The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von GoetheMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
In 1999, I saw Michigan Opera Theatre's production of Jules Massenet's Werther. This sad and moving work was doubly impactful with the program notes about the spike of emulation suicides known as the Werther effect following Goethe's novel. I can see how the dissected suicide can serve as a trigger in the absence of protective factors, for a susceptible or suggestible persons. The one-sided epistolary presentation makes the lone Werther away from home and support seem even more isolated and hopeless. The final act is foreshadowed, predicted and drawn out in a way that emphasizes the final, bloody scene in a way that seems modern in effective contrivance. Through translation and the centuries, this is still a moving and affecting novella.
Some quotes, from this edition of Burton Pike (Translator):
"People would have fewer pains if [...] their imaginations were not so busily engaged in recalling past trials rather than bearing an indifferent present."
Alas, great pains come from busily chasing an impossible future! This recalls to me of speech pathologist Wendell Johnson's IFD cycle (I: unrealistic expectations/infatuation) I read of in The Use and Misuse of Language. Here the D after "F"ailure to obtain is death for sorrowful Werther.
"As in this world no one easily understands another"
"Must it be, that what makes for man's happiness becomes the source of his misery?"
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