"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
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.
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.
The Sorrows of Young Werther is an epistolary, loosely autobiographical novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, presented mostly as a collection of letters written by Werther, a young artist of a sensitive and passionate temperament, to his friend Wilhelm. These give an intimate account of his stay in the fictional village of Wahlheim whose peasants have enchanted him with their simple ways. Werther meets Charlotte, a beautiful young girl who takes care of her siblings after the death of their mother, and falls in love with her although knowing beforehand that she is engaged. Despite the pain it causes him, Werther keeps spending time with Charlotte, but his pain eventually becomes so great that he is forced to leave. After a short absence, he comes back to find Charlotte married, and his agony becomes a threat. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) was a German writer and statesman, best known for his tragic play, Faust. His body of work includes epic and lyric poetry written in a variety of meters and styles, prose and verse dramas, memoirs, literary and aesthetic criticism, novels, numerous literary and scientific fragments and many more. A literary celebrity by the age of 25, Goethe was ennobled by the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, Karl August, following the success of his first novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther. He was also an early participant in the Sturm und Drang literary movement.
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.
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.
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.