Goethe the suffering of the young Werther about the work. "The suffering of young Werther

Werther, a young man from a poor family, educated, prone to painting and poetry, settles in a small town to be alone.

He enjoys the contemplation of nature, communicates with ordinary people, reads his beloved Homer, draws. At a country youth ball, he meets Charlotte S. and falls head over heels in love with her. Lotta, as the closest acquaintances call the girl, is the eldest daughter of the princely amtsman, there are nine children in their family. Mother died, and Charlotte, despite her youth, managed to replace her with her brothers and sisters. She is attractive not only outwardly, the girl earns respect for herself by the independence of her thoughts. After the first day of acquaintance, Werther and Lotta have a common taste, they found a common language extremely easily.

Since that time, the young man spends a lot of time every day in the house of the amtsman, located at a considerable distance from the city (an hour on foot). Together with Lotta, they visit a sick pastor, take care of a sick lady in the city. Every minute near her brings Werther pleasure and happiness. However, the young man's love is doomed to suffer from the very beginning, because Lotta has a fiancé, Albert, who is temporarily absent due to the fact that he hopes to get a promising position.

Albert arrives, and although he treats Werther favorably and delicately hides the manifestation of his feelings for Lottie, the young man in love expresses jealousy towards him. Albert is restrained, reasonable, he considers Werther a mediocre person and forgives him for his restless behavior. It is extremely difficult for Werther to endure the presence of a third person when meeting with Lotta. His mood changes instantly - from unbridled joy to an incomprehensible amount.

Once, in order to temporarily distract himself, Werther is going to ride into the mountains and asks Albert to give him pistols on the road. Albert agrees, but warns that they are loaded. Werther takes one pistol and puts it on his forehead. This, at first glance, a joke develops into a serious dispute between young people over a person, his passions and thoughts. Werther tells the story of a girl who was left by her beloved and she threw herself into the river, because without him life has lost all meaning for her. Albert considers this act "nonsense", he condemns a person who, carried away by passions, loses the opportunity to reason. Werther, on the contrary, is oppressed by excessive prudence.

For his birthday, Werther receives a bundle from Albert: it contains a bow from Lotta's dress, in which he saw her for the first time. The young man is suffering. Werther understands that he needs to get down to business, to leave, but he keeps postponing the time of separation. On the eve of his departure, he visits Lottie. They go to their favorite gazebo in the garden. Werther does not say anything about separation, but the girl, as if feeling it, begins a conversation about death and what will happen after it. She remembers her mother, the last minutes before parting with her. Excited by her story, Werther, however, finds the strength to leave Lotta.

The young man leaves for another city, he gets a job as an official with messengers. The latter is extremely demanding, pedantic and limited. However, Werther made friends with Count von K. and tries to escape from his loneliness in conversations with him. In this town, as it turns out, prejudices regarding religious affiliation were very important, and the young man was pointed out from time to time to his origin.

Werther meets the girl B., vaguely reminds him of the incomparable Charlotte. He often talks to her about his former life, including telling her about Lotta. The surrounding society oppresses Werther, and his relationship with the envoy is doomed to failure. The case ends with the envoy complaining about him to the minister, who, like a delicate person, writes a letter to the young man, in which he tries to direct his crazy ideas in a way where they can find their right application.

Werther temporarily agrees with his position, but soon there is a "trouble" that forces him to leave the service and the city. He was on a visit to Count von K., lingered, at that time guests began to appear. In the same town it was not accepted that among noble society a person of low birth appeared. Werther did not immediately understand what was happening, besides, when he saw the familiar girl B., he began to talk to her. Only when everyone began to look askance at him, and his interlocutor could hardly keep up the conversation, the count, having called the young man, delicately asked him to leave. Werther hastily left. The next day, the whole city was talking that Count von K. drove the young men out of his house. Not wanting to wait to be asked to leave the service, the young man submitted his resignation and left.

First, Werther goes to his native places, where he feels an influx unforgettable memories childhood, then accepts the invitation of the prince and goes to his possessions, but even here he feels awkward. Finally, unable to bear the separation any longer, he returns to the city where Charlotte lives. During this time, she became Albert's wife. Young people are happy. The appearance of Werther brings discord in their family life.

One day, while walking around the outskirts of the town, Werther meets a crazy Heinrich, who is picking a bouquet for his beloved. Later, he learns that Heinrich was a scribe for Lotta's father, fell in love with a girl, and love drove him crazy. Werther feels that the image of Lotta haunts him and he does not have enough strength to end the suffering. At this, the young man's letters break off, and about his future fate we'll find out from the publisher.

Love for Lotta makes Werther unbearable for others. On the other hand, in the soul of a young man, the decision to leave the world has more and more strength, because he is not able to simply leave his beloved. One day, he sees Lotta taking presents on Christmas Eve. She turns to him with a request to come to them next time not earlier than Christmas Eve. For Werther, this means that he is deprived of the last joy in life.

Returning home, Werther puts his affairs in order, writes Farewell letter his beloved, sends a servant with a note to Albert for pistols. Exactly at midnight, a shot is heard in Werther's room. In the morning, the servant finds a young man, still breathing, on the floor, the doctor comes, but it's too late. Albert and Lotta are having a hard time with Werther's death. They bury him not far from the city, in the place that he himself chose for himself.

Werther's personality is extremely contradictory, his consciousness is split, he is in constant conflict with others, and with himself. Werther, like the young Goethe himself and his friends, represent that generation of rebellious youth, whose enormous creative possibilities and life demands led to its irreconcilable conflict with the then social order. The fate of Werther is a kind of hyperbole: all the contradictions are sharpened in it to the last step, and this is what leads to death. Werther appears in the novel as a man of extraordinary talent. He is a good painter, poet, endowed with a subtle and multifaceted sense of nature. However, precisely because Werther is a "natural person" (as the enlighteners interpreted this image), he sometimes puts forward too high demands on his environment and society. Werther, with increasing disgust from time to time, looks around him at the "struggle of insignificant ambitious people", experiences "longing and sadness in the company of people disgusting to him." He is oppressed by the state of obstacles, at every step he sees how aristocracy degenerates and turns into empty space. Werther feels best in the company of ordinary people and children. He has extensive knowledge, even tries to make a career, but then stops these attempts. Gradually, all human life begins to seem to him a well-known cycle.

Love therefore seems to be the only consolation for Werther, because it does not give in mechanically in due course. Love for Werther is the triumph of living life, living nature over dead conventions.

Closely following the controversy that the novel caused, as well as learning about the wave of suicides after the publication of his book, Goethe decided to publish in 1784 new edition, where he removed everything that, in his opinion, prevented the correct perception of the work, and also placed a preface in which he urged not to succumb to temptation, to draw strength from suffering to deal with overwhelming circumstances.

"A little prudent afterword", believing that he, like himself, condemns the cowardice of the hero.

However, in this work, Goethe quite consciously focused on the "ordinary" person from the burgher environment, for whom the heroism of existence was not at all in the fight against social circumstances or in the protection of class honor, or the fulfillment of one's civic duty. It consisted solely in the struggle for its intrinsic value and uniqueness, in the defense of peace own feelings as the sole and most important property of the individual. The inability to realize their feelings for the hero is equivalent to the inability to continue to live.

The main conflict in the novel unfolds between the hero, who is incapable of any moral compromise either with himself or with society and the environment, where only etiquette and conventionality reign. Such is the world of Lotta and the entire bureaucratic environment.

Goethe approved with his novel the type of the so-called "sentimentalist hero", whose distinguishing feature is the awareness of his dissimilarity with other people and the impossibility of realizing his noble spiritual impulses in society, his uniqueness, which, on the contrary, becomes an obstacle to happiness.

Summing up, let's pay attention to the fact that the novel is sentimental ("feeling is higher than reason"), socio-psychological (the fate of the individual depends on the social characteristics of society).

Goethe's novel enjoyed fame not only among the writer's contemporaries, but also remained popular throughout the 19th century. Napoleon, according to his own testimony, re-read the novel seven times. The novel strengthened the cult of "seraphic" friendship, when young people imitated the elegant trusting relationship of Lotti - Werther - Albert. Together, the influence of the novel explained the wave of suicides of young men during the 70s. Given the above, the immortal significance of the novel lies in the fact that the author managed to put before the culture of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. the problem of the value of the spiritual uniqueness of a person in a society of standardized relations that is still relevant to this day.

September 25, 1774 Mrs. Kestner, who lived with her husband in Hannover, received a parcel from Frankfurt, and in it - the novel "Suffering young Werther". Having read it, the husband of the lady immediately saw in the work a libel on his intimate relationship with his wife, and in Alberta - his own portrait, where he appeared as a miserable mediocrity. But after some time, Kestner wrote a letter to Goethe, in which he did not blame the writer: this reconciled the former friends. Charlotte was content to be Goethe's inspiration.

A lot of time will pass, and Goethe, already married to Christina Vulpius, will meet Charlotte, a sick old woman who has long been left without a husband. It will take place in Weimar 1816. Occupying a high position in society, he will look at the world through the eyes of a great Olympian, will host his former lover quite importantly, but joyfully.

When the woman goes, he will not be able to resist and say: “There is still a lot left of that Lotta in her, but it’s shaking her head .. And I loved her so madly, and through her I ran in despair in Werther’s costume! It’s incomprehensible ... Incomprehensible! "

Composition

He was lucky enough to be born not a subject of a petty despot, but a citizen of a free imperial city Frankfurt am Main, in which his family occupied a high and honorable place. Goethe's first experiments in poetry belong to the age of eight. Not too strict home schooling under the supervision of his father, and then three years of student freemen at the University of Leipzig left him enough time to satisfy his craving for reading and try all the genres and styles of the Enlightenment, so that by the age of 19, when a serious illness forced him to interrupt his studies , he already mastered the techniques of versification and dramaturgy and was the author of a fairly significant number of works, most of which he later destroyed. Annette's collection of poems and the pastoral comedy The Caprices of a Lover were specially preserved. In Strasbourg, where in 1770-1771 Goethe completed his legal education, and for the next four years in Frankfurt he was the leader of a literary revolt against the principles established by J. H. Gottsched (1700-1766) and the theorists of the Enlightenment.

In Strasbourg, Goethe met with J. G. Herder, the leading critic and ideologist of the Sturm und Drang movement, overflowing with plans to create in Germany a great and original literature. Herder's enthusiastic attitude towards Shakespeare, old English poetry and folk poetry of all nations opened new horizons for a young poet whose talent was just beginning to unfold. Goethe wrote Goetz von Berlichingen) and, using Shakespeare's "lessons", began work on Egmont (Egmont) and Faust (Faust); helped Herder collect German folk songs and composed many poems in the manner folk song. Goethe shared Herder's conviction that true poetry should come from the heart and be the fruit of the poet's own life experience, and not rewrite old patterns. This conviction became his main creative principle for the rest of his life. During this period, the ardent happiness that filled him with love for Friederike Brion, the daughter of a pastor, was embodied in the vivid imagery and sincere tenderness of such poems as Date and Parting, May Song and With a Painted Ribbon; reproaches of conscience after parting with her were reflected in the scenes of abandonment and loneliness in Faust, Goetz, Clavigo and in a number of poems. Werther's sentimental passion for Lotte and his tragic dilemma: love for a girl already engaged to another is part of Goethe's own life experience.

