The Sorrows Of Young Werther

"Stanley Corngold's translation is a triumph. This is a glorious achievement, a Werther for the ages."--Christopher Prendergast

This classic selection of writings by Goethe reflects the author's philosophy of love and death. This new, updated package includes a new Introduction. Reissue.

A major work of German romanticism in a translation that is acknowledged as the definitive English language version. The Vintage Classics edition also includes NOVELLA, Goethe's poetic vision of an idyllic pastoral society.

"Daniel Randolph Deal is a Southern aristocrat, having the required bloodline, but little of the nobility. A man resistant to the folly of ethics, he prefers a selective, self-indulgent morality. He is a confessed hedonist, albeit responsibly so."--Back cover

The Sorrows of Young Werther is a epistolary novel by J. W. von Goethe. First published in 1774, it reappeared as a revised edition in 1787. It was one of the most important novels in the Sturm und Drang (“Storm and Stress”) period in German literature, and influenced the later Romantic movement. The book's publication instantly placed the author among the foremost international literary celebrities, and was among the best known of his works. Goethe is, by some accounts, the father of the romantic period in literature, or at least the proto-romantic Sturm und Drang period. And The Sorrows of Young Werther was its genesis. While Voltaire parodied rationalism in Candide, Goethe transcended it with the semi-autobiographical story of Werther, a young man governed more by his emotions than his reason, whose only employment is his delight in the romantic ideals of the pastoral lives he finds in the rural town of Walheim. There he also finds Charlotte, and in her an idealized but unobtainable old-world domesticity. Werther’s internal dialog about his growing obsession with Charlotte, and his inability to cope rationally with the fact that she is engaged to—and in love with—another man, form the bulk of the book in the form of a series of ever more intense letters to a friend. Werther's descent into sorrow has captivated readers for centuries, helped by Goethe’s intensely beautiful prose, enchanting imagery, and obvious reverence for nature and a dying past.

Thoughtful yet spontaneous, self-aggrandizing and hopelessly philosophical, Mike would like to find out if the earth really is round. During his four-month voyage around the planet, Mike's past loves, current romances and vision of himself are on a collision course. His mind becomes increasingly abstract as he navigates the continents and struggles with morality in a dream world of his own making, a universe where spring break happens weekly at a dart's throw on a world map. Mike's story is told through his journal which is interlaced with various documents - essays, instant message conversations and an email. These documents tell a story that parodies Goethe, in both his behavior as a writer and his apparent views on love, nature and the world. These views were described in Goethe's seventeenth-century novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther.

A major work of German romanticism in a translation that is acknowledged as the definitive English language version. The Vintage Classics edition also includes NOVELLA, Goethe's poetic vision of an idyllic pastoral society.

Composed almost entirely of letters written by Werther to his friend Wilhelm, The Sorrows of Young Werther is a heartbreaking narrative about a doomed love. Werther, a young artist driven more by the heart than by reason, is already enraptured with the elusive Charlotte when she marries another man better suited to her class. To keep Charlotte near, Werther befriends her husband--a bid that becomes a torturous reminder of all he's lost. Then, out of sincere pity, Charlotte can think of only one way to help free Werther from his self-destructive passion, but he has a different plan of escape. In one of the first important novels of the Sturm und Drang movement in German literature, the self-absorption of youth unites with the extremes of emotion to create a perfect storm, leaving readers shipwrecked on the shores of grief and awe. Revised edition: Previously published as The Sorrows of Young Werther, this edition of The Sorrows of Young Werther (AmazonClassics Edition) includes editorial revisions.

Goethe's influential and important novel is here presented in a translation which flows in a modern natural style while maintaining fidelity to the original German.