Goethe's "The Sorrows of Young Werther"

After reading Faust, it was difficult to read The Sorrows of Young Werther with a fresh mind. 

 

Although I was unfamiliar with the story before reading it, I coincidentally listened to an interview with Ryan Beil who recently starred as Young Werther in a local performance of the play, and that spoiled the tragic ending.

 

It's difficult to miss the overwhelming foreshadowing of Werther's impending self-afflicted demise; he's overly passionate, he considers suicide and mentions it in passing multiple times, he raises a pistol and puts it against his brow in a "playful" manner.  The eventual 'tragic' ending comes at no surprise.

 

But still.  This would never have been published today.  Suicide is out of vogue in contemporary art; the Western world sees suicide as selfish and damning at worse, sad at best. Look back only a few decades, and suicide attempts were a common plot element indicating that a protagonist had "reached the end of their rope".  Suicide is a main plot point in 1946's "It's a Wonderful Life", 1954's "Sabrina", even 1968's "The Love Bug" as Herbie tries to drive himself off a bridge when Dean Jones doesn't want to be his driver. 

 

Suicide has not fallen out of the purview of the media however; in November "dozens of teens and pre-teens" formed a suicide pact just a few blocks from my home, and the holiday season was rife with news articles about the rising suicide rate among active service people in the US military.  We recognise and honour self-sacrifice for a cause or in order to protect others.  We also see the grace and dignity in physician assisted-suicide when faced with the end of a debilitating illness.  There's less acceptance for suicide due to the intensity of emotional pain experienced by Werther.

 

I need to think more on this, but it's worth noting that this tragic ending may have been received very differently even a few decades ago, let alone centuries.  

 

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The other (much more subtle) thing that really jumped out at me, was the undercurrent of Werther's pedophilia.  We see him drawn to innocence again and again, which is underlined in his attraction to  Lotte's association with children.

 

Eventually Lotte must intervene as he impulsively grabs a young child and kisses her.  Lotte whisks the child away and the child cleans her face as fervently as Lady Macbeth washes her hands. This is the turning point in Lotte and Werther's relationship, the turning point in the book, the plot point that happens directly before Werther's long discussion about psychic pain in his August 16th letter as his dreams begin to unravel.

 

Creepy.

 

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"I am also disturbed to find he values my mind and abilities more highly than my heart, which is my only souce of pride, and indeed of everythhing, all my strength and happiness and misery.  The things I know, anyone can know, but my heart is mine and mine alone."  - Werther, 9th of May