Eleven years at the Weimar court (1775-1786), where he was a friend and adviser to the young Duke Charles August, radically changed the life of the poet. Goethe was at the very center of court society. . But most of all he benefited from his long daily contact with Charlotte von Stein. The emotionality and revolutionary iconoclasm of the Sturm und Drang period are a thing of the past; now the ideals of Goethe in life and art are restraint and self-control, poise, harmony and classical perfection of form. Instead of great geniuses, his heroes are quite ordinary people. The free stanzas of his poems are calm and serene in content and rhythm, but little by little the form becomes tougher, in particular Goethe prefers the octaves and elegiac couplets of the great "troika" - Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius.

When Schiller died in 1805, thrones and empires trembled - Napoleon was reshaping Europe. During this period, he wrote sonnets to Minna Herzlieb, the novel "Elective Affinity" and an autobiography. At the age of 65, wearing the oriental mask of Hatem, he created the "West-Eastern Divan", a collection love lyrics. parables, deep observations and wise thoughts about human life, morality, nature, art, poetry, science and religion illuminate the verses of the West-Eastern divan. in the last decade of the poet's life, he graduated from Wilhelm Meister and Faust.

Goethe's work reflected the most important trends and contradictions of the era. In the final philosophical work - the tragedy "Faust" (1808-1832), saturated with the scientific thought of his time, Johann Goethe embodied the search for the meaning of life, finding it in action. Author of the works "Experience on plant metamorphosis" (1790), "Teaching about color" (1810). Like Goethe the artist, Goethe the naturalist embraced nature and all living things (including man) as a whole.

TO modern hero addressed by Goethe and in the very famous work of this period - the epistolary novel The Sufferings of Young Werther (1774). At the heart of this novel, imbued with a deeply personal, lyrical beginning, lies a real biographical experience. In the summer of 1772, Goethe practiced as a lawyer in the office of the imperial court in small town Wetzlar, where he met Kestner, secretary of the Hanover embassy, ​​and his fiancee Charlotte Buff. Already after Goethe's return to Frankfurt, Kestner informed him of the suicide of their mutual friend, a young official in Jerusalem, which deeply shocked him. The reason was unhappy love, dissatisfaction with one's social position, a feeling of humiliation and hopelessness. Goethe took this event as a tragedy for his generation.

The novel appeared a year later. Goethe chose the epistolary form, consecrated by the authorities of Richardson and Rousseau. She gave him the opportunity to focus on the inner world of the hero - the only author of letters, to show through his eyes the surrounding life, people, their relationships. Gradually, the epistolary form develops into a diary. At the end of the novel, the hero's letters are already addressed to himself - this reflects the growing feeling of loneliness, the feeling of a vicious circle, which ends in a tragic denouement.

At the beginning of the novel, an enlightened joyful feeling dominates: having left the city with its conventions and falseness of human relations, Werther enjoys solitude in the picturesque countryside. Rousseau worship of nature is combined here with a pantheistic hymn to the Omnipresent. Werther's Russoism is also manifested in sympathetic attention to ordinary people, to children who are trustingly drawn to him. The movement of the plot is marked by outwardly insignificant episodes: the first meeting with Lotta, a village ball interrupted by a thunderstorm, the memory of Klopstock's ode flashed simultaneously in both of them as the first symptom of their spiritual closeness, joint walks - all this takes on a deep meaning thanks to Werther's inner perception, emotional nature, entirely immersed in the world of feelings. Werther does not accept the cold arguments of reason, and in this he is the direct opposite of Lotta's fiancé Albert, for whom he forces himself to have respect as a worthy and decent person.

The second part of the novel introduces social theme. Werther's attempt to realize his abilities, mind, education in the service of the envoy comes up against the routine and pedantic captiousness of his boss. On top of this, in a humiliating way, they make him feel his burgher origin. The final pages of the novel, which tell about Werther's last hours, his death and funeral, are written on behalf of the "publisher" of the letters and are sustained in a completely different, objective and restrained manner.

Goethe showed the spiritual tragedy of a young burgher, fettered in his impulses and aspirations by the inert, frozen conditions of life around him. But, penetrating deeply into the spiritual world of his hero, Goethe did not identify himself with him, he managed to look at him with the objective look of a great artist. Many years later, he will say: "I wrote Werther so as not to become him." He found a way out for himself in creativity, which turned out to be inaccessible to his hero.

The year of the appearance of "Werther" (1774) is a significant date not only in the history of German literature. The colossal success of "Werther" for the first time revealed the brief, but significant, predominance of German literature and philosophy throughout Europe. He heralded the beginning of the best era of German culture. France for some time ceases to be the most advanced country in literary terms. Her influence recedes into the background compared to that of writers such as Goethe. Of course, even before the advent of Werther, German literature possessed works of world-historical significance. Suffice it to recall Winckelmann and Lessing. But the extremely wide and serious influence that Goethe's "Werther" had on the whole society of his time brought the German Enlightenment to the fore for the first time.

German Enlightenment? the reader, brought up on the literary legends of bourgeois historiography and the vulgar sociology dependent on it, will ask with amazement. In the bourgeois history of literature and in vulgar sociology it became common place that the Age of Enlightenment and the so-called. the period of "storm and onslaught", to which the "Sufferings of young Werther" is usually attributed, are in a state of sharp opposition to each other. This literary legend owes its origin to the famous book of the romantic writer Madame de Stael "On Germany". Subsequently, the reactionary literary historians of the imperialist period inflated this legend in every possible way, for it is an excellent means for erecting Chinese wall between the Enlightenment in general and German classical literature in order to humiliate the Enlightenment in comparison with later reactionary tendencies in Romanticism.

The writers of these kinds of legends worry least of all about historical truth; they are simply indifferent to the fact that these legends contradict the most elementary facts. The selfish interests of the bourgeoisie are their only motive. Even bourgeois literary history is compelled to recognize in Richardson and Rousseau the literary predecessors of Werther. But, in establishing this connection, she still does not want to give up the old illusion that there is a diametrical opposition between Goethe's "Werther" and the intellectual movement of the Enlightenment era.

More smart representatives The reactionary camp feel, it is true, that there is some kind of ambiguity here. In order to resolve the issue, they bring Rousseau himself into sharp contradiction with the Enlightenment, making him a direct predecessor of romanticism. But in the case of Richardson, such tricks are untenable. Richardson was a typical representative of the bourgeois Enlightenment. His works were a great success among the progressive bourgeoisie of Europe; the foremost fighters of the European Enlightenment, like Diderot and Lessing, were the most enthusiastic heralds of its glory.

What motivates bourgeois literary history to separate the young Goethe from the Age of Enlightenment? The fact is that the Enlightenment supposedly took only "reason" into account. The period of "storm and onslaught" in Germany was, on the contrary, a revolt of "feelings", "soul", "obscure languor" against such a tyranny of reason. With the help of this abstract scheme, all sorts of irrationalist tendencies are glorified, all kinds of historical “foundations”, “sources”, etc. are found for bourgeois decadence. The traditions of the revolutionary period of bourgeois development are subjected to cheap and biased criticism. For liberal historians of literature, like Brandeis, this theory still has an eclectic and compromising character. Open reactionaries are already turning against the legacy of the Enlightenment without any reservations, slandering it openly and shamelessly.

What was the essence of the glorified idea of ​​"reason" of the Enlightenment? In merciless criticism of religion, philosophy infected with theology, feudal institutions, moral precepts consecrated by the "old regime", etc. It is easy to understand that for the bourgeoisie, which has completed its evolution from democracy to reaction, the merciless struggle of the enlighteners must seem like a fatal mistake.

Reactionary historians constantly asserted that the Enlightenment lacked a "spiritual" element. There is no need to prove how one-sided such an assertion is, how unfair it is.

We give here just one example. It is known that Lessing struggled with the theory and practice of the so-called. classic tragedy. From what point of view does he oppose false classicism? Lessing proceeds precisely from the fact that Corneille's concept of the tragic does not have a concrete human character and that Corneille does not take into account the spiritual world, the world human feelings; that, remaining captive to the courtly-aristocratic conventions of his era, he creates dead and purely rational constructions. The literary and theoretical struggle of such enlighteners as Diderot and Lessing was directed against aristocratic conventions. They rebelled against these conventions, showing their rational coldness and - at the same time - their contradiction to reason. Between the fight against this coldness and the proclamation of the rights of reason in such enlighteners as Lessing, there is no internal contradiction.

For every great social and political upheaval creates a new type of man. In the literary struggle, it is a question of defending this new, concrete person from the disappearing old and hated social order. But the struggle between "feeling" and "reason" of one isolated and abstract feature of man against another never takes place in reality; it occurs only in the banal constructions of reactionary literary history.

Only the destruction of this kind of historical legend opens the way to the knowledge of the real internal contradictions of the Enlightenment. They are an ideological reflection of the contradictions of the bourgeois revolution, its social content and its driving forces, the emergence, growth and development of the entire bourgeois society. Here there is nothing once and for all given and frozen. On the contrary, the internal contradictions of cultural development grow in the highest degree unevenly, in accordance with the unevenness of social development. At certain periods, they seem to weaken and find a peaceful resolution for themselves, but only in order to arise again at a higher level, in a more profound, simpler and more visual form. The literary controversy among the enlighteners, the criticism of the general, abstract principles of the Enlightenment by the enlighteners themselves, is a definite historical fact. The internal complexity and inconsistency of the enlightenment movement, which is beyond the understanding of reactionary historians, is only a reflection of the contradictions of social development itself; it is the struggle of individual currents within the Enlightenment, the clash of individual stages in the development of enlightenment philosophy and literature.

Mering was on the right track in his portrayal of Lessing's struggle against Voltaire. He convincingly proved that Lessing criticized the backward aspects of Voltaire's worldview from the point of view of a higher level of the entire enlightenment movement. This question is of particular interest in relation to Rousseau. In Rousseau's philosophy, for the first time, the ideological reflection of the plebeian method of carrying out the bourgeois revolution appears clearly; according to the internal dialectic of this movement, Rousseau's views are sometimes imbued with petty-bourgeois, reactionary features; sometimes this vague plebeianism comes to the fore, pushing aside the real problems of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. Rousseau's critics among the Enlightenment - Voltaire, d'Alembert, and others, as well as Lessing - are right in defending these real problems, but in their polemics with Rousseau they often miss what is really valuable in him, past his plebeian radicalism, past the beginning dialectical growth of the contradictions of bourgeois society . The artistic creativity of Rousseau is most closely connected with the main trends of his worldview. Through this, he elevates Richardson's portrayal of psychological conflicts. everyday life to a much higher level, both in terms of thought and in terms of poetry. Lessing often expresses his disagreement with Rousseau and, along with Mendelssohn, puts Richardson's novels above those of Jean-Jacques. But in this case, he himself is conservative, not wanting to recognize the essential features of a new, higher and more contradictory stage, the so-called. Enlightenment.

The work of the young Goethe is a further development of the Rousseau line. Of course, in a German way, which undoubtedly complicates the issue again. The specifically German traits of Goethe are closely connected with the economic and social backwardness of Germany, with its plight in this era. However, this backwardness should not be exaggerated or understood too simplistic. It goes without saying that German literature lacks the distinct social purposefulness and firmness of the French, and it lacks the characteristic English of the eighteenth century. realistic depiction of a highly developed bourgeois society. This literature bears the imprint of the pettiness characteristic of backward, fragmented Germany. But on the other hand, we must not forget that the contradictions of bourgeois development are expressed with the greatest passion and plastic force in German literature. late XVIII V. Let us recall the bourgeois drama. Having arisen in England and France, it did not reach such heights in these countries as the German drama already in Lessing's Emilia Galotti, and especially in The Robbers and the young Schiller's Intrigue and Love.

Of course, the creator of "Werther" was not a revolutionary even in the sense of the young Schiller. But in a broad historical sense, in the sense of being intimately connected with the main problems of the bourgeois revolution, the work of the young Goethe is in some respects the culminating point of the revolutionary thought of the Enlightenment.

