The Sorrows of Young Werther: A cathartic account of romantic i…

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“I address no prayers but to Charlotte; my imagination sees nothing but her; all that surrounds me is of no account, but as it relates to her.” Werther, Goethe’s romantic hero, finds himself absorbed in overwhelming, intense, and fixated love. To his ill fate, this love is destined to remain unrequited, for Charlotte is engaged to marry Albert. Our hero is unable to accept the fact and transcends into a realm beyond the grasp of his mortal brain. He drifts into intoxication and insanity and finally into a tragic, eternal slumber. Published in 1774, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther quickly captured the hearts of readers across Europe, inspiring a wave of Romanticism that emphasized emotion. The transformation of Werther’s idealistic and introspective nature into a consuming and demanding obsession seems inevitable as 24-year-old Goethe describes it. Although the novel was Romanticism, proto-romanticism, or Sturm und Drang avant la lettre, it also led to the contagion of how Werther had decided to end his torment. This was the collateral damage of amplified ‘romanticism’—a recurrent concept and word in this blog.

On surface, romanticism is a tendency to see the world beyond how it exists in reality. It is to beautify one’s ordinary experiences into deeper, greater quests with the aid of one’s intellect and imagination. Werther possesses enough of both, the intellect and imagination as well as the sensitivity to all that is around him. His anima projected onto Charlotte, automatically lifts her character to such divine pedestal that a reader too sees her in the light of that angelic halo. Nevertheless, the readers remain deeply conscious of Werther’s idealization of Charlotte and his inability to see her as a normal, real, flawed person. The readers are acutely aware that he fails to see her humanity, stating, “She’s perfect, so perfect that no words can describe her!” He lives in an illusion, clinging to this ideal despite knowing she is engaged to another. The idea of love becomes so consuming that he starts to view his suffering as an emblem of virtue, almost holy, affirming his self-worth through despair. In desperation, he begins to romanticize suffering itself, describing his despair as “a bliss I would not exchange for anything.”

The Romantics saw madness as a gateway to the sublime, yet in Werther’s case, it is a gateway to annihilation.

By romanticizing Charlotte, he sets himself apart from his peers, whom he sees as ordinary and unfeeling. In his letters, he expresses disdain for their trivial pursuits, seeing his love for Charlotte as something more profound than the conventions of societal life. He distances himself from the world, creating an emotional cocoon around his suffering. The isolation that Werther chooses is both a cry for individuality and a willful detachment from a world that cannot comprehend his “higher” passion.

Werther’s mind oscillates between moments of clarity and intense irrationality while Charlotte, serves as both the catalyst and the perpetuating force behind his mental deterioration.

The fatal flaw of our romantic, from his earliest letters is his gruesome yearning for beauty that exceeds mundane. Upon meeting Charlotte, all the beauty becomes embodied by her and so she becomes the center of all his yearning and longing. He is self-aware enough to recognize the impossibility of his love for Charlotte, yet he refuses to relinquish his attachment to her. This inner conflict creates a duality within him, one where he is simultaneously rational and irrational.

On the other, he is driven by a Romantic conviction that true love is bound to transcend all logic, even at the cost of his mental stability. This inner battle brings Werther to the edge of madness, as he oscillates between moments of lucidity and profound despair. Goethe illustrates this inner turmoil by showing Werther’s intense mood swings, his rapid shifts from euphoria in Charlotte’s presence to hopelessness when he is reminded of her engagement to another man, Albert.

His final letter captures this tragic resolve, as he writes, “I die willingly, to escape the torment of life.” Death, for Werther, is not simply an end but a completion of his Romantic journey, where life’s pain and longing can be transcended in the afterlife.

This descent into madness is not unique to Werther alone. In German Romantic literature, characters who pursue similar ideals often meet tragic ends. For instance, Novalis’s Hymns to the Night explores the allure of death as a union with the divine, reflecting a Romantic obsession with the sublime that transcends life. Similarly, Hölderlin’s works portray characters who, like Werther, become so consumed by beauty and longing that they become estranged from reality, ending in despair or madness.

For Romantics like Werther, conscious is a force that keeps them away from mirth of all kind. Their rational mind sees misery and only misery. Werther’s interaction with another insane man, especially when his fixation already borders madness, reinforces his wish and his resolution to go insane or die. ”God of heaven! Is this the destiny of man? Is he only happy before he possesses reason and after he has lost it?” Upon knowing that the cause of insanity in this man too, was love of Charlotte as well, his resolution becomes even clearer. In his mind, a man who loves Charlotte has to either go made or die. This further apotheosizes Charlotte in eyes of Werther and his regard for dying, dying especially for Charlotte, becomes an act more noble and virtuous than ever.

To die, to die by borrowing Albert’s pistol and a pistol which was handed over to servant by Charlotte was the ultimate and sole consolation for our Romantic. In this intimate gesture, the pistol was both lover and executioner. For Werther, the pistol was not only a fatal weapon that shall kill him but an echo of Charlotte, a symbol of her consent, a nod, a sign of approval that dying for her was the right thing Werther was doing. It might as well have been her redemption, for what was her last interaction with Werther, in eyes of Albert and Charlotte was infidelity. Charlotte frees herself, she frees Werther, perhaps because of her awareness that Werther’s love and yearning shall not be quenched by the mere act of their union, if it ever happened. In his love, Werther has transcended to a realm nothing can bring him, not even Charlotte. So, his mortal body must be put to rest, wherever and however and whenever he desires.