Journal articles on the topic 'Sorrows of Young Werther'

ABSTRACT Goethe’s novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774 and revised 1787), stands at the very beginning of the modern period, and offers a dramatic story of passionate love, which is still profoundly relevant. As a popular bestseller, this book is a response to emerging romantic themes. It seems to affirm romantic experience, while it initiates a critique of many of its typical forms at the point when these stereotypes were first beginning to appear. Through a close examination of Goethe’s text, this article considers (1) Werther’s self-destructive passion; (2) romantic love as a heroic response to the alienation of modern society; and (3) the problem of gender, which Werther ignores. In this novel, Goethe begins a philosophical conversation on love that we are bound to continue: What is romantic love, and in what way does it liberate or constrain us? And given some of the problems of romantic love, what would a “post-romantic” love be like?

This paper studies the idea of identity loss and suicide in three novels that have different cultural backgrounds. These novels are Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1877), Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958). The paper discusses the theme of suicide in all of these three novels through concentrating on one major aspect which is individuality. Okonkow in Things Fall Apart, Anna in Anna Karenina and Werther in Sorrows of Young Werther have suffered and struggled hard to live as happy individuals in society. Each one of them had dreams and ambitions which they tried to realize. Individuality seems one of the strongest motives behind their own dreams. However, all of them have failed in their pursuit of having an individual life away from social constraints and pressures. The study points out the social, psychological, political factors and conditions that lead to the individual’s identity loss. All these protagonists were looking for establishing an unfettered personal identity, but they all lost their dreams on the way and the result was a downfall, a loss of individuality, and most importantly a tragic life which pushed them to commit suicide.

Friends of literature often claim that it is capable of making readers more tolerant and benevolent. Enemies of literature, on the other hand, claim that it is capable of corrupting readers. Both groups exaggerate the power of literature. The exaggeration has important consequences for the debate about the role of literature in the curriculum of law schools and also for the debate about the limits of literary expression. This paper discusses one literary work frequently used to exemplify the negative effects of literature: Goethe’s “The sorrows of young Werther”. It is a commonplace among literary scholars that the publication of the book caused numerous suicides in eighteenth-century Europe. This paper raises doubts about that commonplace by emphasizing the lack of evidence to support it as well as the gravity of its political implications.

In this fascinating article, the Professor of Archaeology in the University of Exeter shows us that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) was not only the author of Faust, The Sorrows of Young Werther, and of beautiful lyrics, ballads and love-songs, but was keenly interested in prehistory and was well abreast of the subject as it was developing in Germany in the early nineteenth century.

The relevance of the study The publication in 1774 of the epistolary novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe became not only an outstanding fact in the biography of a still very young German genius at that time. The echoes of this event can be felt over the next several years, when this work literally turned the worldview of contemporaries, as well as in the following centuries in numerous artistic paraphrases. Obviously, the meaning of The Sorrows of Young Werther goes far beyond the purely literary sphere; therefore, its research should be approached with the appropriate tools. This key can be intermediality, which explores the processes of interspecific interaction of arts as mediums that do not compete with each other, do not strive for mutual intervention, but, on the contrary, reinforce each other’s action. The study of the mechanisms of intermediality makes it possible to go beyond the narrow professional field and determine the general cultural context of the era, which is an urgent task of modern humanitarian science. The purpose of the study is to characterize the mechanisms of interaction between literature and music in Goethe’s epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther and the basic role of these mechanisms in the formation of a sentimentalist worldview. The results and conclusions. Consideration of the Goethe’s epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther in the aspect of intermedial connections prompts several thoughts at the same time. First, in this novel, at the declarative level, literature retains its position as an already fully formed social institution. Literature, like art history and philosophy, is not anonymous here, but personified. In this approach, one senses an attempt at an aesthetic discussion with immediate contemporaries, the penetration of a publicistic component into a work of art, which became a powerful part of Herder’s essay sermons in the late 1760s. At the same time, music and painting appear as forms of realizing the ‘true,’ extremely sensual human nature, not reduced by various secular conventions. Werther draws, Charlotte plays the piano and sings, the ball scene is permeated with music. The newfangled hobby for folklore has determined the anonymity of musical toposes in the novel: these are ancient songs that sound accompanied by a piano, as well as popular dances—in this one can also see the influence of J. G. Herder. The entire fabric of the novel permeates and defines music as a super-idea: the music of the language and the music of novel drama with its discontinuous fragmentation and temporal fluidity. The presence of music within the story legitimizes its emotional exaltation, unpredictable syntax. The mention of singing or playing music influences the development of the storyline, the music becomes that invisible director who constructs the form of a whole literary work. The intermedial interaction of the two by nature temporal arts serves as an intensified catalyst for the ‘feelings biography’ of the protagonist, which also unfolds in time and directs the reader’s attention to the irrational sphere. The interpenetration of literature and music becomes a tool for overcoming outdated artistic conventions and the formation of a new type of European literature, in which attention to the sensual sphere becomes a way of reflecting the life of the New Age as fluid, subject to constant changes. The main conclusion of the study is that The Sorrows of Young Werther marks a turn from the typical for sentimentalist style music ‘literaturezation’ to counter processes, which will be fully revealed already in the era of romanticism.

Rich in exclamations and ellipses, Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther inhabits a linguistic space in German that does not immediately lend itself to literal translation. Its first translations into Japanese and Chinese coincided with periods of linguistic innovation, as writers and translators contributed to the development of vernacular writing. While in Japanese versions the rendered text faithfully evinces intermediate stages of vernacularization, Guo Moruo's 1922 translation represents a radical attempt to reshape language. By finding literal equivalents of Goethe's stylistic idiosyncrasies, Guo actively shapes the Chinese vernacular, i.e. he establishes the syntactical usage of an exclamation particle plus an exclamation mark. Since German and Chinese belong to different language families, his translation artificially creates intralingual affinities.

Summary: The association between the portrayal of suicide in fictional media and actual suicide has been debated since 1774, when it was asserted that Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther had led people to take their own lives. Since that time, a plethora of studies considering the association has been conducted. This review considered 34 studies examining the impact of fictional portrayal of suicide (in film and television, music, and plays) on actual suicidal behavior. It asked the question: “Is there any association, and if so, can it be considered causal?” Using strict criteria to establish causality, we found that the evidence was more equivocal than was the case for nonfictional reporting.

