© Preface by Yu. Arkhipov, 2014

© Translation by N. Kasatkina. Heirs, 2014

© Translation by B. Pasternak. Heirs, 2014

© Notes. N. Vilmont. Heirs, 2014

All rights reserved. No part of the electronic version of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including posting on the Internet or corporate networks, for private or public use without the written permission of the copyright owner.

A great many literary scholars and translators encroach on our attention and time, defining their cultural task as discovering as much as possible more“missed” names and unknown works. Meanwhile, “culture is selection,” as Hofmannsthal’s capacious formula says. Even the ancients noted that “art is long, but life is short.” And what a shame it is to live your short life without visiting the heights of the human spirit. Moreover, there are so few of them, peaks. Akhmatova’s contemporaries say that her inseparable masterpiece books fit on one shelf. Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Goethe... This obligatory minimum of all educated person managed to double only the Russian nineteenth century, adding Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov to the list.

All these authors, our teachers, delighters, and often tormentors, are similar in one thing: they left concepts-images-types that have firmly and forever entered our consciousness. They became household names. Words such as “Odyssey”, “Beatrice”, “Don Quixote”, “Lady Macbeth” replace long descriptions for us. And they are universally accepted as a code accessible to all humanity. The most unfortunate of the Russian autocrats, Pavel, was nicknamed “Russian Hamlet.” And “Russian Faust” is, of course, Ivan Karamazov (who in turn became - sublimation of the image-type! - an easily wedged out cliché). And recently “Russian Mephistopheles” appeared. This is what the Swede Ljunggren called his book, translated from us, about Emilia Medtner, the famous Goethean cul-urologist of the early 20th century.

In this sense, Goethe, one might say, set a kind of record: for a long time, many – from Spengler and Toynbee to Berdyaev and Vyacheslav Ivanov – have called “Faustian” no less than the entire Western European civilization as a whole. During his lifetime, however, Goethe was primarily the celebrated author of The Sorrows young Werther" Thus, under this cover are collected two of his most famous books. If we add to them his selected lyrics and two novels, then this, in turn, will constitute that “minimum from Goethe”, which an inquisitive reader cannot do without. Our Symbolist poet Vyacheslav Ivanov generally believed that Goethe’s novel “Selective Affinity” best experience this genre in world literature (a controversial but also weighty opinion), and Thomas Mann singled it out as “the most daring and profound novel about adultery created by the moral culture of the West”). And Goethe’s “Wilhelm Meister” gave birth to a whole specific genre of “educational novel”, which has since been considered a purely German peculiarity. Indeed, the tradition of the German-language educational novel extends from Keller's Green Heinrich and Stifter's Indian Summer through Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain and Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities to our contemporary modifications by Günther Grass and Martin Walser, and this constitutes the main ridge of the said prose. Goethe generally gave birth to a lot of things in German literature. Goethe’s blood flows in her veins - to paraphrase Nabokov’s maxim about Pushkin’s blood of Russian literature. The roles of Goethe and Pushkin are similar in this sense. Fathers-progenitors of mythological scope and power, who left behind a mighty galaxy of heirs-geniuses with their vast and branched offspring.

Goethe discovered his phenomenal strength very early. He was born on August 28, 1749 in Frankfurt am Main into a wealthy patrician family. His family nest (now, of course, a museum) resembles a proud fortress, scattering the surrounding houses in the ancient part of the city. His father wanted him to have a good career in the public service and sent him to study law at reputable universities - first in Leipzig, then in Strasbourg. In Leipzig, our classmate was our Radishchev. In Strasbourg, he became close friends with Lenz and Klinger, writers, “stormy geniuses”, whom fate destined to end their days also in Russia. If in Leipzig Goethe only wrote poetry, then in Strasbourg he was seriously infected with literary fever from his friends. Together they formed a whole movement, named after the title of one of Klinger’s plays, Sturm and Drang.

It was a turning point in European literature. The bastions of classicism, which seemed so unshakable for many decades, classicism with its strict architectonics of known unities (place, time, action), with its strict inventory of styles, with its exaggerated moralizing and obsessive didactics in the spirit of the Kantian categorical imperative - all this suddenly collapsed under the onslaught of new trends. Their herald was Rousseau with his cry “Back to nature!” Along with the intellect with its responsibilities, the heart with its incalculable impulses was discovered in man. In the depths of the literary storehouse, under a layer of classicists, young writers, prompted by Rousseau, discovered the giant Shakespeare. They opened it and gasped at its “natural” power. "Shakespeare! Nature!" - young Goethe choked with delight in one of his first magazine articles. Compared to Shakespeare, their vaunted Enlightenment seemed so ugly one-sided to the turbulent geniuses.

Shakespeare's chronicles inspired Goethe to search for a plot from German history. The drama from the times of chivalry “Götz von Werlichengen” made the name of young Goethe extremely popular in Germany. For a long time, probably since the times of Hans Sachs and, perhaps, Grimmelshausen, German pietists have not known such wide recognition, such fame. And then Goethe’s poems began to appear in magazines and almanacs, which young ladies rushed to copy into their albums.

So in Wetzlar, where twenty-three-year-old Goethe arrived - at the patronage and insistence of his father - to serve in the imperial court, he appeared like an unexpected star. It was a small provincial, burgher-like cozy town a hundred miles north of Frankfurt, striking only for its disproportionately huge cathedral. This is how the town has remained to this day. But now the house of Amtman Buffa has been added to the cathedral and the former imperial court building as a tourist attraction. However, Goethe looked into the courthouse only once - the newly minted lawyer immediately realized that he would suffocate from boredom in the heap of office papers. More than a century would pass before another young lawyer, Kafka, saw with his “trimmed eyes” an attractive artistic object in such a bureaucratic monster and created his own “Castle”. The ardent, big man Goethe found a more attractive magnet - the young and charming daughter of the Amtmann, Lotta. So, passing the courthouse, the hapless official, but famous poet frequented Buff's house. Nowadays, in the endless suite of tiny rooms on three floors of this Gothic house, there is also, of course, a museum - “Goethe and His Age”.

Goethe's blood boiled easily even in old age, but here he was young, full of unspent strength, spoiled by universal success. It seemed that the provincial Lotte would be easily conquered, like her predecessor Frederica Brion, who had just been abandoned by Goethe in mutual tears in Strasbourg. But something bad happened. Lotte was engaged. Her chosen one, a certain Kestner, who diligently made a career in the same judicial department, was a positive person, but also quite ordinary. “Honest mediocrity” - as Thomas Mann described it. No match for the brilliant rival bon vivant who suddenly fell on his poor head. After hesitating, the sober girl Lotta, however, preferred the bird in her hands. After staying only a few months in Wetzlar, Goethe was forced to retreat - in desperate feelings, thinking about suicide. Several times he even poked himself in the chest with a dagger, but, apparently, not too persistently, more out of artistic interest.

