《少年維特的煩惱》和歌德最後愛的繆斯-寫出內心的痛苦
《少年維特的煩惱》(德語:Die Leiden des jungen Werther)是第一部讓歌德在德國幾乎一夜成名的小說。本書於1774年秋天在萊比錫書籍展覽會上麵世,並在那裏成了暢銷書。它是歌德作品中被他的同時代人閱讀得最多的一本。由此而來的成功給歌德的一生帶來了名譽和財富。《少年維特的煩惱》的初版屬於狂飆突進運動的風格,而修訂版是魏瑪的古典主義時期的代表作品。小說中的主人公——他的行為僅僅取決於他的感覺——是感傷主義的代表性人物。
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B0%91%E5%B9%B4%E7%BB%B4%E7%89%B9%E7%9A%84%E7%83%A6%E6%81%BC
內容[編輯]
絕大部分的情節是在維特寫給朋友威廉的信中敘述的。
作為一個還不清楚自己人生目標的年輕人,維特離開了市民的世界,來到了W城。在那裏,他從在自然中遊蕩和練習繪畫中獲得享受,因為他認為自己是個藝術家。一天他被邀請參加舞會,在這次舞會上,他認識了公務員的女兒綠蒂,綠蒂在母親去世之後照顧著八個兄弟姐妹。維特先前就知道她已經訂過婚,卻不顧這些,立刻愛上了她。舞會期間下了一場暴雨。兩人想到了克洛普斯托克的同一首詩,並由此意識到了兩人間深深的靈魂的親和力。從此,綠蒂和維特一起度過了很多時光。
綠蒂的未婚夫阿爾貝特出差回來的時候,維特的感情漸漸產生了變化。綠蒂未婚夫的存在使他意識到了自己的愛情的無望。盡管阿爾貝特是一個富有同情心的、好心腸的人,他和維特之間的關係仍是緊張的。當維特意識到他對綠蒂的感情因為這種棘手的局麵不能繼續下去時,他離開了這座城市,以避開綠蒂。維特為一座大使館工作了一段時間,但事務的死板和禮儀的拘束摧毀了他的希望。他不能認同社會的上層和貴族的生活。他失望地回到了W城。這時綠蒂已經和阿爾貝特結婚了。
聖誕節之前,維特在阿爾貝特不在時拜訪了綠蒂,並為她朗讀了莪相(Ossian)的作品,他們情不自禁,相互擁抱、親吻。但是綠蒂掙脫了,還發誓永遠不再見維特。這次事件後,維特徹底絕望了。他寫了一封訣別信,並以要旅行的藉口向阿爾貝特借了兩把槍開槍自殺。次日早晨,人們發現他身著他標誌性的藍-黃衣服死去了。萊辛的作品《愛米麗雅·迦洛蒂》翻開著放在他的桌上。由於是自殺,人們無法以基督教的方式埋葬他。
背景[編輯]對夏綠蒂·布夫的愛[編輯]小說的情節在極大程度上是自傳性的:當歌德在韋茨拉爾(Wetzlar)的帝國最高法院實習期間,他結識了年輕的夏綠蒂·布夫,並愛上了她。但夏綠蒂已經和一位名叫約翰·克裏斯蒂安·凱斯特納(Johann Christian Kestner)的法律工作者訂了婚。在夏綠蒂的父親看來,凱斯特納顯然比年輕、有著藝術方麵抱負的歌德更加穩重可靠;歌德在那時就已經更想成為一名藝術家而不是律師。歌德倉促地離開了夏綠蒂。後來,他又認識了一位樞密顧問的女兒馬克西米利安娜·馮·拉·羅歇。歌德把兩個女子給他留下的印象融合到了綠蒂的形象中。據歌德本人說,他在四周的時間內寫出了這部書信體小說,以抵消愛情的痛苦並使自己從自殺的念頭中擺脫出來。
耶路撒冷的自殺[編輯]小說中的一部分情節,特別是結尾的部分,不同於歌德的經曆。維特自盡了,歌德卻沉浸在痛苦與寫作中。小說中自殺的情節是受到了一位年輕的同事耶路撒冷的激發而產生的。耶路撒冷確實因為巨大的愛情上的不幸而自殺,他在韋茨拉爾的墓地成了不幸的年輕戀人的朝拜聖地。卡爾·威廉·耶路撒冷(Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem)是歌德的泛泛之交,他於1772年10月自殺。此事是凱斯特納告訴歌德的。具有悲劇性的是,耶路撒冷用來自殺的手槍是凱斯特納借給他的。這使歌德把他自己在1772年夏天的經曆和耶路撒冷的命運混合起來,而在小說的第二部分,耶路撒冷的命運越來越多地成為敘述的主要對象。歌德將耶路撒冷的許多性格特點和其他特征轉移到他的維特形象上。為了更近地了解耶路撒冷自殺的情況,歌德於1772年11月初再次短暫地來到韋茨拉爾。他以與熟悉耶路撒冷的人的談話,以及他自己對耶路撒冷的記憶構成了小說的基礎。他甚至原文引用了凱斯特納對耶路撒冷之死的報告的一些段落。
影響[編輯]爭論[編輯]這部小說激起了批評家和支持者們極為熱烈的反應。其中的原因在於,歌德以維特作為他小說的中心人物,而這個人物完全違背了市民社會的規則。市民大眾將維特視為一個和睦婚姻的破壞者,一個反叛者,一個無神論者,他與市民大眾的觀念完全相悖。他們期待的文學,更多的是“實用的東西”和“娛樂的東西”,而歌德的小說在他們看來並不是上述兩者中的任何一種。他們直接在故事中尋找“實用的東西”,他們希望有一個他們能夠認同的人物,並從他的行為中得到學習。但這部小說卻是以自殺告終的——從市民的價值標準來看這不可想象。許多市民批評這部小說僅僅因為它的主要人物不符合他們的觀念,還威脅到他們的價值標準。他們認為《少年維特的煩惱》是一本和傳統文學決裂的書,這種決裂是他們不希望看到的。他們認為這本書頌揚了與他們的利益相悖的價值標準,讚美了自殺的行為。