This article pursues the analysis of Hans Robert Jauss’s conception of “Aesthetic Experience”, as developed in Ästhetische Erfahrung und literarische Hermeneutik. The critical implication of hermeneutics in literary analysis is still considered problematic. In his book, Jauss goes beyond disciplinary limits and asserts that a hermeneutical methodology is in fact relevant in postmodern literary theory. He then provides the principles of this approach : historical consciousness and dialectical hermeneutics are here considered to be the main events involved in the act of interpretation, for they broaden one’s understanding of the text. This study, divided into two parts — theoretical and literary —, examines first the conceptual nature of “Aesthetic Experience”. It then presents an example of one of Jauss’s most important hermeneutical essays : a comparative reading of The Sorrows of Young Werther and The New Héloïse. We wish to prove the relevance of literary hermeneutics and the significance of its application, a process that understands the author “better than he understood himself”.

The need to read classics is growing day by day. It is necessary to check once in a while how faithfully translated and disseminated the 'World Literary Collection', which has spread like a fad in the publishing world. In this thesis, readers' translation criticism was attempted on Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, which is a classic literary work common to all world literature collections in Korea. Checking the translation from the point of view of a reader who does not know the foreign language of the starting text is a criticism about the publisher's publication of the translated book. Therefore, unlike the existing translation criticism method, the translation status was reviewed targeting the same works of five publishers publishing world literature collections based on ‘readability’ and ‘consistency’, ‘omission error’ and ‘notation error’. As a result, all translations of the five publishers are incomplete, so it seems urgent to prepare a countermeasure for the translation of Western classics. The solution is a world-class translation project led by the state. Another way is to expand and reorganize the Korean Classics Translation Institute into the World Classics Translation Institute. As history proves, the promotion of the humanities is achieved through translation projects.

The subject of this paper is the analysis of the first epistolary novel of the Italian literary tradition, The Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis by Ugo Foscolo, work which, thanks to its polyvalent character, both in content and form, occupies a significant place in the rich European literary context. The genre debut of the Italian literary tradition is positioned in a very complex literary panorama in the beginning of the 19th century, as a follower of Rousseau's The New Eloise, Richardson's Pamela, and above all Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, a work that is its closest European reference point in terms of composition and content. The polyvalent philosophical and artistic character of Foscolo's novel, its content stratification that reflects not only the intimate confession of the individual, but also the collective dilemmas of the then still ununited Italy in the complex cultural-historical mosaic of Europe of that time, however, are not in artistic collision with the unquestionable thematic and formal closeness between Foscolo's novel and its models in the European context - they only testify in a unique way, in a strong metatextual dialogue, complementary to the universal literary-ideological value of The Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis.

The Lotte Group is a diverse conglomerate empire in the South Korean business market, with businesses and investments in multiple sectors located in South Korea, other Asian countries, and the US. It is becoming a global market leader in the world economy; in fact, Forbes magazine ranked the Lotte Group’s retail division as the world’s number three department store in 2013. The focus is the proper name of this group, Lotte. The founding group’s president, Kyuck-Ho Shin, has stated that he wished to channel his admiration for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe by branding his merchandise, supermarket chain, and hotels with the name Lotte, the diminutive form of Charlotte, in a direct reference to The Sorrows of Young Werther. Consumers encounter the Lotte logo daily, and this feminized encounter pacifies any possible suspicion that a giant corporation may indeed be engulfing the Korean citizens’ physical and linguistic landscape. Drawing on communication studies and linguistic landscape studies, the focus is on the role of the proper name “Lotte” in South Korean advertising to uncover the multivalent, mythic power of German classical female archetypes in contemporary Korean circulation.

The epistolary heritage of Ivan Franko contains over six thousand letters. Germanepistolary correspondence addressed to Vienna, Berlin, Budapest, Heidelberg, Freiburg, Stanislav,Chernivtsi. The author of the article analyzes also the response letters sent to I. Franko. His firstletters in German were addressed to Olha Roshkevych. They were written under the strongimpression that the epistolary novel “The Sorrows of Young Werther” by J.W. von Goethe had hadon I. Franko. The Ukrainian writer’s correspondence with H. Kanner and I. Singer the editors of theweekly newspaper “Zeit” is an evidence of their close cooperation. I. Franko had close professionalties with V. Adler one of the founders and leaders of the Austrian social-democratic party, theeditor of Vienna newspaper “Arbeiterzeitung”, as well as with V. Adler’s wife Emma. I. Franko’scorrespondence with a prominent Slavic scholar V. Yagic didn’t contain only private mattersdiscussions. The third part of it is totally scientific which actually makes it valuable for researchers.I. Franko’s epistolary works reflect his artistic writer’s style neither in form nor in content. Hisletters are characterized by the depth of his thought, consistency of his statements, clearness of thesentence constructions, tendency to critical assessments of phenomena and scientific findings.

Richard Lansdown, “Suicide, Melancholia, and Manic Defense in Byron's Manfred” (pp. 1–32) This essay presents a literary-critical account of Lord Byron’s verse drama Manfred (1817) from the perspective of Freudian and Object Relations psychological theories, in particular as regards the distinction between melancholia and mourning and the presence of part-objects within the psyche. It argues that whereas it is important to preserve a distinction between the poet and his works, such a distinction can never be total: like Childe Harold, Manfred is clearly in part a personal projection, given Byron’s state of mind at the time of composition. To provide context for these discussions the essay surveys both Byron’s personal views concerning suicide and the history of self-slaughter in Western culture, with Romanticism as a particular focus. The poet’s attitudes were many and various, depending on which cases he had in mind. Furthermore, the Romantic tradition initiated by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) and continued by Byron’s numerous treatments of suicide mark a complication of the attitudes we find voiced by Enlightenment philosophers and, indeed, by Sigmund Freud himself.

Os estudos que se dedicam à paisagem a compreendem como a materialização de relações entre o homem e o território. Por outro lado, a noção de paisagem abriga, desde sua origem, uma conotação estética, pensada como discurso valorativo da natureza. Assim, o objetivo desse artigo é mostrar a paisagem como categoria do pensamento e parte do campo reflexivo da disciplina Estética. Serão mencionados escritos de determinados filósofos empenhados em interpretar a paisagem em sua dimensão estética. Dentre eles, pode-se citar Georg Simmel, Augustin Berque e Arnold Berleant. Busca-se ampliar sua noção para além das transformações sociais do espaço, celebrando as maneiras sensíveis de apreensão da natureza. Pretende-se, ainda, compreender a noção de paisagem formulada no Renascimento e, especialmente, no final do século XVIII, pondo luz em algumas obras literárias de Goethe, tais como Os sofrimentos do jovem Werther e Escritos sobre arte.[The studies that are dedicated to the landscape understand it as the materialization of relations between man and territory. On the other hand, the notion of landscape has, since its origin, an aesthetic connotation, thought of as a valorative discourse of nature. Thus, the purpose of this article is to show the landscape as a category of thought and part of the reflective field of the Aesthetic discipline. It will be mentioned writings of certain philosophers committed to interpret the landscape in its aesthetic dimension. I will mention, for instance, the research of Georg Simmel, Augustin Berque and Arnold Berleant. It seeks to broaden its notion beyond the social transformations of space, celebrating the sensitive manners of apprehending nature. It is also intended to understand the notion of landscape formulated in Renaissance and especially in the late Eighteenth Century putting light on some of Goethe's literary works, such as The sorrows of young Werther and Elective affinities.]

