A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter W

Werther

Literary Character
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

The protagonist of Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, whose intense emotional sensitivity and suicide over unrequited love became a Romantic archetype.

Detailed Definition
Werther, protagonist of Goethe’s novel, embodies Sturm und Drang emotionality and the cult of feeling. In poetry, he represents romantic despair, the intensity of unfulfilled passion, and the tragic consequences of idealized love.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Goethe’s "The Sorrows of Young Werther" (adapted into lyrical poetry), Werther embodies romantic despair and unrequited love; In Lord Byron’s works, Werther symbolizes the Byronic hero’s emotional excess; In W.H. Auden’s “New Year Letter,” Werther represents dangerous idealism; In Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy,” Werther-like despair echoes in suicidal ideation; In modern poetry, Werther often signifies the cost of emotional absolutism; In Tracy K. Smith’s “Watershed,” Werther’s letters inform narratives of longing.
Additional Notes
Werther, the protagonist of Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, embodies romantic despair, unrequited love, and the cult of sensibility; his suicide sparked a wave of imitative “Werther fever” in the 18th century, making him an archetype of the passionate, self-destructive artist; poets reference Werther to explore the dangers of idealization, the aesthetics of melancholy, or the social consequences of emotional excess—his epistolary form also influences confessional and lyric poetry.
Also Known As
Sorrows of Young Werther Passionate Suitor Goethe’s Lover
Skip to main content