“The world kills the kindest, the gentlest and the strongest indiscriminately. And if you are neither one nor the other and not the third, then you can be sure that your turn will come, just not so soon.”

E. Hemingway "Gertrude Stein"

“For the poet there is not a single historical person; he wants to depict his moral world”

In her memoirs, M. Shaginyan describes how in her youth she experienced unhappy love and attempted suicide. She was pumped out and placed in the hospital for a while. Her nanny, looking for a way to calm her down, said: “Look how many women there are here. Where are the men who die of love?

“The Sorrows of Young Werther” is a small book. Having written it, the twenty-five-year-old author “woke up world famous” the next day.
“Werther” was read everywhere. And in Germany, and in France, and in Russia. Napoleon Bonaparte took her with him on his Egyptian campaign.

“The effect of this story was great, one might say enormous, mainly because it came at a time when just one piece of smoldering tinder was enough to detonate a large mine, so here the explosion that occurred among the readership was so great because young world I’ve already undermined my own foundations.” (V. Belinsky)

What is this book about? About love? About suffering? About life and death? About personality and society? And about this, and about the other, and about the third.

But what caused such unprecedented interest in her? Attention to the inner world of a person. Creating a three-dimensional image of the hero. Detail of the image, psychologism, depth of penetration into the character. For the 18th century, all this was a first. (The same thing happened in the painting of that time. From the local writing of Giotto - to the detailing of the Dutch, where every petal, drop on the hand, tenderness of a smile is visible.)

The Sorrows of Young Werther was a great step towards realism in both German and European literature of the 18th century. Already some sketches of the burgher family life(Lotta surrounded by her sisters and brothers) seemed like a revelation at the time: after all, the question is whether philistinism is worthy of being a subject artistic display I was just deciding. Even more disturbing was the portrayal of the swaggering nobility in the novel.

The epistolary genre in which the novel is written is one of the components of success and interest in the novel. A novel in the letters of a young man who died of love. This alone took the breath away of readers (and especially female readers) of that time.

In his old age, Goethe wrote about the novel: “Here is the creation that I nourished with the blood of my own heart. There is so much internal stuff put into it, taken from my own soul, felt and rethought..."
Indeed, the novel is based on the writer’s personal emotional drama. IN
Wetzler played out Goethe's unhappy romance with Charlotte Buff (Kästner).
A sincere friend of her fiancé, Goethe loved her, and Charlotte, although she rejected his love, did not remain indifferent to him. All three knew this. One day
Kestner received a note: “He’s gone, Kestner, when you receive these lines, know that he’s gone...”

Based on my own heartfelt experience and weaving into my experiences the story of the suicide of another unhappy lover - the secretary of the Breunschweig embassy at the Weizler Court Chamber, young
Jerusalem, Goethe and created “The Sorrows of Young Werther”.

“I carefully collected everything that I managed to find out about the history of the poor
Werther..." wrote Goethe, and was sure that readers "will be imbued with love and respect for his mind and heart, and will shed tears over his fate."

“Invaluable friend, what is the human heart? I love you so much. We were inseparable...and now we have parted..." Goethe created his works in line with the philosophical constructs of Rousseau and especially Herder, so revered by him. Due to his own artistic perception of the world and refracting Herder’s thoughts in his work, he wrote both poetry and prose only “from the fullness of feeling” (“feeling is everything”).

But his hero dies not only from unhappy love, but also from discord with the society around him. This conflict is “ordinary.” It testifies to the unusualness and originality of a person. Without conflict there is no hero. The hero himself creates the conflict.

Some critics see the main reason for Werther’s suicide in his incredible discord with the entire bourgeois-aristocratic society, and his unhappy love is regarded only as the last straw that confirmed his decision to leave this world. I just can't agree with this statement.
It seems to me that the novel should be considered, first of all, as a lyrical work in which the tragedy of the heart and love occurs, even if divided, but unable to unite the lovers. Yes, it is undoubtedly necessary to take into account Werther’s disappointment in society, his rejection of this society, the incomprehensibility of himself, and hence the tragedy of the loneliness of the individual in society. But we should not forget that the cause of suicide is Werther’s hopeless love for Lotte. Really,
Werther initially becomes disillusioned with society, not with life. And it is impossible not to share this opinion. The fact that he seeks to break off his relationship with a society alien to him and despised by him does not mean that he does not see any meaning and joy in life. After all, he is able to enjoy nature, communication with people who do not wear masks and behave naturally. His rejection of society does not come from a conscious protest, but from a purely emotional and spiritual rejection. This is not a revolution, but youthful maximalism, the desire for goodness, the logic of the world, which is characteristic of, perhaps, everyone in youth, so one should not exaggerate his criticism of society. Werther is not against society as a society, but against its forms, which conflict with the naturalness of the young soul.

In Werther's tragedy the love is primary, and the social is secondary. With what feeling did he, even in his first letters, describe the surrounding area and nature: “My soul is illuminated with unearthly joy, like these spring mornings, which I enjoy with all my heart. I am completely alone and blissful in this land, as if created for people like me. I am so happy, my friend, so intoxicated by the feeling of peace...I am often tormented by the thought: “Ah! How to express, how to breathe into a drawing what is so full, what lives so reverently in me, to give a reflection of my soul, as my soul is a reflection of the eternal God!

He writes that either “deceptive spirits, or one’s own ardent imagination” turns everything around into paradise. Agree, it is very difficult to name
Werther is a man disillusioned with life. Complete harmony with nature and ourselves. What kind of suicide are we talking about here? Yes, he is cut off from society. But he’s not burdened by this, it’s already in the past. Not finding understanding in society, seeing its countless vices, Werther refuses it. Society is disharmonious for Werther, nature is harmonious. He sees beauty and harmony in nature, as well as in everything that has not lost its naturalness.

Love for Lotte makes Werther the happiest of people. He's writing
Wilhelm: “I am experiencing such happy days that the Lord reserves for his holy saints, and no matter what happens to me, I do not dare to say that I have not known the joys, the purest joys of life.” Love for Lotte elevates Werther. He enjoys the happiness of communicating with Lotte and nature. He is happy to know that she and her brothers and sisters need him. Thoughts about the insignificance of society, which once overwhelmed him, do not at all darken his boundless happiness.

Only after the arrival of Albert, Lotte's fiancé, does Werther realize that he is losing Lotte forever. And by losing her, he loses EVERYTHING. Critical view
Werther's attitude to society does not prevent him from living, and only the collapse of love, a dead end
“soulful and loving” leads him to the end. Often in critical articles Lotte is called Werther's only joy. In my opinion, this is not entirely true.
Lotte, Werther’s love for her, managed to fill his entire soul, his entire world.
She became not his only joy, but ALL! And the more tragic is the fate awaiting him.

