He was fortunate enough to be born not a subject of a petty despot, but a citizen of the free imperial city of 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 J. G. Herder, the leading critic and ideologue of the Sturm und Drang movement, overflowing with plans to create great and original literature in Germany. 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 of a 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 Goethe's ideals in life and art are restraint and self-control, balance, 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 harsher, in particular, Goethe prefers the octaves and elegiac couplets of the great "troika" - Catullus, Tibullus and Propertia.
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 of 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.
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© Foreword by Y. Arkhipov, 2014
© Translation by N. Kasatkina. Heirs, 2014
© Translated by B. Pasternak. Heirs, 2014
© Notes. N. Wilmont. Heirs, 2014
All rights reserved. No part of the electronic version of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including posting on the Internet and corporate networks, for private and public use, without the written permission of the copyright owner.
Foreword
A great number of literary scholars and translators encroach on our attention and time, defining as their cultural task the discovery of as many "lost" names and unknown works as possible. Meanwhile, "culture is selection," as Hoffmannsthal's capacious formula says. Even the ancients noticed that "art is long, but life is short." And how insulting it is to live your short century without visiting the heights of the human spirit. Besides, there are so few peaks. At Akhmatova, contemporaries say, inseparable books-masterpieces fit on one shelf. Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Goethe... Only the Russian nineteenth century was able to double this mandatory minimum for any educated person, adding Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov to the list.
All these authors, our teachers, sweeteners, and often tormentors, are similar in one thing: they left concepts-images-types that firmly and forever entered our consciousness. Became a household name. Words like "Odyssey", "Beatrice", "Don Quixote", "Lady Macbeth" replace long descriptions for us. And they are universally accepted as a code accessible to all mankind. "Russian Hamlet" was nicknamed the most unfortunate of the autocrats of Russia, Paul. And “Russian Faust” is, of course, Ivan Karamazov (which, in turn, has become – the sublimation of an image-type! – an easily wedged cliché). And recently, "Russian Mephistopheles" appeared. This is how the Swede Junggren called his book translated in our country about Emil Medtner, the famous goethean culinary urologist of the early 20th century.
In this sense, Goethe, one might say, set a kind of record: for a long time and many - from Spengler and Toynbee to Berdyaev and Vyacheslav Ivanov - call "Faustian" no less than the entire Western European civilization as a whole. However, during his lifetime, Goethe was above all the celebrated author of The Sorrows of Young Werther. Thus, two of his most famous books are collected under this cover. If we add to them his selected lyrics and two novels, then this, in turn, will constitute that “minimum of Goethe”, without which the inquisitive reader cannot do without. Goethe’s novel “Elective Affinity” was generally considered by our Symbolist poet Vyacheslav Ivanov to be the best experience of this genre in world literature (a controversial but weighty opinion), and Thomas Mann singled out it as “the most daring and profound novel about adultery created by the moral culture of the West” ). And Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister" gave rise to a whole specific genre of "educational novel", which has been known since then as a purely German feature. Indeed, the tradition of the German-language educational novel stretches from Keller's Green Heinrich and Stifter's Indian Summer through Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain and Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities to the contemporary modifications of Günther Grass and Martin Walser, and this amounts to the main range of the aforementioned prose. Goethe generally gave birth to a lot of things in German literature. Goethe's blood flows in her veins - to paraphrase Nabokov's maxim about Pushkin's blood in Russian literature. The roles of Goethe and Pushkin are similar in this sense. Fathers-progenitors of mythological scope and strength, who left behind a mighty galaxy of heirs-geniuses with their extensive and branched offspring.
Goethe discovered his phenomenal power very early. He was born on August 28, 1749 in Frankfurt am Main into a wealthy patrician family. His ancestral home (now, of course, a museum) looks like a proud fortress that scattered the surrounding houses in the old part of the city. His father wished for him a good career in the civil service and sent him to study law at reputable universities - first in Leipzig, then in Strasbourg. In Leipzig, his classmate was our Radishchev. In Strasbourg, he became close friends with Lenz and Klinger, writers, "stormy geniuses", whom fate prepared to end their days also in Russia. If in Leipzig Goethe only wrote poetry, then in Strasbourg he was seriously infected by his friends with a literary fever. Together they made up a whole direction, named after the title of one of Klinger's plays, Sturm und Drang.
