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Title: The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ISBN: 0486424553 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: November, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $2.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.41
Rating: 1
Summary: Great Work of Literature - Lousy Edition
Comment: The Sorrows of Young Werther is one of Goethe's greatest works. Unfortunately, this edition leaves everything to be desired. For almost [money amount] you get no explanatory notes whatsoever, no footnotes on the original German text, and the translator is not even credited. No commentary, no introduction. It looks like someone paid to have it printed at a cheap copyshop.
Rating: 4
Summary: "Remember Albert!"
Comment: What is it about this particular novella which inspired a series of youthful suicides throughout Europe soon after its publication? Why did Napoleon insist on keeping the French translation with him during his campaign in Egypt? How did Goethe succeed in capturing the poignancy of the human heart, while fascinating a jaded but "enlightened" 18th century public? The young German author touched a universal chord with this slender volume, in which he offers tender insight on such diverse Romantic subjects as Love, Religion, Nature and Man's relationships with God and his fellow men. Why do critics consider it a classic of both German and World Literature?
Presented in a quaint literary style, this story consists of confidential diary entries and letters to a trusted friend, Wilhelm, by a senstitive protagonist, with the addition of editorial notes. (The latter results from the inveitable drawbacks of first-person narratives.) The plot unfolds as Werther, a young nobleman who interests himself in the daily activities of the peasantry, is enjoying an extended holiday in a scenic area of Germany. Free to savor the magnificent natural beauty around him, Werther is soon dazzled by the numerous charms of the delightful Charlotte--daughter of a local town dignitary. This paragon of feminie virtue and attraction appears more sensual and maternal than truly sexual.
Alas, the incomparable Lotte is already engaged to absent Albert, due home soon. Is she too naive to understand that in Werther she has acquired an ardent admirer? Is she aware of his easily-inflamed fascination, or the violent depths of his stifled emotions? Is she oblivious or heartless to his passionate despair once her fiance has returned? Just how long can she juggle two lovers, or even control her own dainty heart--which Goethe chastely and tantalizingly hides from us?
Readers will be be swept away on the floodtide of Gothe's untamed emotions, as poor Werther faces the inevitable. Ah, but which act requires or proves the greater bravery: to terminate the heart's torment by the simple act of Suicide, or to accept Life's harshness by continuing a lonely, meaningless existence? Which Hell is it better or nobler to endure: that of rejecting God's gift or that of eternal separation from the Beloved? The strain of a prolonged "menage a trois" can not be permitted to endure--neither from a literary or a moral point of view.
The last entries painfully point the way as Werther's despair cascades into definitive--albeit negative--action. Weep, hope forlornly with this ardent young man, even rage at his fate; then be swept away into the maelstrom of thwarted dreams. Analyze and pity Germany's most famous pre-Romantic hero, as he struggles though this psychological novel, for Goethe plays upon the reader's memory's heartstrings with the skill of Ossian's agonized harper.
Rating: 5
Summary: The Sorrow of Loving Too Much
Comment: I always find it sad that more people do not read Goethe for pleasure alone. Yes, he was a "scholarly" writer but his works, although profound, are written in an easily understandable style. I think too many people have been needlessly scared off by Goethe's monumental intelligence and his philosophy. This is too bad. His books revolve around themes that are universal, subjects to which all of us can relate: romantic love, nature, God, beauty.
Eighteenth-century German literature was propelled by a revolution in romanticism, and writers such as Goethe celebrated their most cherished ideals in as ornate and eloquent a manner as possible. While the tendency of American and British writers to ignore the sublime and the romantic in favor of stark realism does have its place, that does not mean that the sublime and the romantic should be casually tossed aside.
The Sorrows of Young Werther is not Goethe at this best (you need to read Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship for that) but it the best introduction to Goethe anyone could find and a lovely novella in its own right. The Sorrows of Young Werther opens more amazingly than any book I have ever read and it is not overstating things a bit to say that Goethe gives us something profound and beautiful on each and every page.
The Sorrows of Young Werther is comprised, for the most part, of letters written by a hopelessly romantic young man named Werther to a friend named Wilhelm. These letters not only detail Werther's doomed love for the beautiful Charlotte, they also contain the most beautiful meditations on just about everything important in life: love, beauty, nature, philosophy, art, religion.
In Werther, Goethe clearly shows us the problems inherent in loving and idealizing something a bit too much. I think many readers will have a problem with the character of Werther. He is simply too romantic to be real. And then there will be those who will wonder how a man who is capable of uttering the most gorgeous and flowing words about beauty, art and nature can fall so hopelessly in love with one woman that he seems to forget all else that he holds dear. Well, Werther, in the best romantic tradition, has invested all the emotion he feels for art, beauty, religion, etc. in Charlotte. Once readers realize this, I think the ending of this novella will make sense to them. Yes, Werther is an extreme but once you come to understand him, he does make perfect sense.
As I said, this isn't Goethe at this best or his most sublime or even, believe it not, his most romantic, but this is certainly the best place to begin if you are just beginning your study of this monumental author or of German romanticism in general.
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Title: Faust I & II (Goethe : The Collected Works, Vol 2) by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, Stuart Atkins ISBN: 069103656X Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 05 July, 1994 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Erotic Poems (Oxford World's Classics) by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, David Luke, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Hans R. Vaget ISBN: 019283939X Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: October, 1999 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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Title: Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, Leo Bersani, Lowell Bair ISBN: 0553213415 Publisher: Bantam Classics Pub. Date: 01 July, 1982 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
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Title: The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Martin Edward Malia ISBN: 0451527100 Publisher: Signet Pub. Date: October, 1998 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
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Title: Reveries of the Solitary Walker by Peter France, Jean Jacques Rousseau ISBN: 0140443630 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: February, 1980 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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