The central point of "Werther" is the humanistic problem of progressive bourgeois democracy, the problem of the free and all-round development of the human personality. Feuerbach says: "Let our ideal be not a castrated, devoid of corporeality, abstract being, but a whole, real, all-round, perfect, developed man." In his "philosophical notebooks" Lenin calls this striving the ideal of "advanced bourgeois democracy or revolutionary bourgeois democracy."

Goethe poses this problem deeply and comprehensively. His analysis concerns not only the semi-feudal, petty-princely world of his native Germany. The contradiction between the individual and society, revealed in The Suffering of Young Werther, is inherent in the bourgeois system and in its purest form, which Europe of the Enlightenment did not yet know. Therefore, in "Werther" there are many prophetic features. Of course, the protest of the young Goethe is directed against the specific forms of oppression and impoverishment of the human person that were observed in Germany of his era. But the depth of his concept is revealed in the fact that he does not dwell on the criticism of symptoms alone, is not limited to a polemical depiction of eye-catching phenomena. On the contrary, Goethe depicts the daily life of his era with such generalized simplicity that the significance of his criticism immediately went far beyond the limits of provincial German life. The enthusiastic reception that the book had among the more developed bourgeois nations shows best that in the sufferings of the young Werther, advanced humanity saw its own fate: tua res agitur.

Goethe not only shows what immediate obstacles society poses to the development of the individual, not only satirically depicts the estate system of his time. He also sees that bourgeois society, which puts forward the problem of the development of the individual with such acuteness, itself continually puts up obstacles to its true development. Laws and institutions that serve the development of the individual in the narrow class sense of the word (ensure, for example, freedom of trade), at the same time mercilessly stifle the real germs of individuality. The capitalist division of labor, which serves as the material basis for a developed personality, subjugates a person, cripples his personality, subordinating it to one-sided specialization. Of course, the young Goethe could not discover the economic basis of these ties. All the more one is surprised at the poetic genius with which he depicts the contradictory position of the human person in bourgeois society.

Goethe's depiction of reality is quite concrete; the living fabric of artistic images is nowhere interrupted by the author's artificial maxims. Werther is a complex figure, he is a person deep in himself and prone to reflection on high and subtle matters. And meanwhile, the connection between his experiences and the real contradictions of reality is everywhere clear; even to a certain extent, the actors themselves are aware of it. Let us recall, for example, what Werther says about the relationship of nature to art, to everything created by social development: “Only she alone is infinitely rich, she alone creates a great artist. Much can be said in favor of established rules, approximately as much as in praise of human society."

We have already said above that the central problem of the work is formed by comprehensive development human personality. In Poetry and Truth, the aged Goethe analyzes in detail the fundamental foundations of his youthful views, analyzes the worldview of Hamann, who, along with Rousseau and Herder, most of all influenced the formation of these views, and expresses in the following words the basic principle of his early aspirations: "Everything, what a man begins to undertake, whether it be expressed by deed, word, or otherwise, must flow from all his combined forces, the disunited must be rejected. A magnificent maxim, which, however, is difficult to follow.

Main poetic content"Werther" is a struggle for the realization of this maxim, a struggle with external and internal obstacles that hinder its implementation. In the aesthetic sense, this is a struggle with the conventional "rules" of art, which we have already heard about. And here it is necessary to warn against metaphysical abstraction. Werther, and with him the young Goethe, are enemies of all rules, but this “absence of rules” does not at all mean for them immersion in the world of the irrational. It means a passionate striving for realism, means worship of Homer, Klopstock, Goldsmith, Lessing.

Still more energetic and passionate is the indignation against the rules of morality in the young Goethe. Bourgeois society replaces class and local privileges with a single national system of law. This historical movement is also reflected in ethics - in the form of a striving for universally binding laws of human behavior. In the future, this social trend finds its highest philosophical expression in the idealistic ethics of Kant and Fichte. But as a trend it existed long before them and grew out of practical life itself.

Although such an evolution of morality is necessary from a historical point of view, in fact it is still one of the obstacles to the development of personality. Ethics in the sense of Kant and Fichte strives for a unified system of rules, devoid of any contradiction, and wants to declare it an immutable law for a society whose main driving principle is contradiction itself. An individual acting in this society inevitably recognizes a system of rules of conduct in general terms, in principle, so to speak, but in concrete life he constantly falls into contradictions with this system. Such a conflict is not at all a consequence of the antagonism between the lower egoistic aspirations of man and his highest ethical "norms, as Kant thought. On the contrary, contradictions very often arise in cases where the best and noblest passions of man are involved. Only much later does Hegel's dialectic create a logical an image that (in an idealistic form) to some extent reflects the contradictory interplay between human passion and social development.

But even the best logical conception cannot resolve any real-life contradiction of reality. And the generation of the young Goethe, who deeply experienced this life contradiction, although they could not express it in logical formulas, with stormy passion rose against the moral obstacles to the free development of the individual.

A friend of Goethe's youth, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, in an open letter to Fichte vividly expressed this public mood: "Yes, I am an atheist and an atheist who ... wants to lie, as the dying Desdemona lies, to lie and deceive, like Pylades, posing as Orestes, to kill , like Timoleon, break the law and the oath, like Epaminondas and John de Witt, commit suicide like Otho, rob the temple, like David, and pluck ears on the Sabbath only because I am hungry and that the law was given for the sake of man, and not man for the sake of the law." Jacobi calls the revolt against the abstract norms of morality "the prerogative of man, the seal of his dignity."

The ethical problems of "Werther" are under the sign of this protest. In his novel, Goethe shows action very sparingly, but at the same time he almost always selects such figures and such events in which contradictions between human passions and the laws of society are revealed. Thus, in a few brief scenes, with amazing art, the tragic fate of a young worker in love who kills his beloved and rival is depicted. This crime forms a grim parallel to Werther's suicide.

The struggle for the realization of humanistic ideals is closely connected in the young Goethe with the nationality of his aspirations. In this respect, he is the successor of the tendencies of Rousseau and Rousseauism. The whole of "Werther" is a fiery recognition of that new man who appears in France on the eve of the bourgeois revolution, that all-round awakening of people's activity, which colossally accelerates the development of bourgeois society and at the same time condemns it to death.

Climbing it human type takes place in continuous dramatic contrast to class society and petty-bourgeois philistinism. The new, more democratic culture is opposed to the dullness and lack of intellectual interests of the "upper classes", on the one hand, and the dead, frozen, petty-egoistic life of the bourgeoisie, on the other. Each of these oppositions, as it were, suggests the idea that only among the people themselves can one find a real understanding of life, a living resolution of its questions. The inertia of the aristocracy and philistinism is opposed as a living person and a representative of new beginnings not only by Werther, but also by a number of figures from the people. Werther himself is a representative of the popular and vital element, in contrast to the estate ossification of the upper classes. Numerous discussions about painting and literature are subject to this. Homer and Ossian for Werther (and the young Goethe) are great folk poets, exponents of creative spiritual life, which should be sought only among the working people.

So, not being a revolutionary and a direct representative of the plebeian masses, the young Goethe proclaims, within the framework of the general bourgeois-democratic movement, the ideals of the people's revolutionary. The enemies of the revolution immediately understood this tendency of "Werther" and appreciated it accordingly. Notorious for his controversy with Lessing, the orthodox priest Goetze wrote, for example, that such books as Werther are the mothers of Ravaillac, the murderer of Henry IV and Damien, who attempted to assassinate Louis XV. Years later, Lord Bristol attacked Goethe for making so many people unhappy with his Werther. It is very interesting that Goethe, usually so subtly polite, responded to this complaint with sharp rudeness, listing to the astonished lord all the sins of the ruling classes. All this brings "Werther" closer to the revolutionary dramas of the young Schiller. The aged Goethe gives a very characteristic evaluation of these dramas by the reactionaries. One of the German princes once told him that if he were an omnipotent god and knew that the creation of the world would also bring the appearance of Schiller's "Robbers", then he would refrain from this rash act.

This kind of hostile assessment best reveals the real significance of the literature of the era of "storm and stress". Werther owed its success all over the world precisely to the revolutionary tendency inherent in it, no matter what the representatives of the reactionary philosophy of culture might say. Young Goethe's struggle for a free, all-round developed person, which found expression also in Goetz, a fragment of Prometheus, in the first sketches for Faust, reached its climax in Werther.

It would be wrong to see in this work only a symbol of a transient, overly sentimental mood, which Goethe himself overcame very quickly (three years after "Werther" Goethe wrote a cheerful and provocative parody of him - "The Triumph of Sensibility"). Bourgeois literary history draws attention to the fact that Goethe depicts Rousseau's "Eloise" and his own "Werther" as a manifestation of sentimentality. But she ignores the fact that Goethe ridicules only the aristocratic court parody of Werther, which degenerates into something unnatural. Werther himself runs to nature and to the people from the society of the nobility, frozen in its dead immobility. On the contrary, the hero of the parody creates an artificial nature for himself from the wings, he is afraid of reality, and his sensitivity has nothing to do with the vital energy of real people. Thus, "Triumph of Sensibility" only emphasizes the folk tendency of "Werther"; this is a parody of the influence of "Werther" unforeseen by the author - his influence on "oorazed" people.

In "Werther" we see a combination of the best realistic trends of the 18th century. In terms of artistic realism Goethe surpasses his predecessors - Richardson and Rousseau. Whereas with Rousseau the entire external world, with the exception of the landscape, is still absorbed by the subjective mood, the young Goethe is the successor to an objectively clear representation of the actual social and natural world; he is the successor not only of Richardson and Rousseau, but also of Fielding and Goldsmith.

From the external and technical side, "Werther" is the culminating point of the literary subjectivism of the second half of XVIII century, and this subjectivism does not play a purely external role in the novel, but is an adequate artistic expression of Goethe's humanistic indignation. But everything that happens within the framework of the narrative is objectified in Goethe with unheard-of simplicity and plasticity, taken from the great realists. Only towards the end of the work, as the tragedy of young Werther develops, the foggy world of Ossian displaces the clear plasticity of Homer.

But the novel of the young Goethe rises above the works of his predecessors not only in artistic terms. "Werther" is not only the climax of the artistic development of the Enlightenment era, but also an anticipation of realistic literature 19th century, the literature of great problems and great contradictions. Bourgeois historiography sees the young Goethe's successor in Chateaubriand. But this is not true. It is the deepest realists of the 19th century, Balzac and Stendhal, who continue the tendencies of Werther. In their works, those conflicts that Goethe prophetically guessed in The Suffering of Young Werther are fully revealed. True, Goethe paints only the most common features the tragedy of bourgeois-democratic ideals, a tragedy that becomes apparent only after a long time. Thanks to this, he still does not need the grandiose background of Balzac's novels and can confine himself to depicting a small, idyllicly closed world, reminiscent of the provincial scenes of Goldsmith and Fielding. But this image is already filled with that inner drama that, in the time of Stendhal and Balzac, forms an essentially new thing in the novel of the 19th century.

The Sorrows of Young Werther is usually portrayed as a love story. Is this true? Yes, "Werther" is one of the most significant creations of this kind in world literature. But like any really great poetry. The young Goethe's portrayal of love is not limited to this feeling. Goethe managed to invest deep problems of personality development into the love conflict. Werther's love tragedy appears before our eyes as an instantaneous flash of all human passions, which in ordinary life they act separately and only in Werther's fiery passion for Lotte merge into a single flaming and luminous mass.

