The Sorrows of Young Werther (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Catriona MacLeod

This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading.  The literary sensation The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) launched its twenty-five year old author on the world stage overnight. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's novel gave voice to young bourgeois intellectuals who despaired of finding fulfillment and authenticity in a hierarchical, convention-bound society.

In the novel, Werther, a social rebel with artistic leanings, falls in love with Lotte, a young woman who is already engaged to Werther's friend, the stolid Albert. In a spiral of extravagantly self-destructive behavior and torment, Werther pays the ultimate price for his illicit passion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Release date: Mar 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9781411466852

Book preview

THE SORROWS OF YOUNG WERTHER

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

INTRODUCTION BY CATRIONA MACLEOD

Introduction and Suggested Reading © 2005 by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

This 2012 edition published by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.

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INTRODUCTION

A literary sensation that launched its twenty-five year old author on the world stage overnight, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s novel The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), gave voice to a crisis in subjectivity that was shared by Goethe and other young bourgeois intellectuals of his generation who despaired of finding fulfillment and authenticity in a hierarchical, convention-bound society. That generation saw itself mirrored in a book. Werther, a social rebel with artistic leanings, falls in love with Lotte, a young woman who is already engaged to Werther’s friend, the stolid Albert. In a spiral of extravagantly self-destructive behavior and torment, Werther pays the ultimate price for his illicit passion, and dramatically stages his own suicide down to the last detail, shooting himself on Christmas Eve with Albert’s pistols. Werther dies after twelve hours of agonizing suffering. His absolute alienation from society is registered by the stark final words of the novel, which reduce a character who is all sensibility and feeling to a lifeless unnamed thing: The body was carried by laborers. No priest attended.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) went on to become a towering figure in European culture, a living monument to whom countless other writers and intellectuals made pilgrimages. Author of literary masterpieces such as the drama Faust (1803 and 1832), the Roman Elegies (1795), and the novels Elective Affinities (1809) and Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (1795), Goethe was also a scientist who produced an influential color theory in response to Newton and did important work in the fields of geology, botany, and anatomy; an able statesman and administrator at the court of Weimar; and a theorist and collector of art. Despite the lifetime of intense productivity and achievement that followed the publication of Werther, the psychologically unhinged young man he had created forever haunted Goethe. From the moment of the book’s publication, readers scrutinized his personal life for parallels to Werther’s, enraging Goethe, though indeed he also confessed that he had nourished the novel like a pelican, with his own blood. One of the most famous testimonies to the novel’s success is Napoleon’s admission to Goethe, when the two men met in Erfurt in 1808, that he had read Werther no fewer than seven times, and had even taken it with him on his Egyptian campaign.

The shocking plot that unfolds in The Sorrows of Young Werther is based on real events in Goethe’s circle. An acquaintance of Goethe’s, the young civil servant Karl W. Jerusalem (1747-1772), committed suicide over his unrequited love for the wife of a friend. The event deeply distressed Goethe, who himself, a young lawyer in the same small town, Wetzlar, and in the same year, 1772, had developed an attachment to an engaged woman, his older friend Johann Christian Kestner’s fiancée, Charlotte Buff (1753-1828). Kestner, whose pistol Jerusalem had used in the suicide, composed an account of the circumstances surrounding Jerusalem’s death and shared it with his circle of friends. Goethe used many details from this report for his own literary reckoning with suicidal love. Unlike both Jerusalem and Werther, however, Goethe purged himself of the dangerous passion through the cathartic act of writing the novel. In conversation with Eckermann, in 1824, Goethe claimed that he had only read the novel once since its publication — a striking remark from an author who generally enjoyed revisiting his own works. A second edition of the novel, which Goethe completed when he was established in Weimar in 1786, having put the emotional turmoil of his relationship with Lotte Buff and Jerusalem’s suicide firmly in the past, more explicitly pathologizes Werther’s behavior while portraying Albert in a more positive light. A new subplot, which involves a farm boy who falls in love with his married employer and murders his rival, is also added.

