sentimental romance in epistolary form was written in 1774. The product became the second literary success great German writer. The first success came to Goethe after the drama Goetz von Berlichingen. The first edition of the novel becomes an instant bestseller. A revised edition appeared in the late 1780s.
To some extent, The Sorrows of Young Werther can be called autobiographical novel: the writer spoke about his love for Charlotte Buff, whom he met in 1772. However, Werther's lover was not based on Charlotte Buff, but on Maximilian von Laroche, one of the writer's acquaintances. The tragic ending of the novel was inspired by Goethe's death of his friend, who was in love with a married woman.
Syndrome or Werther effect in psychology is called a wave of suicides committed for imitative purposes. The suicide described in popular literature, cinema or widely publicized in the media mass media. For the first time this phenomenon was recorded after the release of Goethe's novel. The book was read in many European countries, after which some young people, imitating the hero of the novel, committed suicide. In many countries, the authorities were forced to ban the distribution of the book.
The term "Werther effect" appeared only in the mid-1970s thanks to the American sociologist David Philipps, who was studying the phenomenon. As in Goethe's novel, those who were in the same age group with the one whose “feat” was chosen to be emulated, that is, if the first suicide was an elderly person, his “followers” will also be elderly people. The method of suicide will also in most cases be copied.
A young man named Werther, who comes from a poor family, wants to be alone and moves to a small town. Werther has a penchant for poetry and painting. He enjoys reading Homer, talking to the people of the city and drawing. Once, at a youth ball, Werther met Charlotte (Lotta) S., the daughter of a princely amtman. Lotta, being the eldest, replaced her brothers and sisters dead mother. The girl had to grow up too soon. That is why it is distinguished not only by attractiveness, but also by independence of judgment. Werther falls in love with Lotta on the very first day they met. Young people have similar tastes and characters. From now on, Werther tries to spend every free minute near unusual girl.
Unfortunately, the love of a sentimental young man is doomed to numerous sufferings. Charlotte already has a fiance - Albert, who briefly left the city to get a job. Returning, Albert learns that he has a rival. However, Lotta's fiancé turns out to be more reasonable than her admirer. He is not jealous of his bride for a new admirer, finding it quite natural that it is simply impossible not to fall in love with such a beautiful and smart girl as Charlotte. Werther begins bouts of jealousy and despair. Albert is trying in every possible way to calm the opponent, reminding him that every act of a person must be reasonable, even if madness is dictated by passion.
On his birthday, Werther receives a gift from her fiancé Lotta. Albert sent him a bow from his bride's dress, in which Werther first saw her. The young man takes this as a hint that it is high time for him to leave the girl alone, and then goes to say goodbye to her. Werther again moves to another city, where he gets a job as an official with the envoy. The main character does not like life in a new place. Class prejudices are too strong in this city.
Seal of Bad Luck
Werther is constantly reminded of his ignoble origin, and the boss turns out to be overly picky. However, soon young man new friends appear - Count von K. and the girl B., who is very similar to Charlotte. Werther talks a lot with his new girlfriend, tells her about his love for Lotta. But soon the young man had to leave this city as well.
Werther goes home, believing that it will be easier for him there. Not finding peace here either, he goes to the city where his beloved lives. Lotta and Albert by that time had already managed to get married. Family happiness ends after the return of Werther. The couple start arguing. Charlotte sympathizes with the young man, but cannot help him in any way. Werther increasingly begins to think about death. He does not want to live away from Lotta and at the same time cannot be near her. In the end, Werther writes a farewell letter, and then commits suicide by shooting himself in his room. Charlotte and Albert are having a hard time with the loss.
Character characteristics
The protagonist of the novel is quite independent and independent in order to get a decent education, despite his low origin. It is very easy to find mutual language with people and place in society. However, the young man definitely lacks common sense. Moreover, in one of his conversations with Albert, Werther argues that an excess of common sense is not needed at all.
All his life, the main character, being a dreamer and romantic, was in search of an ideal that he found in Lotte. As it turned out, the ideal already belongs to someone. Werther does not want to put up with this. He prefers to retire. With many rare virtues, Charlotte was not perfect. It was made ideal by Werther himself, who needed existence supernatural being.
