The Sorrows of Young Werther and Selected Writings

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  I realize that it means a great deal to you that I do not neglect my sketching, so I would rather say nothing at all about it except confess that I have not done much work since I met Lotte.

  I have never been happier. My appreciation of nature, down to the most insignificant stone or blade of grass, has never been more keen or profound, and yet…I don’t know how to explain it to you. My powers of expression are weak and everything is so hazy in my mind that all contours seem to elude me. I tell myself that if I had clay or wax, I could shape them. And if this mood prevails, I shall certainly get hold of some clay and model it, even if all I turn out is a patty cake!

  I have started three times to draw Lotte and three times made a complete mess of it. This irritates me, because only a short while ago I was quite a good portraitist. So I did a silhouette of her, and that will have to suffice.

  July 26th

  Yes, dear Lotte, I shall attend to everything, only please give me more errands to do and give them to me more often. And one more request: no more sand, please, on the little notes you write to me. Today I pressed your letter to my lips and felt the grains on my teeth.

  July 26th

  Every now and then I make up my mind to see her less often—as if anyone could possibly adhere to such a rule! Every day I give in to temptation and swear that tomorrow I will stay away, but when tomorrow comes, I of course find an absolutely irresistible reason for going to see her, and before I know it—there I am! Perhaps it is because she said the evening before, “Will you be coming tomorrow?” So who could stay away? Or she asked me to attend to something, and I tell myself that the only proper thing to do is go personally to inform her that it has been done. Or the day is so beautiful that I go to Wahlheim and, once I am there…well, after all, she is only half an hour away. I am too close to her aura…whoosh! and I am there.

  My grandmother used to tell a fairy tale about the Magnet Mountain: The ships that came too close to it were robbed suddenly of all their metal; even the nails flew to the mountain, and the miserable sailors foundered in a crash of falling timber.

  Albert has come back, and I shall leave. He might be the best, the most noble man in the world, and I would be glad to subordinate myself to him in any capacity whatsoever, but I would find it insufferable to see him take possession of so much perfection. To take possession…let it suffice, William…her betrothed has returned—a worthy, kindly man whom one simply has to like. Fortunately, I was not present when he arrived; it would have torn my heart to shreds. And he is an honorable man. Not once has he kissed Lotte in my presence. May God reward him for it! And I have to love him for the way he respects the girl. He seems to like me and I have the feeling that I have Lotte to thank for this rather than any impression of his own, because in things like that women have great intuition and they are right—it is always to their advantage to keep two admirers in harmony with each other, however rarely it may occur.

  Meanwhile, I cannot help respecting Albert. His easygoing behavior contrasts strangely with my restlessness, which cannot be concealed. He is a man of strong feelings and knows what a treasure he has in Lotte. He seems to be a man of good spirits too, and you know that, as far as I am concerned, moroseness is a man’s greatest vice. He apparently takes me for a sensible fellow, and my devotion to Lotte, my warm pleasure in everything in which she takes part, only increases his sense of triumph and makes him love her more! I have no idea whether or not he sometimes plagues her with little outbursts of jealousy—we will have to leave that point undecided—but if I were in his shoes, I don’t think I would be entirely free of this base emotion.

  Be that as it may, the joyous days with Lotte are over. What shall I call it? Folly? Delusion? It does not need a name. The dilemma speaks for itself. I knew all I know now before he came; I knew that I had no claim to her and demanded none, or let us say, I did not desire her more than one simply has to desire anyone so altogether lovely. And now, idiot that I am, I stare wide-eyed with astonishment at my rival, who has come at last to take the girl away!

  I grit my teeth and scoff at my misery and would scoff even more if anyone dared tell me to resign myself to the situation because there is nothing to be done about it. Just keep such straw men away from me! I tear through the woods and when I have gone as far as I can and find Lotte sitting beside Albert in the summerhouse in her little garden, I behave like an idiot and indulge in all sorts of absurdities. I don’t even make sense! “For heaven’s sake,” she told me today, “please, I beg of you, no more scenes like the one in the garden last night. You are perfectly horrible when you are trying to be funny.” Just between you and me, I watch out for the times when he is busy and then…whoosh, there I am and when I find her alone I feel perfectly wonderful!