The Sorrows of Young Werther, which Goethe completed in three months, became an instant best seller with cult dimensions. The novel’s reception was as sensational as its plot, triggering what became known as Wertherfieber or Wertherwahn (Werther fever and Werther madness). Goethe himself characterized it as an incendiary work. By 1800, the book had been translated into most European languages. It inspired passionate reactions — from enthusiastic emulation, to satire, to moral outrage and fanatical rejection. Goethe biographer Nicholas Boyle notes that Werther is even the favorite reading material of Mary Shelley’s monster in Frankenstein. Werther emulators made midnight pilgrimages to the grave of Karl Jerusalem in Wetzlar, continuing the ritual well into the nineteenth century when the grave was no longer marked. Literary responses known as Wertheriaden circulated widely, among them a 1775 parody entitled The Joys of Young Werther, in which Albert substitutes the bullets with chicken blood and Werther and Lotte marry and have a child, by the Enlightenment philosopher Christoph Friedrich Nicolai. Orthodox theologians condemned The Sorrows of Young Werther for its alleged celebration of suicide, which in this period was criminalized and considered by Christians a grave offense, and called for the novel to be censored. In 1775, with the authorities fearing a suicide epidemic, the novel was banned from sale in the city of Leipzig. Indeed, it appears that the novel did have a lethal outcome, producing sufficient numbers of copy-cat suicides that Goethe prefaced a second edition of the novel with the warning: Be a man, and do not follow my actions! Even Werther’s eccentric clothing — his blue coat worn over a yellow vest and yellow trousers, which he is also wearing when he commits suicide — became an oppositional fashion trend that was instantly recognizable and widely worn by young people who, like their hero, wanted to register their discontent with the status quo. Goethe himself wore the outfit when he made his début at the Weimar court in 1775. These clothes, which broke with the norms of court dress, had much the same connotations as the blue jeans and t-shirts of mid-twentieth century America. Ironically, however — like so many provocative counter-culture fashions — the costume itself became a style accessory that permeated upper-class European society. Werther merchandise soon flooded the marketplace: Scenes from the novel decorated porcelain, fans, and even buttons; silhouettes of Lotte circulated; a perfume was named after Goethe’s hero (eau de Werther ); and the Werthertracht (Werther costume) could be seen in the pages of fashion magazines. Probably Goethe’s most popular work, The Sorrows of Young Werther continued to have a wide resonance in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The tragic story of Werther and Lotte was adapted into opera, puppet theater, and even a fire-work show. Jules Massenet composed his opera Werther in 1892. Thomas Mann based his ironic novel Lotte in Weimar (1939), on a visit that the elderly Charlotte Kestner (née Buff) made to Goethe in 1816 (her reception by the great man was decidedly frosty). In the German Democratic Republic, Ulrich Plenzdorf recorded the discontent of a generation in a new version of Goethe’s novel, The New Sorrows of Young W. (1972).

Goethe’s novel, as we have seen, inspired an unprecedented, passionate kind of involvement by its audience. The experience of reading is central to Goethe’s novel, both on the part of its protagonist and of its readership. Not only is Werther himself dangerously addicted to books, but the reader of the novel is also drawn into the complete identification with the protagonist, thus paralleling Werther’s reception of literature. The novel is structured as a series of letters from Werther to his friend Wilhelm. A popular form in the eighteenth century, the epistolary novel promises direct access to letter-writers’ inner life and emotions, an intimate confession to the recipient of the letters. It is also a dialogical form, based on the give and take of letters between correspondents. The epistolary form of Goethe’s novel, however, contains a brilliant twist: The responder’s voice is missing. With the pragmatic Wilhelm absent from the exchange, the reader is placed in the position of stand-in. For an eighteenth-century audience accustomed to the clear moral evaluation of novels’ plots by commenting narrators, this is a radical new experience: The reader is placed in the position of having to read into the unmediated subjectivity of Werther and of making his or her own judgments concerning the narrator’s monologizing voice and his actions. Having identified so completely with Werther, readers are confronted with interpreting the profoundly disturbing suicide. This first-person narrative form also brilliantly expresses the intense subjectivity of the literary movement known as Empfindsamkeit (Sentimentality) as well as the emotional aspects of the Pietist religious movement. As Werther loses touch with the world, his narrative becomes increasingly overwrought and incoherent. The intrusion by the editor at the end decisively breaks with the tone of novel and jolts the reader back into the position of society confronted with the irrational behavior of Werther.