Werther understands that he must leave. He is unable to look at happiness
Albert and next to him feel his suffering even more acutely. Werther, with pain in his heart, decides to leave, hoping, if not for healing, then at least to drown out the pain. Having temporarily cast aside his conviction about the meaninglessness of any activity in such a society, he enters service at the embassy, ​​in the hope that at least the work will bring peace and tranquility to his soul. But bitter disappointment awaits him. Everything that he had previously observed from the sidelines and condemned - aristocratic arrogance, selfishness, veneration for rank - now surrounded him with a terrible wall.

After being insulted by Count von K., he leaves the service. An infected society cannot become a cure for the passion that torments it. (Can there be such a medicine at all? Especially for such a subtle and sensitive person as Werther.) Society, on the contrary, like a poison, poisons Werther’s soul. And here, perhaps, only here can society be accused of direct involvement in Werther’s suicide. We must not forget that Werther should not be considered as real person and identify with Goethe himself.
Werther is a literary figure, and therefore, in my opinion, it is impossible to talk about how his fate would have developed if he had seen the need for his activities for society. So, society is unable to give him either happiness or even peace of mind. Werther cannot extinguish the flame of love for Lotte. He still suffers, suffers immensely. That's when thoughts of suicide begin to come to him. There is no longer any light or joy in his letters to Wilhelm, they are becoming darker and darker. Werther writes: “Why should what constitutes a person’s happiness at the same time be a source of suffering?
My powerful and ardent love for living nature, which filled me with such bliss, turned the whole the world, has now become my torment and, like a cruel demon, haunts me on all paths...
It was as if a curtain had been lifted before me and the spectacle of endless life turned for me into the abyss of an ever-open grave.”

Reading about Werther’s suffering, one involuntarily asks the question: what is love for him? For Werther this is happiness. He wants to swim in it endlessly. But happiness is sometimes moments. And love is bliss, and pain, and torment, and suffering. He cannot withstand such mental stress.

Werther returns to Lotte. He himself realizes that he is moving with inexorable speed towards the abyss, but he sees no other way. Despite the doom of his situation, sometimes hope awakens in him: “Some changes are happening in me every minute. Sometimes life smiles on me again, alas! Just for a moment!...” Werther is becoming more and more like a madman. His meetings with Lotte bring him both happiness and inexorable pain: “As soon as I look into her black eyes, I feel better…” “How I suffer! Oh, were people really so unhappy before me?

The thought of suicide increasingly takes hold of Werther and he thinks more and more that this is the only way to get rid of his suffering. He himself, as it were, convinces himself of the necessity of this act. This is clearly evidenced by his letters to Wilhelm: “God knows how often I go to bed with the desire, and sometimes with the hope of never waking up, in the morning I open my eyes, see the sun and fall into melancholy.” December 8th.

“No, no, I’m not destined to come to my senses. At every step I encounter phenomena that throw me off balance. And today! Oh rock! O people!
December 1.

“I am a lost man! My mind is clouded, I haven’t been myself for a week now, my eyes are full of tears. I feel equally bad and equally good everywhere. I don't want anything, I don't ask for anything. It’s better for me to leave completely.” December 14.

Even before the last meeting with Lotte, Werther decides to commit suicide: “Oh, how I feel at peace that I have decided.”

In the last meeting with Lotte, Werther is firmly convinced that she loves him. And now nothing scares him anymore. He is full of hope, he is sure that there, in heaven, he and Lotte will unite and “will remain in each other’s arms forever in the face of the eternal.” So Werther dies because of his tragic love.

Reflections on suicide in Goethe's novel appear long before his hero comes up with the idea of ​​committing suicide. This happens when Werther catches the eye of Albert's pistols. In a conversation, Werther puts a pistol to his head as a joke, to which Albert reacts extremely negatively: “I can’t even imagine how a person can reach such madness as to shoot himself: the very thought disgusts me.” On this
Werther objects to him that one cannot condemn a suicide without knowing the reasons for such a decision. Albert says that nothing can justify suicide; here he strictly adheres to church morality, arguing that suicide
- this is an undoubted weakness: it is much easier to die than to endure martyrdom. Werther has a completely different opinion on this matter. He talks about the limit of human mental strength, comparing it with the limit of human nature: “A person can endure joy, grief, pain only to a certain extent, and when this degree is exceeded, he perishes. So the question is not whether he is strong or weak, but whether he can endure the extent of his suffering, regardless of mental or physical strength, and, in my opinion, it is just as wild to say: a coward who takes his own life is as well as to call him a coward a man dying of a malignant fever." Vereter transfers a person’s fatal illness and physical exhaustion to the spiritual sphere. He says
Albert: “Look at a person with his closed inner world: how impressions act on him, how obsessive thoughts take root in him, until an ever-growing passion deprives him of all self-control and leads him to death.” Werther believes that the decision to commit suicide can undoubtedly only be strong man, and he compares it with a people who rebelled and broke their chains.

How did Goethe himself feel about suicide? Of course, he treated his hero with great love and regret. (After all, in many ways
Werther - himself). In the preface, he calls on those who have fallen “to the same temptation to draw strength from its suffering.” He in no way condemns Werther's actions. But at the same time, in my opinion, he does not consider suicide to be the act of a brave person. Although he does not make any final verdicts in the novel, but rather presents two points of view, it can be assumed (based on his own fate) that his fate
Werther was one of the possible ones. But he chose life and creativity. After all
Goethe, in addition to happy and unhappy love, also knew the pain and joy of writing a line.

The motif of love in Goethe’s work never ceased, just like love itself. In addition, he kept returning to his young love stories. After all, he wrote “Faust” when he was no longer a young man, and Margarita was in many ways a reflection of Friederike Brion, whom he loved in his youth and whom he was afraid to marry at one time because he did not want to give up his freedom (hence the tragedy of Margarita in “ Faust"). So for him, love and youth were the “engine” of creativity. After all, when love ends, creativity ends.

It is no coincidence that poets shoot themselves after thirty. Lilya Brik wrote: “Volodya didn’t know how he could live when he wasn’t young.” (Of course, it’s not just about age, but about the youth of the soul and preserving the energy of love. Goethe himself last time fell in love, according to his biographers, at the age of 74 with a seventeen-year-old girl). Anyone who has run out of this energy of love and who is not a poet can commit suicide. Who doesn’t have the divine gift to pour it all out into lines?

