THE LITERATURE OF DESPAIR.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume X, Issue 11, 18 March 1893, Page 245

THE LITERATURE OF DESPAIR.

Almost every one is attached at some period of his life by tendency, akin to disease, towards despair in the possibilities of the future and revolt against the relatives of the present. The tendency can be traced back as far as men’s first recorded utterances about themselves, and finds expression in the literature of every age and every nation. On another occasion we may examine some of the records of blighted lives which constitute such cheerful reading in our own de siecle. At the present moment we wish to recall three romances which appeared about the close of last century in Germany, Italy, and France, holding up to admiration and sympathy certain conditions of mind and body under which hope is altogether extinguished, and life, becoming unendurable, is rejected. For it was these romances which glorified a habit of mind not before regarded with great favour by writers of consideration. They give perhaps more insight into the spirit of their age than many works of sounder purpose, and they stirred a wave of emotion among the young men of the day which touched our own shores too, and roused an eager response among the poets and thinkers of England. The form of each romance is simplicity itself, and was determined by Goethe, who was first in the field. Written in the person of a very young man, each recounts the tragedy of an ardent and sensitive nature, blighted in affection and blighted in career. Something of autobiography was thrown by each author into his romance. Indeed, Goethe in later life acknowledged to Bettina that he had written the Sorrows of Werther in order to rid himself of the tendency towards suicide which haunted him perpetually. Wei ther’s story has been so charmingly summarised by Thackeray that, at the risk of disrespect to the original, his version is here inserted for the benefit of those to whom that is unknown :— Werther bad a love for Charlotte Such as words could never utter; Would you know how first he met her t She was cutting bread and butter. Charlotte was a married lady. And a moral man was Werther, And. for all the wealth of Indies, Would do nothing for to hurt her. So he sighed, and pined, ami ogled. And his passion boiled and bubbled. Till he blew his silly brain- out. And no more was by it troubled. Charlotte, having seen his body Borne before her on a shutter. Like a well-conducted person Went on cutting bread and butter.