The novel thus highlights the reader’s experience as a reader. Secondly, Werther himself is addicted to books. This passion, arguably, dominates even the natural passion that he feels for Lotte. Powerless in the face of aristocratic social structures, the young bourgeois Werther ostensibly values the natural over the artificial, celebrating nature, intimate friendship, and feeling over artificial court life, and rejecting as well the complacent bourgeois world, with its emphasis on conformity. Two letters on nature, however, indicate Werther’s increasing alienation even from that realm. Early in the novel, on May 10, Werther rhapsodizes about his peaceable oneness within the womb of nature and describes himself as a kind of refractive device in which nature mirrors itself: When the lovely valley teems with vapor around me, and the meridian sun strikes the upper surface of the impenetrable foliage of my trees. . .then I throw myself down in the tall grass by the trickling stream and as I lie close to the earth a thousand unknown plants discover themselves to me. By his letter of August 18, nature has become a torturer: Nature has formed nothing that does not consume itself and every object near it; so that, surrounded by earth and air and all the active powers, I wander on my way with an aching heart, and the universe is to me a fearful monster, forever devouring its own offspring. Though he yearns for intimacy with nature and with other human beings, Werther exhibits a self-absorbed passion with distinctly sadistic overtones: In the last sentences of the novel, as Benjamin Bennett has pointed out, even Werther’s dead body continues an assault upon Lotte: Charlotte’s life was despaired of.

Werther’s claim of originality is itself — like that of the sensitive young men who imitated Werther’s authentic clothing and language in droves — deeply contradictory. Constantly proclaiming that intense emotion is the gateway to artistic expression — the word that dominates the novel is heart — Werther remains a dilettantish copyist, for the only art he creates are sketches and silhouettes. Moreover, those emotions themselves are always mediated by his reading. The natural Werther is largely a persona constructed from and through his reading, and shows the influence of other important eighteenth-century sentimental authors such as Jean Jacques Rousseau, Samuel Richardson, and Oliver Goldsmith. In his alienation and embracing of human anguish, Werther repeatedly quotes from Christ’s words (for example, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?), and the suffering alluded to in the novel’s title is a clear and self-aggrandizing reference to Christ’s passion (in German, Leiden). Werther’s first vision of idyllic bliss, when he glimpses Lotte going about her quiet daily routines, is mediated by his readings of Homer — whom he narcissistically appropriates, as he does other authors, as my Homer. For Werther, Homer is a kind of primitive bard, though the simple life symbolized in the image of Lotte slicing bread for her younger siblings (letter of June 16) also resembles the idyllic parsonage life of Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield. When Werther’s passion for Lotte has intensified and darkened, a long passage in the novel is devoted to direct quotation from the poet Ossian, an ancient Gaelic bard whom the Scottish author James Macpherson (1736-1796) claimed to have rediscovered. (Ironically, Macpherson had perpetrated one of the great literary forgeries — a fact that was established in 1805, but not before Ossian’s brooding, elegiac sensibility and overwrought rhetoric had been enthusiastically adopted by much of the European literary scene. Significantly, Werther and Lotte read Ossian before they part for the last time.) Even Werther’s affinity with the natural world is revealed as literary. When he and Lotte experience the sublime grandeur of a thunderstorm at the end of a spring ball, Lotte responds with the single word "Klopstock ! It is that word, not the thunderstorm, that reduces them to tears and that encourages Werther to kiss Lotte for the first time (June 16). (The German poet Friedrich Gottlob Klopstock [1724-1803] was famous for his rhapsodic hymns, including Frühlingsfeier," a poem in celebration of spring.) Finally, Werther reads Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s 1772 play Emilia Galotti the night before he commits suicide, and the book is found open on his writing-desk: The passionate young heroine of that play takes her own life

Reviews for The Sorrows of Young Werther (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

[dale01-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The pain of loving in vain taken to the extreme! Young Werther’s profound expressions of deep anguish are even more heart wrenchingly dramatic when read aloud. As someone well acquainted with unrequited love, I could not help but be moved.