Abstract The current reckoning with systemic bias and discrimination calls for centering historical and social context in narrative theory, as in other domains of academic and public life. This article undertakes that centering in rhetorical narrative theory. Informed by genre theory, it argues for theorizing narrative occasion by focusing on two dimensions: 1) the social positions it entails and 2) the conceptual frameworks it engages. Readings of two German-language texts, Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther (1774/1787) and Babak Ghassim and Usama Elyas's “Behind Us, My Country” (2015), establish continua for mapping these social positions and conceptual frameworks and for evaluating their thematic salience in the narrative. Crucially, these methods are applied not only to text-internal figures like narrators and characters but also to the real-world parties to narrative: authors and actual readers. In addition to providing a framework for describing narrative occasion, this socially attuned analysis highlights problems with rhetorical narrative theory's treatment of audience, particularly its idealization of the authorial audience. The article thus points the way toward dismantling the universal thinking embedded in other narratological categories and suggests that rhetorical and cognitive narrative theories could be combined to understand how cognitive frameworks shape narrative occasion.

In The Sorrows of Young Werther, an epistolary novel by J.W. Goethe, we can find a literary portrait of a beloved woman playing a keyboard instrument. This is the motif Adam Mickiewicz referred to in his Dziady, Part 4. Both texts describe unrequited love to a woman belonging to another man. Belles-lettres reflect repertoire issues – at the turn of the 19th century girls from a proper home performed simple pieces, often dances. Subsequent decades of the 19th century came with the development of piano methodics, and composers wrote pieces which today constitute part of concert canon, whereas the piano became the perfect musical tool. The plot of Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks is set in the second half of the 19th century. Music plays an important role in that novel. Mann depicts the problem of clashing views in the marriage of Thomas, who was fond of “pretty melodies”, and Gerda, a magnificent violin and piano player who performed ambitious compositions and showed no mercy in criticising her husband’s musical taste. An important motif is the appearance of a young officer who visits Gerda in order to perform chamber works together. Thomas fears the mysterious bond between his wife and the lieutenant on the one hand and people’s opinions on the other. The motif of music as a platform for communication between a man and a woman can also be found in the novel Embers by Sándor Márai. Here as well it is a connection unavailable to the husband of the main heroine. At the end of his life, Henri, Christine’s husband, refers to music as the “melodious and obscure language” which allows “certain people” to communicate. Both novels include the motif of the end of an era and death of the characters for whom music was extremely significant and who performed compositions of the highest artistic value. Texts by Mann and Márai reflect a decline of a certain stage in the history of culture. It is also the end of the typical ways how burgesses and aristocrats spent their leisure time, how they treated the sphere of emotions and communed with the widely understood art. The result of these changes is the dethronement of the piano, which no longer was one of the most important pieces of furniture in a drawing room nor the most important instrument – as it used to be in the 19th century culture.

The concept of ‘romantic suicide’ emerged in the 1770s following the suicide of the teenage English poet Thomas Chatterton, memorialised in Goethe's 1774 novel in the character of young Werther. Eighteenth-century authors embellished these men as romantic outcasts, triumphing over death through fearless individualism to achieve immortality in heaven. Such myths still persist today, exemplified in journalists' responses to the suicides of artists such as Kitaj, Kirchner, Rothko and Van Gogh. Glorifying their deaths by wreathing them in martyrdom is a dangerous practice. Awareness of the damage wreaked by propagation of these myths is the starting point for challenging them.

My article will investigate the ways in which metaphors for birds, especially birds of song, in the correspondence between the protagonists of Dostoevsky's novel “Poor Folk” (Бедные люди, 1846) — Makar Devushkin and Varen'ka Dobroselova — refer back to Goethe's scandalously popular epistolary novel “The Sufferings of Young Werther” (Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, 1774). I propose that Dostoevsky involves a metaphoric net as an oblique subtext of references to recent popular European literature to convey the idea of Romantic death (bearing in mind the extent to which “Werther”, though written in the late eighteenth century, retained its cultural relevance for Russian readers in Dostoevsky's time). As I am investigating the larger picture of Dostoevsky's treatment of death and suicide in his shorter fiction as well as his dialogue with Goethe on this subject, I also argue that in “Poor Folk” the parody and stylization of Romantic discourse in Rataziaev's texts (and elsewhere) reveals thematic parallels between the Russian and the German narratives, and demonstrates Dostoevsky's viewpoint on death, Romanticism and Realism. For the methodological basis of my study, I will apply Mikhail Bakhtin's ideas on parody and stylization from his seminal “Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics” (especially from the chapter “Dostoevsky's Discourse”.

The hypothesis of this research is that the impact of Pre-Islamic poetry appeared early in the features of the German poet, Goethe, in contrast with the critics who studied this connection. This impact appears in his novel The Sorrows of Young Wrether, which is one of his early works (1774). The researcher thinks that Goethe was unintentionally influenced by Pre-Islamic poetry in general and by Tarafah Ibn Alabd (his life and his outstanding Mu'ullaqa, the Lameyah) in particular. The research tries to clarify similarities and convergences between the two poets along with the two texts (the novel and Mu'ullaqa).

In Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774), a piece of life writing constitutes one of the founding documents of modern German literature. The tragic story of the young bohemian Werther and his beloved Charlotte is partly based on the life and suicide of Goethe's friend Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem, but is also infused with passages from Goethe's own letters and inspired by his unrequited love for Charlotte Buff. Validating Paul De Man's assertion that autobiography is not necessarily a genre or a type of writing, but rather a way of approaching and interpreting literature, Goethe's Werther can equally be read as biography, autobiography or as a work of fiction. Despite the fact that the novel sets the scene for the intricate interplay of life and literature that became a distinguishing mark of European Romanticism, the particular significance of life writing for German literature and thought is obvious if one considers the role of biography for German Historism in the tradition of Leopold Ranke and Gustav Droysen, of autobiographical writing from Goethe's Dichtung und Wahrheit (1811-1833) to Ruth Klüger's Weiter leben (1992), or of auto/biographical tropes in fictional genres like the Bildungsroman. This makes it all the more surprising that no comprehensive study has yet been devoted to the role of life writing within the German context. Even the term ‘life writing,’ bridging the gap between different genres and media, has only recently and somewhat reluctantly been adopted in German-language scholarship. A recent collection of essays, edited by Katja Herges and Elisabeth Krimmer, entitled Contested Selves: Life Writing and German Culture has set itself to remedy this shortcoming.

