Goethe's Werther after two centuries

Abstract

Goethe's novel The Sufferings of Young Werther appeared two centuries ago; it was published anonymously at Leipzig in September 1774. In the jargon of our day it became an immediate best seller, perhaps the first in world literature. Since there were at that time no book clubs, no television talk shows, no paperback or motion picture rights, no literary cocktail parties, its author (whose identity soon leaked out) was spared those trials and triumphs which his twentieth-century descendants must endure. But his book did enjoy a popularity till then unknown in the history of literature. Two new reprints were issued before the year was out; a French translation appeared within a few months and many more followed; there were translations into English, Russian, and many other European languages. Poems, novels, dramas, musicals, operas, chapbooks were produced dealing with aspects of Werther. Among the notable works of literature that showed the influence of Goethe's novel were Benjamin Constant's Adolphe, Chateaubriand's René, Ugo Foscolo's Jacopo Ortis, Senancour's Obermann, Mickiewicz' Dziady, Flaubert's Education sentimentale. Lamartine, Sainte Beuve, Musset acknowledged the influence of Werther on their early careers. Of the three extant Werther operas, Massenet's (1892) is a major work of art. A Werther film was produced in France in 1938. André Maurois devoted one of his three essays in Méipe (1926) to a retelling of the Werther story. Thomas Mann treated the Werther aftermath in his outstanding novel, Lotte in Weimar (1939).