young men throughout Europe to dress in the clothing style described for Werther in the novel.[6][7] Items of merchandising such as prints, decorated Meissen porcelain and even a perfume were produced.[8]

The book reputedly also led to some of the first known examples of copycat suicide. The men were often dressed in the same clothing "as Goethe's description of Werther and using similar pistols." Often the book was found at the scene of the suicide.[9] Rüdiger Safranski, a modern biographer of Goethe, dismisses the Werther Effect 'as only a persistent rumor'.[10] Nonetheless, this aspect of "Werther Fever" was watched with concern by the authorities – both the novel and the Werther clothing style were banned in Leipzig in 1775; the novel was also banned in Denmark and Italy.[8] It was also watched with fascination by fellow authors. One of these, Friedrich Nicolai, decided to create a satirical piece with a happy ending, entitled Die Freuden des jungen Werthers ("The Joys of Young Werther"), in which Albert, having realized what Werther is up to, loaded chicken's blood into the pistol, thereby foiling Werther's suicide, and happily concedes Charlotte to him. After some initial difficulties, Werther sheds his passionate youthful side and reintegrates himself into society as a respectable citizen.[11]

Goethe, however, was not pleased with the Freuden and started a literary war with Nicolai that lasted all his life, writing a poem titled "Nicolai auf Werthers Grabe" ("Nicolai on Werther's grave"), in which Nicolai (here a passing nameless pedestrian) defecates on Werther's grave,[12] so desecrating the memory of a Werther from which Goethe had distanced himself in the meantime, as he had from the Sturm und Drang. This argument was continued in his collection of short and critical poems, the Xenien, and his play Faust.

Rüdiger Safranski, who wrote a biography of Goethe, dismisses the Werther Effect 'as only a persistent rumor'.

Alternative versions and appearances

Translations

  • The Sorrows of Young Werther, Oxford World's Classics, tr. David Constantine, Oxford University Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0199583027{{citation}}: CS1 maint: others (link).
  • The Sorrows of Young Werther, Dover Thrift Editions, tr. Thomas Carlyle, R. Dillon Boylan, Dover Publications, 2002 [1902], ISBN 0-486-42455-3{{citation}}: CS1 maint: others (link); originally publ. by CT Brainard.
  • The Sufferings of Young Werther, tr. Harry Steinhauer, New York: WW Norton & Co, 1970, ISBN 0-393-09880-X{{citation}}: CS1 maint: others (link).
  • The Sorrows of Young Werther, & Novelle, Classics Edition, tr. Elizabeth Mayer, Louise Bogan; poems transl. & foreword W. H. Auden, Vintage Books, June 1990 [1971], ISBN 0-679-72951-8{{citation}}: CS1 maint: others (link); originally publ. by Random House.
  • The Sorrows of Young Werther, Classics Library Complete Collection, tr. Michael Hulse, Penguin Books, 1989, ISBN 0-14-044503-X{{citation}}: CS1 maint: others (link).
  • The Sorrows of Young Werther, Modern Library, tr.Burton Pike, Random House, 2004, ISBN 0-8129-6990-1{{citation}}: CS1 maint: others (link).
  • The Hebrew translation יסורי ורתר הצעיר was popular among youths in the Zionist pioneer communities in British Mandate of Palestine in the 1930s and 1940s and blamed for the suicide of several young men considered to have emulated Werther.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Wellbery, David E; Ryan, Judith; Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich (2004), A New History of German Literature, pp. 386–387, ISBN 9780674015036
  2. ^ a b c d e Appelbaum, Stanley (2004-06-04), Introduction to The Sorrows of Young Werther, pp. VII–VIII, ISBN 9780486433639
  3. ^ Robertson, JG, A History of German Literature, William Blackwood & Sons, p. 268
  4. ^ Hunt, Lynn. The Makings of the West: Peoples and Cultures. Bedford/St. Martins Press
  5. ^ Will Durant (1967). The Story of Civilization Volume 10: Rousseau and Revolution. Simon&Schuster. p. 563.
  6. ^ Goleman, Daniel (March 18, 1987). "Pattern Of Death: Copycat Suicides Among Youths". The New York Times.
  7. ^ A. Alvarez, The Savage God: A Story of Suicide (Norton, 1990), p. 228.
  8. ^ a b Furedi, Frank (2015). "The Media's First Moral Panic". History Today. 65 (11).
  9. ^ Devitt, Patrick. "13 Reasons Why and Suicide Contagion". Scientific American. Retrieved 2017-12-04.
  10. ^ Ferdinand Mount (2017). "Super Goethe". The New York Review of Books. 64 (20).
  11. ^ Friedrich Nicolai: Freuden des jungen Werthers. Leiden und Freuden Werthers des Mannes. Voran und zuletzt ein Gespräch. Klett, Stuttgart 1980, ISBN 3-12-353600-9
  12. ^ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, David Luke (1964), Goethe: with plain prose translations of each poem (in German), ISBN 9780140420746, retrieved 1 December 2010
  13. ^ Ulrich Plensdorf, tr. Romy Fursland: The New Sorrows of Young W. (London: Pushkin Press, 2015).
  14. ^ Andrew Travers, "In Aspenite's debut novel, a Goethe hero lost at sea," The Aspen Times, October 3, 2014.
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