![]() ![]() This literary legend first began with the famous book on Germany by the Romantic writer, Madame de Stael. Indeed, both in bourgeois literary history and vulgar sociology, it is a commonplace that the Enlightenment, on the one hand, and “Storm and Stress” – and especially Werther – on the other, are exclusively opposed to one another. The German Enlightenment? That startles the reader who has been “schooled” in the literary legends of bourgeois historiography and the vulgar sociology which depends upon them. But the exceptionally extensive and profound effect of Werther on the entire world clearly brought to light the leading role of the German Enlightenment. One need only mention Winckelmann, Lessing and Goethe’s Götz von Berlichingen. To be sure, German literature had already produced works of significance for world literature before Werther. The brief but exceptionally significant philosophical and literary hegemony of Germany, which temporarily relieved France of ideological leadership in these areas, became clearly evident for the first time with the worldwide success of Werther. The year in which Werther appeared, 1774, is an important date, not only for the history of German literature, but also for world literature. Transcribed: Harrison Fluss for, February 2008, corrected by Christos Kefalis, 2020. Source: Goethe and His Age Merlin Press 1968 Georg Lukács 1936 The Sorrows of Young Werther In line with Charlie Chaplin’s dictum so many years later: “Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot”.The Sorrows of Young Werther by Georg Lukacs 1936 Goethe’s responses perhaps proves that he was the master not just of tragedy, nor of comedy, but the amalgamation of the two. Goethe penned other attacks, including even giving Nicolai a small cameo in Faust as a "Proktophantasmist" - a neologism by Goethe which combines the Greek word for anus ( proktus) with phantom (Nicolai began to be plagued by ghostly apparitions, and cured himself by applying leeches on his backside). In 1797 he published a poem that depicts Nicolai as a stork, unable to eat the food offered to him, unable to comprehend abstract thought. | If only he’d learned to shit like this | He’d be alive today!” Goethe’s friend, Schiller, also hits back. In the poem, Nicolai stands next to Werther’s grave and defecates on it: “He sat down, as it wouldn’t keep | On the grave, and left his little heap | Benignly his muck he contemplated | Went his ways much alleviated | And musing to himself did say: | “Poor fellow! A life spent amiss! | I’m sorry he had passed away. In 1775, the same year as Nicolai’s takedown, Goethe composed a small poem in an attempt to ridicule his parodist. This literary affair does not end here though. The orchard was Werther’s responsibility, and the children planted flowerbeds full of tulips and fair anemones. For in the cabbage fields Lotte grew vegetables and roots that filled their respectable country table. Here he sat himself down and once again relished the simple harmless delight of a man who serves at table a head of cabbage that he himself has grown, and in that same moment enjoys not only the cabbage itself, but also all the good days, the fine morning on which he planted it, the beautiful evenings on which he watered it and took pleasure in its continued growth, all at once. It had only a tiny house, but there were fertile fields and a garden surrounding the house in which, beneath tall trees, there was a well, cut twenty steps deep into the rock, just as Werther loved it. Werther was now able to give up his onerous work, and so he purchased a little smallholding that lay on the side of a hill, dotted with high elms and ancient oaks. ※Īfter about sixteen years, their hard work and thriftiness had made them prosperous. ![]() ![]() Subsequently the term Werther-Effekt has emerged to refer more generally to the phenomenon of copycat suicides. A moral panic ensued and the book took on a pathological quality: some seeing Goethe's tale not just as a well-crafted expression of Weltschmerz (an almost untranslatable pain or weariness with the world what Søren Kierkegaard called “sickness until death”) but also its cause. Within the first few weeks of publication, numerous incidents of suicide were recorded, some of the departed found reportedly clutching copies of the book. They'd dress in his garb of yellow trousers and blue jacket, wander through forests in melancholic fashion, and even sadly go so far as to, like Werther, end their own lives. In addition to the emergence of a range of Werther merchandise - prints, porcelain, and even perfume - young men began to imitate Werther, their new hero of youthful disaffection and nihilistic abandon. Shortly after its release so-called "Werther Fever" broke out over Europe. Goethe’s short epistolary tale of teenage angst and suicide The Sorrows of Young Werther caused shockwaves upon its publication in 1774.
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