It was a turning point in European literature. The bastions of classicism, which seemed so unshakable for many decades, classicism with its strict architectonics of known unities (place, time, action), with its rigorous inventory of styles, with its bulging moralizing and obsessive didactics in the spirit of Kant's categorical imperative - all this suddenly collapsed under the onslaught of new trends. Rousseau became their forerunner with his cry “Back to nature!”. Along with the intellect with its duties, a heart with its uncalculated impulses was discovered in a person. In the depths of the literary pantry, under the layer of classicists, young writers, prompted by Rousseau, discovered the giant Shakespeare. They opened it and gasped at its "natural" power. "Shakespeare! Nature!" – young Goethe choked with delight in one of his first journal articles. Against the background of Shakespeare, their vaunted Enlightenment seemed so ugly one-sided to the stormy geniuses.
Shakespeare's chronicles inspired Goethe to search for a plot from German history. The drama from chivalrous times "Götz von Werlichengen" made the name of the young Goethe unusually popular in Germany. For a long time already, probably since the time of Hans Sachs and, perhaps, Grimmelshausen, the German Piites did not know such wide recognition, such glory. And then Goethe's poems began to appear in magazines and almanacs, which the young ladies rushed to rewrite in their albums.
So in Wetzlar, where the twenty-three-year-old Goethe arrived - at the patronage and insistence of his father - to serve in the imperial court, he appeared like an unexpected star. It was a small, provincial, burgher-style cozy town a hundred miles north of Frankfurt, striking only with its disproportionately huge cathedral. This town has remained to this day. But now, Amtman Buff's house has been added as a landmark to the cathedral and the former imperial courthouse. However, Goethe looked into the courthouse only once - a freshly baked lawyer immediately realized that he would suffocate from boredom in a pile of stationery. More than a century will pass before another young lawyer, Kafka, sees an attractive artistic object in such a bureaucratic monster with his “trimmed eyes” and creates his own “Castle”. The ardent big man Goethe found a magnet more attractive - the young charming daughter of Amtman Lotta. So, bypassing the courthouse, the unlucky official, but the famous poet, frequented Buff's house. Now, in an endless suite of tiny rooms on three floors of this Gothic house, of course, there is also a museum - “Goethe and his era”.
Goethe's blood boiled easily even in old age, but here he was young, full of unspent energy, spoiled by universal success. It seemed that the provincial Lotta would be easily conquered, like her predecessor Frederica Brion, who had just left Goethe in mutual tears in Strasbourg. But an accident happened. Lotta was engaged. Her chosen one, a certain Kestner, who diligently made a career in the same judicial department, was a positive person, but also quite ordinary. "Honest mediocrity" - as Thomas Mann described it. Not like the brilliant rival bon vivant, who suddenly fell on his poor head. After hesitating, the sober girl Lotta preferred, however, a titmouse in her hands. After staying only a few months in Wetzlar, Goethe was forced to retire - in desperate feelings, thinking about suicide. Several times he even poked himself in the chest with a dagger, but, apparently, not too stubbornly, more out of artistic interest.
Written in 1774. Based on a biographical experience. In Wetzlar G. met a certain Mr. Kestner and his fiancee Charlotte Buff. Another comrade official was in love with this Charlotte, who then committed suicide. The reason is unhappy love, dissatisfaction with one's social position, a feeling of humiliation and hopelessness. G. took this event as a tragedy of his generation.
G. chose the epistolary form, which made it possible 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 - suicide.
Werther is a man of feelings, he has his own religion, and in this he is similar to Goethe himself, who from a young age embodied his worldview in the myths created by his imagination. Werther believes in God, but this is not at all the god that is prayed to in churches. His god is an invisible, but constantly felt by him soul of the world. Werther's belief is close to Goethe's pantheism, but does not completely merge with it, and cannot merge, for Goethe not only felt this world, but also sought to know it. Werther is the most complete embodiment of that time, which is called the era of sensitivity.
Everything is connected for him with the heart, feelings, subjective sensations, which tend to blow up all the barriers. In full accordance with his mental states, he perceives poetry and nature: looking at the village idyll, Werther reads and quotes Homer, at the moment of emotional excitement - Klopstock, in a state of hopeless despair - Ossian.