LIST OF REFERENCES USED

Goethe “The Sorrows of Young Werther” BVL, Moscow, 1980

I. Mirimsky “On the German classics” Moscow, 1957, his article “The Sorrows of Young Werther” intro. article for Georg's novel
Lukács, 1939

V. Belinsky “On Goethe” Collected works. Volume 3 Goslitizdat, M., 1950

Wilmant "Goethe" GIHL., 1956

A. Pushkin PSS, vol. 7, Academy of Sciences of the USSR, M., 1949.

“The Sorrows of Young Werther” is a novel that defined a whole movement in literature - sentimentalism. Many creators, inspired by his success, also began to turn away from the strict tenets of classicism and the dry rationalism of the Enlightenment. Their attention was focused on the experiences of weak and rejected people, and not on heroes like Robinson Crusoe. Goethe himself did not abuse the feelings of his readers and went further than his discovery, exhausting the topic with just one work that became famous throughout the world.

The writer allowed himself to reflect personal experiences in literature. The history of the creation of the novel “The Sorrows of Young Werther” takes us into autobiographical motives. While practicing law in the office of the imperial court of Wetzlar, Goethe met Charlotte Buff, who became the prototype of Lotte S. in the work. The author creates the controversial Werther in order to get rid of the torment inspired by his platonic love for Charlotte. The suicide of the book's protagonist can also be explained by the death of Goethe's friend Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem, who suffered from a passion for married woman. It is interesting that Goethe himself got rid of suicidal thoughts, giving the opposite fate to his character, thereby curing himself with creativity.

I wrote Werther so as not to become Werther

The first edition of the novel was published in 1774, and Goethe became the idol of reading youth. The work brings literary success to the author, and he becomes famous throughout Europe. However, the scandalous fame soon served as the reason for a ban on the distribution of the book, which provoked a lot of people to commit suicide. The writer himself did not suspect that his creation would inspire readers to such a desperate act, but the fact remains that suicides became more frequent after the publication of the novel. The star-crossed lovers even imitated the way the character dealt with himself, which led American sociologist David Phillips to call this phenomenon the “Werther effect.” Before Goethe's novel literary heroes also took their own lives, but readers did not try to imitate them. The reason for the backlash was the psychology of suicide in the book. The novel contains a justification for this act, which is explained by the fact that in this way the young man will get rid of unbearable torment. In order to stop the wave of violence, the author had to write a preface in which he tries to convince the audience that the hero is wrong and his action is not a way out of a difficult situation.

What is this book about?

The plot of Goethe's novel is indecently simple, but the whole of Europe was reading this book. Main character Werther suffers from love for the married Charlotte S., and, realizing the hopelessness of his feelings, he considers it necessary to get rid of the torment by shooting himself. Readers cried over the fate of the unfortunate young man, sympathizing with the character as with themselves. Unhappy love is not the only thing that brought him difficult emotional experiences. He also suffers from discord with society, which also reminds him of his burgher origin. But it is the collapse of love that pushes him to suicide.

The main characters and their characteristics

1. Werther is a good draftsman, a poet, and he is endowed with great knowledge. Love for him is the triumph of life. At first, meetings with Charlotte bring him happiness for a while, but, realizing the hopelessness of his feelings, he perceives the world around him differently and falls into melancholy. The hero loves nature, the beauty and harmony in it, which is so lacking in modern society, which has lost its naturalness. Sometimes his hopes awaken, but over time, thoughts of suicide increasingly take possession of him. In the last meeting with Lotte, Werther convinces himself that they will be together in heaven.
2. No less interesting is the image of Charlotte S. in the work. Knowing about Werther's feelings, she sincerely sympathizes with him and advises him to find love and travel. She is reserved and calm, which leads the reader to think that the sensible Albert, her husband, is more suitable for her. Lotte is not indifferent to Werther, but she chooses duty. Female image it’s also feminine, because it’s too contradictory - you can feel a certain pretense on the part of the heroine and her secret desire to keep a fan for herself.

Genre and direction

The epistolary genre (a novel in letters) is a great way to demonstrate to the reader inner world Main character. Thus, we can feel all of Werther’s pain, literally look at the world through his eyes. It is no coincidence that the novel belongs to the direction of sentimentalism. Sentimentalism, which originated in the 18th century, did not last long as an era, but managed to play a significant role in history and art. The ability to freely express your feelings is the main advantage of the direction. Nature also plays an important role, reflecting the state of the characters.

Issues

• The theme of unrequited love is quite relevant in our time, although now, of course, it is difficult to imagine that, reading “The Sorrows of Young Werther,” we will cry over this book, as Goethe’s contemporaries did. The hero seems to be made of tears, now you even want to squeeze him out like a rag, slap him in the face and say: “You’re a man!” Pull yourself together!” - but in the era of sentimentalism, readers shared his grief and suffered with him. The problem of unhappy love certainly comes to the fore in the work, and Werther proves this without hiding his emotions.
• The problem of choosing between duty and feeling also takes place in the novel, because it would be wrong to say that Lotte does not consider Werther as a man. She has tender feelings for him, would like to consider him a brother, but prefers loyalty to Albert. It is not at all surprising that the death of Lott’s friend and Albert himself are taking it hard.
• The author also raises the problem of loneliness. In the novel, nature is idealized in comparison with civilization, so Werther is lonely in a false, absurd and insignificant society that cannot be compared with the nature of the world around him. Of course, maybe the hero puts forward too high demands on reality, but class prejudices in it are too strong, so it’s not easy for a person of low origin.

The meaning of the novel

By putting his experiences on paper, Goethe saved himself from suicide, although he admitted that he was afraid to re-read own work so as not to fall into that terrible blues again. Therefore, the idea of ​​the novel “The Sorrows of Young Werther” is, first of all, important for the writer himself. For the reader, of course, it will be important to understand that Werther’s exit is not an option, and there is no need to follow the example of the protagonist. However, we still have something to learn from a sentimental character - sincerity. He is true to his feelings and pure in love.

Interesting? Save it on your wall!

Current page: 1 (book has 9 pages in total)

Johann Goethe
The Sorrows of Young Werther

© Translation by N. Kasatkina. Heirs, 2014

© Notes. N. Vilmont. Heirs, 2014

All rights reserved. No part of the electronic version of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including posting on the Internet or corporate networks, for private or public use without the written permission of the copyright owner.

© Electronic version books prepared by liters company

* * *

I have carefully collected everything that I managed to find out about the history of poor Werther, I offer it to your attention and I think that you will be grateful to me for it. You will be imbued with love and respect for his mind and heart and shed tears over his fate.

And you, poor fellow, who have fallen under the same temptation, draw strength from his suffering, and let this book be your friend if, by the will of fate or through your own fault, you do not find a friend closer to you.

