The Sorrows of Young Werther

I had somehow mentally classified Goethe as "difficult to read classics" and had avoided him thus far. But somehow when I saw this charming little volume at my beloved bookstore's "going out of business" sale, I couldn't resist it.

And it was charming. And not difficult to read at all. Told mostly in letters, and letters only from Young Werther, we get none of the replies at all -- we get not only a one-sided but a "how I want to represent myself to my friend" side of a young man's descent into romantic obsession with a woman he cannot have. Part of what makes it so fascinating is how many chances and choices he had along the way -- to realize this path would never make him happy, could only end in misery, to choose to go somewhere else, show more give himself a chance to love someone else. But at the same time, making those different choices would make him a different person. So do any of us really have any choice at all? show less

Maybe it was reading about his sorrows after only three hours of sleep, but I just wanted to shake Young Werther. It’s interesting, really, that Goethe seems to retain some distance from Werther despite much of the narrative being told in the first person. I did not feel that Goethe necessarily asked the reader to wholly sympathise with his protagonist. (Especially when Werther argues that a murderer should be set free because he did it for love. Cool motive, still murder.) Personally, I was much more inclined to sympathise with Lotte, who behaved in an astonishingly kind and sensitive manner towards this unbalanced young man who was obsessed with her. Nonetheless, the portrait of Werther is an interesting and convincing one. His show more obsession with nature comes through strikingly, and seems to feed his frustration with society in general and Lotte’s choice of Albert in particular. The manner in which he objectifies Lotte as something that should belong to him is sadly plausible and his descent from euphoria into suicidal depression is told with beautiful turns of phrase.

The introduction (which I read last, as always) gives a fascinating insight into the context and reception of the novel. I think the latter is best summarised by this Kate Beaton cartoon. I did find Young Werther’s melodrama hard to take seriously at times. Sleep deprivation renders me even less romantic than usual and I have never had much time for male characters who cannot accept that a woman does not want to date them. Literally everyone tells Werther to move on, his tragedy is that he fails to. show less

Werther was one of the first cult novels in European history, arguably the book that put the novel solidly in place as the dominant literary form for the next couple of centuries. It was condemned by the older generation, provoked a new trend in men's fashion, was blamed for a wave of teenage suicides, and generally had all the attributes we now attach to fads like Pokemon Go and self-driving cars...

It's probably a book you need to read in your teens. Re-reading it in later life, it's difficult to feel much sympathy for Werther, who insists on falling in love with a young woman who is already engaged to someone else, makes a nuisance of himself by stalking her, and then makes everyone's life even more miserable by killing himself. In show more the final pages of the novel, he acts like a tenor in the last act of an opera - every time you think he's finished and is about to pull the trigger, he steps back and adds a couple more paragraphs to his already voluminous suicide note. "Enough already!", readers have been wanting to shout for the last two centuries.

It's an exasperating and profoundly foolish book in many ways, but it also has some very beautiful passages, so not a complete waste of time, but it's definitely best-read when you're in the mood for the love-lorn. show less

I expected to dismiss this book, having read others' reviews in advance. Goethe himself often wished it forgotten after he wrote it, when it still haunted his legacy. Maybe he felt embarrassed by the biographical aspect and his own youthful foolishness. He was too hard on himself. It may be easy to deride Werther's sorrows and weakness, but Goethe did a fine job of capturing youth's irrational passions. There's a reason why it's so hard for adults to relate to teenagers, and I think this classic sums it up perfectly.

Werther has to start high before he can fall, and he begins very high. His adoration of a pastoral scene is enough to trigger tears of happiness in him, demonstrating how commanded he is by emotional highs and lows. A storm show more is brewing - literally, as he is about to meet Charlotte for the first time. At first he is merely an admirer, desirous of her company but not overly wounded that she is engaged to Albert. He is still full enough of life that he can argue with Albert that moroseness is a sin: extreme dramatic irony on a re-read. But gradually admiration turns to obsession, as he begins to idealize his love and then encounters hardships with his attempt at a career, doubled by the impending marriage of Charlotte and Albert becoming fact. After that it's a swift slide to the bottom.

Interesting arguments surface. Werther compares a wounded heart to dying of a disease; that there can only be so much pain before one's endurance is overcome, no matter how determined the mindset. Here he clearly ranks emotion above reason as the force which commands him. With this imbalance locked in, no appeal can save him. At this point the reader's loathing is liable to be set in as well. Just snap out of it! Accept what is, and move on! It's compounded by Werther being directionless and possibly too proud and lazy for his own good. He lives off his mother's allowance, and how old is he? Clearly I'm thinking like a parent, or at least a mature adult. To understand this character, I need to cast my mind further back.