[gypsysmom_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was my 298th read from the 1001 Books To Read Before You Die list (which is actually closer to 1300 books now with all the updates). Obviously, since I am 68, I am never going to read all the books on the list but I do attempt to read 10 to 12 books from the list every year. There have been some duds but, all in all, I can see why the books were picked. As one of the oldest books on the list this book I suspect that this one made the list as one of the first examples of an epistolary novel.This is the account of a fervent love affair from the point of view of a young German man. Werther was sojourning in the countryside trying to escape a romantic entanglement when he met Charlotte, the daughter of a man he had met. Although Charlotte was as good as engaged Werther fell in love with her and constantly sought her presence. When her soon-to-be fiance returned he and Werther became quite friendly but Werther continued to pine for Charlotte. When it became clear she was going to marry this man, Werther left abruptly to take up a position in court. When that proved unsatisfactory he returned to the area where Charlotte and her husband now lived. Charlotte appears to have had some feeling for Werther but she was devoted to her husband and her marriage. Seeing the futility of his passion, Werther committed suicide.Goethe, we learn from the introduction by the translator David Constantine, was involved in two love triangles and, although he didn't commit suicide, he knew another young man who did. Goethe did a great job of showing the decline in Werther's mental state through the medium of letters that he wrote. Who of us hasn't experienced the heartbreak of thwarted love? It is a universal story.

[josephcamilleri-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

To our cynical, postmodern sensibilities, Werther may well come across as an arrogant, pompous and misguided young fool who is likely displaying the symptoms of bipolar disorder. However, anybody with a passing interest in the Romantic Movement should read this seminal novel. Given the bland, aseptic world we live in, perhaps we need a few messy, idealistic characters like the protagonist.

[leslie398 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This novel would appeal to Miss Marianne Dashwood (from Austen's "Sense and Sensibility")! Werther is also all sensibility - by which Austen (and I) mean romanticism. I hate that name for the movement because I like romance but don't much care for the artistic/literary/intellectual movement called romanticism which, to quote Wikipedia, "was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as glorification of all the past and nature, preferring the medieval rather than the classical." This 1774 novel was one of the literary works that influenced the Romantic movement that followed in the 19th century. Unfortunately, I am more like Eleanor Dashwood and prefer emotion to be at least somewhat tempered by rationality. Thus I found Werther to be less sympathetic and romantic and more irritatingly self-absorbed and unbalanced than others might. He falls in love with Charlotte, whom he already knows to be engaged to another man, and then after an abortive attempt to take his mind off this unhappy love affair by moving to another place and working in a diplomatic capacity, which fails because he is unable to bring himself to comply with the social norms of the time, he returns to the town where Charlotte and her husband are living and spends all his time thinking about how much he loves her and how miserable he is that she is married to another! To me, he doesn't really love Charlotte but just has an intense desire for her; if he truly loved her, he would have spent a bit more time thinking about what would make her happy rather than thinking about himself all the time.

[deltaqueen50 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Originally published in 1774, The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe is an epistolary style story that captured the imagination of the public when first published. Men dressed in Werther’s signature outfit and women wore “Eau de Werther”. This novella is one of the first examples of romanticism, a movement in arts, music and literature in the late 18th century that emphasized inspiration, emotion and glorification of nature.The sensational story is about a young artist who heads for rural solitude after becoming entangled in an inappropriate romance. While in the country, he falls for Lotte, the daughter of a land steward. She is engaged to another and cannot return his affections. Werther’s extreme passion and torment at Lotte’s rejection leads him to contemplate suicide as his only solution.This fictional story is in actuality based on the author’s own bout with unrequited love and in this story he captures how Werther becomes fixated with the ideal he has built in his mind rather than having real feelings toward an actual woman. The Sorrows of Young Werther, although a little dated, is a well written story about the painful emotions of obsession and rejection,

[kakadoo202 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A classic. Poor Werther. Too much in love or just naiv and spoiled?

[sonorandreamer-1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I read this book because I enjoy the poetic language of Goethe. I could barely finish this particular book though. This story is a good example of why men rarely make good friends for women. I've experienced this behavior so much from men, including threats of suicide as a method of manipulation, that I felt disgusted reading the book. If there was poetic language in this book, and there probably was, I was so distracted by the stereotypical bad behavior of the male protagonist that I missed it.