Incomparable Charlotte
It is no coincidence that the author notes that Werther and Lotta are similar in their tastes and characters. However, there is one fundamental difference. Unlike Werther, Charlotte is less impulsive and more reserved. The girl's mind dominates her feelings. Lotta is engaged to Albert, and no passion can make the bride forget her promise to the groom.
Charlotte took on the role of mother of the family early, despite the fact that she did not yet have her own children. Responsibility for someone else's life made the girl more mature. Lotta knows in advance that she will have to answer for every act. She perceives Werther, rather, as a child, one of her brothers. Even if there had been no Albert in Charlotte's life, she would hardly have accepted the courtship of her ardent admirer. In a future life partner, Lotta is looking for stability, not boundless passion.
The ideal Charlotte found for herself an equally ideal spouse: both belong to upper strata society, and both are characterized by composure and restraint. Albert's prudence does not allow him to fall into despair when meeting with a potential rival. He probably does not consider Werther a competitor. Albert is sure that his smart and prudent, like himself, the bride will never exchange her fiancé for a crazy man who can fall in love so easily and do crazy things.
Despite everything, Albert is not alien to sympathy and pity. He does not rudely try to remove Werther from his bride, hoping that the unfortunate rival, sooner or later, will change his mind himself. The bow sent to Werther for his birthday becomes a hint that it's time to stop dreaming and take life for what it is.
Composition of the novel
Goethe chose one of the most popular literary genres XVIII century. The work was divided into 2 parts: the letters of the protagonist (the main part) and additions to these letters, which have the heading "From the publisher to the reader" (thanks to the additions, readers become aware of the death of Werther). In the letters, the protagonist turns to his friend Wilhelm. The young man seeks to tell not about the events of his life, about the feelings associated with them.
5 (100%) 1 vote
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 the 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 had already mastered the techniques versification and drama, 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 up 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 become completely 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 Propertia.
Goethe's work reflected the most important trends and contradictions of the era. In the final philosophical work - the tragedy "" (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 this period - epistolary novel "The Suffering 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 falsity of human relations, Werther enjoys solitude in a 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 acquires deep meaning thanks to the inner perception of Werther, an emotional nature, completely 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, telling about last hours Werther, 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 an objective look. 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.
© 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 many literary scholars and translators encroach on our attention and time, defining as their cultural task the discovery of how more"lost" names and unknown works. 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... This mandatory minimum any educated person managed to double only the Russian nineteenth century, 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 Russian Pavel. 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, under this cover are collected two of his most famous books. 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 birth to a whole specific genre"educational novel", which has since been reputed to be 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 family nest(nowadays, of course, a museum) looks like a proud fortress that scattered the surrounding houses in the old part of the city. His father wished him a good career in public service and sent 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 art object in such a bureaucratic monster with his “cropped 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.
Federal Agency for Education
SEI 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.
Died August 10, 2007 German writer and playwright Ulrich Plenzdorf. 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 ordinary life 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-class boy named Edgar Wiebo.
Ulrich Plenzdorf revived the famous plot scheme"The Suffering of Young Werther", his hero also fell in love with the inaccessible "Charlotte", also felt superfluous, 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 V.".
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).
Structure term paper next: 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 artistic text. 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 movement are “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. At each new stage aesthetic development there are their own norms, their own points of reference, their 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 simultaneously appeared and final stage New time, and a 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 appeared, as attention to the individual, his social role increased, the particular received priority over the general, normative ethics was replaced by the individual, an attempt was made to remove everything that limits the possibility 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 taken out of the context of this literary system and transferred to another, is colored differently, overgrown with other features, enters another genre, loses its genre, in other words, its function is transferred. 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, and 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, based on the connection between the situation and the 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 the whole. cultural era.
1.2 Forms of manifestation of the category of intertextuality.
“The world kills the kindest, the gentlest and the strongest indiscriminately. And if you are neither one nor the other and not the third, then you can be sure that your turn will come, but not so soon.
E. Hemingway "Gertrude Stein"
“For a poet there is not a single historical person, he wants to depict his moral world”
In her memoirs, M. Shahinyan describes how in her youth she experienced unhappy love and attempted suicide. She was pumped out and placed in the hospital for a while. Her nanny, looking for a way to calm her down, said: “Look how many women are here. And where are those men who die of love?
"The Sufferings of Young Werther" is a small book. Having written it, the twenty-five-year-old author "woke up world-famous" the next day.
