[183] Sorrows of Werther

Werther had a love for Charlotte
  Such as words could never utter;
Would you know how first he met her?
  She was cutting bread and butter.

Charlotte was a married lady,
  And a moral man was Werther,
And, for all the wealth of Indies,
  Would do nothing for to hurt her.

So he sighed and pined and ogled,
  And his passion boiled and bubbled,
Till he blew his silly brains out,
  And no more was by it troubled.

Charlotte, having seen his body
  Borne before her on a shutter,
Like a well-conducted person,
  Went on cutting bread and butter.

	 -- William Makepeace Thackeray

As a poem, this doesn't really need much said about it. The reference is to
Goethe's 'The Sorrows of Young Werther', a work that apparently inspired a
lot of poems[1], though it's a pretty safe bet none of them took quite the
tone of Thackeray's piece.

[1] see <http://www.engl.virginia.edu/~enec981/dictionary/16smithM1.html>
for example.

Note: I couldn't find a synopsis of 'The Sorrows of Young Werther' anywhere,
but the following is a synopsis of Massenet's opera based on the novel:
<http://www.laopera.org/98-99/werthersynopsis.htm>. The poem is a nicer if
not as accurate summary, though <g>.

Biography:

Thackeray, William Makepeace

  b. July 18, 1811, Calcutta, India
  d. Dec. 24, 1863, London, Eng.

  English novelist whose reputation rests chiefly on Vanity Fair (1847-48),
  a novel of the Napoleonic period in England, and The History of Henry
  Esmond, Esq. (1852), set in the early 18th century.

  See <http://www.infoplease.com/ce5/CE051388.html> for a full biography.

Assessment:

  In his own time Thackeray was regarded as the only possible rival to
  Dickens. His pictures of contemporary life were obviously real and were
  accepted as such by the middle classes. A great professional, he provided
  novels, stories, essays, and verses for his audience, and he toured as a
  nationally known lecturer. He wrote to be read aloud in the long Victorian
  family evenings, and his prose has the lucidity, spontaneity, and pace of
  good reading material. Throughout his works, Thackeray analyzed and
  deplored snobbery and frequently gave his opinions on human behaviour and
  the shortcomings of society, though usually prompted by his narrative to
  do so. He examined such subjects as hypocrisy, secret emotions, the
  sorrows sometimes attendant on love, remembrance of things past, and the
  vanity of much of life--such moralizing being, in his opinion, an
  important function of the novelist. He had little time for such favourite
  devices of Victorian novelists as exaggerated characterization and
  melodramatic plots, preferring in his own work to be more true to life,
  subtly depicting various moods and plunging the reader into a stream of
  entertaining narrative, description, dialogue, and comment.

  Thackeray's high reputation as a novelist continued unchallenged to the
  end of the 19th century but then began to decline. Vanity Fair is still
  his most interesting and readable work and has retained its place among
  the great historical novels in the English language.

  	-- EB

From: Abraham Thomas <thomas@>

Goethe's novel, of course, is the canonical example of 'Bildungsroman' -
literally, 'education novel' - a work which traces the moral and
psychological growth of the protagonist. And it's actually pretty good
(as such things go). That the sensitive and refined Werther would later
become the inspiration for countless effusions of Victorian
sentimentality is ironic in the extreme - Goethe himself was anything
but a Romantic :-).

From: "Vince" <Butler_vincent@>

Goethe was a romantic, and classical and whatever he wanted to be.
There were several suicides inspired by Werther. I read the book (in
English).  The funniest thing in it was Charlotte and Werther, looking
out of a window watching a storm gathering over the hills, sunset &
clouds and lightening. Werther takes Charlotte's hand in his and says:
"Klopstock"!  ( referring to a Romantic poet).
Vince Butler