Werther's love for Lotte rises in Goethe's masterful depiction to the expression of popular tendencies. Goethe himself later said that love for Lotte reconciled Werther with life. Even more important in this sense is the composition of the work itself. Noticing the irresolvable conflict his love involves, Werther seeks refuge in practical life, in activity. He takes a job at the embassy. This attempt fails because of the obstacles that aristocratic society places on the tradesman. Only after Werther has suffered this failure does his second tragic meeting with Lotta take place.

One of Goethe's admirers, Napoleon Bonaparte, who took "Werther" with him even on an Egyptian campaign, reproached the great writer for introducing a social conflict into a love tragedy. Old Goethe, with his subtle courtly irony, replied that the great Napoleon, it is true, studied Werther very carefully, but he studied it in the same way as a criminal investigator examines his affairs. Napoleon's criticism clearly proves that he did not understand the broad and comprehensive nature of the "Werther" problem. Of course, even as a tragedy of love, Werther contained the great and the typical. But Goethe's intentions were deeper. Under the guise of a love conflict, he showed an insoluble contradiction between the development of the individual and social conditions in the world of private property. And for this it was necessary to develop this conflict in all directions. Napoleon's criticism proves that he rejected the universal character tragic conflict depicted in "Werther" - which, however, is quite understandable from his point of view.

In such a roundabout way, Goethe's work leads us to the final catastrophe. Lotta, in turn, fell in love with Werther and, thanks to an unexpected impulse on his part, she comes to the realization of her feelings. But this is what leads to disaster: Lotta is a bourgeois woman who instinctively clings to her marriage and is frightened by her own passion. The tragedy of Werther, therefore, is not only the tragedy of unhappy love, but also a perfect depiction of the internal contradiction of bourgeois marriage: this marriage is connected with the history of individual love that arises with it, but "at the same time, the material basis of bourgeois marriage is in an insoluble contradiction with the feeling "Individual love. The social content of Goethe's love tragedy shows very clearly, although with restraint. After a collision with the aristocratic society of the embassy, ​​Werther leaves for the village. Here he reads that wonderful passage from Homer, which tells how Odysseus, who returned to his homeland, talks friendly with a swineherd. In the night suicide latest book that Werther is reading is Lessing's Emilia Galotti, the most revolutionary work of previous German literature.

So, "The Suffering of Young Werther" is one of the best novels in world literature, because Goethe managed to put the whole life of his era, with all its conflicts, into the image of a love tragedy.

But that is precisely why the meaning of "Werther" goes far beyond the limits of his era. The aged Goethe once said to Eckermann: “The era of Werther, about which so much has been said, if you look closer, does not belong to a certain stage in the development of world culture, but to the life development of each individual person, who, with free inclinations innate in his nature, must find a place for himself and adapt to oppressive shattered happiness, ruined activity, unsatisfied desire - these are the misfortunes not of any particular era, but of each individual person, and it would be bad if everyone did not have to experience at least once in his life such an era when Werther feels like it was written specifically for him."

Maybe Goethe is somewhat exaggerating the "timeless" character of "Werther", since the conflict depicted is a conflict between the individual and society within the framework of the bourgeois order. But that's not the point. After reading in the French magazine "Globe" a review in which his "Tasso" is called "an exaggerated Werther", old Goethe enthusiastically joined this assessment. The French critic correctly pointed out the threads that connect "Werther" and Goethe's later writings. In "Tasso" the problems of "Werther" are presented in an exaggerated form, emphasized more vigorously, but that is why the conflict receives a less pure resolution. Werther dies as a result of the contradiction between the human personality and bourgeois society, but he dies tragically, without polluting his soul with a compromise with the bad reality of the bourgeois system.

The tragedy of Tasso is closer to the outstanding novels of the 19th century, since the solution to the conflict here is more like a compromise than a tragic collision. The line "Tasso" becomes the leitmotif of the novels of the 19th century. from Balzac to modern times. It can be said of a number of characters in these novels that they are also "exaggerated Werthers". They die as a result of the same conflicts as Werther. But their death is less heroic, less glorious; it is more polluted by compromises and capitulations. Werther takes his own life precisely because he does not want to sacrifice anything from his humanist-revolutionary ideals. In such matters, he knows no compromises. And this tragic intransigence illuminates his death with that radiant beauty that even now gives a special charm to this book.

The beauty we are talking about is not only the result of the genius of the young Goethe. It is the result of deeper causes. Although the hero of Goethe's work perishes as a result of the universal conflict with bourgeois society, he is nevertheless himself a product of the early heroic period of bourgeois development. Just as the actors french revolution went to their death, full of the heroic illusions of their time, so the young Werther parted with his life, not wanting to part with the heroic illusions of bourgeois humanism.

Biographers of Goethe unanimously assert that the great German writer very soon overcame his Wertherian period. This is undoubtedly so. The further development of Goethe goes far beyond the former horizon. Goethe survived the disintegration of the heroic illusions of the revolutionary period and, despite this, retained in a peculiar form the humanistic ideals of his youth, portrayed their conflict with bourgeois society more fully, broadly and comprehensively.

And yet - a living sense of the value of the vital content that is inherent in "Werther", he retained until his death. Goethe overcame Werther not in the vulgar sense advocated by the bourgeois history of literature, not in the same way that a bourgeois who has grown wiser and reconciled to reality overcomes his "hobbies of youth." When, fifty years after the appearance of "Werther", Goethe had to write a new preface to it, he created the first poem of the "Trilogy of Passions", full of a melancholy attitude towards the hero of his youth:

Zum Bleiben ich, zum Scheiden du, erkoren,
Giingsit du voran - und hast nicht viel verloren.

This sadness of the aged Goethe most clearly expresses the dialectic of overcoming Werther. The development of bourgeois society has gone beyond the bounds of the integral and pure tragedy of Werther. The great realist Goethe never disputes this fact. A deep understanding of the meaning of reality always remains the basis of his poetry. But at the same time, he feels his loss, feels what humanity has lost along with the fall of the heroic illusions of an earlier era. He is aware that the radiance of this era, once and for all gone into the past, forms the immortal beauty of his "Werther", like the radiance of the morning dawn, followed by the rising of the sun - the First French Revolution.

In his early novel The Sorrows of Young Werther (see summary), which appeared in 1774. However, the sentimentalism in it, as has been pointed out more than once, is not purely German, but a synthesis of a trend common to England, France, and Germany, which Goethe independently experienced. Therefore, with all the variety of sources - both book and personal experiences and observations of immediate life (the story of the young man of Jerusalem who committed suicide), - the work turned out to be not only completely original, but at the same time typical of the pan-European literature of that era.

Goethe. The suffering of young Werther. Radio show

Werther's disease is a disease that an entire generation suffered from, infected with an excess of sensitivity, a preponderance of the life of the heart over all other properties of a person's spiritual life. Goethe managed to bring this state of mind to its extreme expression and make a tragic outcome internally necessary, according to the mental data of the character portrayed. He merged his individuality, generalizing the mood experienced by himself, with the individuality of another person, from whom he took sharper features, and created a generalized type, also presenting the first exemplary novel from German modern life, a response to contemporary reality.

And it seems not accidental that, at first glance, so paradoxical, Napoleon's admiration for the sensitive Werther, which cannot be explained only by the dilettantism of a practical politician and warrior, the celebrity of creation, or the sensitivity of a genius to everything that is brilliant. Napoleon, the son of the revolution and its consummator, carried a book with him on all campaigns, studied it deeply and subtly understood (which is proved by Goethe's recorded conversation with the emperor in 1805) - is it not because under the shell of sentimental psychology depicted in the novel, under nebulae of world sorrow, lurked a spark of his native rebellious fire - the seed of a true spiritual rebellion, which was destined to break out in a world fire?

Napoleon himself did not have to experience what Werther experienced in order to understand the consanguinity of his antipode and, oddly enough, his forerunner. The era of Werther posed the question of "to be or not to be" for the individual; and those who did not commit suicide, like the unfortunate Werther and the model with which he was written off - the dreamy young Jerusalem who loved to walk by the moon, had to either lay down their arms before life, or crave the destruction of its given forms. The robber Karl Moor was to be reincarnated, with the loss of all dreaminess and most of the abstractly noble feelings, in the condottiere Buonaparte.

The novel about Werther caused imitations of his hero in the increase in "romantic suicides" of young people. This seemed to Goethe himself an involuntary, but still criminal incitement. The horrified poet had to hastily beat the retreat and, above all, to come to his senses himself, to seek for himself order, harmony, measure and limit.

We know Goethe's lyrical poem "A Winter Journey to the Harz", whose symbolism would be impenetrable if the poet himself did not explain to us the origin of this ode: it is an attempt (in November 1777) to save a certain young man who fell ill with Werther's disease. We see from this symbolism how complex and spontaneous the psychology of that time was. "Who's out there? the poet asks. – His path is lost in the bushes, the thickets close behind him, the grass rises, the desert swallows him up... Whose power will heal the pain of the one for whom the balm turns into poison, who drank hatred of people from the excess of love? Previously despised, now despising himself, a misanthrope himself, he secretly feeds on his own pride, but selfishness will not satisfy his hunger. If there is on your psalter, Father of love, a single sound that is intelligible to his ears, revive his heart! Open your clouded eyes and let him see the thousand springs that flow beside him in the desert.

With gratitude and humility, Goethe contrasts the despair of the mentally ill with his own inner happiness, the deep golden peace of the spirit, which finds itself on the path of the deep affirmation of being in God and the world, in itself, living, and in everything that is alive; but in God all things are alive, for He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

Federal Agency for Education

GOU VPO Samara State University»

Faculty of Philology

The role of allusions to the novel by Johann Wolfgang Goethe "The Sufferings of Young Werther" in Ulrich Plenzdorf's story "The New Sufferings of Young V."

Course work

Completed by a student

2 courses 10201.10 groups

Eremeeva Olga Andreevna

______________________

Scientific director

(Ph.D., Associate Professor)

Sergeeva Elena Nikolaevna

______________________

Job protected

"___"_______2008

Grade___________

Samara 2008

Introduction……………………………………………………………………..……3

1.1. Tradition and intertextuality in the literature of the twentieth century…………….……5

1.2. Forms of manifestation of the category of intertextuality……………………...7

Chapter 2. The works of Goethe and Plenzdorf in the context of the era.

2.1. Goethe "The Suffering of Young Werther"…………………………………...10

2.2. Ulrich Plenzdorf “The New Sufferings of Young V.”………………...12

Chapter 3

3.1. Composition level…………………………………………….……..16

3.2. The main characters of the works………………………………..……….……21

Conclusion………………………………….………………….……………...…28

List of used literature…………………………………….…..…29

Introduction.

On August 10, 2007, the German writer and playwright Ulrich Plenzdorf died. He left his mark on literature, film and theatre. For example, according to his script, one of the most famous films of the GDR "The Legend of Paul and Paul" was shot, which told about the ordinary life of East Berlin to the music of the iconic rock band Puhdys.

Yet Ulrich Plenzdorf was the classic homo unius libri, "one book man." Moreover, this book turned out to be the most famous East German novel. "The New Sufferings of Young V." appeared in the early 1970s and glorified the young writer throughout Germany. Almost 200 years after Goethe's great novel, he again made a modern young man suffer, a working boy named Edgar Wibo.

Ulrich Plenzdorf revived the famous plot scheme of The Suffering of Young Werther, his hero also fell in love with the inaccessible Charlotte, also felt superfluous, and also died tragically.