By means of his art, Goethe made it so that the story of Werther's love and torment merges with the life of all nature. Although the dates of the letters show that two years pass from the meeting with Lotta (Charlotte S. - the girl with whom V. was in love) to the death of the hero, Goethe compressed the time of the action: the meeting with Lotta takes place in the spring, the happiest time of Werther's love is summer , the most painful for him begins in the fall, he wrote his last suicide letter to Lotte on December 21. So the fate of Werther reflects the flourishing and dying that occur in nature, just as it was with mythical heroes.
Werther feels nature with all his soul, this fills him with bliss, for him this feeling is contact with the divine principle. But the landscapes in the novel constantly "hint" that the fate of Werther goes beyond the usual story of unsuccessful love. It is imbued with symbolism, and the wide universal background of his personal drama gives it a truly tragic character.
Before our eyes, the complex process of the hero's spiritual life is developing. Initial joy and love of life are gradually replaced by pessimism. And it all leads to phrases like: "I can't do it," "But I don't see anything but an all-devouring and all-grinding monster."
So Werther becomes the first herald of world sorrow in Europe long before a significant part of romantic literature is imbued with it.
Why did he die? Unhappy love is not the main (or far from the only) reason here. From the very beginning, Werther suffered from "what narrow limits the creative and cognitive forces of mankind" (May 22) and from the fact that the consciousness of these limitations does not allow him to lead an active, active life - he does not see the point in it. So he gives in to the desire to get away from this life and plunge into himself: "I go into myself and open the whole world!" But a disclaimer immediately follows: "But also more in forebodings and vague desires than in living, full-blooded images" (May 22).
The reason for the torment and deep dissatisfaction of Werther with life is not only in unhappy love. Trying to recover from it, he decides to try his hand at the state field, but, as a burgher, he can only be given a modest post that does not correspond to his abilities.
Werther's grief is caused not only by unsuccessful love, but also by the fact that, both in his personal life and in his public life, the paths were closed to him. Werther's drama turns out to be social. Such was the fate of a whole generation of intelligent young people from the burgher environment, who did not find application for their abilities and knowledge, forced to eke out a miserable existence of tutors, home teachers, rural pastors, petty officials.
In the second edition of the novel, the text of which is usually printed, the "publisher" after Werther's letter of December 14 is limited to a brief conclusion: "The decision to leave the world became stronger and stronger in Werther's soul at that time, which was facilitated by various circumstances." In the first edition, this was clearly and clearly stated: “The insult inflicted on him during his stay at the embassy, he could not forget. his honor was still offended, and that this incident aroused in him an aversion to all business and political activity, he then completely indulged in that amazing sensitivity and thoughtfulness that we know from his letters, he was seized by endless suffering, which killed in him the last remnants of since nothing could change in his relations with a beautiful and beloved being, whose peace he had disturbed, and he fruitlessly squandered his strength, for the use of which there was neither purpose nor desire, - this pushed him in the end to a terrible deed."
Werther is wrecked Not only because of the limited human capabilities in general or because of their heightened subjectivity; because of this - including. Werther fails not only because of the social conditions in which he must live and cannot live, but also because of them. No one will deny that Werther was deeply offended when he had to leave aristocratic society because of his burgher origin. True, he is offended more in human than in burgher dignity. It was the man Werther who did not expect such meanness from refined aristocrats. However, Werther is not outraged by the inequality of people in society: "I know very well that we are not equal and cannot be equal," he wrote on May 15, 1771.
The central conflict of the novel is embodied in the opposition of Werther and his lucky rival. Their characters and concepts of life are completely different. Werther cannot help but admit: “Albert deserves respect. His restraint is very different from my restless disposition, which I cannot hide. He is able to feel and understand what a treasure Lot is. Apparently, he is not prone to gloomy moods ... (July 30). Already in the cited words of Werther, a cardinal difference in temperaments is noted. But they also differ in their views on life and death. One of the letters (August 12) tells in detail about the conversation that took place between two friends, when Werther, asking to lend him pistols, jokingly put one of them to his temple. Albert warned him that it was dangerous to do so. “It goes without saying that there are exceptions to every rule. But he is so conscientious that, having expressed some, in his opinion, reckless, unverified general judgment, he will immediately bombard you with reservations, doubts, objections, until the essence of the matter is nothing will not remain" (August 12). However, in a dispute about suicide that has arisen between them, Albert holds the firm view that suicide is madness. Werther objects: “You have ready definitions for everything: it’s crazy, it’s smart, it’s good, it’s bad! .. Have you delved into the internal causes of this act? him? If you had undertaken this work, your judgments would not have been so reckless" (ibid.).
