I read Werther for the first time and — quote! — I didn’t like it. I came from I do not know what reading or, rather, from Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, and I felt the book being smaller than it is. And life, as usual, made my tongue burn. “Good, but mushy. At one point, it’s sick” — it’s what I’ve said at the end of the reading. I do not deny: I was in charm, drunk from the first contact with Mann. Shortly thereafter, I rethought: it’s very likely that the problem is in me, not in Goethe. I gave the book a new chance — a book, say, of “a sitting” — and the reading took place as follows: I felt chills, my eyes seemed to swallow the lines; sometimes I thought i’d pause, think calmly about everything I was feeling. Immersed in a whirlwind of feelings, thoughts, judging Werther while I was empathizing with the narrative. Almost crying, I close the book. The verdict: “Next to Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich , these were the best few pages I’ve read in my entire life”. And I almost forget the main one: “I will never forgive myself for saying this book is sick. I am forever an idiot”.
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