It’s a small book whose impact on the world of literature has been large. It tells of a love triangle between a young lady, her betrothed, and her not-so-secret admirer. The story is driven by the angst and ruminations of the frustrated admirer. The plot is ancient, the way of the telling was fresh.
It was personal, where previous such tales were epic.
Goethe (Gert-ta) wrote The Sorrows of Young Werther
in the fall of 1774. The places, people and events described may, or may not describe real people, real places and real events. That ambiguity, along with the romantic and introspective mullings of the agonizing would-be lover, young Werther, excited the imagination of readers all over Germany. Many young men of the time even took to wearing their own version of Werther’s blue frock coat and yellow waistcoat. It was the, “age of sentiment”. The excitement and emulation was only to be expected.
The little book was a great success.
So it has remained, but for reasons beyond sentiment.
Classic art typically has qualities that can be perceived, though not explained. These qualities defy dissection in much the same way that jokes once explained, are no longer funny. There is something like magic in this. Artists cannot control Art. They can only gratefully answer the door when they hear the knock. Great works get inside your head, and stay there. That’s what makes them classic.
The Sorrows of Young Werther is just such.
Werther’s anxious ruminations are thoughtful in a way not much expected in the churning mind of the average 23-year old. Nonetheless, Goethe was only 23 when he wrote of Werther’s sorrows. Everyone suffers. Usually alone. Great writers recall their sorrows in a way that makes the personal, archetypical.
In May of 1771, Goethe went to the small German town of, Weltzlar to serve a legal apprenticeship. Along the way he was introduced to Miss Charlotte Buff by his friend, and Charlotte’s fiancé, Johann Christian Kestner. The three spent the spring and summer in close happy harmony. Goethe was charmed by the romance between Charlotte and Kestner. They in turn, thought of him as their dear brother.
In the months that followed Goethe became increasingly focused on Charlotte, and correspondingly annoyed with Kestner. It wasn’t right. He should be Charlotte’s betrothed, not Kestner.
In the fall of the same year a local boy, named Jerusalem, committed suicide because of his unrequited love for a married woman.
Goethe stirred all this - love triangle, suicide, and long reflective musings about science, nature, art and love into 130 pages of compelling reading.
The structure of the novel is not as story, but as a collection of letters.
It begins with a prefacing paragraph from an unidentified person who is acting as editor. The rest is told through letters from Werther (Goethe) to his childhood friend, William. The character of William has no real-life counterpart. Werther confides to William the path of his sorrows. No response from William is included. Werther’s suicide is explained by the unknown editor.
In the book, Charlotte is depicted as: Lotte. Johann Kestner becomes: Albert. Many of the characters and places are based on reality. Guessing who was whom, and which was what, was great sport for the early readers.
It wasn’t what made the little novel great.
Tragedies are the common stuff of newspapers.
They happen somewhere every single day. It is the way of the telling that makes the difference. One definition of a diplomat is: “A person who can tell you to go to Hell in such a way as to make you look forward to the trip”. That’s a good trick. Great writers charm us with a more positive trick. They pull us out of our world and into theirs’s.
They show us that what we might otherwise dismiss as pointless gossip is actually the earthly undergirding of transcendent art.
The total of Goethe’s lifetime writings eventually filled 44 volumes. The Sorrows of Young Werther is probably still the most famous. Those 130 pages were followed by thousands more. Not just from Goethe, but from the many writers who were inspired by him. One of whom was Thomas Mann.
Mann was very nearly obsessed with Goethe.
In 1939 Mann wrote about an 1816 trip made by Charlotte Kestner to visit her sister in Weimar. The entire visit lasted about three weeks. While there, she had a brief - very brief - meeting/reunion with Goethe. Mann turned this scanty bit of history into a novel of nearly 450 pages: Lotte in Weimar -The Beloved Returns. Throughout the novel, Goethe is frequently referred to as, “the Great Man”.
Mann seems to be as obsessed with the real-life love story as much as he was impressed with Goethe’s skillful telling of it.
The novel begins with Charlotte’s arrival in Weimar. The entire town is abuzz. The folks know she is Charlotte, but they also can’t help thinking that in a deeper sense, she is actually, Lotte. Charlotte has been living with her alter ego for 44 years. Even now, at age 63, the ghost of the fictional 19-year old, “Lotte”, is more real than Charlotte, herself. Crowds gather in the streets to catch a glimpse.
This cohabitation of literature and reality creates
a tangle of perception that affects every character in the novel, including Goethe. Many notables in the town discover pressing reasons to talk to Charlotte. She is still at the hotel where she first arrived. She would like to get to her sister’s house. Nevertheless, she graciously accords the callers her attention. They begin with adulation. “What an honor to … “, and so on. This is followed by long-familiar questions about Werther, Lotte and that romantic time of long ago. Charlotte engages patiently, answering their questions as well as asking her callers about themselves. Soon, they’re talking mostly about themselves as people are inclined to do.
All of them have had dealings with Goethe. His presence and activities permeate much of daily life in Weimar. Charlotte learns a lot.
Her last caller is the son of Goethe, August. He brings with him an invitation to dinner from his father. It is now late in the afternoon. Finally, Charlotte insists that she must go. She makes her way through the crowd to her sister’s house.
All of this takes up the entirety of Chapters 1
through 6.
In Chapter 7, Goethe appears. He is just waking.
Several pages of the Great Man’s random reflections follow. It‘s not clear whether these are internal thoughts, or speech. They span in quick succession from private piques to great thoughts drawn from the whole of his prodigious knowledge.
He eventually interrupts himself to call for coffee and zwieback (Melba toast).
The chapter unfolds in this back-and-forth between stream-of-consciousness musings, dialogue with staff, and minor carping about the common affections of old age. There is no connecting device for any of it. The dazing swirl continues for 182 pages. I’m tempted to call the effect psychedelic. Mann wrote this chapter as a pastiche of Goethe’s style.
He accomplished this by cobbling together actual lines from Goethe’s writings and recorded pronouncements. All of it held together by invented language based on Mann’s lifetime study of Goethe.
In the last few pages, Goethe’s son, August, appears to inform his father of the arrival of Charlotte in Weimar. Goethe seems unsettled by the news. Still, He instructs August to go to Charlotte with an invitation to dinner; the same invitation we already heard August deliver to Charlette in the previous chapter.
The final two chapters return to standard narrative.
Charlotte was not the only guest at the dinner. Goethe had invited enough others to fill a very long formal dinner table. He dominates the conversation with pompous displays of his great learning and petty dismissal of those incapable of understanding his greatness. He speaks a few words to Charlotte, before and after, the dinner.
This was not what Charlotte expected, but she wasn’t really disappointed. Thoughts of “What if” had naturally floated around her mind for the last 44 years.
Now she knew.
She had rejected the young Goethe as dashing but too self-absorbed. She had sensibly married Kestner, given birth to eleven children, and generally behaved as the responsible lady she had always been. She was sorry that the beautiful charming boy she remembered had grown stiff and sour. She thought it tragic that his art seemed to have consumed his humanity. It was sad. She had decided wisely.
Her mind was at peace.
Not so, Goethe.
He was as distressed by his own behavior as Charlotte should have been. He arranges for a private meeting with Charlotte in his personal carriage. He apologizes. He tells Charlotte that her sudden arrival in Weimar left him shaken, uncertain, fumbling. He also apologizes for appropriating Charlotte to create Lotte. He is as defensive as he is apologetic. He talks and talks, and talks. She listens quietly. She says nothing.
At the end of their ride together he asks for her forgiveness.
She steps down from the carriage and whispers, ” Peace to your old age”.
Classics are about art. Life is about reality.