[amerynth · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Goethe's "The Sorrows of Young Werther" certainly has all the underpinnings of novels from the Romantic period -- unrequited love and plenty of rapture about the natural world.In this epistolary novel, Werther falls in love with Charlotte, a young woman who is already engaged to another man. He makes an attempt to befriend the couple after their marriage with disastrous results.I can understand why it made such a sensation when it was published in the 1770's. The pining away for Charlotte got a bit much by the end so I wouldn't say I really enjoyed this book, but I didn't hate it either.

[jonfaith · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Yes, such is the frailty of man, that even there, where he has the greatest consciousness of his own being, where he makes the strongest and most forcible impression, even in the memory, in the heart of his beloved, there also he must perish,—vanish,—and that quickly.

It is often difficult to parse someone becoming unhinged in an epistolary novel. It is at the point of dissolution that the reader is forced to accept that the ongoing narrative is actually what someone in such straits would be able to emote through writing. I give Goethe a pass, he was Goethe after all. The next great German would hug a horse and he didn't write many letters, those he did he signed The Crucified.

This was a cautionary tale. Like the Quixote--we learn that reading too many books softens the faculties. One then shouldn't woo women already engaged. Or at least accept the inevitable. I liked the interlude towards the end with the recitation of poetry. Romanticism is shorn of its ideals and forced to kneel in all-too-human failure.

[john257hopper · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This novella was the work that first established the reputation of the great German author, though he repudiated it in later life. It is a book of two halves. In the first half Werther reflects philosophically about the nature of beauty in the countryside he visits and envies the certainties in the lives of the peasant families he meets. His love for Charlotte here seems an innocent and healthy one, despite her being engaged to Albert. In the second part, however, his unrequited passion grows into an obsession that eventually destroys him, distorting his healthy outlook on the world. As Charlotte perceptively observes, "Why must you love me, me only, who belong to another? I fear, I much fear, that it is only the impossibility of possessing me which makes your desire for me so strong.” This second part lacked the simplicity and beauty of the first half and was harder to read. Werther is an unattractive character by the end and I am afraid his suicide evoked little sympathy in me. This short book was a key point in the development of European literature in the 1770s.

[greeniezona · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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, 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?

[aliceanna-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Nope. Life is too short. Next!

[enockpioulle · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The quintessential romantic novel, it could easily be mistaken for a handbook on how to express your most intimate feelings as far as the things of the heart are concerned. However it's the superlative skills of the author that really counts: that Goethe is considered one of the greatest writers that ever lived come as no surprise after a few pages of this marvel. To read and reread forever.

[nsenger-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What a thing is the heart of man!- Goethe, The Sorrows of Young WertherIn The Sorrows of Young Werther, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe opens a window into the soul of his young protagonist, allowing the reader to witness first hand his tragic destiny. Young Werther suffers from a hopeless love for the enchanting Charlotte who is engaged to an older man. In a series of letters to his friend Wilhelm, Werther reveals the depths of his anguish. The Sorrows of Young Werther is a beautifully told tale of the interior of a human heart in conflict.First published in 1774, Goethe's epistolary novel has many of the hallmarks of literary romanticism: unattainable love, a passionate and sensitive protagonist, feelings bared open to the world, and a deep appreciation for nature. In his book The Novel 100, Daniel Burt calls The Sorrows of Young Werther "One of the defining works of European Romanticism."Werther is a young artist who moves to the village of Walheim where he meets the lovely Charlotte, daughter of the local judge. Charlotte's mother has died, leaving her to care for her brothers and sisters, and Werther becomes enamored of her, despite knowing that she is engaged to Albert, a man eleven years her senior. As he spends more time with Charlotte and Albert, Werther's love for Charlotte increases, and so does his torment at knowing she is unattainable. The letters Werther writes to his friend Wilhelm express both the intensity of his love and the pain it causes him.Goethe's novel is beautifully written and groundbreaking in its portrayal of a human soul. German literary scholar Karl Viëtor writes about the novel's significance:Among European novels Werther is the first in which an inward life, a spiritual process and nothing else, is represented, and hence it is the first psychological novel....The scene is the soul of the hero. All events and figures are regarded only in the light of the significance they have for Werther's emotion.One thing that stands out in the novel is the likability of all of its characters. This is a novel with no clear antagonist, no evil villain. Not only is Charlotte beautiful, but she is also kind, charming, and generous. Albert is a good man who loves Charlotte. Werther himself is a passionate, sensitive young man whose feelings for Charlotte are pure and innocent. And yet there is conflict in the novel. The reader feels it almost from the very first page. What should Werther do about his passionate feelings for Charlotte? Ignore them? Act on them? Suppress them and move on? What should Charlotte do, and Albert?These questions raise even deeper questions and invite the reader to reflect on his or her own beliefs about love and passion. What is love, and where does it come from? What is the role of emotion in relationships and what is the role of intellect?The Sorrows of Young Werther is well worth a read, not only for its beautiful prose, but also for its attempt to grapple with issues of love and passion.

