Book Club 15th Selection: The Sorrows of Young Werther (Goethe)
"Pretender"
If only I could have chosen a world line
where we met in a different setting, with a different relationship.
If only I could have expressed my love
with a different personality and different values.
But wishing for that is useless.
Goodbye.
You are not the one meant for me.
It's painful, I can't deny it, but it's hard to let go.
Just touching your hair hurts, no, but still...
It's sweet, no, no, no.
Goodbye.
Then what are you to me?
I don't know the answer, and I don't want to know.
If there is one thing I know for sure,
"You are beautiful."
This is a passage from Official Hige Dandism's "Pretender".
I've heard the song many times, but one day while driving, these lyrics suddenly stuck with me.
It happened while I was casually playing a100 million views playliston YouTube.
Listening to this song halfway through a two-hour drive, just as dusk was setting in,
it somehow sank deep into my heart.
At that moment, one book came to mind.
The novel that Napoleon is said to have read seven times and carried with him on his campaigns—
Goethe's "The Sorrows of Young Werther".
The helplessness of "falling in love"
It is a story that could be called a daytime soap opera, depicting the young Werther who falls in love with a married woman, Lotte,
and eventually takes his own life in despair over his unrequited love.
It may look simple at first glance, but this novel remains in literary history because
it depicts the passion and agony of love from the
inside.Werther tells his friend about his feelings in the form of letters.
Those letters record everything: the shock of the moment they met,
and the torrent of emotions that reason cannot suppress.
"I have made a vow. I will not let any man other than me dance with this girl whom I love and wish to call my own. Even if I were to perish for it."
Even though he knows Lotte has a fiancé,
he is still drawn to her.
The pain of a love that cannot be helped seeps out every time I turn the page.
"Albert is a good man. He is my fiancé."
The moment he hears these words, Werther's world collapses with a crash.
Even so, he cannot stop himself from going to see Lotte.
An interesting yet heartbreaking episode
There is an interesting yet heartbreaking episode.
Werther had a silhouette of Lotte displayed in his house,
and he had planned to take it down on the day Albert and Lotte officially became husband and wife.
However, the notice never came.
Yes, the two of them had not sent him word out of consideration for Werther.
In the end, Werther learned of the engagement day later.
He decided to leave the silhouette as it was.
And yet, you are already husband and wife,
and Lotte's silhouette is still hanging here. Now that it has come to this, I will leave it as it is.
"Love is blind" is not enough to explain it
Werther describes Lotte like this.
An angel!—Well, well! Everyone says that about the woman they love. Don't they? Still, I cannot tell you how perfect she is, or why she is perfect. Because she has captured my senses.
She is so intellectual yet innocent, so firm yet gentle, so lively and hardworking yet possesses such peace of soul.
It has gone beyond the realm of unadulterated praise.
They say love is blind, but perhaps he is trying to see a
perfect existence through Lotte even more than that.It is said that Goethe remarked in his later years:
“If there is no period in your life when you feel that 'Werther' was written for you, then you are unfortunate.”
I feel a bit perplexed when faced with these words.
Because I don't think I possess Werther's passion or that intense sensitivity.
However, as I reread it, I begin to understand a little.
Perhaps we are hiding a similar passion beneath the cloak of
reason
.Maybe we are just pretending not to notice it.
Unconscious Repression and Werther's Passion
When I look back on my youth,
I remember, for instance, processing my feelings for someone of the opposite sex in my friend group
as "friendship" rather than "love."
At that time, I might have been unconsciously repressing those feelings.
Werther was someone who discarded such filters of reason
and lived solely according to his emotions.
That led to his ruin, but at the same time,
I think he was also the person who felt life most intensely.
“These pistols were bestowed by your hand, and you wiped the dust from them. Because you touched them, I kiss them a thousand times.”
Reading this letter, along with the pain, I am overwhelmed by the fact that
one can care for someone this much.
However, I also think this.
In the end, the past we recall now is not the true past, but a virtual reality created by our current brain, and I cannot know the truth of my own youth.
Between "Ideal" and "Reality"
“The Sorrows of Young Werther” is not merely a romance novel.
It is a symbol of the “Sturm und Drang” (Storm and Stress) movement of the time,
and a work depicting a young man struggling between his ideals and reality.
Werther's love is also a symbol of a soul seeking individual freedom being crushed by the framework of society.
Unable to live in reality because of the pursuit of ideals—
that suffering still exists within us today in different forms.
When I am struck by a sense of helplessness that I cannot overcome,
I want to open this book again.
Not to trace Werther's despair,
but to re-examine the
impulse of life that existed within him.
Final Chapter: Werther's Cry
Finally, let me quote Werther's words once more.
“When I love her so exclusively, so fervently, so completely, and know nothing, understand nothing, and possess nothing but her, how can another man be allowed to love her? How can he be permitted to love her?”
Those words echo quietly across time.
Perhaps we all carry a pain that reason cannot explain
somewhere within us.