This novel had a considerable resonance. Of course, the new "Wertherism" was already of a different kind: young people, as once 200 years ago, did not take their own lives. It was enough that the readers identified themselves with the thinking youth Vibo. Goethe's contemporaries, imitating Werther, dressed in blue jackets and yellow trousers. Contemporaries of the "young V." dreamed of real jeans: Plenzdorf's readers picked up his aphorism "Jeans are not trousers, but a position in life."

The purpose of this study was to elucidate the role of allusions in Plenzdorf's story "The New Sufferings of Young V." based on Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther.

During the study, the following tasks were set:

Read the text of both

Analyze works from the point of view of intertextuality

Familiarize yourself with critical literature on the issue

Draw conclusions according to the problem and purpose of the study

The subject of this study was the novel by Johann Wolfgang Goethe "The Sufferings of Young Werther" and the story by Ulrich Plenzdorf "The New Sufferings of Young W.".

At the beginning of the study, the following hypothesis was put forward: the leading role in the construction of the plot of the novel by Ulrich Plenzdorf "The New Sufferings of Young V." play literary allusions to Johann Wolfgang Goethe's novel The Sorrows of Young Werther.

The relevance of this study lies in the fact that the issues of comparative analysis of the texts of the story "The New Sufferings of Young V." and the novel "The Suffering of Young Werther" are not sufficiently developed both in German and in Russian. critical literature(first of all, the question of the manifestation of intertextuality in Plenzdorf's story, covered in this study).

The structure of the course work is as follows: the work consists of three chapters. In the first part of the work, the terms "intertextuality" and "tradition" and the forms of their implementation in a literary text are considered. The second chapter is devoted to the consideration of both works in the context of the era. In the third part of the study, we turned to a comparative analysis of the texts of the story "The New Sufferings of Young V." and the novel "The Sorrows of Young Werther", as well as to their compositional construction and the character system.

1.1. Tradition and intertextuality in the literature of the twentieth century.

According to E.A. Stetsenko, any work of art, any artistic trend is “simultaneously both a phenomenon of the reality that gave birth to them, and a part of the general cultural continuum, the result of the experience accumulated by mankind. Therefore, they are characterized not only by belonging to modern stage civilization and their inherent individual originality, but also correlation with previous eras. Each new stage of aesthetic development has its own norms, its own points of reference, its own predilections and stereotypes.

In the history of culture, researchers conditionally distinguish four epochs, characterized by a relatively smooth and consistent change of traditions. But on their borders there was a sharp change in the ideological and aesthetic system. These are antiquity, the Middle Ages, modern times and the 20th century.

The problem of tradition in the 20th century. is especially relevant, since "this century was at the same time the final stage of the New Age, and the transitional era, and the beginning of a new stage in the history of world culture that has not yet taken shape" . The turning point of the era caused a feeling of novelty of the world, the onset of a new stage of civilization, the need to start history as if from scratch. New ideas about the canon and freedom of creativity have appeared, as attention has increased to the individual, her social role, the particular was given priority over the general, normative ethics were supplanted by individual ones, an attempt was made to remove everything that limits the possibilities of realizing human creative potential.

The attitude towards tradition was also influenced by one of the leading ideas of the century - about the interconnection and interdependence of everything that exists. Yu.N. Tynyanov wrote: “A work torn out of the context of a given literary system and transferred to another one is colored differently, acquires other features, enters a different genre, loses its genre, in other words, its function shifts.” At the same time, Tynyanov considers literary continuity as a struggle, a constant repulsion from the previous one, "the destruction of the old whole and the new construction of old elements." Thus, in order to adequately depict the real world, human history and psychology, it is necessary not to break with traditions, but to rethink and transform them.

In the 60s, the term "intertextuality" began to appear in research, which actually replaced the concept of tradition. Intertextuality is understood in this case, according to Y. Lotman, as the problem of "text in text". Intertextuality implies neither continuity, nor influence, nor a canon, nor a purposeful choice, nor an objective logic of cultural development, nor cyclicity. However, such a representation is “only ideal, since in the vast majority of works, various texts are not neutral with respect to each other, but actively interact, being marked in historical, temporal, national, cultural, stylistic and other terms” .

I.V. Arnold believes that intertextuality always compares and usually opposes two points of view, general and individual (sociolect and idiolect), includes elements of parody, creates a conflict of two interpretations. And the phenomenon of text interpretation as a sign system is dealt with by hermeneutics - "the science is not about the formal, but about the spiritual interpretation of the text" .

Hermeneutics has been dealing with the problems of interpreting, understanding and explaining various historical and religious texts since antiquity. legal documents, works of literature and art. She developed many special rules, methods of interpreting texts.

So, one of the leading categories of hermeneutics as a science of text interpretation is the category of intertextuality [a term by Y. Kristeva]. Intertextuality is a multi-layered phenomenon. It can develop, on the one hand, according to literary traditions, the specifics of genres, on the other hand, on the basis of the connection between the situation and meaning.

According to Lotman, a text can be related to another text as reality is to convention. “The game of opposition between “real” and “conditional” is inherent in any “text within text” situation. The simplest case is the inclusion in the text of a section encoded with the same, but doubled code as the rest of the space of the work. It will be a picture within a picture, a theater within a theatre, a film within a film, or a novel within a novel” [6, p.432].

All those who have written about intertextuality have noted that it places texts in new cultural and literary contexts and makes them interact, revealing their hidden, potential properties. Thus, it can be argued that intertextuality is closely related to the concept of tradition and its concept both within individual creativity and on the scale of an entire cultural era.

1.2 Forms of manifestation of the category of intertextuality.

In terms of intertextuality, each new text is considered as a kind of reaction to already existing texts, and "existing ones can be used as elements of the artistic structure of new texts." The main markers, i.e. quotations, allusions, aphorisms, and other style inclusions can serve as linguistic ways of implementation, categories of intertextuality in any text.

Let us first consider such a common phenomenon as citation. It is known that the work of the classics of German literature had a significant impact on the development of German literature of the 19th and 20th centuries and on the formation of the German language. The main role in this process belongs, of course, to I.V. Goethe. As noted by I.P. Shishkin, it was "he who introduced a number of word-formation models into the everyday life of the literary language, which later became widespread, the author's neologisms became stronger in the vocabulary, and numerous quotations from his works entered the phraseological fund as" winged "expressions" .

Quotes may be verbatim. In this case, they are marked by graphic means, which can also be emphasized by a statement that introduces a quotation, which serves as a starting point for the character's further reasoning. Verbatim quotations have the function of characterizing the characters of works.

Quotations can also be included in the text without graphic marking. To describe events, not only a quotation is used, but also associations associated with it. Graphically unmarked quotations are in most cases modified by the author and subject to the context. "Unmarked quotations are included, as a rule, in the structure of a complex sentence or in a question-answer unity as a response. The main function of these inclusions is to increase the figurative expressiveness of the characters' speech, as well as an indirect characterization of the speaker's intellectual and social status" .

Often in the title artwork one can come across the so-called "foreign word" (the term of M.M. Bakhtin). "The presence of a "foreign word" in the title - a strong position of a work of art - further emphasizes the author's intention to reach the level of intertextual dialogue, to contribute to the development of universal problems. At the same time, the cited text acts as an interpretive system in relation to the title of which he is quoted.

Allusion is another way of linguistic manifestation of intertextuality. The meaning of the term "allusion" itself is ambiguous and allows for a number of very diverse interpretations. In the German literary subject dictionary, the definition of allusion is interpreted as follows: "Allusion is a hint, hidden in speech or writing, of a person, event or situation that is presumably known to the reader" .

Researcher L. Mashkova understands by allusion "nothing but a manifestation literary tradition; at the same time, no fundamental difference is made between imitation, the conscious reproduction of the form and content of more early works and those cases when the writer is not aware of the fact of someone's direct influence on his work ... ".

Thus, the phenomenon of allusion is also a way of realizing the category of intertextuality.

The next way of manifestation of intertextuality in the text, according to A.V. Mashkova, is an aphorism. Translated from the Greek "aphorismos" - a short saying; "this is a thought expressed in an extremely concise and stylistically perfect form. Very often an aphorism is an instructive conclusion that broadly generalizes the meaning of phenomena."

In the German-language dictionary of literary terms, edited by G. von Wilpert, an aphorism is understood as a sentence that is an author's thought, assessment, result of an action or life wisdom and expressed extremely briefly, accurately and convincingly "[22].

Another way of linguistic implementation of the category of intertextuality in the text is blotches of other styles. They are based on stylistically colored words - these are "words in the lexical meaning of which there are connotations indicating their belonging to a particular style" .

According to Zh.E. Fomicheva, "when registers and styles are mixed, the codes of two works are contrasted based on intertextuality. In this case, the old code is deformed and some elements are redistributed ... the old code adapts to the performance of a new communicative task" .

When mixing styles, as Zh.E. Fomicheva pointed out, "... a stylistic and functional transformation of foreign factual material occurs ... Different style inclusions, united by one common feature - a change in the subject of speech, are a type of intertextuality, more or less marked traces of another text ".

Chapter 2 The works of Goethe and Plenzdorf in the context of the era.

2.1. Goethe "The Sorrows of Young Werther"

The time of the appearance of the novel by I.W. Goethe "The Suffering of Young Werther" is 1774.

None of the works of Goethe had such a phenomenal success as this novel. tragic fate The young hero made a huge impression on his contemporaries. Thomas Mann, the 20th-century German writer whose novel Lotta in Weimar deals with the central event of The Sorrows of Young Werther, wrote: “Werther reflected all the richness of [Goethe's] talent ... Pushed to the limit, the nervous sensitivity of this small book ... caused a storm admiration and, overcoming all boundaries, miraculously intoxicated the whole world” [ 5, p.170 ].

The protagonist of the novel is Werther, a young man who is dissatisfied with his life and comes into conflict with high society. The only light in his life was his love for Charlotte, a young girl who was engaged to another man. Werther falls in love with her, the feeling for her captures all his thoughts. And the only way out that he sees in this situation is to consciously die so as not to interfere with the love of another person, which he does at the end of the novel.

The fate of Werther reflected the whole life of German society at the end of the 18th century. This work "was a typical story of the life of a contemporary who failed to fully realize his strengths and capabilities in a philistine environment" . The novel became "a spark that fell into a barrel of gunpowder and awakened the forces that were waiting for it." Proclaiming the right to emotions, the book expressed the protest of young people against the rationalism and moralizing of the older generation. Goethe spoke for a whole generation. The novel became the spiritual embodiment of the age of sensibility and the first experience of literature, which would later be called confessional.

"Werther's fever" swept through Europe and continued to run rampant for several decades after the publication of the novel. There have been sequels, parodies, imitations, operas, plays, songs and poems based on the story. Eau de toilette "Werther" came into fashion, ladies preferred jewelry and fans in the spirit of the novel. And the men flaunted in blue tailcoats and yellow vests “under Werther”. In twelve years, twenty different editions of the novel appeared in Germany.

The reason for the creation of the novel was Goethe's love for Charlotte Buff. He met her in June 1772 while serving at the Imperial Court in Wetzlar. Goethe had good friendly relations with Charlotte's fiancé, Kestner, who also served in Wetzlar, and when he realized that his feelings for Lotte were disturbing the peace of his friends, he retired.

Goethe himself left his beloved, but not from life, but the prototype of the suicide-lover is also taken from real events. Another Wetzlar official familiar to Goethe, Karl Wilhelm Jeruzalem, found himself in similar circumstances, falling in love with married woman. But he did not find a way out and committed suicide.

The news that Goethe's story is based on real events played into the hands of the "Werther fever". Travelers from all over Europe made a pilgrimage to the tomb of Jerusalem, where they made speeches and laid flowers. In the 19th century, the grave was included in English guidebooks.

