Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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49 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
self-pity lovingly described, May 5, 2000
We tend to think of our era as unique when we descry the impact that the media has on our young people's behavior. Well the same thing happened 200 years ago when this book was first published. Impressionable young readers who identified so completely with Werther went out and committed suicide by the droves. Werther is the prototypical Romantic male, who "feels" more deeply than the rest of humanity. Unlike Heathcliffe, who settles on revenge as an answer to his thwarted designs, Werther takes it out on himself. Of course, there's a great deal of self-destruction at work in Heathcliffe's persona too. I would recommend this to a reader who is just getting to know Goethe. I read it when I was about eighteen and it definitely struck a nerve with me at that time. It made me want to read everything by Goethe I could find in translation. Read it, and if you like it, as I am sure you will, go on to Goethe's two great Romantic novels, Elective Affinities and Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship. I found in my earlier readings that I never went wrong with what used to be referred to as Penguin Classics (now Vintage) translations. They're normally all top-notch, whether Greek, Latin, French, German, Russian, etc. PS: If you're a young reader, please don't take Werther too much to heart. It's only a novel, ok?
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42 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Sorrow of Loving Too Much, November 26, 2000
By A Customer
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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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"Remember Albert!", May 6, 2001
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.
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