So, did Werther actually have a shot at Lotte?
I'm of the thought that he most definitely did, their last meeting was pretty much "Oh Werther, I love you too, but I'm dating this other dude atm".
His sorrow was pretty much the same as Elizabeth Bennet/Jane Eyre, by splitting Lotte and Albert apart he would have made her "impure" and into someone he didn't love.
Or was it just a lost cause? Would she never love him?
Werther's love can hardly be called love, in a sense. I hate to go all Lacanian psych-bullshit but Lotte is the 'objet petit a' - the ultimate object of his desire, but one that cannot be attained because to attain it would be to compromise or change its qualities. His love for Lotte is rarely described as physical, but one could argue that Werther would be unable to express physical love due to its being so taboo. Werther is downright obsessed with her.
I'd probably argue that Werther is a depressive. He is able to keep it together most of the time but is clearly deeply emotionally repressed. I think that had Lotte not married Albert, Werther probably could have married her. Like you say, Lotte admits that he is attracted to him too.
I'd say that the main reason he doesn't want to break them up is that he recognises that they're happy together, and as he says many times, he respects, admires and likes Albert on a personal level. If you can, there's a great new translation of it available that I really enjoyed (it's called "The Sufferings of Young Werther").
>>7871909
>I hate to go all Lacanian psych-bullshit but Lotte is the 'objet petit a' - the ultimate object of his desire, but one that cannot be attained because to attain it would be to compromise or change its qualities.
This seems very interesting. Where can I read more?
I don't think he had a chance.
Lotte may or may not have loved him, but I don't think he had a chance regardless.
I find the most heartbreaking thing about love, to be the uncertainty. Whenever I fall in love, I get two different voices in my head, where one is encouraging and positive, and the other negative and discouraging.
The result is a kind of limbo, where you don't fall out of love, but you're still too afraid to make a move.
This is what happens to Werther, and then it just intensifies over the course of the story untill Lotte becomes an obsession. All of Werthers love goes to Lotte, so he becomes depressed since the only thing he can love is something he can't have.
But what would have happened if Lotte returned his love and left Albert?
Honestly, I don't think it would have made a difference. Werther himself said that one of them had to die, and he didn't have the "guts" or whatever you wanna call it, to kill Albert.
Albert isn't a villain, nor is Werther a hero, and Lotte certainly isn't someone who needs to be saved.
>>7871909
> 'objet petit a' - the ultimate object of his desire, but one that cannot be attained because to attain it would be to compromise or change its qualities
It is for this reason I wonder whether Mishima was indeed a homosexual as the term is understood today. The way he painfully admires his fiancée is very similar to his pinimgs for the rough young men of the docks, whom he pointedly cannot interact with and certainly not sleep with. It:s a form of ritualized emotional self a castigation, a rationalization and reenactment of deep-seated feelings of inadequacy
>>7871915
Zizek. I genuinely think Zizek is betyerat elaining Lacan than Lacan himself
>>7871814
Really want to read this book. Avoiding the text of the thread bc spoilers. What translation should I read? Is the penguin classics edition fine?
>>7871814
nah
>>7872061
What about the whole "Zizek's interpretation of Lacan, not actual Lacan" thing? I've read that his interpretations tend to pollute the intended meaning of a given work to a great extent.
>mfw read this while in love
It's quite the experience.
>>7872061
He literally fucked men. Whoever you desire is deeply interwoven with who you are and want to be and don't want to be. Whether you're straight or gay. I don't think having more depth to your desires than "me get penis excited, me ejaculate" make you "not a true homosexual". It's easy to say that because homosexuality is in itself a deviation of the norm, but take a straight man falling in love with an idea manifest in a woman and no one would question his heterosexuality.
But actually if you read Confessions of a Mask I think he delves somewhat into psychoanalysis of homosexuals as just narcissists or sadists.
>>7872061
Definitely the point about ritualised emotional self-castigation is correct. Either he was a homosexual who attempted to convince himself to love his wife through drawing a self-delusional equivalence between his homosexual desires and his aesthetic, if chaste, appreciation for her. Mishima strictly stipulated that his wife have certain physical qualities, so it seems as though he could appreciate female beauty. Mishima was clearly deeply insecure about "weakness" and "femininity", I wrote an essay on how he associates femininity with weakness (and with the West!) in The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea. His homosexuality presumably compounded this.
Back to Werther, though. Werther's depression is not simply because of his unrequited, flamboyant, hysterical love, it's also because he's self-aware, moral and principled enough to not do anything particularly malicious to be with Lotte. If he were truly mad, he would likely scheme to kill Albert or even do something nefarious, which he never does at all. If anything, Werther is quite logical and reasonable. He loves Lotte and is desperately unhappy without her, but he knows that it would be wrong to conspire to split up a couple who are happy, to cuckold a man he calls his friend or to kill a man he respects and likes. He can't be happy, so he rationalises that either Albert or he himself must die. All the while, the sheer craziness of this situation is torturing him too. He's not a lovelorn fool mad with desire at all.
I am in love with Werther. I can marry him if you want ;)
>>7871814
She wasn't just "dating" and there was no such thing as "atm". This isn't Seinfeld. She was to marry Albert.
>>7871814
My copy. Excuse the shitty camera phone.
>>7872487
>>7871814
>shot
>>7871909
Į would rather say he is emotionally unstable. Note how he enjoys life in the first part of the book, how he wonders at all the minor details of nature around him (he says he feels nature in his body), how happy he feels when he moves his chair to a nice spot to read Homer. He gives many examples of his (extreme) happiness. You really can't feel this way if you're really depressed. His feelings and emotions are intense, and his love for Lotte is unbearably strong.
Interesting posts in this thread. English translation of Werther destroys the greatness of the book.
>>7871814
She did love him but he never had a shot at her and both of them knew
>>7871909
>Werther's love can hardly be called love, in a sense.
Agreed, he's infatuated, it's an obsession, it's not a love meant to last. But it is a form of love? Is it not?
>>7872003
But say Albert died in a Jane Eyre/Bertha, kind of way, could we not have gotten a "Happy ever after"-ending? I really think we could have, it would have been a The Graduate kind of ending but still. Up in the air.
Is there any literature that deals with the kind of feeling seen at the end of The Graduate please, whatever feeling you think that would be /lit/.
>>7872088
Penguin is fine
>>7872098
Reading it after ever having been in love is a little bit embarrassing. Still, I'm there again, happily in love for now, but... We'll see how long it lasts. Fuck I hate this human condition.
>>7872456
Well sure, it would have been VERY understanding in the context of the time for Albert to allow Lotte to leave her husband hand come to him since it would have rendered her without morals and shit. But love conquers all? Does it not? Even the norms of purity in a woman at the time?
>>7873181
You're so 21st century it hurts.
I never though this was open to interpretation. Werther was a classic case of overly emotional beta male. Lotte may have been attracted to him at the beginning but Friendzoned him hard.
>>7873252
This warms my millenial heart
>>7872088
>>7873181
The Penguin translation is horrible.
I have a German, Dutch and an English Penguin edition. The Penguin edition is so inferior to the others that I even refuse to read more than the few paragraphs I read. Absolute waste of money, and I even dislike the idea of it being on my shelf. It is absolutely horrendous and completely ruins the story, its emotional effect, what's Goethe about the book - everything.
You really should avoid the Penguin edition. I hope there are better versions, but I know this one is awful and unacceptable.
I get that the capturing Goethe's writing in English is very difficult, but often the translator isn't even trying. If you choose to read this version, don't think you have read Werther or Goethe.