It is amazing how skillfully Goethe prepares the finale of the novel, posing the problem of suicide long before the hero comes to the idea of dying. At the same time, how much hidden irony is here in relation to critics and readers who will not notice what made Werther's shot inevitable. Albert firmly believes that some actions are always immoral, no matter what the motives are. His moral concepts are somewhat dogmatic, although for all that he is undoubtedly a good person.
The mental process leading to suicide is described with great depth by Werther himself: “A person can endure joy, grief, pain only to a certain extent, and when this degree is exceeded, he dies ... Look at a person with his closed inner world: how they act impressions on him, what obsessive thoughts take root in him, until an ever-growing passion deprives him of all self-control and brings him to death "(August 12). Werther quite accurately anticipates his fate, not yet knowing what will happen to him.
The controversy, however, reveals more than just a divergence of views on suicide. We are talking about the criteria for the moral assessment of human behavior. Albert knows well What well and What Badly. Werther rejects such morality. Human behavior is determined, in his opinion, by nature: "Man will always remain a man, and that grain of reason, which he may possess, has little or no value when passion rages and he becomes cramped within the framework of human nature." Moreover, according to Werther, "we have the right to judge in conscience only what we ourselves have felt."
There is another character in the novel that cannot be ignored. This is the "publisher" of Werther's letters. His attitude to Werther is important. He retains the strict objectivity of the narrator, reporting only the facts. But sometimes, conveying Werther's speeches, he reproduces the tone inherent in the hero's poetic nature. The speech of the "publisher" becomes especially important at the end of the story, when the events preceding the death of the hero are described. From the "publisher" we learn about the funeral of Werther.
Young Werther is the first hero of Goethe, who has two souls. The integrity of his nature is only apparent. From the very beginning, there is both a sense of joy in life and a deep-seated melancholy. In one of his first letters, Werther writes to a friend: "It's not for nothing that you have not met anything more changeable, fickle than my heart ... You have so many times had to endure the transitions of my mood from despondency to unbridled dreams, from gentle sadness to pernicious ardor!" (may 13). Observing himself, he makes a discovery that again reveals his inherent duality: “... how strong is a person’s thirst to wander, to make new discoveries, how expanses beckon him, but along with this, we have an inner craving for voluntary limitation, for roll along the usual rut, without looking around. Extremes are inherent in Werther’s nature, and he admits to Albert that it is much more pleasant for him to go beyond the generally accepted than to obey the routine of everyday life: “Oh, you are reasonable! Passion! Intoxication! Insanity! drunkards, despise fools and pass by like a priest, and, like a Pharisee, thank the Lord that he did not create you like one of them. not in another" (August 12).
The tragedy of Werther also lies in the fact that the forces boiling in him are not used. Under the influence of adverse conditions, his consciousness becomes more and more painful. Werther often compares himself with people who get along well with the prevailing system of life. So is Albert. But Werther can't live like that. Unhappy love exacerbates his tendency to extremes, abrupt transitions from one state of mind to the opposite, changes his perception of the environment. There was a time when he "felt like a deity" in the midst of the violent abundance of nature, but now even the effort to resurrect those inexpressible feelings that used to elevate his soul turns out to be painful and makes you feel the whole horror of the situation doubly.
Werther's letters over time more and more betray violations of his mental balance: Werther’s confessions are also supported by the testimony of the “publisher”: “Melancholy and annoyance took root deeper and deeper in Werther’s soul and, intertwining with each other, gradually took possession of his whole being. destructive action, leading to complete exhaustion, with which he struggled even more desperately than with all other misfortunes. Heart anxiety undermined all his other spiritual strength: liveliness, sharpness of mind; he became unbearable in society, misfortune made him the more unjust, the more unhappy he was. was."
Werther's suicide was the natural end of everything he had experienced, it was due to the peculiarities of his nature, in which personal drama and an oppressed social position prevailed over the painful beginning. At the end of the novel, with one expressive detail, it is once again emphasized that Werther's tragedy had not only psychological, but also social roots: "The artisans carried the coffin. None of the clergy accompanied him."
