Word: wertherisms
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...called vignettes. The process, developed in England, spread to Paris, where in the '30's a formidable number of illustrated books were produced. The interest was shared between new editions of famous literature and contemporary writings. Thus "Gil Blas," "Don Quixote," "Paul and Virginia," are exhibited with Goethe's "Werther," Nodier's fairy tale "Tresor des Feves," Reybaud's political satire "Jerome Paturot," all with blocks cut after designs by Johannot, and Gigoux and others...
...Goethe's Werther," Professor Silz, Sever...
...will deny that he has failed --is in his segregating a student from the general classification of youth. Education, however profound, however inspiring, can never hope to cope with the vagaries of the adolescent mind. In the nineteenth century it was called mal de siecle, mal de Rene, Werther-sickness--any number of names. Today it bears the label of "student suicide", probably because the public is now interested in students or at least in thousands of boys and girls who are termed students. But even before the advent of science, this disease was known, and appreciated...
...remarkable power of lucid biographical romancing upon two fruitless subjects out of the three chosen. The power remains admirable, but the reading palls. The young Goethe's windy sentimentality for Charlotte Buff is shown translating itself into that sweet and sticky opus, The Sorrows of the Young Werther. Other chapters demonstrate the dull phenomenon of Mrs. Siddons, a British beauty with the spirit of a bourgeois curate, rising to histrionic heights on emotional wings supplied by the death of her asthmatic daughter-shallow and caddish Painter Thomas Lawrence being lugged in to emphasize the inferiority of the Siddons-Kemble...
...There are two ideas running through Goethe's life and writings from beginning to the end, the ideas of work and renunciation . . . . We know that in Werther's sorrows Goethe portrayed his own inner struggles and sufferings, but Goethe acquired these two qualities, even in his youth, by the strictest self-discipline . . . . Work is the treasure of life and rest can be enjoyed only after hard work. You may call it a homely lesson, but Goethe knew no better...