7.26 Goethe — «Die Leiden des jungen Werther» (I) — Epoché
What you will be able to do Read the opening letters of Goethe's novel Die Leiden des jungen Werther , the book that made its author famous across Europe at twenty-five. Follow the voice of a young man writing to his friend: exclamations, broken sentences, dashes, and elided forms such as hab' ich , mir's , Konnt' ich . Read eighteenth-century forms: the genitive object ich freue mich meines Lebens , ward for wurde , mich dünkt , and the address of a servant in the third person. Follow one of the most famous long sentences in German prose, the letter of 10 May, built on wenn … wenn … dann . Sentences from this text, before the notes. Read the German aloud; all of them come back below. German English mich vom Kummer zur Ausschweifung und von süßer Melancholie zur verderblichen Leidenschaft übergehen zu sehn to see me pass from grief to excess and from sweet melancholy to ruinous passion Die Einsamkeit ist meinem Herzen köstlicher Balsam in dieser paradiesischen Gegend Solitude is a precious balm to my heart in this heavenly countryside ich will das Gegenwärtige genießen, und das Vergangene soll mir vergangen sein. I will enjoy the present, and the past shall be past for me. Eine wunderbare Heiterkeit hat meine ganze Seele eingenommen A wonderful serenity has taken possession of my whole soul mißverstanden zu werden, ist das Schicksal von unsereinem. to be misunderstood is the fate of people like me. Hab' ich nicht ihre Empfindungen genährt? Did I not feed her feelings? Prerequisites : 7.25 — you need the past tenses from 9.2 Writing , the subjunctive from 2.23 Grammar , the vocabulary of literature from 5.16 Vocabulary , and the old spelling explained in 7.24 Reading . About this text Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749–1832) wrote Die Leiden des jungen Werthers in a few weeks in 1774. It is a novel in letters: almost all of it consists of the letters that the young Werther writes to his friend Wilhelm, whose answers we never see. Werther leaves his home town after an unhappy affair, settles in a small town in the countryside, draws, reads Homer, and falls in love with Lotte, a young woman who is already engaged to another man, Albert. The book was an immediate sensation. Young men dressed in Werther's blue coat and yellow waistcoat, and the novel was translated into French and English within a few years. Goethe revised it for his collected works in 1787, and the title lost its genitive -s : Die Leiden des jungen Werther . That revised version is the one read today and the one printed here. The novel is also the story of a suicide: Werther kills himself at the end of the second book. In its own time the book was accused of encouraging imitation, and researchers still call the effect of reported suicides on vulnerable readers the Werther effect . These two lessons read the happy beginning; the ending is summarised but not printed. If thoughts of suicide affect you, please talk to someone you trust or to a local crisis line. The text here is the editor's preface and the first letters of the first book, from 4 May to 26 May 1771, about 3,100 words, unchanged except that the editor's footnote markers are left out. It follows the Hamburg edition of Goethe's works edited by Erich Trunz, as transcribed in the TextGrid Repository; Goethe's works are in the public domain. The language belongs to the movement later called Sturm und Drang , storm and stress : young writers wanted to express feeling directly, against the rules of polite literature, and Werther's sentences break off, exclaim and contradict themselves. Grammar in the text The elided e . Werther writes as he speaks. An apostrophe marks a dropped vowel: Konnt' ich dafür for Konnte ich , hab' ich for habe ich , ich verspreche dir's for dir es , Leb' wohl! These forms make the letters sound breathless and personal. Modern spelling mostly leaves these apostrophes out. The genitive object. Ich bin allein und freue mich meines Lebens : the genitive with sich freuen now survives only in elevated style, and everyday German says ich freue mich über mein Leben or an meinem Leben . Older German used the genitive after many verbs and adjectives; a few survive in formal style, such as sich einer Sache erinnern and jemanden einer Tat beschuldigen . In an des Brunnens Kühle , at the coolness of the well , the genitive stands before its noun, a word order now found only in poetry. You will meet more such forms in 2.39 Grammar . Old forms of verbs. Sie ward rot über und über : ward is the old past of werden , modern wurde . mich dünkt , it seems to me , survives only as a joke or in high style. Goethe also writes ergetzt for modern ergötzt , delighted , and verfertiget with an extra e . Speaking to a servant. At the well Werther asks a servant girl: Soll ich Ihr helfen, Jungfer? Ihr here is the dative of sie , she : he addresses her in the third person singular, a polite but distant form used in the eighteenth century for people of lower rank. Compare the plural Ihr of the warders in 7.24 Reading . The long sentence of 10 May. The letter of 10 May contains one sentence of about 150 words. It is built as a period: a series of conditions, Wenn das liebe Tal um mich dampft … wenn ich das Wimmeln der kleinen Welt … fühle … wenn's dann um meine Augen dämmert … , and then the main clause, dann sehne ich mich oft und denke … Read it in three steps: find each wenn and its verb at the end, then find dann . The subjunctive of wishes. Ach könntest du das wieder ausdrücken! , oh, if only you could express that again! A wish with the verb first and no wenn , as in 2.23 Grammar . And a condition: der Schmerzen wären minder unter den Menschen, wenn sie nicht … , there would be fewer pains among people if they did not … Reading it a second time, letter by letter The editor's preface. A fictional editor presents the letters he has collected and asks the reader for admiration, love and tears, and offers the little book as a friend to anyone who feels the same longing. 4 May. We