Comparison of Pessimistic Character of Spasse’s Jon Zaveri and Goethe’s Werther

Abstract

This paper aims to compare the pessimistic character of Spasse’s Jon Zaveri and Goethe's Werther. Although the novels were written in different periods, “Why?!” (Albanian: Pse?!) by the Albanian author Sterjo Spasse, in the thirties of the twentieth century, and “The Sorrows of Young Werther” (German: Die Leiden des jungen Werthers), by the German author Johan Wolfgang Goethe, in the seventies of the seventeenth century, they have their similarities and contradictions, which is natural given the fact of the social and economic circumstances of both the Western European and European Balkan areas. Goethe's Werther, although much earlier in time than Spasse’s Jon, lived in an environment that bears no resemblance to the environment in which Jon was born, raised, and formed. Werther, was traditionally rich, educated, and wandered around different places. His social circle was of an intellectual and artistic level. There is talk of ballrooms, pianos, music, novels, drawing, travel, and great writers...while, in Jon's social circle, especially where we deal with family and social conventionalism, it is completely different even though we are almost in the second half of the twentieth century. Jon is the only villager who leaves the village and goes to the city to get educated, while all the villagers are not only in mentality, but also in their clothes they wear still traditional. This is also beautifully portrayed at the time of John's wedding, when his family arrange a marriage getting him married to his wife Aferdita! She is a bride in traditional village style clothes, as described by Jon, just like all the wedding guests, with the exception of Jon, who had changed his dressing style, getting dressed as a citizen. The most obvious commonality in the characters of the novels “Why?!” and “The Sorrows of Young Werther”, is the pessimism of both and the suicide of both. John commits suicide in the lake by disagreeing with the marriage and fails to understand love, while Werther is madly in love, a love that leads him to suicide. So, Jon commits suicide by not finding the WHY of life and young love, which he never managed to understand or experience, while Werther fails to find the WHY of not making true the dream of his love, love which blinds him and takes him to the peak of pessimism, to suicide! Goethe's Werther is influenced as a personality by the world of art, while Spasse’s Jon is influenced by the world of philosophers.