One of the most popular and enduring legends in the Andean city of Quito recounts the vivid tale of a young Indian named Francisco Cantuña, the son of a powerful Inca captain, who lived and died in the sixteenth century. Maimed and horribly disfigured when the Inca general Rumiñahui burned the city of Quito, Cantuña was present when the general hid the treasure of Atahualpa before the arrival of the conquering Spaniards. In the aftermath of occupation, the young Cantuña was adopted by a benevolent Spaniard who taught him to read, write, and live a good Christian life. In return, Cantuña rewarded the Spaniard, as well as several local churches and chapels, with large sums of gold, which he secretly melted down from Atahualpa's hidden treasure. News of Cantuna's beneficence prompted all manner of speculation and suspicion among the local populace, to the extent that he was called before a tribunal to account for his mysterious wealth. In order to preserve the secret of the Inca treasure, Cantuña testified that he had acquired his riches by signing a pact with the devil. On this point, the earliest published version of the legend affirms that his testimony was a deliberate lie intended to quiet the gullible authorities, because Cantuna “was in reality a good Christian” who was very devoted to a local image of the Dolorosa (Virgin of Sorrows).

One of the most popular and enduring legends in the Andean city of Quito recounts the vivid tale of a young Indian named Francisco Cantuña, the son of a powerful Inca captain, who lived and died in the sixteenth century. Maimed and horribly disfigured when the Inca general Rumiñahui burned the city of Quito, Cantuña was present when the general hid the treasure of Atahualpa before the arrival of the conquering Spaniards. In the aftermath of occupation, the young Cantuña was adopted by a benevolent Spaniard who taught him to read, write, and live a good Christian life. In return, Cantuña rewarded the Spaniard, as well as several local churches and chapels, with large sums of gold, which he secretly melted down from Atahualpa's hidden treasure. News of Cantuna's beneficence prompted all manner of speculation and suspicion among the local populace, to the extent that he was called before a tribunal to account for his mysterious wealth. In order to preserve the secret of the Inca treasure, Cantuña testified that he had acquired his riches by signing a pact with the devil. On this point, the earliest published version of the legend affirms that his testimony was a deliberate lie intended to quiet the gullible authorities, because Cantuna “was in reality a good Christian” who was very devoted to a local image of the Dolorosa (Virgin of Sorrows).

Background Concerning rates of psychological disorders are increasingly recognized in young adults during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aimed to examine the associations of different structural and functional social supports on depression, anxiety, and stress among young adults in Vietnam. Methods An online cross-sectional study was performed on 236 respondents aged 16 to 30 years in Vietnam from June to July 2020. The Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale—21 Items (DASS-21); the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS), and the LUBBEN Social Network Scale (LSNS-6) was used to measure psychological health, functional and structural social support characteristics. Multi-level mixed-effect logistic regression was used to identify associations between social support and anxiety, depression, and stress. Results The rate of at least mild depression, anxiety, and stress were 30.1%, 34.8%, and 35.6%, respectively. Structural supports measured by LSNS-6 were not associated with the likelihood of having depression, anxiety, and stress (p>0.05). Respondents having friends with whom they could share joys and sorrows were less likely to have anxiety (aOR = 0.61, 95%CI = 0.41–0.90) and stress (aOR = 0.66, 95%CI = 0.45–0.96). Having family support in decision-making was also negatively associated with depression, anxiety, and stress. Meanwhile, those having family and friends who tried to help them were more likely to suffer stress (aOR = 1.94, 95%CI = 1.16–3.24) and depression (aOR = 2.09; 95%CI = 1.11–3.92), respectively. Conclusion This study highlighted a high rate of psychological problems among young adults during the COVID-19 pandemic in Vietnam. Emotional support from friends and advice support from family were important components that should be considered in further interventions to mitigate the psychological problems in young adults.

Decimus Ausonius Magnus (ca 310-394) was a rhetorician, a teacher, a tutor of young Gratian and a highly-ranked, influential official, as well as one of the most famous poets of the late Roman Empire. In his poems, he frequently described the small world he belonged to, the daily routine of his own, of his relatives, professional colleagues and friends. As the poet reached his old age, he made it a subject of his poetry. Ausonius considers old age to be a blessing, a time which permits a wise, generous person to gather fruit of his good deeds and fulfilled duties, to watch children and grandchildren grow and achieve successes, to share one’s wisdom with younger persons. Ausonius shows his grandfather and his grand­mother, his aunts, but first of all his father, Ausonius senior, as the examples of happy old persons, loving and loved, respected and needed by the people who surrounded them. He notices that old persons can be joyful, healthy and beautiful. Writing about old age, he mentions illness only once, while expressing his joy of having recovered and being able to send greetings to the grandson who celebrates his birthday. In spite of his age, Ausonius still loves his wife Sabina, who died many years before, the same way as he loved her when he was a young husband. He is deeply attached to Bissula, the charming German girl cap­tured and given to him by the Emperor Valentinian I probably circa 368. Besides, he really enjoys spending time with his friends and with the Muses. In his epigrams, most of which don’t have personal, but rather literary character, the poet translates, quotes, paraphrases and imitates Greek and Latin epigrams which deal with the theme of old age. Although in Ausonius’ poems exists an obvious resemblance to their models, he grants himself much freedom in his remouldings. Not only he alters circumstantial details, expands or abbrevi­ates the original, bur also uses them as mere starting points of his reflexion. It becomes more important for him to ponder over quickly passing youth or over a lover’s feelings towards a woman who rejected him when she was young, but whom he still admires, than to play a literary game. Ausonius never parodies nor even portrays women trying to attire men in their old age, even though he may mock old men pretending to look younger than they are. Neither he complains about pains and sorrows of old age. In all that, he remains a true Roman and a true gentleman.