"Werther" was read everywhere. And in Germany, and in France, and in Russia. She was taken with him on the Egyptian campaign by Napoleon Bonaparte.
“The action of this story was great, one might say enormous, mainly because it came at the right time, just as one piece of smoldering tinder is enough to blow up a large mine, so here the explosion that occurred in the reader's environment was so great because young world he himself has already undermined his own foundations. (V. Belinsky)
What is this book about? About love? About suffering? About life and about death? About personality and society? And about that, and about another, and about the third.
But what caused such an unprecedented interest in her? Attention to the inner world of man. Creation of a three-dimensional image of the hero. Detailing of the image, psychologism, depth of penetration into the character. For the 18th century - all this was the first time. (The same thing happened in the painting of that time. From Giotto's local writing to the detailing of the Dutch, where you can see every petal, a drop on the hand, the tenderness of a smile.)
"The Sorrows of Young Werther" big step towards realism, both in German and in European literature of the 18th century. Already some sketches of the burgher family life(Lotta, surrounded by her sisters and brothers) seemed then a revelation: after all, the question of whether philistinism was worthy of being the subject of artistic reflection was only being decided. Even more disturbing was the depiction of the swaggering nobility in the novel.
The epistolary genre in which the novel is written is one of the components of success and interest in the novel. A novel in the letters of a young man who died of love. From this alone, readers (and especially readers) of that time were breathtaking.
Goethe wrote about the novel in his old age: “Here is the creature that I nourished with the blood of my own heart. So much internal is invested in it, taken from my own soul, re-felt and rethought ... "
Indeed, the novel was based on a personal emotional drama writer. IN
Wetzler had an unhappy romance between Goethe and Charlotte Buff (Kestner).
A sincere friend of her fiancé, Goethe loved her, and Charlotte, although she rejected his love, did not remain indifferent to him. All three knew it. One day
Kestner received a note: “He is gone, Kestner, when you receive these lines, know that he is gone ...”
Based on my own heartfelt experience and weaving into my experiences the story of the suicide of another unfortunate lover - the secretary of the Breinschweig embassy at the Weizler Court of Justice, young
Jerusalem, Goethe and created The Suffering of Young Werther.
“I carefully collected everything that I managed to find out about the history of the poor
Werther ... "- wrote Goethe, and was sure that readers "will be imbued with love and respect for his mind and heart, and shed tears over his fate."
“Invaluable friend, what is the human heart? I love you so much. We were inseparable… and now we have parted…” Goethe created his works in line with the philosophical constructions of Rousseau, and especially Herder, that he honored so much. By virtue of his own artistic worldview and refracting Herder's thoughts in his work, he wrote both poetry and prose only "from the fullness of feeling" ("feeling is everything").
But his hero dies not only from unhappy love, but also from discord with the society surrounding him. This conflict is "usual". It testifies to the unusualness, uncommonness of a person. There is no hero without conflict. The hero himself creates conflict.
Some critics see the main reason for Werther's suicide in his irreconcilable discord with the entire bourgeois-aristocratic society, and his unhappy love is regarded only as the last straw that confirmed his decision to leave this world. I cannot agree with this statement at all.
It seems to me that the novel should be considered primarily as lyrical work, in which there is a tragedy of the heart, love, even if divided, but unable to unite the lovers. Yes, it is undoubtedly necessary to take into account Werther's disappointment in society, his rejection of this society, the incomprehensibility of himself, and hence the tragedy of the loneliness of the individual in society. But do not forget that the cause of suicide is still Werther's hopeless love for Lotte. Really,
Werther is initially disappointed in society, not in life. And it is impossible not to share this opinion. The fact that he seeks to break off his relations with a society alien to him and despised by him does not mean that he does not see any meaning and joy in life. After all, he is able to enjoy nature, communication with people who do not wear masks and behave naturally. His denial of society comes not from a conscious protest, but from a purely emotional and spiritual rejection. This is not a revolution, but youthful maximalism, the desire for goodness, the logic of the world, characteristic of youth, perhaps, for everyone, so one should not exaggerate his criticism of society. Werther is not against society as a society, but against its forms, which are in conflict with the naturalness of a young soul.
