The Sufferings of Young Werther. The Fifteen-Year-Old Goethe

The book includes the famous epistolary novel «The Sufferings of Young Werther» by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, translated by A. N. Strugovshchikov, the essay «The Fifteen-Year-Old Goethe», which is part of Goethe's memoirs «From My Life. Poetry and Truth», as well as an extensive literary and historical review by Strugovshchikov titled «Werther». The book is equipped with numerous comments. It is adorned with magnificent illustrations made by the best German artists for the collected works of Goethe, published in 1882.

At the end of the 18th century, a wave of suicides among young people swept across Europe. Such spikes in youth suicides sometimes occur even today. Psychologists and sociologists refer to this phenomenon as the «Werther Syndrome». This refers to the main character of the famous novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe — a dreamy educated young man who falls desperately in love with the young Charlotte, who has a fiancé. In «The Sufferings of Young Werther», Goethe subtly describes the feelings of the young man, who fully understands that his love is unrequited. Unable to cope with the overwhelming emotions, Werther takes his own life. However, many critics believe that «The Sufferings of Young Werther» is not just a novel about unhappy love, but a drama that tells how a person who idealizes the world around him ultimately suffers defeat from the harsh realities surrounding him.