Background. The article tells about the work of the famous German writer Johann Wolfgang Goethe and about the history of the creation of the famous "West-Eastern Divan". Methods. The famous German writer Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832) was a poet, playwright, literary critic, jurist, orientalist, historian and philosopher, painter, theater critic, naturalist, and scientist and statesman who made discoveries in biology and mineralogy. He was one of the first to use the term "world literature." His 143-volume artistic and scientific legacy includes his works such as Faust, The Sufferings of Young Werther, West-east collection of poems, Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him), Tawrida Iphigenia, Roman Elegies, Torquato Tasso, "The Evolution of Nabotot", "The Magic Whisper", "Information about Color", as well as more than three thousand poems have attracted the attention of readers around the world. Results. In particular, Goethe's main idea in his artistic heritage was to bring together the cultures of all the peoples of the world and to open the way to world literature. "West-east collection of poems" brought him a lot of fame. At that time, the poet was 70 years old. Discussion. Before Goethe created the "West-east collection of poems" (or “Mag‘ribu Mashriq devoni”), he began to study the Qur'an, the holy book of Islam, which the Orient worships. At that time, the Qur'an was translated into German, as well as into Latin, English and French. Although the poet was still young, more precisely, twenty-four years old, he studied these translations by comparing them because he knew all the languages listed above. He even mastered the Arabic orthography, through which he tried to understand and study the essence of the verses of the Qur'an. He also took a keen interest in studying the life of Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) and the hadeeths that are his sayings. The full manuscript of Surat an-Nas, written by Goethe in Arabic, includes "Allah," "Muhammad, may Allah bless him and grant him peace." The manuscript is still housed in the House Museum in Weimar, Germany. Conclusion. Thus, Goethe, who from an early age was interested in the languages, history, literature, religious and philosophical views, customs and traditions of the peoples of the East, wrote the "West-east collection of poems", primarily under the influence of the Qur'an and hadiths, mystical teachings. as well as in the interpretation of the ghazals of such famous representatives of Eastern poetry as Rudaki, Firdavsi, Hafiz Sherozi, Saadi, Anvari, Nizami, Rumi, Jami, Navoi. He even chose the oriental nickname "Hotam" to create it

Цель исследования, на результатах которого основана статья, – анализ визуально-дискурсивных особенностей информационного содержания молодёжной региональной группы сети «ВКонтакте» «Мемы о родном Саратове» (МОРС). Интернет-мем – это группа визуальных, вербальных элементов, объединённых единством содержания, формы, позиции, которые созданы, преобразованы и распространены многими участниками с помощью цифровых платформ. Критериями при выборе группы МОРС стали: открытость официального регионального сообщества; ежедневное наполнение новым контентом; наличие контента социально-политического характера; присутствие публикаций с радикальным, грубым, агрессивным контентом деструктивной направленности; количественный и демографический критерий группы МОРС – сообщество со значительным количеством молодых подписчиков Саратовской области). Участники группы – в шутку и всерьёз – рисуют социально-политические образы городской среды, критикуют безучастность властных структур области и России, бездействие коммунальных служб или равнодушие горожан. В условиях кажущейся свободы интернета в социальных сетях проявляются и конфликтные, деструктивные интеракции в форматах троллинга, фейла, флейма. Последовательно решаемые исследовательские задачи были сосредоточены на сборе и интерпретации дискурсивных данных с применением методики качественно-количественного контент-анализа. В статье представлены результаты анализа трёх тем-индикаторов смыслового поля сообщества (в которые вошли 125 мемов): «Власть на службе народа», «Коммунальный беспредел», «Центр – периферия: “российские печали”». Авторами сформулировано понимание контента конструктивной и деструктивной гражданской направленности. На основе бального ранжирования составлен рейтинг активности молодёжи внутри выделенных тем-индикаторов смыслового поля сообщества за период 2019 года. Определены общие эпизоды и специфика дискурсивного наполнения, его деструктивности в интернет-мемах различной семиотической структуры и комментариях к мемам в каждом тематическом направлении МОРС. Выявлены тенденции, прослеживающиеся в гражданских дискурсах молодёжи, обозначены перспективы проявлений молодёжной гражданственности в городском интернет-сообществе. Проведённое исследование позволило авторам представить специфику информационного наполнения каждого тематического направления, выделенного внутри группы МОРС, с акцентом на анализе деструктивности, дискурсивных особенностей её контента. Internet sites are an additional space of uniting by interests, a place for upholding rights and freedoms. They are becoming more popular for social activism manifestations. Conflicting, destructive interactions in the formats of trolling, fail, and flame are observed in social networks within the seeming freedom of the Internet. A popular way for young people to present their sociopolitical views is the Internet meme: a visual-verbal means of mass communication, a tool for activation, a translator of emotions. The aim of this study is to analyze the visual-discursive features of the information content of the youth regional community “Memes about Native Saratov” posted on the social network VKontakte. “Memes about Native Saratov” is a group of sociopolitical “digital folklore”, the main content of which is Internet memes and their discussion. The criteria for choosing the “Memes about Native Saratov” group were: openness of the official regional Internet community; daily updates with new content; availability of sociopolitical content; publications with radical, rude, aggressive destructive content; quantitative and demographic characteristics. This Internet community has a significant number of young subscribers in Saratov Oblast. The members of the community, jokingly and seriously, draw sociopolitical images of the urban environment, criticize the indifference of the power structures of the region and Russia, the inaction of utility service providers, or the indifference of the city dwellers. The consistently solved research problems were focused on the collection and interpretation of discursive data using the methodology of qualitative and quantitative content analysis. The results of the analysis of three topics indicating the community’s semantic field—“Authorities Serving the People”, “Communal Lawlessness”, “Center–Periphery: ‘Russian sorrows’ ”—are presented in the article. The field included 125 memes. The authors’ understanding of the content of a constructive and destructive civic orientation is formulated in the article. Based on the score ranking, the rating of youth activity within the selected topics of the semantic field of the community for the period of 2019 was compiled. The general episodes and the specifics of discursive content, its destructiveness in Internet memes of various semiotic structures and comments on memes in each thematic area of the “Memes about Native Saratov” community were determined. The tendencies observed in the civic discourses of the youth are revealed, the prospects of manifestations of youth citizenship in the urban Internet community are identified. The study allowed the authors to present the specifics of the content of each thematic area identified within the “Memes about Native Saratov” Internet community, with a focus on the analysis of destructiveness, the discursive features of its content.