In Werther's tragedy, love is primary, and public is secondary. With what feeling, even in his first letters, he describes the surrounding area, nature: “My soul is illuminated with unearthly joy, like these spring mornings, which I enjoy with all my heart. I am all alone and blissful in this land, as if created for people like me. I am so happy, my friend, so intoxicated with a sense of peace ... Often I am tormented by the thought: “Ah! How to express, how to breathe into the drawing that which is so full, that lives so reverently in me, to give a reflection of my soul, as my soul is a reflection of the eternal God!
He writes that either "deceptive spirits, or his own ardent imagination" turns everything around into paradise. Agree, it is very difficult to name
Werther is a man disillusioned with life. Complete harmony with nature and ourselves. What kind of suicide are we talking about here? Yes, he is out of touch with society. But after all, he is not burdened by this, it is already in the past. Not finding understanding in society, seeing his countless vices, Werther refuses him. Society is disharmonious for Werther, nature is harmonious. In nature, he sees beauty and harmony, as well as in everything that has not lost its naturalness.
Love for Lotte makes Werther the happiest of people. He's writing
Wilhelm: "I experience such happy Days which the Lord reserves for his saints, and no matter what happens to me, I dare not say that I have not known the joys, the purest joys of life. Love for Lotte exalts Werther. He enjoys the happiness of communion with Lotta, nature. He is happy to realize that she, her brothers and sisters are needed. Thoughts about the insignificance of society, which once overcame him, do not at all overshadow his boundless happiness.
Only after the arrival of Albert, Lotta's fiancé, Werther realizes that he is losing Lotta forever. And when he loses her, he loses EVERYTHING. critical eye
Werther on society does not prevent him from living, and only the collapse of love, a dead end
"soulful and loving" leads him to the end. Often in critical articles Lotta is called the only consolation of Werther. In my opinion, this is not entirely true.
Lotta, Werther's love for her, managed to fill his whole soul, his whole world.
She became for him not the only joy, but EVERYTHING! And the more tragic is the fate that awaits him.
Werther understands that he must leave. He can't look at happiness
Albert and next to him feel their suffering even more sharply. Werther, with pain in his heart, decides to leave, hoping, if not for healing, then at least for drowning out the pain. Having discarded for a while his conviction about the meaninglessness of any activity in such a society, he enters the service of the embassy, in the hope that at least work will bring peace and tranquility to his soul. But a bitter disappointment awaits him. Everything that he used to observe from the outside and condemned - aristocratic arrogance, selfishness, servility - now surrounded him with a terrible wall.
After insulting Count von K. in the bag, he leaves the service. An infected society cannot be a cure for the passion that torments it. (Can there be such a cure at all? Especially for such a subtle and sensitive person as Werther.) Society, on the contrary, poisons Werther's soul like a poison. And now, perhaps, only here can society be accused of being directly involved in Werther's suicide. We must not forget that Werther should not be regarded as a real person and identified with Goethe himself.
Werther is a literary image, and therefore it is impossible, in my opinion, to talk about how his fate would have developed if he saw the need for his activity for society. So, society is not able to give him either happiness or even peace. Werther cannot extinguish the flame of love for Lotta. He still suffers, suffers immensely. That's when thoughts of suicide begin to come to him. In his letters to Wilhelm there is no longer any light or joy, they are getting darker. Werther writes: “Why should that which constitutes a person’s happiness be at the same time a source of suffering?
My powerful and ardent love for living nature, which filled me with such bliss, turned the whole world around me into paradise, has now become my torment and, like a cruel demon, pursues me in all ways ...
It was as if a veil had lifted before me, and the spectacle of endless life turned for me into the abyss of an eternally open grave.
Reading about the suffering of Werther, one involuntarily asks the question - what is love for him? For Werther, this is happiness. He wants endless bathing in it. But happiness is sometimes moments. And love is both bliss, and pain, and torment, and suffering. He can't handle that mental stress.
Werther returns to Lotte. He himself realizes that with inexorable speed he is moving towards the abyss, but he sees no other way. Despite the doom of his position, sometimes hope awakens in him: “Some changes are constantly taking place in me. Sometimes life smiles at me again, alas! Only for a moment! ... ”Werther is becoming more and more like a madman. His meetings with Lotta bring him both happiness and inexorable pain: “As soon as I look into her black eyes, I already feel better ...” “How I suffer! Ah, have people been so unhappy before me?”
