Synopsis "The Sorrows of Young Werther, explores the extremes of the subjective experience through the novel's depiction of a sensitive young man caught up in a love impossible to fulfill.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1993-11-01 | | Series: | Modern Library Series | | Edition Description: | Reissue |
| Size | | Length: | 201 pages | | Height: | 7.8 in | | Width: | 5.0 in | | Thickness: | 0.8 in | | Weight: | 8.8 oz |
Publisher's Note A novel explores a young man's fatal love for a married woman, and poems depict an idyllic pastoral society.
Industry Reviews "The world at once took possession of 'The Sorrows of Young Werther' and it took possession of the world....It seemed as though the public in all countries, secretly and without their own knowledge, had been awaiting this very book by an unknown young man from a German Imperial city; that this book with revolutionary, liberating power emancipated the fettered yearnings of the civilized world. Napoleon, the iron man of destiny, had the French translation in his knapsack through the Egyptian campaign. He claimed to have read it seven times." Thomas Mann
"When writing a novel, an author naturally often makes use of his personal experiences, but a novel is not an autobiography....The novels seems to me to be one of those works of art in which the conscious and unconscious motives of the creator are at odds. Consciously, that is, Goethe approved of his hero, but his unconscious motive was therapeutic: by cultivating to the extreme, but only in words, the indulgence in subjective emotions typical of the Sturm und Drang movement, to get it out of his system and find his true poetic self...." Reference Books - W. H. Auden
| See an error? Submit a change request |