On this day in 1832 the German poet, novelist and playwright Johann Wolfgang von Goethe died aged 82 after famously calling out "More light!" He has been called the last of the great universal geniuses, so wide-ranging were his activities (he claimed to be most proud of his Treatise on Colour). Although chiefly remembered for his magnificent drama Faust, completed shortly before his death, Goethe also created the prototype of the Romantic hero in his semi-autobiographical novel The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774). Werther is a sensitive, melancholy, artistic young man unable to reconcile his ideals with the demands of the everyday world, and hopelessly in love with an unattainable woman (he eventually commits suicide). The novel's glorification of the emotions struck a powerful blow against the rationalism of the Enlightenment and caused a sensation throughout Europe, making Goethe famous.
According to Thomas Carlyle, who called Goethe "the Wisest of our Time" and persuaded a whole generation of Victorians to read him, Werther gave expression to "the nameless unrest and longing discontent which was then agitating every bosom". Goethe once described all of his works as fragments of a great confession in a tradition stretching back to St Augustine.