Die Leiden de jungen Werther

Title        : Die Leiden de jungen Werther

Writer     : Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Year        : 1774 (Indonesian first edition released in 2000)

Language              : German (translated to Indonesian)

von Goethe is certainly one of the greatest artists both in Germany and Europe. He gives such a great influence to the world of writing. This is the first time I read his work, and I’m quite shock about it.

I can’t say anything but the story may have been quite different back at his time, but it’s very common and usual today. Not that I want to despise him, but the triangle love story has been rewritten for so many times since the time of Shakespeare. It’s about a young man named Werther who meets and falls in love with a young girl named Lotchen, nicknamed Lotte. Werther feels very extravagant about his feeling and he think he knows that it’s a true love. By the reaction of Lotte towards Werther’s attention, he feels that Lotte has the same feeling as he does. He think that she loves him too even though she has been engaged.

However, his life is never easy. He keeps thinking that the world has gone crazy because of too much restriction. He doesn’t like any limitation applied in the world and he wants people to live just as their feeling run. He also, certainly, doesn’t like the restriction between he and Lotte: their different social status and Lotte’s status as other man’s fiancé. He goes crazy with it, and he can’t deal with it. At the end, he decides to die, committed suicide.

Besides the usual flow of the story, the language is also not interesting for me. It’s too poetic. Not that I don’t understand, but for me…the poetic language seems to undervalue the feeling of each character instead of making it amazing. I don’t know why…perhaps it’s the problem with the translation but… I still didn’t enjoy reading this novel. In terms of poetic language, I prefer Shakespearean language after all.

Rating: 2.5

The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken over the Ship

Title : The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken over the Ship
Writer : Charles Bukowski
Year : 1998
Language : English

This is the first prose of Charles Bukowski I’ve read after some of his poems. I fell in love with his works from the very first time I read his poem for my poetry class like two years ago. For me, he’s just simply genius!! He’s not a kind of writer who tries so hard to be romantic, critical, and poetic or something. His words, phrase, and sentences are just simple, but they just can hit my heart and mind once I read them. They hit the reality, they hit the truth, and they hit them all correctly, honestly, and without manipulation!

The title seems not to be relevant to what he says in his writings. I thought that he’s always like that. But that’s not until I understand what he talks about actually. In this short story, he talks about his life in his 70s days. He is an old 70s or something writer who still drinks much and goes to the horse racetrack to do some bet. This-diary-like story is not without meaning. He actually wants to state that in his old days, he needs something to do to fill the remaining of his life time, and he chooses going to the racetrack. He doesn’t mind if he loses the bet, he doesn’t need the money, but he needs the joy. That’s it.

He also states that for him, previously, being a writer is a must to do job since he had undergone some kind of poor life that he couldn’t eat. And because the only thing he can do well is writing and it sells, he continues to write for 50 years. However, in his old days later on, he feels like better and better in writing. He can feel that he really writes something! He’s not afraid of saying that he hates some writers, great writers, with their so-called great works. He thinks that those writers are only dumb people writing dumb fool things about lie. He thinks that they are never true. And he also thinks that people are just so foolish living their life. For him, there are not interesting people. This world is just a whole crap. That’s why…the captain is out to lunch…and the sailors HAVE TAKEN over the ship!!

I like this short story, I mean…the core of the story. Of course, not the selected object of the racetrack. But yeah…Bukowski has the right to write anything about his life. The best part is…yes..the language. The way he says everything in there is just genius!

Rating: 3