📓 Deadly book in real history

There is a popular plot device in world literature: a book, after reading which, people either die, or lose their mind, or commit suicide. This isn’t an original plot device. It’s in fact so unoriginal that it was already the subject of parodies by the beginning of the XX century. An example of this is “The Blast of the Book”, a short story by G. K. Chesterton. It’s easy to guess the roots of this plotline: most writers are pretty chuffed by the idea that writing something is magical, that the written word can move mountains and lay whole kingdoms to dust. That and kill people, of course. Usually though these statements are used as a metaphor. For example “Mein Kampf” could be called a book that took many lives, but only metaphorically. Could something like this happen literally though?

At first glance, it’s a rather silly question. Of course not. Carpets can’t fly, houses are not made of gingerbread and books can’t kill people. History, however, does have a place for books with a rather somber reputation.
Perhaps the most famous deadly book is a novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe called “The Sorrows of Young Werther”. The plot is pretty straightforward: a sentimental young man falls in love with a young girl but she marries another. The young man is unable to bear the burden of his sorrows and he kills himself. You might say that’s all pretty dark, but nothing unusual. Well, that may be the case for a contemporary reader. However, it had the effect of an atomic bomb in European society of the time. All across Europe, young men were inspired by Werther’s act and proceeded to shoot themselves. The number was so huge that contemporaries compared the book to a deadly wind. There was a whole suicidal epidemic in Europe for decades. It affected German-speaking nations the most. Attitudes towards the book became rather mystical. When Napoleon was a general, he issued a separate order to ban the book within his army. Several countries banned its publication.

As it often happens, the book was largely autobiographical. When Goethe was a young man, he suffered from a strong unrequited love towards a young girl called Charlotte, like the heroine of his novel. His friend’s suicide had a major impact on him and he contemplated ending his own life. Things worked out in a much less tidy and romantic fashion though: like the main character of “The Ring”, he pushed many people towards death while escaping it himself.

Of course, the novel wasn’t filled with any NLP or psychocoding or black magic. It’s just that when the reader was in a similar situation to the protagonist, he strongly identified with him. And, for young people, this obviously wasn’t a rare occurrence. So the reader mistook Werther’s action for a logical or even appropriate one. Much later, in the XX century, suicidologists would call this copycat suicide phenomenon the “Werther effect”. So if you haven’t read this book and want to – don’t worry. It won’t make you contemplate suicide, same as “What is to be done?” won’t turn you into a revolutionary. It’s just that each time period has its own overarching ideas and literary devices that don’t necessarily work as well on future generations.

Russia actually saw a similar “suicide epidemic” after the publication of “Poor Lisa”, a novel by Nikolay Karamazin. In the novel, a young peasant girl has a brief affair with an aristocrat, only to later discover that he left her to marry a wealthy widow. Heartbroken, she drowns herself in the lake they often walked past. This novel is currently on the school curriculum, yet it cause a true epidemic among young women and girls reading it in 1792.