1774. Most people know what this book is about before they read it I think, but if you don't here come spoilers: it's about Werther, who falls in love with a woman engaged to another and eventually offs himself. Might sound kinda pathetic, but the character and the writing make this little book a gem. If I had to compare it to anything I'd compare it to Marilynne Robinson's Gilead and Roland Barthes' A Lover's Discourse. It is epistolary for the most part and a philosophical consideration of love and unrequited love, as well as nature, art and God. When Werther killed himself I felt like it was the right thing for him to do under the circumstances, or at least that I could understand why he did it. ( )

Werther died for my sins.

The Sorrows of Young Werther (published in 1774 when Goethe was 25) epitomized, for Schopenhauer (who was an admirer of Goethe) the essence of art, i.e. "that its one case applies to thousands". And such is true of this story of pain and anguish of unrequited passion and love that resonates as emotionally true, 230 years after it was published; not that this should this surprise anyone as the gamut of human relations and emotions change very little. (Napoleon is said to have read this novel nine times). Werther is finally driven to suicide which is, of course, pretty extreme, but short of that, Goethe does capture the anguish, the heartbreak, the obsession, the completely disconcerting, disorienting, overwhelming and uncontrolled flow of emotions that bedevil Werther and make his life hell. A tendency to obsessive behaviour, and an inability to control emotions and emotional entanglements is noted early in the novel, in other circumstances, and so it comes as no surprise when these surface in Werther's relationship with Lotte. In this, Werther's actions fly directly against the philosophy of the Stoics, such as Seneca, who argued:

"Reason allows us to determine when our wishes are in irrevocable conflict with reality, and then bids us to submit ourselves willingly, rather than angrily or bitterly, to necessities. We may be powerless to alter certain events, but we remain free to choose our attitude towards them, and it is in our spontaneous acceptance of necessity that we find our distinctive freedom."

Wise words, but unfortunately, for Werther, there was no such saving grace.