Werther's suicide caused a wave of imitations among boys and girls in Germany and France: Goethe's volumes were found in the pockets of young suicides. Critics lashed out at the writer with accusations of corrupting influence and encouraging morbid sensibility. The clergy preached against the novel. The Leipzig Faculty of Theology called for the book to be banned on the grounds that it promoted suicide.

In his memoirs, Goethe wrote about his novel: “This thing, more than any other, gave me the opportunity to escape from the raging elements, ... capriciously and menacingly throwing me one way or the other. I felt as if after confession: joyful, free, entitled to a new life. But if, having transformed reality into poetry, from now on I felt free and enlightened, at that time my friends, on the contrary, mistakenly believed that poetry should be transformed into reality. , play out such a romance in life and, perhaps, shoot yourself. So, what at first was a delusion of the few, later became widespread, and this little book, so useful to me, deserved the reputation of being extremely harmful.

In 1783-1787 Goethe revised the book. IN final version In 1787, he added material emphasizing Werther's mental breakdown in order to discourage readers from following his example - suicide. The appeal to readers, anticipating the first book, reads: “And you, poor fellow, who succumbed to the same temptation, draw strength from his suffering, and let this book be your friend if, by the will of fate or through your own fault, you do not find a friend closer to yourself” .

So what is the reason for such a success of the novel? First of all, Werther is a man of a new formation. Goethe very accurately caught the shift in history - “the heroic and rational era of the Enlightenment, so loving strong rebels, leaders, putting reason above feelings, began to recede into the past. It was replaced by a new time, the hero of which was people like Werther. Emotional, passionate, but not able to resist the impulses of their nature, sensitive, weak and not ready to fight the world. The reader saw in Werther the bearer of bourgeois consciousness. The nature of the German burgher was exposed, for a long time dreaming of a struggle for a better reality and finally discovering that he can only dream and be sad that he has not yet matured for this struggle.

The tragic outcome of Werther's love can be understood as the tragic outcome of a person's encounter with cruel reality. According to B. Purishev, in Goethe's novel the conflict unfolds in two psychological planes. “Foreground: Werther's irrationalism. Werther is an unusually impressionable nature, a person who has dissolved his whole being in the subtlest feelings and experiences, his actions are guided by passions (“heart”), and not reason. “Second plan: weakness. Werther is a soft person, unable to overcome the obstacles that stand in his way, unable to apply his strength and will to reality. Werther perishes because he is too weak, too weak-willed, too neurotic to avoid a tragic denouement. In his first plan, Werther is included in a number of irrational images that arose in European literature in the second quarter of the 18th century. In the second plan, the main psychological specificity of the image is revealed.

The assessment of Werther by his contemporaries is characteristic. Lessing, who was backed by the most revolutionary layers of the bourgeoisie, paid tribute to the artistic merits of the novel, but negatively reacted to Werther as an image that promotes weak will and pessimism. "No Greek or Roman youth would have acted like this" (from Lessing's letter dated 26/X 1874). As for those sections of the German bourgeoisie whose ideology was carried by the young Goethe, they enthusiastically accepted the novel. Here is the end of one of the reviews: “...buy the book (reader) and read it yourself. But don't forget to listen to your heart. I would rather be a beggar, lie on straw, drink water and eat roots, than be immune to this emotional writer.

2.1. Ulrich Plenzdorf "The New Sufferings of Young V."

The literature of the GDR in the 1970s “gravitates toward a more multifaceted picture of the present and the contemporary than in previous decades. There is an active inclusion of the feelings and thoughts of an individual in the field of view German writers". In the 1970s, the growing interest of modern authors in the writers of the Sturm und Drang era and some German romantics was also clearly revealed. It is known that "the development of each national culture associated with the study of traditions, the use of the artistic experience of writers of previous generations and literary movements. The spiritual heritage of the past is a model of life experience, a reflection of the worldview of our predecessors. The appeal to this experience is caused by the desire to reveal their own aesthetic and moral positions. This is one of the ways of expressing one's attitude to the problems of modern reality. Thus, the work of the classics of German literature of the 18th century had a significant impact on the development of German literature of the 19th-20th centuries, and the primary role in this influence is rightfully given to J.W. Goethe.

The problem of attitude to Goethe - and in his face to German classics- had the most important cultural and political significance. In this sense, of undoubted interest in clarifying the nature of the relationship of the literature of the GDR to the classical heritage is the story of the young prose writer Ulrich Plenzdorf "The New Sufferings of Young V."

Ulrich Plenzdorf's story "The New Sufferings of Young W." It attracted considerable literary and critical interest both in the GDR and in the Federal Republic. The main attention of the researchers was paid to the writer's criticism of his own society [21]. This criticism has been made possible by new liberalization trends. After VIII. SED party congress in 1971, there was a change of power from Ulbricht to Honecker, which is considered as a decisive condition for the appearance of Plenzdorf's story and some other similar works (for example, Volker Brons "Dump Trucks" - also in 1973), as well as their consideration in a more complete public - political sense.

In the words of Erich Honecker: “From the standpoint of socialism, then, in my opinion, there can be no taboos in the field of art and literature,” a phase of more open cultural policy began. This manifested itself primarily in the literature, where the theme of "the individual and society" received a new interpretation.

The story of Edgar Vibo aroused the liveliest interest. Literary critics in the GDR and in the Federal Republic carried on a heated discussion of Plenzdorf's work on the pages of the magazine "Sinn und Form" (Nos. 1-4, 1973).

Story structure, the system of characters and a number of details of Plenzdorf's story are associated with Goethe's novel. But why modern writer needed Goethe's model of the relationship of a young man with the surrounding society? During the discussion, it was concluded that "Plenzdorf's appeal to the legacy of Goethe plays not only a secondary role in the text of the story, but also determines its socio-critical structure in many aspects" (Ebergart Mannack) [ 15 ]

Another point of view was represented by a professor at the University of Berlin. Humboldt Robert Weiman. He determined the correlation of these two texts with a short formula: "The classical text as an extended metaphor" [15]. Quoting Goethe's text and parallels to his plot is a huge metaphorical simile that covers the whole story. It allows the main character to reveal himself more fully, but not so much to his external, noticeable at first sight features, but to his deep inner qualities.

Also in Ulrich Plenzdorf’s story, “for the first time, the connection between the people and the bourgeois literary society proclaimed in official circles was called into question. cultural heritage promoted for decades". Surveys were conducted, on the basis of which the researchers made an unexpected conclusion that the working population, and in particular the youth of Germany, "not only do not know Goethe's works well, but, after becoming familiar with the language and ideas of his work, they do not want to continue this acquaintance." Sergei Lvov writes that the majority of the young people surveyed “would never have thought of reading or re-reading Goethe’s novel The Sorrows of Young Werther if it weren’t for Edgar Wiebo.” Ulrich Plenzdorf himself, in a discussion in Sinn und Form, admitted that he “read the novel when he was already an adult. Moreover, I read it for the first time with almost the same feeling as Edgar.

The story "New suffering of young V." caused a great public outcry, as well as strong interest among young people. The heroes of the story and their problems were close to the general population of Germany. For example, Stefan Hermlin, who gave one of the most positive assessments of the work, praised the work as "a true expression of the thoughts and feelings of the working youth of the GDR" . The surveys conducted showed people's clear sympathy for Edgar, coupled, however, with partial criticism of his behavior. At the same time, the extreme importance and acuteness of the problems raised in the work were noted.

The hero of Plenzdorf's story Edgar Wibo, a 17-year-old boy, feels constrained in hometown. “A young man, an example of socialist education, an exemplary student, breaks one day under the pressure of the prescription of being and criticizes the world around him, full of bourgeois-petty-bourgeois stereotypes.” He rebels against the gray everyday life of modern industrial society, defends his right to an individual way of life, to independently choose his own destiny. Edgar suffers from the limitations of his abilities, considers himself a misunderstood, unrecognized genius. He opposes modern society with its "increasing rationalization, the dominance of production-consumer relations, the regulation of life" [23].

Werner Neubert, Chief Editor magazine "Neue deutsche Litheratur", critically reacted to the work of Plenzdorf. However, he noted the relevance of the story: “This is undoubtedly a signal of a real problem and an image of this problem. Let one Edgar Vibo die by the will of his creator, but he died only in order to draw our attention to the fact that many Vibo live! .

But there was also a sharp rejection of the work. The well-known lawyer and writer Professor Kaul was outraged by the very idea that parallels are generally possible between the hero Goethe and the youth - a homeless child. Considering Edgar "not typical of our youth", he denies the author the right to deal with such a character. Kaul also reproaches Plenzdorf for the fact that there is no socio-political counterbalance to Edgar in the story.

Thus, the story of Ulrich Plenzdorf "The New Sufferings of Young V.", as well as Goethe's novel, expressed the views and moods of the new generation. Just like Goethe, Plenzdorf portrayed a man of a new formation, going beyond the usual society, in conflict with him. In my opinion, this was one of the reasons for Plenzdorf's appeal to Goethe's text "The Sorrows of Young Werther".

Chapter 3

3.1. compositional level.

The novel by I.W. Goethe "The Sufferings of Young Werther" appeared in 1774 and enjoyed phenomenal success. The tragic fate of the young hero made a huge impression on his contemporaries.

In the 20th century, almost two centuries later, the Werther theme receives a new, specific incarnation in German literature. The story of the young prose writer Ulrich Plenzdorf "The New Sufferings of Young V." appears in 1973 and has almost the same colossal success among new generation readers.

The writers of the 70s were most interested in the question of how a person manages his life, “whether he manages to carry out his life project” in accordance with his dreams and desires. It is the fulfillment of the "life project" that becomes a matter of personal responsibility of each for the chosen version of fate.

Two centuries filled with acute historical cataclysms separate the novel by I.W. Goethe and the story by W. Plenzdorf. But the theme and characters remain the same. In the center of the artistic image is again a person with his feelings and thoughts, misunderstood by society and isolating himself from it. The "sufferings" of Werther's hero are transferred to the soil of a new historical reality. They are continued in relation to the fate of the young construction worker Edgar Vibo.

The plot structure and system of characters in Plenzdorf's story is a modern version of the story told by Goethe: a young man, Edgar Wibo, passes away without realizing himself as a person. In the last weeks of his life, he meets a girl who is engaged to another.

So, what are the similarities and differences between these works? Taking these two books in hand, we see their similarity at the level of the titles of the works: Johann Wolfgang Goethe "The Sufferings of Young Werther" and Ulrich Plenzdorf "The New Sufferings of Young V." The title is "the first sign of a work of art... In the content structure of a work, the title plays a significant role: it conveys in a concentrated form its main [work] theme and idea." From the title, we can determine that both works will be about the “sufferings” of a young man, but in the text of W. Plenzdorf’s story they will be “new”, modern. The author in this case sets a new direction for the reader's perception of the old plot.

Upon further comparison of the two titles, we see the following situation: in the title of the novel by J.W. Goethe, the hero is named full name. In the title "The New Sufferings of Young V." there is a coded name of the protagonist, starting with the same letter as Goethe's. Thus, the title of Plenzdorf's story is a modification of the title of Goethe's novel. Moreover, the reduction of the surname Vibo to the initial serves, in my opinion, a reflection of modern reality, with its tendencies to speed up life, dryness and brevity of official speech. In this way, the author of the story also takes us to a new historical stage.

“I carefully collected everything that I managed to find out about the story of poor Werther, I offer it to your attention and I think that you will be grateful to me for this. You will be imbued with love and respect for his mind and heart and shed tears over his fate…” [ 1, p.329 ]

From here we learn that in the novel there will be a story about the sad fate of Werther, but the author does not report what will happen to him.