The thought of suicide takes over Werther more and more and he thinks more and more that this is the only way to get rid of his suffering. He himself, as it were, convinces himself of the necessity of this act. This is clearly evidenced by his letters to Wilhelm: "God is my witness, how often I go to bed with a desire, and sometimes with the hope of never waking up, in the morning I open my eyes, see the sun and fall into melancholy." December 8th.
“No, no, I am not destined to recover. At every step I encounter phenomena that throw me off balance. And today! Oh rock! Oh people!
December 1.
"I dead person! 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." December 14th.
Even before the last meeting with Lotta, Werther decides to commit suicide: "Oh, how calm I am from the fact that I decided."
IN last meeting with Lotta, Werther is firmly convinced that she loves him. And now nothing scares him anymore. He is full of hope, he is sure that there, in heaven, he and Lotta will unite and "in each other's arms they will abide forever in the face of the eternal." So Werther dies because of his tragic love.
Reflections on suicide in Goethe's novel appear long before his hero comes up with the idea of committing suicide. This happens when Werther catches the eye of Albert's pistols. In a conversation, Werther, for fun, puts a gun to his temple, to which Albert reacts extremely negatively: “I can’t even imagine how this person can reach such madness as to shoot himself: the very thought is disgusting to me.” On this
Werther replies to him that it is impossible to condemn a suicide without knowing the reasons for such a decision. Albert says that nothing can justify a suicide, here he strictly adheres to church morality, arguing that suicide
- this is an undoubted weakness: it is much easier to die than to endure martyrdom. Werther has a completely different opinion on this matter. He speaks of the limit of human spiritual strength, comparing it with the limit of human nature: “A person can endure joy, grief, pain only to a certain extent, and when this degree is exceeded, he perishes. So the question is not whether he is strong or weak, but whether he can endure the measure of his suffering, whether mental or physical strength and, in my opinion, it is just as wild to say: he is a coward who takes his own life, as it is to call a coward a man who is dying of a malignant fever. The deadly disease of a person, his physical exhaustion, Vereter transfers to the spiritual sphere. He says
Albert: "Look at the man with his closed inner world: how impressions affect him, how intrusive thoughts take root in him until the ever-growing passion deprives him of all self-control and brings him to death. Werther believes that the decision to commit suicide can, of course, only strong man, and he compares with the people who rebelled and broke the chains.
How did Goethe himself feel about suicide? Of course, he treated his hero with big love and regret. (After all, in many ways
Werther - himself). In the preface, he urges those who have succumbed to "the same temptation to draw strength from his sufferings." In no way does he condemn Werther's act. But at the same time, in my opinion, he does not consider suicide an act of a brave person. Although he does not issue any final verdicts in the novel, but sets out two points of view, it can be assumed (based on his own fate) that for him the fate
Werther was one of the possible. But he chose life and creativity. After all
Goethe, in addition to happy and unhappy love, also knew the pain and joy of writing a line.
The motive of love in Goethe's work never ceased, just like love itself. In addition, he always returned to his young love stories. After all, he wrote “Faust” when he was no longer a young man, and Margarita was in many ways a reflection of Friederike Brion, whom he loved in his youth and whom he was afraid to marry at one time, because he did not want to sacrifice his freedom (hence the tragedy of Margarita in “ Faust"). So for him, love and youth were the "motor" of creativity. After all, when love ends, creativity ends.
It is no coincidence that poets shoot themselves after thirty. Lilya Brik wrote: "Volodya did not know how he could live not young." (Of course, the matter is not only in age, but in the youth of the soul and the preservation of the energy of love. Goethe himself last time fell in love, according to his biographers, at the age of 74 with a seventeen-year-old girl). The one who has run out of this energy of love, and who is not a poet, can end his life with suicide. Above whom does not hang the divine gift to throw it all into lines.
LIST OF USED LITERATURE
Goethe "Suffering of young Werther" BVL, Moscow, 1980
I. Mirimsky "On the German classics" Moscow, 1957, his article "The suffering of young Werther" intro. article on George's novel
Lukacs, 1939
V. Belinsky "About Goethe" Collected works. Volume 3 Goslitizdat, M., 1950
Wilmant "Goethe" GIKHL., 1956
A. Pushkin PSS, vol. 7, Ak.nauk USSR, M., 1949
