Getting Going on Goethe

[ex_pseudonymous328]

Has anybody else gotten started yet?  What are your initial impressions of the book?  Feel free to judge the book by its cover. I began yesterday and I have read about 15 pages.  This novel is in epistolary form, an absolute favorite of mine.  It makes the novel so personal, as if Werther is writing to you.  I already found a great little quote in the introduction:

"...let this little book be your friend, if through fate or your own fault you can find no closer one."

Comments

[leighton]

I just started reading (up to May 13 and taking it in just a little bit at a time) and overall my dominant impression is that it's awfully ... cheerful for what I expected of Drang and Sturm. All brightness and rainbows and Wordsworthian daffodils. I can definitely see the connection to the Romantic movement.

[ex_pseudonymous328]

I noticed that too. Werther seems to find everything and everyone to be just peachy. Do you think that is reality or Werther being in a good mood in the spring in the country?

[leighton]

I haven't noticed a lot of hints/ominous foreshadowing of tensions roiling in the background that Werther hasn't noticed yet, so it's hard to say at this point. However, I get the feeling that Goethe is getting his Rousseau on and showing that man(Werther) is truly at his happiest when he's at one with nature and the distinction between physical and spiritual love isn't forced into a dichotomy, and it's going to be the pressures of society that cause crushing misery. Werther hasn't fallen to this pressure yet, hence the unmitigated rose-colored goggles.