In September 1808, Napoleon Bonaparte, the world-conquering Alexander of his time, summoned Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the most celebrated literary figure in Europe, to an interview at the Congress of Erfurt, not far from the writer’s home in Weimar. The emperor was eating breakfast and conducting business when Goethe was admitted—there was no mistaking just who was condescending to whom here—and proceeded to dilate on a supposed defect in the plot of The Sorrows of Young Werther, Goethe’s 1774 novel about unrequited love that had won international renown.

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