針對這部小說對自殺的讚美的批評在很大程度上也來自於教會和一些同時代的作家,因為,據說許多青年模仿了自殺行為。實際上的確有模仿性的自殺行為,但其數量遠遠低於教會宣稱的數量。在一些地方(如:萊比錫、哥本哈根、米蘭)這本小說甚至受到了封禁。歌德的反駁大意如下:他以自己的生還給出了最好的例子:人們必須寫出內心的痛苦。歌德對指責自己誘惑他人自殺的馮·戴爾比(von Derby)主教和布裏斯托(Bristol)爵士做出了辛辣、諷刺的回應:
現在你卻把一個作家托來盤問,想對一部被某些心地偏狹的人曲解了的作品橫加斥責,而這部作品至多也不過使這個世界甩脫十來個毫無用處的蠢人,他們沒有更好的事可做,隻好自己吹熄生命的殘焰。(韓耀成譯)
“維特熱”[編輯]正當歌德經受著來自教會和市民方麵的憤怒和批評的時候,這部小說也擁有著熱心的追隨者。首先在年輕人中間爆發了一場不折不扣的“維特熱”,這場熱潮使得維特成了一個偶像人物。當時出現了“維特裝”(黃褲子、黃馬甲、藍外衣)、“維特杯子”、甚至還有“維特香水”。小說中的場景裝點著茶壺、咖啡壺、杯子、餅幹盤和茶葉罐。對於那時的有教養的市民來說,喝茶喝咖啡的時間成了接觸文學的美好一刻。
小說的追隨者首先是那些和維特處境相似所以立刻受到吸引的人。那些正確理解了歌德的人可以以這部小說間接地反映他們的處境,並從維特承受的痛苦中找到鼓舞和安慰。
價值[編輯]《少年維特的煩惱》被視為狂飆突進運動時期最重要的小說。這部小說獲得了那個時代相當高的印數,並且是引發所謂的“閱讀熱”的因素之一。
歌德本人也沒有預料到這本書會獲得世界性的成功。為了記錄所謂的“維特熱”,現在在韋茨拉爾,除了一本珍貴的第一版《少年維特的煩惱》外,被展示的還有它的戲仿作品、模仿作品、爭鳴文獻和多種語言的翻譯本。但這本小說的成功並不僅僅是一種流行現象,用歌德自己的話來說:
這本小書的影響是巨大的、驚人的、很好的,因為它產生的正是時候。(《詩與真》)
版本[編輯]第一版出版於1774年。
1774年出現了一部法語譯本,此譯本拿破侖讀了七遍。
1775年德語本重印了七次。
此後出現了荷蘭語譯本(1776年),英語譯本(1779年),意大利語譯本(1781年)和俄語譯本(1788年)。
1787年歌德出版了小說的修訂版。
中文譯本[編輯](部分)
《少年維特的煩惱》,胡其鼎/譯,商周出版社,2006,ISBN 986-124-651-7
《少年維特的煩惱》,楊武能/譯,人民文學出版社,1999,ISBN 7-02-000605-1
《少年維特的煩惱》,韓耀成/譯,譯林出版社,1998,ISBN 7-80567-486-8
《少年維特的煩惱》,侯浚吉/譯,上海譯文出版社,1996,ISBN 7-5327-1924-3
《少年維特的煩惱》,周學普/譯, 誌文出版社, 1975, ISBN 9575451139
First print 1774 | |
Author | Johann Wolfgang von Goethe[1] |
---|---|
Original title | Die Leiden des jungen Werthers[1] |
Country | Germany |
Language | German |
Genre | Epistolary novel[1] |
Publisher | Weygand'sche Buchhandlung, Leipzig |
Publication date | 29 September 1774, revised ed. 1787[2] |
Published in English | 1779[2] |
The Sorrows of Young Werther (German: Die Leiden des jungen Werthers) is an epistolary and loosely autobiographicalnovel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, first published in 1774; a revised edition of the novel was published in 1787. Werther was an important novel of the Sturm und Drang period in German literature, and influenced the later Romantic literary movement.