AbstractAry Scheffer (1795-1858) is so generally included in the French School (Note 2)- unsurprisingly, since his career was confined almost entirely to Paris - that the fact that he was born and partly trained in the Netherlands is often overlooked. Yet throughout his life he kept in touch with Dutch colleagues and drew part of his inspiration from Dutch traditions. These Dutch aspects are the subject of this article. The Amsterdam City Academy, 1806-9 Ary Scheffer was enrolled at the Amsterdam Academy on 25 October 1806, his parents falsifying his date of birth in order to get him admitted at the age of eleven (fifteen was the oficial age) . He started in the third class and in order to qualify for the second he had to be one of the winners in the prize drawing contest. Candidates in this were required to submit six drawings made during the months January to March. Although no-one was supposed to enter until he had been at the Academy for four years, Ary Scheffer competed in both 1808 and 1809. Some of his signed drawings are preserved in Dordrecht. (Figs. 1-5 and 7), along with others not made for the contest. These last in particular are interesting not only because they reveal his first prowess, but also because they give some idea of the Academy practice of his day. Although the training at the Academy broadly followed the same lines as that customary in France, Italy and elsewhere (Note 4), our knowledge of its precise content is very patchy, since there was no set curriculum and no separate teachers for each subject. Two of Scheffer's drawings (Figs. 2 and 3) contain extensive notes, which amount to a more or less complete doctrine of proportion. It is not known who his teacher was or what sources were used, but the proportions do not agree with those in Van der Passe's handbook, which came into vogue in the 18th century, or with those of the canon of a Leonardo, Dürer or Lebrun. One gets the impression that what are given here are the exact measurements of a concrete example. Scheffer's drawings show him gradually mastering the rudiments of art. In earlier examples the hatching is sometimes too hasty (Fig. 4) or too rigidly parallel (Fig.5), while his knowledge of anatomy is still inadequate and his observation not careful enough. But right from the start he shows flair and as early as 1807 he made a clever drawing of a relatively complex group (Fig. 6) , while the difficult figure of Marsyas was already well captured in 1808 and clearly evinces his growing knowledge o f anatomy, proportion , foreshortening and the effects of light (Fig. 7). The same development can be observed in his portrait drawings. That of Gerardus Vrolik (1775-1859, Fig.8), a professor at the Atheneum Illustre (the future university) and Scheffer' s teacher, with whom he always kept in touch (Note 6), is still not entirely convincing, but a portrait of 1809, thought to be of his mother (Fig.9, Note 7), shows him working much more systematically. It is not known when he left the Academy, but from the summer of 1809 we find him in France, where he was to live with only a few breaks from 1811 to his death. The first paintings and the Amsterdam exhibitions of 1808 and 1810 Ary Scheffer's earliest known history painting, Hannibal Swearing to Avenge his Brother Hasdrubal's Death (Fig. 10) Notes 8-10) was shown at the first exhibition of living masters in Amsterdam in 1808. Although there was every reason for giving this subject a Neo-Classical treatment, the chiaroscuro, earthy colours and free brushwork show Scheffer opting for the old Dutch tradition rather than the modern French style. This was doubtless on the prompting of his parents,for a comment in a letter from his mother in 1810 (Note 12) indicates that she shared the reservations of the Dutch in general about French Neo-Classicism. (Note 11). As the work of a twelve to thirteen year old, the painting naturally leaves something to be desired: the composition is too crowded and unbalanced and the anatomy of the secondary figures rudimentary. In a watercolour Scheffer made of the same subject, probably in the 1820's, he introduced much more space between the figures (Fig. 11, Note 13). Two portraits are known from this early period. The first, of Johanna Maria Verbeek (Fig. 12, Note 14), was done when the two youngsters were aged twelve. It again shows all the characteristics of an early work, being schematic in its simplicity, with some rather awkward details and inadequate plasticity. On the other hand the hair and earrings are fluently rendered, the colours harmonious and the picture has an undeniable charm. At the second exhibition of works by living masters in 1810, Ary Scheffer showed a 'portrait of a painter' (Fig. 13), who was undoubtedly his uncle Arnoldus Lamme, who also had work in the exhibition as did Scheffer's recently deceased father Johan-Bernard and his mother Cornelia Scheffer-Lamme, an indication of the stimulating surroundings in which he grew up. The work attracted general attention (Note 16) and it does, indeed, show a remarkable amount of progress, the plasticity, effects of light, brushwork and colour all revealing skill and care in their execution. The simple, bourgeois character of the portrait not only fits in with the Dutch tradition which Scheffer had learned from both his parents in Amsterdam, but also has points in common with the recent developments in France, which he could have got to know during his spell in Lille from autumn 1809 onwards. A Dutchman in Paris Empire and Restoration, 1811-30 In Amsterdam Scheffer had also been laught by his mother, a miniature painter, and his father, a portrait and history painter (Note 17). After his father's death in June 1809, his mother, who not only had a great influence on his artistic career, but also gave his Calvinism and a great love of literature (Note 18), wanted him to finish his training in Paris. After getting the promise of a royal grant from Louis Napoleon for this (Note 19) and while waiting for it to materialize, she sent the boy to Lille to perfect his French as well as further his artistic training. In 1811 Scheffer settled in Paris without a royal grant or any hope of one. He may possibly have studied for a short time under Prudhon (Note 20) , but in the autumn of 1811 he was officially contracted as a pupil of Guérin, one of the leading artists of the school of David, under whom he mastered the formulas of NeD-Classicism, witness his Orpheus and Eurydice (Fïg.14), shown in the Salon of 1814. During his first ten years in Paris Scheffer also painted many genre pieces in order, so he said, to earn a living for himself and his mother. Guérin's prophecy that he would make a great career as a history painter (Note 21) soon came true, but