And what do we see in Plenzdorf? - These are condolences from various newspapers on the death of a certain Edgar Vibo. But we learn the name of the protagonist in parts: from the first extract - the name, from the second - the surname:

On the evening of December 24, in the summer building on the territory of the “Children's Paradise II” camp in the Lichtenberg district, the people's police discovered the body of seventeen-year-old Edgar V. ." [2,p.106]

Edgar V. - this abbreviation reflects the style of modern life, namely the business dryness, the formality of speech. On the one hand, no significance is attached to the name of the deceased, on the other hand, we are talking about the anonymity of the newspaper style. However, already at this level, the connection of the names "V." and Werther.

As a result of an accident on December 24, the life of our younger comrade Edgar Wibo was cut short.

We mourn the untimely departed!

Directorate of the RSU People's Enterprise, Berlin.

Shop committee of the trade union.

Committee of the SSNM. [2,p.106]

From here we learn the full name of the main character, the place where the action takes place, as well as what and when happens to the main character. Thus, in brief, we have an idea of ​​the main events of the story.

So, the accident with Edgar Wibo takes place in Berlin in the Lichtenberg district: a young man died as a result of careless handling of electric current. Thus, U. Plenzdorf begins his story, as it were, from the end. In Goethe, we can also observe a similar construction of the beginning of the novel, but there are no specific data here. And his novel begins at the end, on behalf of the author-"publisher", who introduces us to the essence of the matter, but there is no designation of the finale. We will learn about the unfortunate fate of Werther later, having read the text.

Also in Goethe's novel, attention is drawn to the fact that the place from where Werther mainly writes letters is the village of Walheim. And in the text we see the following remark by Goethe:

... Let the reader not bother to look for the places named here; we had to change the original names. (Author's note.) "

Thus, the writer deliberately uses a fictitious name, about which he himself informs the reader, while W. Plenzdorf indicates completely real spatio-temporal coordinates. According to B. Purishev, in Goethe this is “an element of intrigue; in addition, he [Goethe] emphasizes the role of fiction when he talks about changing proper names” [24].

Consider now the composition of both texts. The narration in Goethe's novel "The Sufferings of Young Werther" is built in the form of letters from the protagonist Werther to his friend. We can talk about the sequence of events, as the letters are arranged in chronological order. First it is May 4, 1771, then May 10, May 12, and so on.

In Plenzdorf's story, we see four information layers:

1. documents in the introduction (newspaper article, three death notices)

2. memories of parents, friends, colleagues

3. comments by Edgar himself “from the next world”

4. reflection of reality in Goethe's quotations.

“The form of subjective narration characteristic of Goethe's novel” (Purishev) is also preserved in Plenzdorf's story. This is "mainly a monologue-outpouring, acting as a means of revealing the inner content of the personality, its cherished impulses hidden from external observation" [17]. However, these are not letters. We see that this is a dialogue, and often isolated remarks, but there is no indication of who utters them.

“The identification of the speaker occurs on the basis of the semantic content of the utterance” [17], i.e. from the replicas, we seem to guess the speaker, since in the dialogue the names of those who are being discussed are also called. Thus, here we are dealing with such a stylistic device as polyphony, or polyphony.

Here are the replicas of Edgar's father Vibo, his friend Willy, Edgar's lover Shirley, his workmates Eddie and Zaremba. But something else is interesting. In the story, which has “such a complex compositional and speech structure, where the narration is conducted by several storytellers replacing each other, without special marking by lexical means” [ 17 ], the main voice belongs to the deceased Edgar Vibo himself. Thus, the main narration in the story is conducted by Vibo himself, and the replicas of other characters serve to complicate the form of the narration.

After the first pages, when Wibo's father and Edgar Willy's friend are talking, Edgar Wibo himself is included in the conversation. But the difficulty lies in the fact that the dialogue that is being conducted about Edgar takes place after his death, i.e. Edgar is included in the conversation as if "from the next world" and confirms or refutes the words of the participants in the dialogue.

For example: Wibo's father asks Elsa Wibo, mother, about Edgar. She answers:

“Later, we talked about some girl, but then everything soon got upset. Got married! While he was here with me, he did not even know about any girls ... But this is not a reason to raise the police to their feet!

And then comes the comment of Edgar Wibault himself:

"Stop, stop! This is all bullshit, of course. I really knew about the girls - even how!

But this inclusion of Vibo's words is not indicated in any way, we can only guess about this from the meaning.

Another means of constructing the text of Plenzdorf's story is quoting passages from Goethe's novel.

Werther writes letters to his friend. And Edgar Wibo sends his friend recordings on tape. And the content of these tapes is nothing but quotations from the text of Goethe's novel. Edgar Wibo compares himself with the hero of Goethe. This juxtaposition is realized in the story by including quotations from the novel at the moments of the greatest inner tension of the protagonist.

In the text of W. Plenzdorf's story, the graphics and spelling of these quotes are stylized as a transcribed tape recording. Here, for example, is one of them:

“the groom is here / wilhelm / fortunately I was not at the meeting / it would tear my soul / the end”

Compare with Goethe's text:

“The groom is here, Wilhelm. He is sweet, nice, and you need to get along with him. Fortunately, I was not at the meeting! It would break my soul."

In the story, sentences are separated by oblique strokes, all words are written with a small letter, there are no punctuation marks. Only pauses are marked. However, this is a quote from Goethe's novel. Here we reach a new level of intertextuality - citation. But the quoted text does not completely coincide with the text of Goethe's novel. Sometimes some phrases are released, or two independent statements merge into one. Moreover, all transformations occur only on the basis of the novel without any author's additions and modifications. One phrase has been omitted in the above citation, because this phrase cannot be connected with the realities of the novel.

And here is an example of combining two independent statements into one. Edgar's penultimate message to his friend Willie:

“my friends / why does the spring of genius so rarely beat / so rarely overflows with a full-flowing stream / shaking your embarrassed souls / my dear friends / yes, because / because reasonable gentlemen live on both banks / whose gazebos / vegetable gardens and flower beds with tulips would be washed away without a trace / and therefore they manage to prevent danger in advance with the help of diversion channels and dams / all this makes me numb / I withdraw into myself and open the whole world / the end” [ 2, c.110 ]

This quotation is presented in Goethe's text as two separate statements. In addition, in the story they are not connected in the order in which they are written in the novel.

...just the powerless humility of dreamers who paint the walls of their prison with bright figures and attractive views - all this makes me numb. I withdraw into myself and open the whole world!”

This phrase corresponds to the second part of Edgar's message, and the next phrase will be the beginning of the tape recording, although in Goethe's novel they go in a different order:

My friends! Why does the spring of genius so rarely beat, so rarely overflows with a full-flowing stream, shaking your embarrassed souls? My dear friends, yes, because sensible gentlemen live on both banks, whose arbors, vegetable gardens and flower beds with tulips would be washed away without a trace, and therefore they manage to prevent danger in advance with the help of diversion channels and dams.

There are seven such quotations in the form of transcribed tapes in the text of the story. When comparing them with the text of Goethe's novel, it turns out that the order in which they appear does not correspond to the order in which they appear in the novel. W. Plenzdorf builds quotes as some stages in the development of relations between Edgar Wibo and Shirley.

3.2. The main characters of the works.

So, in the novel by I.V. Goethe, we have the following characters: Werther, Charlotte (Lotta), Albert (fiance, and later Lotta's husband) and Werther's friend Wilhelm (the addressee of letters, an off-stage character, so to speak, because . he never appeared on the pages of the novel in person). Here are the heroes that Plenzdorf presents to us: Edgar Vibo, Shirley, her fiancé and then her husband - Dieter and friend of Edgar Willy (unlike Wilhelm, he is the protagonist of the work). The main storyline, both in the novel and in the story, is a love triangle, the eternal theme of "the third superfluous".

First, let's analyze the names of the characters. According to V.A. Kukharenko, "the choice of a character's name is a very crucial moment in the creation of a work of art. It actualizes both the author's modality, and prospectivity, and the pragmatic focus of the text on the reader's complicity" [ 18, p.104].

As mentioned earlier, the same letter "B" appears in the names of the main characters of both works. Thus, the source of the story - Goethe's novel - reveals itself from the very beginning, even in the title of the story "The New Sufferings of Young V.".

Now let's compare the names of the lovers from both works - Charlotte and Shirley. It can be assumed that Shirley is a modern Americanized version of the name Charlotte. However, in fact, Edgar Vibo's beloved name is not Charlotte at all. We learn about this from the dialogue between Father Edgar and Shirley. When asked by Shirley what he knows about her, her father replies:

"Very little. That your name is Charlotte and that you are married. And that you have black eyes” [ 2, p.118 ]

Here is Shirley's reaction:

"Which Charlotte? Is it me, Charlotte?!” [2,p.118]

Next, Edgar Wibault himself is included in the text:

“Don't cry, Shirley. Buza is all this. Why are you crying here? And I took the name from that very book. [2,p.118]

Thus, the girl's name is another parallel with Goethe's novel.

Also striking is the similarity in the names of Wibo and Werther's friends: Willy Lindner and Wilhelm. The name "Willy" can be seen as a colloquial variant of "Wilhelm".

So, from the first lines of Plenzdorf's story, we learn that Edgar Vibo - "the headmaster's son, the best student", runs away from home. Edgar's acquaintances believe that the reason for this was his quarrel with the teacher Fleming. At the school, Edgar and Willy had to file the plates. Edgar was indignant why they had to do it by hand, if there was a special machine for this in the next room. In retaliation, Flemming mispronounces his last name as "Weebau" instead of "Weebo". This pronunciation of the surname deprives her of French roots, which Edgar was very proud of. For this, Edgar "accidentally" dropped this iron plate on the teacher's leg.

Edgar himself explains his departure in a different way. He could no longer live within the rigid confines of exemplary behavior. He did not want to upset his mother and therefore always tried to be an exemplary boy. But then he got tired of being the way others want to see him, he wanted to be himself. Here's how Edgar puts it:

“That's where I really was a fool, a fool - I was always afraid that she [mother] would not be upset. In general, I was taught to walk on the line - God forbid you upset someone. And so he lived: this is impossible, this is impossible. Coffin. I don't know if I'm being clear. But now, maybe you understand why I told them all - hello! How much you can call people's eyes: here you see, living proof that a guy can be brought up wonderfully without a father. And so it was. Once an idiotic thought occurred to me: what if I suddenly give up the ends one fine day? Let's say black pox or some other vile. Yes, if you then ask: what did I get from life? I couldn’t get rid of this thought - I just stood with a stake in my head” [ 2, p.111 ]

That. the story with the teacher was just the last straw. Edgar fled to Berlin and settled in an abandoned garden house. There he does everything to feel different from others: he bought jeans, grew his hair, leads a nocturnal lifestyle. In the house, he “hung his selected works on the walls. Let everyone know that the unrecognized genius Edgar Vibo lives here.”

Edgar attaches great importance to his Huguenot roots. He honors his ancestors and wears his name with pride. For Vibo, this is another way to stand out, to challenge society. At the beginning of the work, he flaunts this, speaks of the hot blood of the Huguenots that flows in his veins.

“Sometimes this happens to me - suddenly it throws you right into the heat, it’s dark in your eyes, and then you’ll definitely throw something out, and then you don’t remember what came over you. It's probably all my Huguenot blood. Or maybe my blood pressure is high. Huguenot blood rushes in." [2,p.108]

In Berlin, Edgar wants to visit the museum of the history of the Huguenots, to find some traces of the name Wibo. But then, already at the end of the work, when Vibo stumbled upon this museum, closed for repairs, he turned around and left.

