The Sorrows of Young Werther, Goethe

Werther is a young man from a good family, educated and cultured, about to leave for a stay in the countryside. Yet this seemingly idyllic locus amoenus is like dew that gilds dark forests: Werther’s nature is in fact sensitive, impulsive, and deeply restless. An impossible love, a growing intolerance for a monotonous life, and flight as a search for freedom all emerge through an intense epistolary exchange, in which Werther confesses and cries out a universal pain. But who is Werther, really? Is he a self-portrait of a young Johann Wolfgang von Goethe? The voice of a European age exhausted by Restoration? A wandering figure lost in a sea of fog?

Considered the greatest expression of the German Sturm und Drang, The Sorrows of Young Werther is certainly the story of a tormented protagonist, but above all the manifesto of heroic Romantic titanism. It does not merely involve the reader: it tears the reader away from reality and drags them into a realm of the Absolute, where Werther, Goethe, Nature, God, Love, and the Self dismantle all certainties through turbulent passions, irreconcilable conflicts, and repressed irrationality.

If you love Werther, you will love a young Goethe; if you hate him, you will become what Goethe himself despised.

edited: Emilia S.