The Sorrows of Young Werther and Selected WritingsMy rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is my second time reading Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther, and I really do enjoy the story. Maybe even more so this second time. Great flow of emotions, especially through the first part and most of the second.

I went with 3 stars for this review solely based on the translation, where sometimes more modern day phrases were used. One examples dealt with Werther contemplating suicide by talking about “blowing my brains out” (p. 51). In the 1850s translation by Thomas Carlyle and R.D. Boylan, it was rendered as “when I am ready to commit suicide” (p. 25 of Dover Thrift paperback edition). In Dr. Pratt’s 1813 edition, it was “when the desponding soul meditates its own destruction.” Now, the 1813 edition is simply too outdated for today, but the 1850s version, I think, is the best of the three.

I had 3 copies of Werther open while reading, and while it makes for slow going, for me, it was a joy to compare the different choices that each translator made, some of which expressed their current cultural mores. One instance of different choices (besides not explicitly referring to suicide in the 1813 edition) regards Werther pointing a pistol at his head. In the 1813 edition, it was unconsciously done, and not premeditated. In the 1850s and 1962 version, it was definitely an intentional act.

The translator’s choices reminded me a little of my negative reaction to Stanley Lombardo’s updated text for the Iliad and Odyssey. I can understand trying to make the text more accessible, but for me, there’s also a meta-understanding that this is an older text and that some modern language doesn’t fit with the experience. Then again, as I’ve said with other reviews, if this is what it takes to lasso in a younger, new reader, than perhaps that’s what might be needed. Then, after they’re hooked, they might be willing to explore the book more fully through other translations or the original.

For me, I will likely come back to Werther again.