  August 8th

  I assure you, dear William, that I did not mean you when I took those men to task who demand from us resignation to an unavoidable fate. It never occurred to me that you might be of the same opinion. And actually you are right. But, my good friend, in this world things can be settled with an either-or attitude only very rarely. Feelings and behavior overshadow each other with an effect as varied as the difference between hawk- and pug-nose. So you won’t be offended with me, I hope, if I concede your entire argument and try to squeeze through between the either and the or!

  You say that I must “either” have hope of winning Lotte “or” I must have none. Very well. In the first case I am to try to grasp the fulfillment of my wish and make my hopes come true; in the second I am to pull myself together and try to rid myself of this miserable emotion that must in the end utterly debilitate me. Dear William, you put it so well, and it is easily advised. But can you demand of an unfortunate human who is dying by inches of an insidious disease that he should end his misery with one knife thrust? Wouldn’t you rather say that his misfortune weakens him to such an extent that it must rob him also of the courage to rid himself of it?

  Of course you might reply with an appropriate parable: who would not rather sacrifice his right arm than lose his life through hesitation and despair? I don’t know. And don’t let us settle it with parables. Enough! Yes, William, sometimes I do have moments of surging courage to shake it all off, and then…if only I knew whither…probably I would go.

  Evening

  Today I came across my diary. I haven’t written in it for some time, and I was astonished to see how I got into all this, step by step, with my eyes wide open; how clearly I saw the whole thing and my condition, yet dealt with it like a child. I see just as clearly today and note no sign of improvement.

  August 10th

  I could be leading the best of happiest lives if I were not such a fool. It would be hard to find more agreeable circumstances than those granted me now. But I am absolutely sure that our hearts alone can give us happiness. To be counted as a member of this charming family, to be loved like a son by her father and like a father by the children, and by Lotte! And then there is good, worthy Albert, who does nothing to disturb my joy with moody behavior and accepts me in a spirit of friendliness—even prefers me to anyone else, after Lotte! William, it is a pleasure to listen to us when we are out walking together and we talk about Lotte. I don’t think you will find anything in the whole wide world more ridiculous than our relationship, and still my eyes fill with tears when I think of it.

  He talks to me about her good mother—how, on her deathbed, she handed over house and children to Lotte, who since then has been quite changed; how, through having to care for a household and face the more serious aspects of life, she has become a real mother, and not a moment of her time passes without work or an act of love; how, in spite of all this, her blitheness and vitality have never forsaken her. I wander along at his side, pick flowers, arrange them carefully into a bouquet and…throw them into the stream rushing by and look after them as they are slowly sucked down. I don’t know whether I wrote to you that Albert intends to remain here, and that the Prince will let him have a tidy little income because he is
well liked at court. I have rarely seen his equal when it comes to orderliness and diligence in matters of business.

  August 12th

  Albert is the best man on earth…agreed! Yesterday I had a strange experience with him. I went to see him, to bid him farewell, for it had occurred to me that a ride up into the mountains (I am writing to you from there now) was just what I wanted to do. As I was pacing up and down his room, I happened to see his pistols. “Lend me your pistols for the trip,” I said.

  “By all means,” he replied, “if you want to take the trouble to load them. I only have them hanging around here pro forma.” As I took one down, he went on: “Since my sense of caution played me such a nasty trick, I don’t want to have anything more to do with them.”

  I was anxious to hear the story. “I was in the country, staying with a friend for about three months,” he said. “I had a brace of pistols with me, unloaded, and slept peacefully. On a rainy afternoon I was sitting there with nothing much to do and, I don’t know why, but it occurred to me that we could be attacked; we might need the pistols and could—you know how it is. I gave them to a servant to clean and load. He fooled around with the girls, wanted to frighten them…. God knows how it happened, but the gun went off with the ramrod still in the barrel and shot the ramrod into the thumb of one of the girls, smashing it. And I had to listen to all the lamentations and pay the surgeon’s bill. Since then I leave the pistols unloaded. My dear fellow, what is precaution? We can never learn all there is to know about danger. To be sure…”

  Now, you know that I love this man very much, except for his “to be sure,” for isn’t it obvious that every generalization admits of exceptions? But this fellow is full of such self-justification. When he thinks he has said something too hastily, or spoken a half-truth, or generalized too much, then you can’t stop him from attaching limitations to what he has said, from modifying it, adding to it and subtracting from it, until at last nothing is left of the original idea!