Can I never recall admiration for an unobtainable girl that led beyond reason? It would be a cold, hard life I've led if I could not. In youth our passions command us. We can hear and speak reason, but only within the context of values largely determined by our feelings. Urgency comes from desiring the company of an ideal vision of the opposite sex, unaware how much we are projecting onto the nearest target and value accordingly beyond what reason dictates. Puppy love transgresses into puppy idolization, to the detriment of the worshiper and the worshiped. I choose to pity Werther out of sympathy, but only up to the point where he contemplates suicide. That state is only obtainable by the sustaining of blind romantic notion far beyond anything I achieved. It is a reality that some are not so lucky. To deride Werther is to deride all youth who give way to irrational despair. Understand him, and you may perceive a life to be saved. show less

The fact that so many people read it merely as a melancholic tale of unrequited love, kind of corroborates how we, in general, are unequipped to naturally reflect on the amazing complexity of a being's existence in time. In fact, regardless of its biographical bent, this beautiful narrative is as much about the inexplicable nature of our very existence. It is a simple and strong statement regarding man's fateful desires and seemingly blurred lines between the free-will and determination. In other words, its Goethe's way of asking whether a man can choose to be happy or to put it more precisely: is it possible to achieve happiness as an ideal or even pursue it, without being perturbed by nature's innumerable dictating factors?

Therefore, show more besides being a heartsick soliloquy of an enervating young lover, its also about those walnut trees which were cut down by the vicar's wife, those tears in the schoolmaster's eyes who broke that news or the little Hans who just stop existing one day.

Those of us who do not have enough literary skills to appreciate the true sorrow in Greek tragedy, would perhaps find nothing better to shed a spontaneous tear or two. show less

Wow. I do not even know where to start with this.

Yes, there are spoilers. Beware!

Werther is, in so many words, a stalker.

Mourning the death of a young woman (girlfriend? arranged match?), he falls for an engaged woman, Charlotte. He stays at her house as invited, ingratiates himself to her father (a family friend?) and young siblings. Her mother is deceased, she has no female guidance.

She marries. He hangs about. Her husband tolerates him. Makes polite upper-class efforts to get him to go away.

She tries to get him to not come around.

He comes around anyway.

A man in the area kills a rival for a woman's affection. Werther actively defends him.

Werther admits that he has considered murdering Charlotte's husband, because he just knows he and show more Charlotte are perfect for each other. At least he knows this is the wrong course of action.

He doesn't, which is the only good thing about this book.

I very rarely give a book one star. Especially if I have read the whole thing, I will quit a book if it is that bad. But this is a 1001 books list book, not long, and not difficult. Just infuriating. How can we be feeling for this sort of man, still?! I feel no sympathy for him. I feel sympathy for the murdered man and the poor woman caught in the middle. I feel sympathy for Charlotte, caught in something she doesn't want to be part of. I feel for her husband, Albert, who wants Werther gone but is so trapped by upper class mores that he can effectively do little. But sympathy for Werther? No. show less

Before I can even begin to address the substance of The Sorrows of Young Werther, I first have to talk about nicknames. Nicknames, in theory at least, should be used only when they make a person's name both easier and more enjoyable to say. If someone is named Nicholas, calling him "Nick" or "Nicky" might be convenient and endearing. Calling a woman named Charlotte "Lotte" is neither of those things. The name Lotte conjures up the image (at best) of a very unpleasant, broad-faced woman, or, if you've spent much time with the Old Testament, the husband of a salt lick. Charlotte is a pretty name. Lotte is a grotesque one. Werther's decision to call Charlotte "Lotte" while continuing to call Wilhelm "Wilhelm" rather than Wil or Will or show more whatever is utterly ridiculous.

Unfortunately, his choice in nickname for his love interest is just one of many of Werther's failures in Goethe's semi-autobiographical epistolary novel. He falls in love with a woman he can't have, allows her to become his obsession, and then shoots himself after weeks of terrible suffering. Not exactly a banner 18-month stretch.

W.H. Auden, who wrote the forward to my edition, didn't feel much sympathy for Werther, calling him a "horrible little monster." I wouldn't go that far, as I find myself empathizing with some of his emotional turmoil, but dude, the world doesn't revolve around you. As someone who finds value in Romanticism and Romantic literature, I'm often frustrated by the way that passion and egoism seem to link together so frequently. In my dream world, profound feelings for both people and nature would make a man want to serve the people and things he cares about rather than weep bitter tears every time whatever he happens to love isn't just handed to him, but for whatever dumb reason, we don't live in my dream world. We live in a world where unrequited love makes one person a victim and the other an antagonist even if both people are acting on their honest emotions.

That being said, I'm not even entirely convinced that what Werther felt for Lotte was love at all. If you truly love someone, and you believe that they love you (as Werther did the last day of his life), then how do you ever make the decision that causing the person you love unimaginable pain is worth escaping your own pain? I don't even think a man as self-absorbed as Werther could justify that. I know next to nothing about mental illness, but I have a much easier time believing that his obsession with Lotte was the result of forces outside of his control rather than her charming personality and skill with a clavichord.

Weirdly enough, despite all that Werther went through, I don't believe that he'd see The Sorrows of Young Werther entirely as a tragedy. Rightly or wrongly (definitely wrongly), this was the kind of life that Werther wanted to live, the way he maintained that life should be lived. "I treat my heart like a sick child," he wrote, "and gratify its every fancy." His heart led him to a place no one should have to go, but at the very least, the journey there was the kind in which he believed.

Also, thank God kissing strangers' children is no longer a thing. Why was that ever a thing? show less