not in the way Guérin thought it would, Scheffer participating in the revolution initiated by his friends and fellow-pupils, Géricault and Delacroix, which resulted in the rise of the Romantic Movement. It was not very difficult for him to break with Neo-Classicism, for with his Dutch background he felt no great affinity with it (Note 22). This development is ilustrated by his Gaston de Foix Dying on the Battlefield After his Victory at Ravenna, shown at the Salon of 1824, and The Women of Souli Throwing Themselves into the Abyss (Fig.15), shown at that of 1827-8. The last years of the Restoration and the July Monarchy. Influence of Rembrandt and the Dutch masters In 1829, when he seemed to have become completely assimilated in France and had won wide renown, Scheffer took the remarkable step of returning to the Netherlands to study the methods of Rembrandt and other Dutch old masters (Note 23) . A new orientation in his work is already apparent in the Women of Souli, which is more harmonious and considered in colour than the Gaston dc Foix (Note 24). This is linked on the one hand to developments in France, where numbers of young painters had abandoned extreme Romanticism to find the 'juste milieu', and on the other to Scheffer's Dutch background. Dutch critics were just as wary of French Romanticism as they had been of Neo-Classicism, urging their own painters to revive the traditions of the Golden Age and praising the French painters of the 'juste milieu'. It is notable how many critics commented on the influence of Rembrandt on Scheffer's works, e.g. his Faust, Marguérite, Tempête and portrait of Talleyrand at the Salon of 1851 (Note 26). The last two of these date from 1828 and show that the reorientation and the interest in Rembrandt predate and were the reasons for the return to the Netherlands in 1829. In 1834 Gustave Planche called Le Larmoyeur (Fig. 16) a pastiche of Rembrandt and A. Barbier made a comparable comment on Le Roi de Thule in 1839 (Note 27). However, as Paul Mantz already noted in 1850 (Note 28), Scheffer certainly did not fully adopt Rembrandt's relief and mystic light. His approach was rather an eclectic one and he also often imbued his work with a characteristically 19th-century melancholy. He himself wrote after another visit to the Netherlands in 1849 that he felt he had touched a chord which others had not attempted (Note 29) . Contacts with Dutch artists and writers Scheffer's links with the Netherlands come out equally or even more strongly in the many contacts he maintained there. As early as 1811-12 Sminck-Pitloo visited him on his way to Rome (Note 30), to be followed in the 1820's by J.C. Schotel (Note 31), while after 1830 as his fame increased, so the contacts also became more numerous. He was sought after by and corresponded with various art dealers (Note 33) and also a large number of Dutch painters, who visited him in Paris or came to study under him (Note 32) Numerous poems were published on paintings by him from 1838 onwards, while Jan Wap and Alexander Ver Huell wrote at length about their visits to him (Note 34) and a 'Scheffer Album' was compiled in 1859. Thus he clearly played a significant role in the artistic life of the Netherlands. International orientation As the son of a Dutch mother and a German father, Scheffer had an international orientation right from the start. Contemporary critics and later writers have pointed out the influences from English portrait painting and German religious painting detectable in his work (Note 35). Extracts from various unpublished letters quoted here reveal how acutely aware he was of what was likely to go down well not only in the Netherlands, but also in a country like England, where he enjoyed great fame (Notes 36-9) . July Monarchy and Second Empire. The last decades While most French artists of his generation seemed to have found their definitive style under the July Monarchy, Scheffer continued to search for new forms of expression. In the 1830's, at the same time as he painted his Rembrandtesque works, he also produced his famous Francesca da Rimini (Fig. 17), which is closer to the 'juste milieu' in its dark colours and linear accents. In the 1840's he used a simple and mainly bright palette without any picturesque effects, e.g. in his SS. Augustine and Monica and The Sorrows of the Earth (Note 41), but even this was not his last word. In an incident that must have occurred around 1857 he cried out on coming across some of his earlier works that he had made a mistake since then and wasted his time (Note 42) and in his Calvin of 1858 (Fig. 18) he resumed his former soft chiaroscuro and warm tones. It is characteristic of him that in that same year he painted a last version of The Sorrows of the Earth in the light palette of the 1840's. Despite the difficulty involved in the precise assessment of influences on a painter with such a complex background, it is clear that even in his later period, when his work scored its greatest successes in France, England and Germany, Scheffer always had a strong bond with the Netherlands and that he not only contributed to the artistic life there, but always retained a feeling for the traditions of his first fatherland. Appendix An appendix is devoted to a study of the head of an old man in Dordrecht, which is catalogued as a copy of a 17th-century painting in the style of Rembrandt done by Ary Scheffer at the age of twelve (Fig.19, Note 43). This cannot be correct, as it is much better than the other works by the twelve-year-old painter. Moreover, no mention is made of it in the catalogue of the retrospective exhibition held in Paris in 1859, where the Hannibal is given as his earliest work (Note 44). It was clearly unknown then, as it is not mentioned in any of the obituaries of 1858 and 1859 either. The earliest reference to it occurs in the list made bv Scheffer's daughter in 1897 of the works she was to bequeath to the Dordrecht museum. A clue to its identification may be a closely similar drawing by Cornelia Scheffer-Lamme (Fig. 20, Note 46), which is probably a copy after the head of the old man. She is known to have made copies after contemporary and 17th-century masters. The portrait might thus be attributable to Johan-Bernard Scheffer, for his wife often made copies of his works and he is known from sale catalogues to have painted various portraits of old men (Note 47, cf. Fig.21). Ary Scheffer also knew this. In 1839 his uncle Arnoldus Lamme wrote to him that he would look out for such a work at a sale (Note 48). It may be that he succeeded in finding one and that this portrait came into the possession of the Scheffer family in that way, but Johan-Bernard's work is too little known for us to be certain about this.