Book one

May 4, 1771

How happy I am that I left! Priceless friend, what is the human heart? I love you so much, we were inseparable, and now we have separated, and I am happy! I know you will forgive me for this. After all, all my other attachments seemed to be deliberately created in order to disturb my soul. Poor Leonora! And yet I have nothing to do with it! Is it my fault that passion grew in the heart of the poor girl while I was entertained by the wayward charms of her sister! And yet, am I completely innocent here? Did I not feed her passion? Wasn’t I pleased with such sincere expressions of feelings, at which we often laughed, although there was nothing funny in them, did I... Oh, dare a person judge himself! But I will try to improve, I promise you, my dear friend, that I will try, and I will not, as usual, torment myself because of every minor trouble that fate presents to us; I will enjoy the present, and let the past remain the past. Of course, you are right, my dear, people - who knows why they were created this way - people would suffer much less if they did not so diligently develop the power of imagination in themselves, if they did not endlessly remember past troubles, but would live harmless present.

Do not refuse the courtesy to inform my mother that I faithfully fulfilled her instructions and will soon write to her about it. I visited my aunt, and she turned out to be not at all the vixen that we portray her as. She is a cheerful woman of sanguine disposition and the kindest soul. I explained to her my mother’s grievances regarding the delay in our share of the inheritance; my aunt gave me her reasons and arguments and named the conditions under which she agrees to give out everything and even more than what we claim. However, I don’t want to expand on this now; tell your mother that everything will be alright. I, my dear, have once again become convinced in this trifling matter that omissions and deep-rooted prejudices bring more turmoil into the world than deceit and malice. In any case, the latter are much less common.

In general, I have a great life here. Loneliness is an excellent medicine for my soul in this paradise, and the young season generously warms my heart, which is often cold in our world. Every tree, every bush blooms in lush colors, and you want to be a cockchafer to swim in the sea of ​​fragrances and be saturated with them.

The city itself is not very attractive, but the nature all around is incredibly beautiful. This prompted the late Count von M. to lay out a garden on one of the hills, located in picturesque disorder and forming charming valleys. The garden is quite simple, and from the very first steps it is clear that it was not planned by a learned gardener, but by a sensitive person who sought the joys of solitude. More than once I have mourned the deceased, sitting in a dilapidated gazebo - his, and now my favorite corner. Soon I will become the complete owner of this garden; The gardener managed to become attached to me in a few days, and he won’t have to regret it.

May 10

My soul is illuminated with an unearthly joy, like these wonderful spring mornings, which I enjoy with my whole heart. I am completely alone and blissful in this land, as if created for people like me. I am so happy, my friend, so intoxicated by the feeling of peace, that my art suffers from it. I could not have made a single stroke, and I have never been such a great artist as in these moments. When steam rises from my sweet valley and the midday sun stands over the impenetrable thicket of the dark forest and only a rare ray slips into its holy of holies, and I lie in the tall grass by a fast stream and, clinging to the ground, I see thousands of all kinds of blades of grass and feel how close in my heart there is a tiny little world that scurries between the stems, I observe these innumerable, incomprehensible varieties of worms and midges and I feel the closeness of the Almighty, who created us in his own image, the spirit of the all-loving, who destined us to soar in eternal bliss, when my gaze is clouded and everything around me and the sky above me are imprinted in my soul, like the image of a beloved - then, dear friend, I am often tormented by the thought: “Ah! How to express, how to breathe into a drawing what lives so fully, so reverently in me, to capture the reflection of my soul, as my soul is a reflection of the eternal God! My friend... But no! I am unable to do this; the greatness of these phenomena overwhelms me.

12 May

I don’t know whether deceptive spirits inhabit these places, or whether my own ardent imagination turns everything around into paradise. Now there is a spring outside the town, and to this spring I am chained by magic spells, like Melusina 1
Melusina– half-woman, half-fish, character from French fairy tale, which developed back in the Middle Ages and migrated from France to Germany and the Scandinavian countries. The tale of Melusine is mentioned by Goethe in Poetry and Truth. Later he called “New Melusine” one of the inserted short stories in “The Years of Wanderings of Wilhelm Meister.”

And her sisters. Going down the hill, you come straight to deep cave, where twenty steps lead, and there below a transparent spring emerges from a marble rock. At the top there is a low fence enclosing the pond, a grove of tall trees all around, cool, shady twilight - there is something alluring and mysterious in all this. Every day I sit there for at least an hour. And city girls come there to get water - a simple and necessary thing; the king’s daughters did not disdain it in the old days.

Sitting there, I vividly imagine patriarchal life 2
...I vividly imagined patriarchal life etc. - This refers to the biblical legend about the matchmaking of great-grandfather Isaac (Book of Genesis, Chapter 24).

: I seem to see with my own eyes how all of them, our forefathers, met and wooed their wives at the well and how beneficent spirits hovered around springs and wells. Only those who have not had the opportunity to enjoy the coolness of a spring after a tiring walk on a hot summer day will not understand me!

may 13

You are asking if you should send me my books. Dear friend, for God's sake, save me from them! I no longer want to be guided, encouraged, inspired, my heart is agitated enough on its own: I need a lullaby, and there is no other like my Homer. Often I try to lull my rebellious blood; No wonder you have never met anything more changeable, more fickle than my heart! Dear friend, do I have to convince you of this, when so many times you have had to endure the transitions of my mood from despondency to unbridled dreams, from tender sadness to destructive ardor! That is why I cherish my poor heart like a sick child; nothing is denied to it. Don't reveal this! There will be people who will reproach me for this.

May 15

The ordinary people of our town already know and love me, especially the children. I made a sad discovery. At first, when I approached them and asked them kindly about this and that, many thought that I wanted to laugh at them, and rather rudely brushed me off. But I did not lose heart, I only felt even more vividly how true one of my old observations was: people with a certain position in the world will always alienate the common people, as if afraid to humiliate themselves by being close to them; and there are also such frivolous and evil mischievous people who, for the sake of appearance, condescend to the poor people, in order to only show off more and more in front of them.

I know very well that we are unequal and cannot be equal; However, I maintain that the one who considers it necessary to shun the so-called mob for fear of losing his dignity deserves no less blasphemy than a coward who hides from the enemy for fear of being defeated.

Recently I came to the source and saw how a young maid put a full jug on the bottom step, and she looked around to see if some friend was coming to help her lift the jug onto her head. I went downstairs and looked at her.

- Can I help you, girl? – I asked.

She blushed all over.

- What are you talking about, sir! – she objected.

- Don't stand on ceremony!

She straightened the circle on her head, and I helped her. She thanked him and went up the stairs.

May 17

I made a lot of acquaintances, but I have not yet found a society of my own. I myself don’t understand what is attractive about me to people: many people like me, I become dear to many, and I feel sorry when our paths diverge. If you ask what people are like here, I will have to answer: “Like everywhere else!” The destiny of the human race is the same everywhere! For the most part, people work all day long just to get by, and if they have a little freedom left, they are so afraid of it that they look for some way to get rid of it. This is the purpose of man!