Finished in six weeks of intensive writing during January–March 1774,[1] its publication instantly made the 24-year-old Goethe one of the first international literary celebrities. Of all his works, this book was the most known to the general public.[1][2] Towards the end of Goethe's life, a personal visit to Weimar became crucial to any young man's tour of Europe.
Plot summary[edit]
The majority of The Sorrows of Young Werther is presented as a collection of letters written by Werther, a young artist of highly sensitive and passionate temperament, and sent to his friend Wilhelm.
In these letters, Werther gives a very intimate account of his stay in the fictional village of Wahlheim (based on the town of Garbenheim, near Wetzlar).[citation needed] He is enchanted by the simple ways of the peasants there. He meets Lotte, a beautiful young girl who is taking care of her siblings following the death of their mother. Despite knowing beforehand that Lotte is already engaged to a man named Albert who is 11 years her senior, Werther falls in love with her.[3]
Although this causes Werther great pain, he spends the next few months cultivating a close friendship with both of them. His pain eventually becomes so great that he is forced to leave and go to Weimar. While he is away, he makes the acquaintance of Fräulein von B. He suffers a great embarrassment when he forgetfully visits a friend and has to face the normal weekly gathering of the entire aristocratic set. He returns to Wahlheim after this, where he suffers more than he did before, partially because Lotte and Albert are now married. Every day serves as a torturous reminder that Lotte will never be able to requite his love. Out of pity for her friend and respect for her husband, Lotte comes to the decision that Werther must not visit her so frequently. He visits her one final time, and they are both overcome with emotion after Werther's recitation of a portion of "Ossian".
Werther had realized even before this incident that one member of their love triangle — Lotte, Albert or Werther himself — had to die in order to resolve the situation. Unable to hurt anyone else or seriously consider committing murder, Werther sees no other choice but to take his own life. After composing a farewell letter to be found after his suicide, he writes to Albert asking for his two pistols, under a pretence that he is going "on a journey". Lotte receives the request with great emotion and sends the pistols. Werther then shoots himself in the head, but does not expire until 12 hours after he has shot himself. He is buried under a linden tree, a tree he talks about frequently in his letters, and the funeral is not attended by clergymen, Albert or his beloved Lotte.
Effect on Goethe[edit]Werther was one of Goethe's few works in the Sturm und Drang movement, before he, with Friedrich von Schiller, began the Weimar Classicism movement.
Goethe initially published the novel anonymously and also distanced himself from The Sorrows of Young Werther in his later years.[2] He regretted his fame and making his youthful love of Charlotte Buff public knowledge. He wrote Werther at the age of twenty-four, and yet some of his visitors in his old age knew him mainly from this work, despite his many others. He even denounced the Romantic movement by calling it "everything that is sick."[4]
Goethe described his distaste for the book, writing that even if Werther had been a brother he had killed, he could not have been more haunted by the vengeful ghost. Nevertheless, Goethe substantially reworked the book for the 1787 edition,[2] and acknowledged the great personal and emotional impact that The Sorrows of Young Werther could exert on those forlorn young lovers who discovered it. In 1821, he commented to his secretary, "It must be bad, if not everybody was to have a time in his life, when he felt as though Werther had been written exclusively for him."
Cultural impact[edit]The Sorrows of Young Werther was Goethe's first major success, turning him from an unknown into a celebrated author practically overnight. Napoleon Bonaparte considered it one of the great works of European literature. He thought so highly of it that he wrote a soliloquy in Goethe's style in his youth and carried Werther with him on his campaigning to Egypt. It also started the phenomenon known as the Werther-Fieber ("Werther Fever") which caused young men throughout Europe to dress in the clothing style described for Werther in the novel.[5][6] It reputedly also led to some of the first known examples of copycat suicide.