Bernard of Clairvaux, ordering the young Aelred to write a treatise on charity, recognized that he was no ordinary theologian. The work of De speculo caritatis confirmed this belief and demonstrated theological competencies of the Abbot of Rievaulx which placed him among the constructors of the Cistercian school of charity. His insightful analyses attest to his in-depth familiarity with the progress of God’s love penetrating the human heart. It certainly goes beyond the knowledge derived from the Augustinian theology, propagated in the monasteries at that time, traces of which are visible throughout his work. It is also the effect of his formative training with the novice monks during his years of being the Novice Master. Possibly, it is also influenced by his very own experience of God, reaching the levels of mystical closeness to God. All these components, void of the structure of the work subjected to the purpose outlined by St. Bernard, yielded quite a coherent doctrine on charity, from which logically follow mystical implications, i.e. the experience of God Himself. There is a summary and a few conclusions from these contemplations. 1. Alread does not explicitly talk about the human condition of viatoris much emphasized by contemporary theology, but he understands the man’s feeling of being lost without God and it is in Him that the Abbot sees completeness of human existence. Following the Augustinian conviction, he implies that nothing and nobody can give the man absolute happiness, except for God; this is why he will not cease seeking in his heart, his deepest actions of his spiritual powers, until he rests in God’s essence, truth and goodness. This is what the Abbot calls the eternal sabbath of God, which by itself is the internal life of the Holy Trinity, yet on the outside, it appears as the purpose of perfection for all creation. The man, naturally, has this divine sabbath etched deeply in his heart, since this is the disposition he received from his Creator, being made of His image (having spiritual faculties of God) and likeness (operations of these faculties drawing to God). 2. Love is the rule according to which the world exists and operates, and the man has an important role to play in it, due to his memory, conscience and freedom, whose operations liken him to God. Thanks to them, he can not only decipher the loving intentions of the Creator, but respond to them in a loving collaboration, which leads him to a happy union with God. This collaboration could not have been shattered even by the sin, redeemed through Christ’s blood, which became the beginning of a new loving proposition made by God and now available in the sacrament of faith and practice of caritas. Certainly, on the part of the man, this collaboration is now more difficult, since the sin weakened his spiritual powers, which in their forgetfulness, error and foolishness lean toward the objects of this world through physical desire. Human love, willing to return to its original form of collaboration with God, must now be ascetic in its character, expressed as mortifications, denials and sacrifices. Aelred calls it, „circumcision of the inner and the outer man”. 3. The circumcision stands for the internal work that the man must do to root the vices out of his heart and install virtues in their place. It is a slow process of spiritual comeback to God, which lasts throughout the entire life of a man and culminates in the eternal sabbath of God. At the same time, it is the time of receiving graceful love, continually supported and animated by God. It is a process of spiritual internalization, i.e. further and further departure from the exterior and physical objects so as to concentrate more and more on the internal and spiritual object of God’s presence in the deepest layers of the human heart, where the full union with God takes place. This union begins with the sacrament of faith received at baptism. Aelred only briefly mentions the mystery of God inhabiting (taking residence in) the human soul, which takes part with God’s grace poured out by the Holy Spirit, but he concentrates more on the idea of the sabbath, the rest, which makes possible participation in the life of God. 4. Aelred and the whole Cistercian school knew that the process of internalizing proceeds according to human nature; this is why he first mentions the basic grace of the humanity of Jesus Christ. The idea was to provide the man, through Jesus Christ, with physical and pious stimuli to make him fall in love with God’s charity and engage his feelings and senses so as to free him of his physical desires and direct his will toward the spiritual love. It is done through the practice of meditating the humanity, contemplating the Scriptures, especially the events from the life of Jesus Christ and his followers. Later on, special types of grace start to appear: compunction (compunctio), or the so called, God’s visits (spiritalis uisitationes), which depending on the stage of spiritual advancement in a man are designed to either awaken those who are asleep, i.e. numb, or console those who are saddened on their way, and lastly, to reward and sustain those who yearn for heavenly goods. Actually, Aelred distinguishes three moments within the long process of God’s intervention into the human soul, reflected in three stages of spiritual life: fear of the beginners, purification of the advanced and love of the accomplished. 5. This is where we can see most of the mystical repercussions of his teaching on charity. The initial visits make room for the next ones, and once their mission of inciting to greater love is complete they face the various trials and undertake, in the name of God, a number of mortifications, followed by practice of virtues. These, in turn, lead to even greater love. For example, the Abbot describes pouring of God’s grace into the human soul through basting in the glory and wisdom of God, so that the soul is lost in love and desires to become united with God in eternity. These are but special graces of God affecting human feelings; however they are not the unity with God, although they appear to be its powerful manifestations. It is only through engaging the will, which combines the functions of the other spiritual powers, that the unity with God’s will is accomplished, signs of that is the willingness of the soul to undertake mortifications and sacrifices for God. Then, it is not a surprise that „the yoke of Christ is sweet and the burden is light”. 6. The union of soul with God is truly about aligning the will (love) of the man with will (love) of God Himself, i.e. being directed by His Spirit and allowing to be transformed by His Divine caritas. It is possible, because caritas, like any human love, weaves into the human psychological structure, marking three distinct stages: choice (predilection), growth (action and desire) and fruits (attaining the object). Within the right choice Aelred distinguishes three types of love: of God, neighbor and oneself, although all of them lead to God, as their source. The Abbot pictured this in the idea of three sabbaths, complementing at the same time the concept of the eternal sabbath. The decisive moment of love is its movement, its growth: actions and desires, which make the man constantly prone and open to God, to unite with Him (rest in Him) finally in the eternal sabbath. 7. Alread makes a longer stop here to discuss the role of affections (affectus, passiones), which influence the actions of will. Besides reason, they are the cause of love’s movement. Their role is indispensable, because they lend inciting sweetness to a mystical encounter with God and stimulate to greater love. By themselves, however, they can be deceitful, when they are not subjected to the will. This is why he proposes to move not through the affections, but according to them, so that they are guided by the will. This is especially true in the case of love of neighbor. The general rule then is that neighbors would rejoice together in God and that each one would rejoice God in each other. Against this background, the Abbot promotes the spiritual affects received from God, rational ones encouraging developing virtues, official ones inducing to love a person, natural ones telling to love one’s friends and foes. He also permits physical affects, attracting with their outer appearance, as long as they do not lead to a vice. 8. The growing love finds its outlet in the fruits, which constitute the third and last component of the internal structure of love operating within the man. It is about rejoicing in the object attained, resting for spiritual powers on an object, which one desired in one’s love. Aelred considers temporary and eternal fruits. The latter refers to the ultimate union with God in heaven, after death, which is the rest in the eternal sabbath of God. We can taste it here on earth to ease human frailty, through contemplation and the sweetness of special graces of God. The former, on the other hand, appreciates the role of others (parents, teachers, instructors, friends) in acquiring the true wisdom of life; we use all of them to sweeten our lives and delight our spirit. Particularly helpful here is a friend, if there is one, who through spiritual friendship can share in our joys and sorrows, as well as the most intimate desires of the soul, so that they merge into unity in spirit. Two years ago, during the Cistercian Studies Conference at the 43rd International Medieval Studies Congress in Kalamazoo, Mi, a discussion was started as to the mystical competencies of Aelred of Rievaulx and his possible mystical predispositions. Our contemplations can cast some more light on this issue.

Abstract. Background: Reporting on suicide can elicit an increase in suicides, a phenomenon termed the “Werther effect.” The name can be traced back to an alleged spike in suicides after the publication of Goethe's novel The Sorrows of Young Werther in 1774, in which the protagonist Werther dies by suicide. Aims: Acknowledging the importance and primacy of systematic ecological and individual-level studies, we provide a historical single-case report of the suicide of a “late arrival of the Werther epidemic,” as the death was headlined in a news report in 1927. Method: Archival research on tenor Paul Vidal's suicide was conducted. Results: Vidal reconstructed the scene of the final act of the opera Werther in his apartment and died by a gunshot, as did Werther. Limitations: Causal interpretations must be made with caution. Conclusion: Striking similarities between Werther's and Vidal's deaths support the idea of strong identification with the fictional narrative and suggest causal effects. Considering the repeated high level of immersiveness and the intense emotions of opera performances, it is likely that performing the role of Werther increases identification processes, contributing to detrimental effects. The lack of knowledge regarding the role of fictional suicide stories on artists' suicides is discussed.