However, the people here are very nice: it is extremely useful for me to forget myself sometimes, together with others to enjoy the joys given to people, to joke simply and sincerely at the abundantly furnished table, by the way, to organize skating, dancing and the like; Just don’t remember at the same time that there are other, uselessly dying, forces hidden within me, which I am forced to carefully hide. Alas, how painfully this makes my heart ache! But what can you do! To be misunderstood is our lot.

Oh, why is the friend of my youth gone! Why was I destined to recognize her! I could have said, “You fool! You are striving for something that you cannot find on earth!” But I had her, because I felt what a heart she had, what a big soul; with her I myself seemed greater than I was, because I was everything that I could be. Good God! All the powers of my soul were in action, and in front of her, in front of my friend, I fully revealed the wonderful ability of my heart to commune with nature. Our meetings gave rise to a continuous exchange of the subtlest sensations, the sharpest thoughts, so much so that any of their shades, any jokes bore the stamp of genius. And now! Alas, she was years older than me and went to her grave earlier. I will never forget her, never forget her bright mind and angelic forgiveness!

The other day I met with a certain F., a sociable young man of surprisingly pleasant appearance. He just left the university, and although he does not consider himself a sage, he still thinks that he knows more than others. True, it is clear from everything that he studied diligently: one way or another, he has a decent education. Having heard that I draw a lot and speak Greek (two unusual phenomena in these places), he hastened to introduce himself to me and flaunted a lot of knowledge from Batte to Wood, from Peel to Winckelmann and assured me that he had read from Sulzer’s 3
Butte Charles (1713–1780) – French esthetician, author of “Discourses on Fine Literature and Its Foundations” (1747, 1750); Wood Robert (1716–1771) – Scottish archaeologist. The German translation of his “Essay on the Original Talent and Creativity of Homer,” made by Michaelis, was published anonymously in Frankfurt in 1773. Goethe reviewed it in the journal “Frankfurt Scientific Notes” for 1773; De Pille Roger (1635–1709) – French artist and art critic; Winkelmann Johann Joachim (1717–1768) – archaeologist, art critic; His main work is “History of Ancient Art.” Goethe wrote an article about him “Winckelmann” (1805); Sulzer Johann Georg (1720–1779) – German esthetician; the first part of it " General theory Fine Arts" was published in 1771. Goethe wrote a critical article about it in the same Frankfurt magazine with all the incontinence of a "stormy genius." Subsequently, he spoke more favorably of Sulzer; Heine Christian Gottlieb (1729–1812) - famous Göttingen philologist, historian ancient literature.

“Theories” throughout the first part to the end and that he has Heine’s manuscript on the study of antiquity. I took it all on faith.

I met another excellent, simple and warm-hearted person, the princely chief minister. They say your soul rejoices when you see him with his children, and he has nine of them; especially praise him eldest daughter. He invited me and I will visit him soon. He lives an hour and a half away from here in a princely hunting house, where he received permission to move after the death of his wife, because it was too difficult for him to stay in the city in a government apartment.

In addition, I have met several originalistic fools in whom everything is unbearable, and most unbearable of all is their friendly outpourings.

Goodbye! You will like the letter for its purely narrative character.

22nd of May

It has already seemed to many that human life is just a dream, and this feeling does not leave me either. I am speechless, Wilhelm, when I observe how narrowly the creative and cognitive powers of man are limited. 4
...when I observe how narrow the limits are human activity, etc. - In this letter dated May 22, Werther for the first time expresses the idea of ​​suicide, of voluntarily leaving these narrow limits that limit a person.

When I see that all activity comes down to satisfying needs, which in turn have only one goal - to prolong our miserable existence, and complacency in other scientific issues is just the powerless humility of dreamers who paint the walls of their prison with bright figures and attractive views. I go inside and open the whole world! But also more likely in forebodings and vague lusts than in living, full-blooded images. And then everything blurs before my eyes, and I live, as if in a dream, smiling at the world.

All the most learned school and home teachers agree that children do not know why they want something; but that adults, no better than children, grope the earth and also do not know where they came from and where they are going, just as they do not see a definite purpose in their actions, and that they are also controlled with the help of cookies, cakes and rods - no one can agree with this doesn’t want to agree, but in my opinion, this is quite obvious.

I hasten to confess to you, remembering your views, that I consider lucky those who live without thinking, like children, babysit their doll, dress and undress it and touchingly walk around the closet where mom has locked the cake, and when she gets to the sweet thing, she gobbles it up on both cheeks and shouts: “More!” Happy creatures! Life is also good for those who give magnificent names to their insignificant occupations and even their passions and present them to the human race as grandiose feats in the name of its benefit and prosperity.

Bless the one who can be like that! But if anyone in his humility understands what the price of all this is, who sees how diligently every prosperous tradesman trims his garden into paradise and how patiently even the unfortunate, bending under the burden, trudges his way and everyone equally longs to see the light of our the sun - whoever understands all this is silent and builds his own world within himself and is happy just because he is a man. And also because, despite all his helplessness, in his soul he retains a sweet feeling of freedom and the consciousness that he can break out of this prison whenever he wishes.

26 of May

You have long known my habit of settling down somewhere, finding shelter in a secluded corner and settling down there, being content with little. I have chosen such a place for myself here too.

About an hour from the city there is a village called Valheim 5
Let the reader not bother to look for the places mentioned here; we had to change the original names. (Author's note.)

It is very picturesquely spread out along the hillside, and when you walk towards the village from the top along a walking path, a view of the entire valley opens up before your eyes. The old woman, the owner of the tavern, helpful and efficient, despite her years, serves wine, beer, coffee; and what is most pleasant is that two linden trees with their spreading branches completely cover a small church square, surrounded on all sides by peasant houses, barns and courtyards. I have rarely seen a more comfortable, secluded place: they bring me a table and chair from the tavern, and I sit there, drink coffee and read Homer.

The first time I accidentally found myself under the linden trees on a clear afternoon, the square was completely deserted. Everyone was working in the field, only a boy of about four years old was sitting on the ground and with both hands he was pressing to his chest another, six-month-old child who was sitting on his lap, so that the older one seemed to serve as a chair for the baby, and although his black eyes sparkled very provocatively from side to side, he sat he doesn't move.

I was amused by this spectacle: I sat down on the plow opposite them, and with the greatest pleasure I captured this touching scene. I also drew a nearby fence, a barn gate, several broken wheels, everything as it was actually located, and after working for an hour, I saw that I had a harmonious and very interesting drawing, to which I added absolutely nothing of my own. This strengthened my intention to never deviate from nature in any way. She alone is inexhaustibly rich, she alone improves great artist. Much can be said in favor of established rules, about the same thing that is said in praise public order. A person brought up on the rules will never create anything tasteless and worthless, just as a person who follows the laws and orders of the community will never be an obnoxious neighbor or an inveterate villain. But no matter what they tell me, all sorts of rules kill the feeling of nature and the ability to truthfully depict it! You say: “This is too harsh! Strict rules only curb, prune wild shoots, etc.”

