The Sorrows of Young Werther
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Language: English
Pages: 128
ISBN: 1519182139
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
You only find true love once.
When Werther dances with the beautiful Lotte, it seems as though he is in paradise. It is a joy, however, that can only ever be short-lived. Engaged to another man, she tolerates Werther's adoration and encourages his friendship. She can never return his love.
Broken-hearted, he leaves her home in the country, trying to escape his own desire. But when he receives a letter telling him that she is finally married, his passion soon turns to destructive obsession.
And as his life falls apart, Werther is haunted by one certainty: He has lost his reason for living.
Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Michael Hulse
corrupt! Weak, yes, quite weak enough!—And is that not in fact corruption?— She is sacred to me. All my desires are stilled in her presence. I never know what I am about when I am with her; it is as if my very soul were throbbing in every nerve.—There is a melody, a simple but moving air, which she plays on the piano, with angelic skill. It is her very favourite tune, and the moment she plays the first note I feel delivered of all my pain, confusion and brooding fancies. Every word they say
and finally I ceased to listen to him, fell to brooding and suddenly placed the mouth of the pistol against my forehead, above my right eye. —‘What rot!’ said Albert, taking the pistol from me. ‘What are you playing at?’—‘It isn’t loaded,’ I said.—‘Even if it isn’t,’ he retorted impatiently, ‘what are you up to? I cannot imagine how a man can be so foolish as to shoot himself; I find the mere thought repellent’ ‘Why is it,’ I demanded, ‘that when people speak of things they must promptly
to part from her children, particularly the little one. When her end was approaching she said, “Bring the children to me.” I led them in, the young ones who did not know what was happening and the elder ones who were numb with pain, and they stood by her bed; and she raised her hands and prayed for them, kissed them in turn and sent them out, and then said to me: “Be a mother to them.”—I gave her my hand.—”Dear daughter,” she said, “what you are promising is a great deal. It is the heart of a
wish. The hall had filled meanwhile. There was Baron F. in all the attire he wore to the coronation of Franz I;48 Privy Councillor R., who is addressed in company as Mr von R., with his deaf wife, etc.; not forgetting J., wretchedly turned out, his old-fashioned Franconian garb patched up with modern rags: all of them were garnered there, and I passed the time of day with one or two I knew, though they were very brief in their replies. I was busy with my own thoughts, and only paid attention to
Jacobin by English conservatives in the 1790s. Writing in 1828, Heine, who had little patience with Werther’s tragic love story or with the question of suicide, declared that the passage that dealt with Werther’s exclusion from aristocratic society would have been recognized as the heart of the book if it had been published then rather man in the 1770s. Naturally Heine was overstating the case. And Goethe, in his old age, would have been reluctant to agree with him, since whatever firebrand