I read this book in high school. So, I don't remember much of it, except the crying. I loved the story, I could relate to many of his thoughts about unrequited love and its tragic consequences, and feeling like it was the end of the world because I wasn't with that special someone and, well. High school: Maths and lovesickness.

I cried quite a bit while reading this book, Bambi's-mother-shooting kind of tears. I probably wouldn't react that way now, I'd just think about how much easier it would be to move out and try to meet somebody else (or not) than crying a river and

Spoiler

trying to kill yourself.

I'd have to re-read it to find out. However, despite that particular part of the plot, it was beautifully and carefully written. Goethe described one of the most profound and dangerous kinds of pain in a delicate and graceful manner. His prose is brilliant, powerful. Besides love, and lack of love, pain and whatnot, there are passages like:

"Oh! you people of sound understandings," I replied, smiling, "are ever ready to exclaim 'Extravagance, and madness, and intoxication!' You moral men are so calm and so subdued! You abhor the drunken man, and detest the extravagant; you pass by, like the Levite, and thank God, like the Pharisee, that you are not like one of them. I have been more than once intoxicated, my passions have always bordered on extravagance: I am not ashamed to confess it; for I have learned, by my own experience, that all extraordinary men, who have accomplished great and astonishing actions, have ever been decried by the world as drunken or insane. And in private life, too, is it not intolerable that no one can undertake the execution of a noble or generous deed, without giving rise to the exclamation that the doer is intoxicated or mad? Shame upon you, ye sages!"

So, what you can get out of this really helpful review is that:
a) I cried.
b) Goethe's writing is beautiful.

Aug 17, 13


* Also on my blog.

4'5/5

Maravilloso retrato de lo idiotas que nos volvemos cuando nos enamoramos.
Tiene partes de una belleza sobresaliente.

I'm not sure what to say nor what to write at the moment.

some parts that struck me for some reason:

[...]was as much frightened as any of them; but by affecting courage, to keep up the spirits of the others, I forgot my apprehensions. - Charlotte [pt1]

Could you by see me, my dear Charlotte, in the whirl of dissipation, -- hw my senses are dried up, but my heart is at no time full. I enjoy no single moment of happinenss; all is vain -- nothing touches me. I stand, as it were, before the raree-show: I see the little puppets move, and I ask whether it is not an optical illusion. I am amused with these puppets, or, rather, I am myself one of them: but, when I sometimes grasp my neighbour's hand, I feel that it is not natural; and I withdraw mine with a shudder. In the evening I say I will enjoy the next morning's sunrise, and yet I remain in bed: in the day I promise to ramble by moonlight; and I, nevertheless, remain at home. I know not why I rise, not why I go to sleep.
The leaven which animated my existence is gone: the charm which cheered me in the gloom of night, and aroused me from my morning slumbers, is for ever fled. - Werther [pt2]

I will say this, the story within the book about Ossian in part 2, it became a blur. I skipped that part and did a shortcut; even though, yes, that was sort of the climactic part ...there was also so much going on, that it sort of ruined the story/mood of the whole thing for me. Buzzkill?! The way Werther died at end or how he sort of died, was probably not how he wanted it. You know 12 hours later after he shot himself, instead of dead on the scene right away. Some may think that his suicide may be selfish, but those "suicide is selfish" comment seem just that. maybe it's selfish, maybe it's cruel to leave your loved ones behind. but it should be everyone's own decision whether they want to live or not. It is selfish to keep someone who doesn't want to exist around just you don't feel sad.

I'll come back and rate/review some more....once everything sinks in.

I can't remember the last time I read a work of 18th-century fiction but this was the perfect tonic for my current reading mood.

All you need to know is that the well-to-so young Werther falls in love with a perfect young woman, only to find she's betrothed. Heartache ensues.

This book epitomizes the idealism of a former age, where the words Nature, God and Man all come capitalised. Full of swelling breasts and fainting maidens and contented peasants. A less cynical age, more awake to the granduer of the world around us, more unashamedly romantic, less obsessed with existential neuroses.

The bulk of the book consists of letters written by Werther to his confidant, charting his burgeoning love and mental unravelling. As I've said before, the letter is a criminally under-appreciated device in fiction.

This original Werther would not win any of today's prizes for fiction, but it's a piece of our literary heritage we'd be the poorer for forgetting.

Werther, the original sadboi. This is one of those books that has survived because of what it meant at the time. The spurned suicidal lover is an archetype in our broader cultural vocabulary but less so when Goethe put this to paper in the eighteenth century. So you'll need to wind your mind back in time to appreciate how shocking that would've been. But as a novel on its own merits I found it to be an engaging if not revelatory read. Goethe took 50 years to write Faust, I'll give him a break on this one.