Lives and Deaths of Werther : Interpretation, Translation, and Adaptation in Europe and East Asia

Abstract

Werther is different Werthers but not everywhere at the same time. This study investigates how the novel’s interpretations, translations and literary adaptations have left their marks on the original text, but this time without judging them against the canonical ideas of academic criticism. It turns out that Werther’s narrative malleability facilitates its use as a “graft.” By isolating some elements of the narrative and eliminating others, readers can draw on Werther to make a case for various ideological projects. He is a sick man, but also a revolutionary hero. His suicide is self-determined, even heroic. In contrast to the epistolary novel’s precarious status in Germany, where it was—and continues to be—downplayed as an immature work of the great Goethe, French Romantic poets such as Chateaubriand and Senancour embraced the novel as a valid template of modern subjectivity. In pre-Risorgimento Italy, Foscolo drew on the book to tell a story of patriotic martyrdom. And in East Asia, the same malleability contributed to Werther’s iconic status among Japanese and Chinese modern writers of the early twentieth century. While translators struggled to capture its explosive literary style in their native languages, literary successors did not detect much foreignness in the text’s ethos; instead, it formed part of the discovery of their own literary heritage.