As the referent of the individual, the body functions as a site of contradiction, resistance and reaffirmation. It embodies a set of rules which delimit individual space by excluding what is not oneself. In Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, corporeality problematizes the relationships between the self and its signifiers. While it has been proposed that mind rests on matter, the body generates real opposition to the expression of genius. An entity based on the postulate of finitude, the body limits aspirations towards infinity. As in the episodes of Werther's drawings, the delimited space of the individual body resists the anarchic space of the sovereign genius. Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on "Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned"?Get the original essay Werther's sketch serves as a preliminary study for the alternate reality he envisions. The “dark eyes” (Goethe 14) that Werther attributes to the older boy are the same “dark eyes” (Goethe 25) that he bestows on Charlotte1. Eyes that can melt from one body to another presuppose a fluid character of reality2. Fluidity characterizes Werther's choice of subjects, bridging the gap between himself and the world. “I included the nearest fence, a barn door, and some broken wheels,” he notes, “just as they appeared” (Goethe 14). Rather than actively selecting his subject, Werther draws objects as they come into his field of vision. He paints outdoors to minimize the barriers between him and nature. The continuity that objects experience as they circulate from the outside world in Werther's sketch implies a confluence of external and personal space. At the same time, Werther perceives his body as an obstacle to the fusion of the individual and the outside into a single entity. Like the sand that prevents him from drinking in Charlotte's letter (Goethe 50), Werther's body reminds him of his individuality and his essential separation from the outside world. Decorporealization, breaking the damnedness of the body, thus proves necessary in the Wertherian construction of a fluid reality. By declaring that “nature alone forms the great artist” (Goethe 14), Werther removes his body from the creative process. Denying his own capacity to act, he emphasizes that it was only “by chance” (Goethe 13) that he found the two boys on the square and that it was only “without adding the slightest invention of.. . [its] own” (Goethe 13). 14) that he finishes the sketch. Reducing the artist to a channel of nature, Werther presupposes self-destruction as the necessary counterpart to the self-creation of genius. Wishing to dissolve and disseminate into the reality of the world, Werther's desire is profane, because it defies the omnipotence of God. God can only be everywhere at once because he does not have a body that locates his being. Corporeality makes everyone an individual, linking their existence to a finite locality. Perceiving the finitude imposed by his body, Werther reflects: "What is man, this famous demigod... is he not... held back and brought back to a dull and cold consciousness at the moment even where he longs to lose himself in fullness. of infinity? » (Goethe 124-125). Werther seeks to dissolve his body as a gesture towards infinity. His narcissism is so great that he aspires to the omnipotence of God4; For Werther, genius must be nothing less than a Creator without body and without limits5. As he states: “That the life of man is but a dream is a thought which has entered the minds of many people, and I myself am constantly haunted by it” (Goethe 11). Werther seeks to be the creator of his own “dream”. The finitude of the body poses a problem for genius. Specifically delimited, corporeality.