As a result of this tremendous effect, the "Werther Fever" was watched with concern by the authorities and fellow authors. One of the latter, Friedrich Nicolai, decided to create a satiric—and happier—ending called Die Freuden des jungen Werthers ("The Joys of Young Werther"), in which Albert, having realized what Werther is up to, had loaded chicken blood into the pistol, thereby foiling Werther's suicide, and happily concedes Lotte to him. After some initial difficulties, Werther sheds his passionate youthful side and reintegrates himself into society as a respectable citizen.[7]
Goethe, however, was not pleased with the Freuden and started a literary war with Nicolai (which lasted all his life) by writing a poem titled "Nicolai auf Werthers Grabe" in which Nicolai (here a passing nameless pedestrian) defecates on Werther's grave,[8] thus desecrating the memory of Werther from which Goethe had distanced himself in the meantime (as he had from the Sturm und Drang). This argument was continued in his collection of short and critical poems, the Xenien, and his play Faust.
Alternative versions and other appearances[edit]Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Frankenstein's monster finds the book in a leather portmanteau, along with two others—Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, and Milton's Paradise Lost. He sees Werther's case as similar to his own. He, like Werther, was rejected by those he loved.
Thomas Carlyle, who also translated Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meister into English, makes frequent reference and parody of Werther's relationship in his own 1836 novel Sartor Resartus.
The statistician Karl Pearson's first book was The New Werther.
It was the basis for the 1892 opera Werther by Jules Massenet.
William Makepeace Thackeray wrote a poem satirizing Goethe's story entitled Sorrows of Werther.
Thomas Mann's 1939 novel Lotte in Weimar recounts a fictional reunion between Goethe and the object of his youthful passion, Charlotte Buff.
An episode of History Bites features this book, with Bob Bainborough portraying Goethe.
Ulrich Plenzdorf, a GDR poet, wrote a novel and a play called Die neuen Leiden des jungen W. ("The New Sorrows of Young W."). It has been called a modern-day Werther.
In William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy, the novel appears next to Harrington's unsealed suicide note.
The 2010 German film Goethe! is a fictional account of the relationship between the young Goethe and Charlotte Buff and her fiancé Kestner, which at times draws on that between Werther and Charlotte and Albert.
The Sorrows of Young Werther, Modern Library, transl. Burton Pike, Random House, 2004, ISBN 0-8129-6990-1.
The Sorrows of Young Werther, Classics Library Complete Collection, transl. Michael Hulse, Penguin Books, 1989, ISBN 0-14-044503-X.
The Sorrows of Young Werther, Dover Thrift Editions, transl. Thomas Carlyle, R. Dillon Boylan, Dover Publications, 2002 [1902], ISBN 0-486-42455-3; originally publ. by CT Brainard.
The Sorrows of Young Werther, & Novelle, Classics Edition, transl. Elizabeth Mayer, Louise Bogan; poems transl. & foreword W. H. Auden, Vintage Books, June 1990 [1971], ISBN 0-679-72951-8; originally publ. by Random House.
The Sufferings of Young Werther, transl. Harry Steinhauer, New York: WW Norton & Co, 1970, ISBN 0-393-09880-X.
The Hebrew translation ????? ???? ????? was extremely popular among youths in the Zionist pioneer communities in British Mandate of Palestine in the 1930s and 1940s and was blamed for the suicide of several young men who were considered to have emulated Werther.
Theodore Ulrike Sophie von Levetzow, known as BaronessUlrike von Levetzow (4 February 1804 – 13 November 1899) was a friend and the last love of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
She was born at Löbnitz (today a part of Groitzsch) in Saxony, the daughter of the ducal Mecklenburg-Schwerin chamberlain and later Hofmarschall Joachim Otto Ulrich von Levetzow. The seventeen-year old girl first met Goethe in 1821 at Marienbad and again at Carlsbad in 1822 and 1823. The poet, then 72, was so carried away with her wit and beauty that he thought for a time of marrying her and urged Grand Duke Karl August of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach to ask for her hand in his name. Rejected, he left for Thuringia and addressed to her the poems which he afterward called Trilogie der Leidenschaft. These poems include the famous Marienbad Elegy.
Ulrike later confessed she was not prepared to marry and annoyedly denied a liaison with Goethe.
She remained a bachelorette for all her life and died at the age of 95 at Trziblitz Castle in Bohemia.
Publications[edit]Suphan, Goethe Jahrbuch, volume xxi (Frankfort, 1900)
Kirschoer, Erinnerungen an Goethes Ulrike und an die Familie von Levetzow-Rauch (Aussig, 1904)
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Gilman, D. C.; Thurston, H. T.; Moore, F., eds. (1905). "article name needed". New International Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead.