In the Library
The Sorrows of Young Werther
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1774
- Form
- Form Novel
- Difficulty
- Difficulty Accessible
- Reading time
- Reading time 3 hours
- Translated by
- Translated by R.D. Boylan (1854)
- Original
- Original de
- Chapters
- Chapters 14
- Length
- Length 42k words
£1.99
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I have possessed that heart, that noble soul, in whose presence I seemed to be more than I really was.
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About the book
She is cutting bread for a crowd of younger brothers and sisters the first time Werther sees her, and that is all it takes: he loves Charlotte instantly, completely, hopelessly, for she is already promised to a steady and decent man named Albert. The whole novel is the letters Werther sends a friend, and you can almost watch his hand shake more with each one as the gap between the world he feels and the world that exists widens past bearing. Goethe poured the book out in six weeks at twenty-four, bleeding his own thwarted love for a real Charlotte into every line. What he discovered was a new kind of ruin: a soul undone not by anything life withholds but by the sheer excess of its own longing, a tenderness too vast for any ordinary day to hold. It made him famous overnight and made heartbreak fashionable; across Europe young men wept over it and dressed in Werther's blue coat and yellow waistcoat to follow their hero all the way down.