Can I give you a comparison, dear friend? Here the situation is the same as with love. Imagine a young man who is attached to a girl with all his heart, spends whole days next to her, wastes all his strength, all his fortune, in order to prove to her every moment how selflessly devoted he is to her. And suddenly a certain philistine, an official holding a prominent position, appears and says to the lover: “Dear young man! It is human nature to love, but we must love like a human being! Know how to manage your time: devote your assigned hours to work, and your leisure hours to your beloved girl. Calculate your fortune, and with what remains of your immediate needs, you are not forbidden to give her gifts, just not often, but, say, for her birthday, name day, etc.” If the young man obeys, he will become an efficient young man, and I will be the first to recommend that any sovereign appoint him to the college, but then his love will come to an end, and if he is an artist, then his art will end. My friends! Why does the spring of genius so rarely flow, why does it so rarely overflow like a torrent, shaking your confused souls? My dear friends, because on both banks live sensible gentlemen whose gazebos, vegetable gardens and flower beds with tulips would be washed away without a trace, and therefore they manage to prevent danger in advance with the help of diversion channels and dams.

May 27

I see that I got carried away with comparisons, got lost in recitation and forgot to tell you what happened next to the kids. I sat on the plow for two hours, immersed in creative thoughts, quite incoherently set out in my letter yesterday. Suddenly, at dusk, a young woman appears with a basket on her hand, hurries to the children, who have not moved the whole time, and already from afar shouts: “Well done, Philips!” She wished me good evening, I thanked her, stood up, came closer and asked if these were her children. She answered in the affirmative, gave the eldest a piece of a bun, and took the baby in her arms and kissed him with maternal tenderness. “I told Phillips to hold the baby, and I went with the eldest to the city to buy white bread, sugar and a clay bowl for porridge. (All this could be seen in the basket from which the lid had fallen.) I need to cook Hans (that was the little one’s name) soup for dinner; and my eldest, the spoiled one, argued with Philips yesterday over scrapings of porridge and broke the bowl.” I asked where the eldest was, and before she had time to answer that he was chasing geese in the meadow, he came skipping and brought his brother a walnut twig. I continued to question the woman and learned that she was the daughter of a teacher and that her husband had gone to Switzerland to receive an inheritance after a deceased relative. “They wanted to bypass him,” she explained, “they didn’t even answer his letters, so he went on his own. If only nothing bad happened to him! We haven’t heard anything about him.” I barely got rid of her, gave each of the boys a kreuzer, gave another kreuzer to the mother so that she could bring the little one a roll for the soup from the city, and with that we parted.

Believe me, priceless friend, when my feelings rush out, their excitement is best pacified by the example of such a being who obediently wanders through the tight circle of his existence, interrupts from day to day, watches the leaves fall, and sees in this only one thing - that winter will come soon.

From that day on, I began to visit the village often. The children are completely used to me; when I drink coffee, they get sugar, at dinner I give them bread and butter and curdled milk. On Sunday they always receive a kreuzer, and if I am not there after mass, the owner of the tavern is ordered to give them coins once and for all. Children trustingly tell me all sorts of things. What especially amuses me about them is the play of passions, the simple-minded persistence of desires when other village children join them. It took me a lot of work to convince their mother that they were not bothering me.

May 30

Everything that I recently said about painting can, without a doubt, be applied to poetry; here it is important to recognize what is perfect and find the courage to express it in words - these few have said a lot. Today I observed a scene that simply needs to be described to create the most wonderful idyll in the world.

Oh, what does poetry, stage, idyll have to do with it? Is it really impossible to connect with natural phenomena without labels?

If, after such a preface, you expect something sublime and refined, you will again be cruelly deceived; Just a peasant boy made such a strong impression on me. As always, I will tell a bad story, and you, as always, will find that I am getting carried away. The birthplace of these miracles is Valheim again, still the same Valheim.

The whole crowd gathered to drink coffee under the linden trees. I didn’t like it, and I made a plausible excuse and moved away from it. A peasant guy came out of a nearby house and began to repair the same plow that I had copied the other day. I liked the look of the young man, and I started talking to him, asking him about his life; We soon met and, as always happens with this kind of people, we even became friends. He told me that he was an employee of a widow and she treated him very well. He talked so much about her and praised her so much that I immediately realized that he was devoted to her body and soul. According to him, she is no longer a young woman, her first husband treated her badly, and she does not want to get married again; from his story it was absolutely clear that there was no one in the world more beautiful than her, dearer to him, that he only dreams of becoming her chosen one and making her forget the misdeeds of her first husband, but I would have to repeat everything word for word to give you an idea of the purity of feeling, the love and devotion of this person. Moreover, I would need a gift greatest poet to capture the expressiveness of his gestures, the sonority of his voice, and the hidden fire in his eyes. No, no words can describe the tenderness that breathed through his entire being: no matter what I say, it will all come out rude and awkward. What especially touched me about him was his fear that I would misinterpret their relationship and doubt her good character. Only in the recesses of my soul can I again feel how touchingly he spoke about her posture, about her body, devoid of youthful charm, but powerfully attractive and captivating for him. In my life I have never seen, nor even imagined, an unrelenting desire, a fiery passionate attraction in such untouched purity.

Don’t be angry if I confess to you that the memory of such sincerity and spontaneity of feelings shakes me to the depths of my soul and the image of this faithful and tender love It haunts me everywhere and I myself seem to be inflamed by it, I languish and burn.

I’ll try to see this woman as soon as possible, however, on second thought, it’s probably better to refrain from doing so. It is better to see her through the eyes of a lover; Perhaps, to my own eyes, she will appear completely different from what is pictured to me now, but why spoil a beautiful vision?

100 banned books: the censorship history of world literature. Book 1 Souwa Don B

The Sorrows of Young Werther

The Sorrows of Young Werther

Year and place of first publication: 1774, 1787, Germany

Literary form: novel

The Sorrows of Young Werther is the first novel by the great German poet, playwright and novelist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The success of this epistolary novel about unrequited love and suicide young man was immediate and deafening. The twenty-five-year-old author became famous. Published in Germany in 1774 and then translated into major European languages, the novel became one of the main literary sensations of the 18th century. The novel's romantic sensibility struck a chord with the youth of Europe, whose admiration for the book bordered on cultishness.

