L’ESTETICA DEL PRIMO HERDER E IL WERTHER DI GOETHE, O DEL MONDO RITROVATO NELLA POESIA

This article examines Herder’s Aesthetics during the so-called Sturm und Drang period and its influence on Goethe’s novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. Herder’s theory is based on the idea that an existential as well as aesthetic experience occurs through the sense of touch and that language, as a product of abstraction, cannot grasp life. The first part of the article focuses on this topic as an early but central step in modern hermeneutical reflections on the relationship between language and reality. The second part looks at Goethe’s novel and shows how Herder’s views on language and experience contribute to shaping and refreshing the literary language of his time. By revealing the inadequacy of words in conveying experience, Goethe paradoxically strengthens the status and the perception of reality in the reader, as well as the notion of literature as a field of reliable cognitive experience.