Product Description

Visiting an idyllic German village, Werther, a sensitive young man, falls in love with sweet-natured Lotte. Though he realizes that Lotte is to marry Albert, he is unable to subdue his passion and his infatuation torments him to the point of despair. The first great 'confessional' novel, it draws both on Goethe's own unrequited love for Charlotte Buff and on the death of a close friend. The book was an immediate success and a cult rapidly grew up around it, resulting in numerous copycat deaths as well as violent criticism and suppression for its apparent support of suicide. Goethe's exploration of the mind of an artist at odds with society and ill-equipped to cope with life remains as poignant as when it was first written.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13355 in Books
• Published on: 2003-11-27
• Original language: German
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 144 pages

About the Author
Johann Wolfgang Goethe was born in Frankfurt in 1749. He is best remembered for his great works The Sorrows of Young Werther and Faust, and his part in the 18th century 'Sturm and Drang' movement. He died in 1832. Michael Hulse is an acclaimed literary German translator.

Customer Reviews

A Little Novel that Caused a Huge Sensation
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 Penguin Classics 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?

"Be on your guard..."
"...and take care not to fall in love!" Truly the first, and still the greatest, pieces of 'confessional' writing on the up's and down's, the trials and tribulations, that come with that awe-inspiring feeling we know as "love".

Whilst a previous reviewer noted this book is not for the recently heart broken, I would say the contrary. Anyone who has experienced both the passionate and romantic conditions of love, and has been affected in all aspects of their life as a result - hint: if you haven't then chances are you have not actually experienced love in its entirity! - simply MUST own a copy of this classic!

It is actually of great comfort in many resepcts, inasmuch as you can relate so directly with the feelings described, so to make the reader aware of the fact that you are not the first nor the last to have simultaneously enjoyed and endured such feelings.

Disapointing
I expected to enjoy this book. I'm keen on literature from this period and I'm not averse to a bit of tragedy. Unfortunately I found Werther in love to be utterly unconvincing. He struck me as self obsessed and ridiculous. Although he is supposed to be desperately in love with Lotte, the plot involves him staying away from her for a period, during which time he admits to not having leisure to think about her. This does not strike me as the emotional behaviour of a man in love and yet not so much later he's committing suicide because of his supposedly deep feelings for her. He appears more sunk in self pity than love and comes across as a candidate for mild contempt rather than sympathy. Nor could I warm to Lotte. One of her main appeals to Werther is her innocence and purity and yet at times she seems intent on ensuring that she doesn't lose his interest. All in all a disappointing read. Perhaps it just doesn't age as well as other literature of the era.