I feel like this book is the first emo album, the beginning of youth culture, the precursor to Schopenhauer & Nietzsche. All the art I enjoy finds a predecessor in The Sorrows of Young Werther. It is tragedy without the chorus, subjective and thus distinctively modern. A world without any security or guarantee of social status for those who do not please the accepted ways. One where women have gained power over men, but where men haven't been able to accept it. Our newfound freedom and accompanying alienation tries to be channeled through marriage and career, to find the socially acceptable good natured partner. A world which has been built on renunciation of instinct, but still hasn't found productive outlets. A world with one step in the past and another in the present. Where the morally disposed of the privileged class fear those beneath them. Where ignorance is bliss, knowledge is without assurance of truth. Those on top have a vision of the future, but it is one where they are not as necessary.
This is a book on the end of the old ways as it enters the modern era where it's presuppositions are under the assault of uncertainty. This book may become a relic as those who truly share the sorrows of young Werther may dwindle. The sorrow depicted is of a very particular kind, of a particular society.
None of what I have said condemns this book. To the contrary this book is essential for human understanding. But it is so disturbing that we should aim for a society which doesn't have so many Werthers. Let the Sorrows of Young Werther disturb and challenge us! We shouldn't like this book, and that is why we need it.
This book is for a world hopefully in the birth pangs of a new era, of a collapse of the old and the prospect of something new. Let this story inspire us, even as we identify with its tragic logic.
No comments:
Post a Comment