The novel is epistolary: for a year and a half - from May 1771 to December 1772 - a young man named Werther sends letters to his friend Wilhelm. In Book One, Werther writes to a friend about an idyllic spring and summer in the village of Valheim. He talks about the pleasure of contemplating the beauty of the surrounding nature, describes his peaceful existence in a secluded house surrounded by a garden, and the joy of communicating with the villagers.

“I am experiencing such happy days as the Lord reserves for his holy saints...” (hereinafter - translated by N. Kasatkina), he writes on June 21. At the ball he meets a girl named Charlotte (Lotte), the charming daughter of a judge. Although he knows that she is engaged to Albert, who has left, Werther passionately, to the point of madness and obsession, falls in love with Lotte. He visits the girl every day and is jealous of her other acquaintances. At the end of July, Albert returns, and the happy idyll with Lotte should end.

He spends six agonizing weeks in the company of the couple, suffering from unrequited and fruitless passion. In August, he writes: “My powerful and ardent love for living nature, which filled me with such bliss, turning the entire world around me into paradise, has now become my torment and, like a cruel demon, haunts me on all paths.” At the beginning of September he leaves to relieve tension.

The second book tells about the last thirteen months of Werther's life. He becomes the secretary of a certain ambassador who is unpleasant to him. He responds with boredom to the ambitious thoughts of the “vile people” with whom he has to communicate, and he is irritated by the dependence of his position. When he learns that Lotte and Albert have gotten married, he leaves his post and accompanies the prince to his country estates as a companion, but this does not bring him any relief. Returning to Valheim, he begins dating Lotte and Albert again. His letters become increasingly sad: he writes about the feeling of emptiness, about his desire to fall asleep and never wake up again.

Last letter Werther dated December 6, 1772. Next, the nameless publisher undertakes to tell about last weeks Werther's life, citing surviving letters and notes. Werther is depressed, exhausted and anxious. Lotte advises him to visit her less often. One evening, in Albert's absence, Werther comes to Lotte's house. He embraces her passionately, but Lotte runs away in fear and locks herself in her room. The next day, Werther sends his servant to Albert, asking him to lend him a pair of pistols for a walk in the mountains. Having written Farewell letter Lotte: “Only a glorious few are given the opportunity to shed their blood for their loved ones and through their death to breathe renewed, hundredfold life into their friends...” Werther shot himself in the head. He died the next day without regaining consciousness. The village workers buried him under the canopy of trees in Valheim, "with none of the clergy accompanying him."

Goethe once remarked regarding the autobiographical nature of most of his works that all his works are “parts of a great confession.” The Sorrows of Young Werther was inspired by two events in Goethe's life. Werther's relationship with Lotte is based on the writer's unhappy infatuation with Charlotte Buff, the fiancée of his friend I. K. Kästner. Suffering from depression due to his unfulfilled feelings for Charlotte, Goethe was deeply shocked by the suicide of Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem, his Wetzlar friend and secretary to the Brunswick ambassador. Offended by aristocratic society, in love with the wife of a colleague, Jerusalem shot himself.

In his memoirs - “From my life. Poetry and truth" - Goethe wrote: "Suddenly I heard about the death of Jerusalem, and immediately after the first news came the most accurate and detailed description fatal event. At that very moment, “Werther’s” plan matured; the constituent parts of the whole rushed from all sides to merge into a dense mass. So the water in the vessel, already close to the freezing point, turns into strong ice at the slightest shock” (translated by N. Man). Goethe said that he breathed into this novel a passion that blurs the distinction between fiction and reality.

CENSORSHIP HISTORY

The publication of The Sorrows of Young Werther in 1774 was greeted with enthusiasm by readers throughout Europe. Thomas Mann, the 20th-century German writer whose novel “Lotte in Weimar” is dedicated to the central event of “The Sorrows of Young Werther,” wrote: “The whole wealth of [Goethe’s] talent was reflected in Werther... The nervous sensitivity of this little book, pushed to the limit... caused a storm admiration and, having overcome all boundaries, miraculously intoxicated the whole world.” The novel became “a spark that fell into a barrel of gunpowder and awakened the forces that were waiting for it.”

Proclaiming the right to emotions, the book expressed the creed of youth - a protest against the rationalism and moralizing of the older generation. Goethe spoke for an entire generation. The novel became a great embodiment of the spirit of the age of sensitivity and the first experience of literature, which would later be called confessional.

The news that Goethe's story is based on real events, in particular, the suicide of young Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem, played into the hands of the “Werther fever” that swept the continent and continued to rage for several decades after the publication of the novel. There have been sequels, parodies, imitations, operas, plays, songs and poems based on this story. Came into fashion Eau de Toilette"Werther", ladies preferred jewelry and fans in the spirit of the novel. And the men sported blue tailcoats and yellow Werther-style vests. In China, figurines of Werther and Lotte were made from famous porcelain for export. Over twelve years, twenty pirated editions of the novel were published in Germany. By the end of the century, there were twenty-six different editions of translations of the novel from French in England. Napoleon admitted to Goethe that he had re-read his book seven times. Travelers from all over Europe made pilgrimages to the grave of Charles Wilhelm of Jerusalem, where they made speeches and laid flowers. In the 19th century, the grave was included in English guidebooks.

Werther's suicide caused a wave of imitations among young men and women in Germany and France: volumes of Goethe were found in the pockets of young suicides. It is difficult to say whether suicides would have happened if Goethe had not written a novel. However, critics attacked the writer with accusations of corrupting influence and encouraging morbid sensitivity. The clergy spoke out against the novel in sermons. The Leipzig Faculty of Theology called for the book to be banned on the grounds that it advocated suicide. In 1776, the translation of the book was banned in Denmark as being contrary to Lutheran doctrine, recognized by the crown as the state religion.

In his memoirs, Goethe wrote about his novel: “This thing, more than any other, gave me the opportunity to escape from the raging elements... capriciously and menacingly throwing me in one direction or the other. I felt just like after confession: joyful, free, given the right to a new life. […] But if I, having transformed reality into poetry, now felt free and enlightened, at this time my friends, on the contrary, mistakenly believed that poetry should be transformed into reality, act out such a romance in life and, perhaps, shoot themselves. So, what at first was the delusion of a few, later became widespread, and this little book, so useful for me, earned the reputation of being extremely harmful” (translated by N. Man).

In 1783–1787 Goethe revised the book. In the final version of 1787, he added material emphasizing Werther's mental disorder to discourage readers from following his example of suicide. The appeal to the readers that precedes the first book reads: “And you, poor fellow, who has succumbed to the same temptation, draw strength from his suffering, and let this book be your friend if, by the will of fate or through your own fault, you do not find a closer friend.” .

After 163 years, the novel “The Sorrows of Young Werther” was again subjected to censorship persecution. In 1939, the government of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco ordered libraries to be cleared of the works of “disgraceful writers like Goethe.”