[thorold_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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 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.

[dreesie-1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

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 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.

[jbd1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of those classics that actually deserves the name. A brilliant psychological meditation.

[benkline · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A fantastic character study, a bit slow in places but ultimately a quick read. Always been a big fan of German literature (Nietzsche, Kafka, Hesse, Goethe).

[koanmi · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Was soll man über ein Buch noch schreiben, über das schon so viel geschrieben wurde? Außer vielleicht, dass man es den Schülerinnen und Schülern heute nicht mehr unbedingt aufzwingen sollte. Grund meines Lesens war die Vermutung, dass sowohl Tex Rubinowitz ("Irma") als auch Arno Geiger (Selbstportrait mit Flusspferd) Anlehnung an Goethe genommen haben. Und nach der Lektüre finde ich, dass dieser Verdacht nicht unbegründet ist, auch wenn die Anlehnungen vermutlich nicht bewusst gemacht wurden (aber was weiß man schon, was in einem Autor vorgeht).

[michael5rimmer · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Obsession, elation, depression, murder, rustic scenes, distance-blurred mountains and wind-swept moors, despair and suicide. A compelling psychological novel.

[v.v.harding · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Not the book I expected: far more enjoyable, and oddly modern in the variety of forms combined without notice, letters to his friend, diary entries, and an outside voice coming in at the end. It's somewhat unsettling to reflect that the book's readers seem to have taken the situation recounted more seriously than the author did.

Now to re-read Lotte in Weimar, which will mean a lot more.

[aegossman · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

awesome and then some.

[cecrow · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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 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.

[annbury_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is of course a great classic, which had a profound impact on the culture of its time. Sometimes, I truly appreciate great classics, for themselves as works of art, not just as for artifacts of culture. But sometimes, I can't make the breakthrough and get really involved with a work -- I observe it, rather than experience it. "The Sorrows of Young Werther", for me, was such a book. I am glad I finally read it (I have certainly read enough about it, over the years) but I won't do so again. Perhaps if I read German, or perhaps if I were a third as old as I am ----- .

[beabatllori · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Soo, I know this is part of a historical period, and it's very representative of a literary movement and yada yada yada. But seriously, dude - man up already. And I mean this in a very non-sexist way.

[lesserlady · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is spectacular. The prose of Goethe is stunning and the depth of emotion is amazing. Do not read this book if you are in a melancholy mood; it will intensify those emotions and may pull you from melancholy to despair. Despite that negativity it is a stellar exploration of human love, affection, friendship and emotion.

[wizardcarlos · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Amazing book about a platonic love that can't be lived by the force of destiny.

[pre20cenbooks · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Call me slightly vengeful, but I enjoyed a male character on the other side of coin in romance. I generally avoid romance novels, but if a story line is psychologically intriguing, unpredictable for me, I will stick with it to the end. Enjoyed very much, even though the tragic end was spoiled by some reviews I read approx two months ago.

[soylentgreen23 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I did not enjoy 'The Sorrows' as much as, I believe, the likes of Byron did. It is a romantic book, but so over-the-top by modern standards that I couldn't really get to grips with it very well. I'm just glad it didn't go on too long, or I might have struggled with a narrator obsessed with himself and with his passionate feelings.

[jwhenderson_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A sensitive youth and suffering artist, Werther is one of Goethe's greatest creations. The book is a bit dated but still evokes the power of emotion that captivated young readers when it was first published. This new translation by Burton Pike is excellent.