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distantheartbeats 's review for:
The Sorrows of Young Werther
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It’s a slip of a book, a mere 150 pages, so I didn’t think it would take long.
Wrong. The books makes you stop and think so often, and if you’ve ever been heartbroken it tugs at your heart so much that you have to take breaks from it. I read it in three big chunks, but I loved Werther and his insane passion from the start, before he met Lotte and was describing his love of nature. What I love — and I mean, really love — about it is that it is not graphic at all, there is sexual attraction but nothing that would prompt a PG rating, let alone anything above. Furthermore, despite his all-consuming adoration for Lotte, they do not consummate their relationship.
Two other things fascinated me: first, that Werther was a man. Maybe I’m approaching this book as a woman who has recently seen plays begging to empower women, but it’s a very interesting choice that Werther is a man and not a love-struck woman. If you have read it, imagine having read it with a female character. Do you think the novel would have survived all these years? Or do you think it would have been more easily disregarded as “just another woman in love”? The second thing that kept my mind whirring away was Lotte, and how she felt about Werther. The style the novel is written in — we read it through letters and diary entries — means everything we see (apart from a few ‘editor’s notes’ which are actually Goethe as a narrator) is seen through Werther’s eyes. What can we trust? What was exaggerated through the eyes of a man infatuated? I wonder, too, if Fraulein B had not been part of the aristocracy, if there had been a real chance at a relationship between the two of them, would his love for Lotte resulted so catastrophically?
Above all, though, it is the language and the observations that Werther makes that make this novel so touching and endearing. I don’t know how much of this is owed to the translator, but it is very easy language that is as transferrable to us today as it was the day it was written. After all, unrequited love is probably the most common of all love, and many of us will have felt the acute pain that comes with loving one we cannot have. Thankfully, few of us will fall into such deep despair as Werther, but his words and his declarations will forever be a comfort.
Needless to say, I can’t wait to read more by Goethe.
Wrong. The books makes you stop and think so often, and if you’ve ever been heartbroken it tugs at your heart so much that you have to take breaks from it. I read it in three big chunks, but I loved Werther and his insane passion from the start, before he met Lotte and was describing his love of nature. What I love — and I mean, really love — about it is that it is not graphic at all, there is sexual attraction but nothing that would prompt a PG rating, let alone anything above. Furthermore, despite his all-consuming adoration for Lotte, they do not consummate their relationship.
Two other things fascinated me: first, that Werther was a man. Maybe I’m approaching this book as a woman who has recently seen plays begging to empower women, but it’s a very interesting choice that Werther is a man and not a love-struck woman. If you have read it, imagine having read it with a female character. Do you think the novel would have survived all these years? Or do you think it would have been more easily disregarded as “just another woman in love”? The second thing that kept my mind whirring away was Lotte, and how she felt about Werther. The style the novel is written in — we read it through letters and diary entries — means everything we see (apart from a few ‘editor’s notes’ which are actually Goethe as a narrator) is seen through Werther’s eyes. What can we trust? What was exaggerated through the eyes of a man infatuated? I wonder, too, if Fraulein B had not been part of the aristocracy, if there had been a real chance at a relationship between the two of them, would his love for Lotte resulted so catastrophically?
Above all, though, it is the language and the observations that Werther makes that make this novel so touching and endearing. I don’t know how much of this is owed to the translator, but it is very easy language that is as transferrable to us today as it was the day it was written. After all, unrequited love is probably the most common of all love, and many of us will have felt the acute pain that comes with loving one we cannot have. Thankfully, few of us will fall into such deep despair as Werther, but his words and his declarations will forever be a comfort.
Needless to say, I can’t wait to read more by Goethe.