“Immediately I analyzed myself at a pace and found that I just didn’t care whether I was of noble blood or not, and what other Huguenots were doing there. I guess I didn't even care if I was a Huguenot or a Mormon or whatever. I don’t know why, but I was already up to the wick. [2,p.141]

This, in my opinion, speaks of the inner development of the protagonist. He no longer needed to look for various facts that spoke about his personality. Sergey Lvov writes about Edgar: “Of course, he is far from an ideal hero, but he is still a very young man who goes through a path of difficult internal development, not limited to searching for outwardly original behavior, growing up and changing in the main thing - in relation to work, love, art . There is no doubt that if this path continued, all the pretense would fly off him like a husk. So the cynical bravado flew off him when he truly fell in love ”[15].

The main characters of Goethe's novel and Plenzdorf's story live in different eras, Werther - in the eighteenth century, and Vibo - in the twentieth century, and both of them are people of their time. The difference between them is very significant: the melancholic contemplative Werther, philosophically introspective, dreamy, subtly feeling the life of nature, and the active Edgar Vibo, who cannot imagine life without contemporary music and outside the big city. Each of them is a child of his age. When reading these two works, a feeling of almost absolute incompatibility of both characters, their alienation to each other, is born. And it seems that the possibility of understanding one another is excluded.

In Plenzdorf's story, Edgar accidentally finds a book that turns out to be nothing more than J.W. Goethe's novel "The Sorrows of Young Werther". At first, Edgar does not perceive Werther's suffering as something worthwhile. He says:

“Here everything is sucked from the finger. Nonsense alone. And the style! Wherever you spit, everything is the soul, and the heart, and bliss, and tears. Did anyone really say that, even if it was three hundred years ago? The whole assembly of continuous letters from this crazy Werther to his friend home. And I suppose the writer expected it to be terribly original or, conversely, natural. [2,p.116]

But he does not even suspect how he will eventually be imbued with the events of this "book", as he calls it. After all, such feelings belong not only to the 18th century, but to the entire history of mankind. Such "young Werthers" were, are and will always be. First, Edgar takes from this book a name for his beloved, and then he himself tries to understand what happened in Werther's soul. And there are many parallels here.

In the end, Edgar reads the story of Werther, remembers it by heart, carries it with him. The old book turns out to be interesting and even necessary. First, Edgar Wibault quotes from "Werther" with only one purpose - to surprise his friend:

“He [Willie] certainly tipped over. His eyes must have popped out of their sockets. Where he stood, he sat there” [ 2, c.120 ]

But then he is forced to admit that “this Werther sometimes sucked really useful things out of his finger!” Edgar begins to use Werther's words when he wants to confuse others. For example:

“The human race is a rather monotonous thing. Most they spend their time on earning bread, and the rest of their small share of freedom frightens them so much that they do everything to get rid of it. [ 2 ]

Both girls, Lotta and Shirley, are also representatives of their generation. They both appear for the first time before us, as well as before Werther and Wibo, surrounded by children. The only difference is that in the case of Lotta, all the children were her sisters, and Shirley worked as a teacher in kindergarten. Thus, Plenzdorf is not satisfied only with the parallel of names, but also uses plot parallelism.

Vibo is not indifferent to Shirley, just as Werther falls in love with Lotta. But Werther himself always found some reason to come to his beloved. And in the case of Vibo, Shirley herself always took the first steps towards meetings.

Suffice it to recall the story of the note written by Shirley Edgar, where she asked him to come. Edgar wanted to write to the girl himself, but did not dare, because. knew he had nothing to rely on. But Shirley was the first to send him a postcard: “Are you still alive? Would have looked at us. We got married a long time ago"

When Vibo came and saw Dieter, Shirley's husband, he was confused and turned the situation around as if he had come for the Swedish key. And Shirley begins to play along with Vibo, pretending that she had absolutely no idea about the arrival of Vibo.

And Shirley herself offers the first kiss to Edgar.

Lotta remained faithful to her fiancé, while Shirley behaved more freely and uninhibitedly. This is the essential difference between the two girls. This, however, is understandable, because. Shirley lives in a different time, when women are completely different from the ladies of the 18th century.

Albert, Lotta's fiancé, is a young man, but already with a promising future, and Dieter served in the army, and then we learn that he is going to enter the university. Both young people are absolutely “correct”, typical representatives its environment. They have no problems with integration into society, with finding their place in this world. They do everything right and condemn those who do not fit into the framework of generally accepted morality. Thus, Albert and Dieter are complete opposites of Werther and Wibo.

And what happens to Werther and Edgar in the society of their contemporaries? At first, Werther is accepted in the world, he finds friends for himself, but over time his position worsens. And in the end he is expelled from high society. And Edgar Wibo, also considering himself misunderstood, wants to complete his task alone: ​​to invent a dripless sprayer that would allow more economical and better use of paint.

No one really understands Vibo, not Mother, not Master Fleming, not Brigadier Eddie, not even Shirley. Only the old worker Zaremba managed to feel the soul of Edgar. But he is one among many, and this is too little. Werther still finds understanding with his friend. Although there is no direct contact with Wilhelm, but Werther, who wrote in a letter about his feelings, still feels better.

Both characters constantly talk about the approaching end. Only Werther simply anticipates it, and Vibo, after his death, talks about the reasons for what happened to him, namely about this ridiculous accident. The very thought of suicide is alien to Vibo, he believes that there is no reason to take one's own life.

Werther feels the full horror of his position. He speaks again and again about the grave as the only way out of this situation:

Standing over the abyss, I stretched out my hands, and I was drawn down! Down! Ah, what bliss to throw down there my torments, my sufferings! Ride along with the waves!” [ 1 ]

Lotta! Lotta! I am a dead man! My mind is confused, for a week now I have not been myself, my eyes are full of tears. Everywhere I feel equally bad and equally good. I don't want anything, I don't ask for anything. It's better for me to leave altogether." [ 1 ]

Werther finally decides to commit suicide, writes a letter to Lotte three days before Christmas, on December 21, when he decides to do as he planned.

In turn, Edgar Wibo had a goal - he had to realize his life project - to create an atomizer, and then leave Berlin forever. This served as "a nail in the lid of his coffin." [2,p.148]

Edgar said: “From an elementary technical point of view, the unit was, of course, just the devil knows what. But the principle was important to me.” [2,c.151]

The device did not work, the voltage rose, “and if you already touched it with your hand, then you will not let go. That's all. Salute, old people! [2,c.151]

Just as in the text of Goethe's novel, in Plenzdorf's story, the last three days [three days before the birth of Christ], which Werther set aside for himself in order to live out his life and then consciously die, are of decisive importance. Only in the text of the story these three days are assigned to the life of the protagonist by a young guy who came on a bulldozer to demolish Edgar's house. He gives him three days to leave this dwelling. And so it happens, only Edgar Wibault dies in an accident.

Edgar tries to realize himself as a person in various ways: in music, in painting, in love, in work. The main thing he strove for was to establish normal contact with the people around him, to contribute to the improvement of life. The author of the story W. Plenzdorf points to the excessive youthful maximalism of the hero, the immaturity of the mind and soul. But modern society (in comparison with the tragedy of Werther) did not do everything to protect the young German from suffering.

Werther came to the conclusion that it is impossible to find oneself in conditions of class inequality, indifference to the spiritual, human content of the individual. Two hundred years have passed, and young Vibo is tormented by the old "new suffering". This means that despite the passage of time, the causes that cause them have not been eliminated. Not everything has been done so that a young man can find himself and his happiness, which would not be selfish.

Both heroes pass away without realizing their full potential. The death of Vibo, who alone is trying to solve a difficult technical problem and becomes a victim of an accident, makes the reader think about the problems of modern youth, about the possibilities of self-determination, about the relationship of generations.

Summing up, we can conclude that the appeal to Goethe's novel enriches the text of Plenzdorf's story. It uses both similar plot moves, the parallelism of the titles and names of the main characters, and direct quotes from Werther's words. Both the novel and the story end with the death of the protagonist.

In my opinion, Edgar's death was not something predetermined, natural. This is an accident, but the reason for this accident was the desire of a young man to prove to society his right to a place in this world. That. the death of Edgar Vibo cannot be interpreted unambiguously. Edgar himself is to blame for it, his excessive self-confidence, and society, which did not accept this gifted, self-hungry personality.

Conclusion.

comparative study novel by W. Plenzdorf "New suffering of young V." and Goethe's novel "The Suffering of Young Werther" allows us to conclude that both works were created in a similar socio-political environment, with a change of formations. They both caused a great public outcry and strong interest among broad circles readers of his time.

Plenzdorf's story, like Goethe's novel, expressed the views and moods of the new generation. Just like Goethe, Plenzdorf portrayed a man of a new formation, going beyond the usual society, in conflict with him.

The "sufferings" of Werther's hero are transferred to the soil of a new historical reality. When constructing the plot of the story, Plenzdorf uses both a parallel of the names of the main characters, plot parallelism, a similar compositional structure, and a direct quotation of Goethe's novel.

The main storyline, both in the novel and in the story, is a love triangle, the eternal theme of "the third superfluous". However, in both works, the tragic outcome of the protagonist's love can be understood as the tragic outcome of a person's encounter with cruel reality.

At first, we have a feeling of complete incompatibility of both characters, their alienation from each other. But then Edgar Wibo compares himself with the hero of Goethe, finds many parallels with his fate, imbued with the events of this book.

W. Plenzdorf points to the excessive youthful maximalism of the hero, the immaturity of the mind and soul. He wants to stand out, does everything to feel different from others. But throughout the story we see internal development Main character. He grows up and changes in relation to work, love, art.

Both the novel and the story end with the death of the protagonist. Werther and Wibo did not find understanding among contemporaries. Society did not accept these gifted people who yearned for independence. And both heroes pass away without realizing their full potential.

List of used literature.

Texts

1. Johann Wolfgang Goethe. "The Sorrows of Young Werther". Translation by N.Kasatkina. Selected works in two volumes. Volume II. M., Pravda, 1985

2. Ulrich Plenzdorf "New suffering of young V." // Foreign literature, 1973, №12.

Scientific and critical literature

3. Stetsenko E.A. The Concept of Tradition in the Literature of the 20th Century // Artistic Landmarks of Foreign Literature of the 20th Century. IMLI RAN, 2002, p. 47-82

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18. Kukharenko V.A. Text interpretation. - M.: Enlightenment, 1988.

19. N. Karolides, M. Bald, D. Suova, Evstratov A., One Hundred Forbidden Books: Censorship of World Literature, Publishing House “Ultra. Culture”, M., 2004, p. 333-335.

20. Heinemann W. Zur Eingrenzung des Intertxtualitaetsbegriffs aus textlinguistischer Sicht. // Textbeziehungen: linguistische und literaturwissenschaftliche Beitraege zur Intertextualitaet. - Tuebingen: Stauffenburg, Joseph Klein, Ulla Fix (hrgs.), 1997.

21. F. J. Raddatz, Ulrich Plenzdorfs Flucht nach Innen, in: Merkur Jg. 27 (1973), Heft 12, S. 1174-1178

22. Wilpert G. von. Sachwoerterbuch der Literatur. - Stuttgart: Alfred Kroener Verlag, 1969.

23. Jürgen Scharfschwerdt. Werther in der DDR. // Jahrbuch der Deutschen Schillergesellschaft 22 (1978), S.235-276.

24. B. Purishev. Werther and Wertherism. (http://feb-web.ru/feb/litenc/encyclop/le2/le2-1842.htm)

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26. Mlechina I. Life of the novel. - M.: Soviet writer, 1984. - 3