In this pre-revolutionary era, personal feelings and moods in a vague form reflected deep dissatisfaction with the existing system. Werther's love sufferings had no less social significance than his mocking and angry descriptions of aristocratic society. Even the thirst for death and suicide sounded like a challenge to a society in which a thinking and feeling person had nothing to live on.
39.. Goethe's tragedy "Faust": the history of creation, the role of prologues, the main conflict, the system of images.
Stages of work:
1) the first version of the tragedy began in 1773 during the period of Goethe's participation in the movement of storm and onslaught, which is reflected
2) 1788 - the return of Goethe from Italy, when his ideological and aesthetic concept changes. Changing the idea of the work
3) 1797-1801 - the key scenes of the first part are created
4) 1825-1831 - the second part of the tragedy (final version), ends in August 1831.
In the legend of Faust, Goethe is attracted by the personality of Faust himself: his desire to penetrate the secrets of nature, his rebellious character and his dream of the boundless power of man.
For the first time, Lessing draws attention to this plot in the poem “Letters on Recent Literature”, reflects on the creation of national dramaturgy. As one of the national subjects - Faust.
The legend of Faust is a German folk legend that originated in the 16th century. Faust is a real person who was born around 1485 and died in 1540. He studied at several universities and had a bachelor's degree. He traveled a lot around the country and communicated with the progressive people of his time. He was interested in astrology and magic besides the sciences. He was an independent and courageous person. His name became overgrown with legends. There was a legend about his deal with the devil.
The first literary processing of the plot in 1587, even before Goethe, by Johann Spies (German writer). Faust was a hero of the folk puppet theater and in his autobiography Goethe saw performances that speak of the impression that Faust made on him. The legend provided material for the English playwright Christopher Marlowe in 1588, The Tragic History of Doctor Faust.
Part 1 opens with a dedication, which talks about the author's personal attitude to the work, and tells about the origin of the idea.
Prologue on stage. The form of the work is explained and it is presented in the form of an allegory. This is a conversation between a theater director, a poet and an actor. All three agree that the spectacle should please the audience. The director agrees to any spectacle, as long as it brings income. The poet does not want to stoop to the low tastes of the crowd. The actor chooses the middle path, that is, he offers to combine entertainment and vital content, that is, Goethe offers 3 approaches to a work of art and he himself is in solidarity with the actor. Thus he explains the idea of his work. The reader is expected by an interesting plot and philosophical reasoning.
Prologue in heaven. The ideological intent of the work is explained. The characters are biblical characters. This is God, the choir of archangels. This heavenly harmony is violated by Mephistopheles. Meph. Raises the subject of human suffering, but this is not a dispute about a person in general, but a dispute about the human mind. Mephistopheles believes that the mind leads a person into a dead end. Without reason, a person's life is calmer and easier. His opponent is God, who believes that the mind is the best that a person has. This dispute is resolved by a kind of experiment, the object of which is Faust.
Goethe's Mephistopheles is not only a force of evil, on the contrary, he represents a critical thought, an active principle, the idea of incessant forward movement, and renewal through it.
The choice of Faust is not accidental, he is not an ideal hero, he is not alien to mistakes and weaknesses. He is the bearer of the best in man: reason and striving for perfection.
At the beginning of the work, Faust is shown as an old man. All his life he has been searching for the truth and for this he consciously refuses the joys of life. Faust summons the spirit of the earth, but he cannot understand its language. To find out what is behind death, he wants to commit suicide, but he understands that this knowledge cannot be conveyed to people. Goethe shows Faust's altruism.
The scene outside the gate when the Spring Festival is described. Faust goes out of the gate, the citizens thank him, he saved many from illness, but at this moment he thinks about the imperfection of his knowledge, as if he were more perfect, he would have saved more people.
All previous events lead to a crisis state of the scientist's spirit, so he easily agrees to sign the contract. He offers to live his life anew, fulfilling all his desires in exchange for the soul of Faust. Key words of the contract: "Stop a moment, you are fine." Goethe holds the idea that a person must constantly move forward, develop, therefore, recognizing the moment as perfect means recognizing that there is nothing more to move towards. Faust agrees to this agreement, because he does not believe that Mephistopheles will be able to stop its development.
1 test of wine and fun company, which he passes easily
The 2nd and most difficult test of love. The image of Margarita is designed in the spirit of folk songs (folklore, storm and onslaught). Margarita was brought up in strictly patriarchal traditions and believed in God. Faith in God is associated with her moral laws. Because of the feelings of love, she transcends both the moral and the laws of God. The tragedy of Margarita is not only in the events that take place (the murder of a child, the death of a brother and mother), but their life with Faust could not take place, since their ideals of life are different. For Margarita, a family, a hearth is ideal, for Faust this is not enough.
The finale of part 1 - after the tragic events, Margarita finds herself in prison and Faust decides to save her, but Margarita refuses to escape. She deliberately rejects flight, because she wants to atone for her guilt before God, and not before people. Part 1 ends with Margarita going to heaven. And the voice says, "Saved." Justified by pure forces.
Starting the second part, Goethe sets himself other tasks than in the first part. In the first part, he was interested in the personal aspirations of Faust, in the second he creates a broad symbolic picture of the life of modern society. He tries to show the connection between the past and the present.
In modern times, it is said in the first act of the 2nd part, when Mephistopheles and Faust enter the imperial palace. They become witnesses of the situation characteristic of feudal Germany of that time. The report of the chancellor reports on the difficult situation in a country where lawlessness, bribery, venality of the court prevails, conspiracies are drawn up and the country is expected to financial collapse. This scene ends with fires in the imperial palace (before that area during the plague), which symbolizes the coming fire of the revolution.
The Poet's Reflections on the Tasks of Art and Literature. Art, according to Goethe, should contribute to the moral rebirth of society. Goethe turns to ancient images. This is the image of the beautiful Helen, for whom Faust goes to Ancient Greece. Elena is a symbol of ancient beauty. This is not as real an image as the image of Margarita. In the second part, Euphorion appears from the union of Elena and Faust. When it grows up, it rushes up and breaks. Elena also disappears, leaving only clothes in Faust's arms. This scene has a symbolic meaning. The idea is carried out that one cannot copy ancient art, one can use the formal side, but the content must be modern. Euphorion inherited his mother's beauty and his father's restless disposition. HE is a symbol of the new art, which, according to Goethe, should combine ancient harmony and modern rationalism. At the same time, Goethe himself associates this image with the image of Byron. Poet of the new art.
Conclusion: in order for the union with Lena to be fruitful, one must not contemplate, but transform reality. About this in the last act 5, when Faust, aged again, returned to the present, is engaged in the construction of a dam. Goethe talks about the change of eras, as the destruction of the old feudal world and the beginning of a new era, the era of creation. Goethe shows that creation cannot be without destruction. Evidence of destruction is the death of two old men.
The tragedy ends with the death of Faust, when he formally pronounces the key words of the treaty. He says that he could say them in the future, when he sees his land and peoples free, but this is impossible without struggle and without knowledge, and therefore his life is not in vain. His knowledge and deeds will remain for the benefit of the people. The end of the tragedy is optimistic,
The soul of Faust goes to heaven, where it unites with the soul of Marguerite.
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 terms of literature. 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 has become commonplace that the era of the 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 a Chinese wall between the Enlightenment in general and German classical literature, in order to humiliate the Enlightenment in comparison with the 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.
The more intelligent representatives of the reactionary camp feel, it is true, that there is some 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, they slander 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 of 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 a struggle of separate currents within the Enlightenment, a clash of separate 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 raises Richardson's depiction of the psychological conflicts of everyday life to a much higher level, both in terms of thought and 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 of the late 18th century. 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 has to wonder 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 the established rules, approximately as much as in praise of human society."
We have already said above that the central problem of the work is the all-round development of the 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.
The main poetic content of "Werther" is the struggle for the realization of this maxim, the 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, which deeply experienced this vital contradiction, although it could not express it in logical formulas, rose up with stormy passion 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, like 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.
The ascent of this 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. The struggle of the young Goethe for a free, comprehensively developed person, who also found expression in Goetz, a fragment of Prometheus, in the first drafts 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 the 18th 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 the realistic literature of the 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 disclosed. True, Goethe paints only the most general outlines of the tragedy of bourgeois-democratic ideals, a tragedy that only becomes apparent 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 appear 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 of the 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, the last book Werther reads 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 inflexibility 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 leaders of the French Revolution went to their deaths filled with 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.