  In the end, Albert became so involved in what he was saying that I stopped listening and was soon lost in my own thoughts. Suddenly, with a rough, abrupt gesture, I pressed the mouth of the pistol against my forehead, just above the right eye.

  “Shame on you!” Albert said, as he forced my hand down. “What on earth is the meaning of this?”

  “It isn’t loaded,” I said.

  “Even so…what was going on in your mind?” He sounded impatient. “I simply cannot imagine how a man could be so foolish as to shoot himself. The very idea disgusts me.”

  “Oh you people,” I cried, “who, when you talk about anything, must immediately declare: that is foolish, that is clever, that is good, that is bad! And what does it all amount to? Do you think you can uncover the vital circumstances of an action with your questions? Are you sure you know how to get at the heart of the matter: why did it happen? Why did it have to happen? If you were, you wouldn’t be so hasty with your decisions.”

  “You will grant me, I am sure,” Albert said, “that certain actions are vicious whatever the reason may be.”

  I shrugged and had to agree with him. “And yet, my dear fellow,” I went on, “here too you will find your exceptions. To steal is a sin, true, but the poor man who steals to save himself and his dear ones from starvation, what does he deserve? Pity or punishment? Who will cast the first stone against the married man who, in his first fury, murders his faithless wife and her vile seducer? And what about the young girl who in a blissful hour loses herself in the irresistible delights of love? Even our laws, cold-blooded and pedantic as they are, can be moved to withhold punishment.”

  “That is something quite different,” said Albert. “A man who lets himself be overwhelmed by passion can be considered out of his mind, and is treated like a drunkard or a madman.”

  “Oh you sensible people!” I cried, but I was smiling. “Passion. Inebriation. Madness. You respectable ones stand there so calmly, without any sense of participation. Upbraid the drunkard, abhor the madman, pass them by like the priest and thank God like the Pharisees that He did not make you as one of these! I have been drunk more than once, and my passion often borders on madness, and I regret neither. Because, in my own way, I have learned to understand that all exceptional people who created something great, something that seemed impossible, have to be decried as drunkards or madmen. And I find it intolerable, even in our daily life, to hear it said of almost everyone who manages to do something that is free, noble and unexpected: He is a drunkard, he is a fool. They should be ashamed of themselves, all these sober people! And the wise ones!”

  “Now you are being fanciful again,” Albert said. “You always exaggerate, and you are certainly wrong when you classify suicide—and suicide is what we are talking about—as any sort of great achievement, since it can be defined only as a sign of weakness. For it is certainly easier to die than to stand up to a life of torment.”

  I was about to break off the conversation, for nothing can so completely disconcert me as when a man presents me, who am talking from the heart, with an insignificant platitude. But I controlled myself because I had heard the same thing so often and let it vex me. Instead I said, with quite some vehemence, “You call it weakness? I beg of you, don’t let yourself be misled by appearances. Would you call a nation groaning under the unbearable yoke of a tyrant weak if it revolts and breaks its chains? Or the man who, in his horror because his house is afire, musters sufficient strength to carry off burdens with ease which he could scarcely have budged when he was calm? Or the man who, enraged by insults, takes on six men and overpowers them? Would you call these men weak? And if exertion is strength, why should exaggeration be the opposite?”

  Albert looked at me and said, “Don’t be offended, but the examples you give don’t seem to fit at all.”

  “That may be,” I said. “I have often been told that my way of combining things borders on the absurd. Let us try and see if we can imagine in some other way how a person feels who shoots himself, thereby throwing off the burden of a life that is generally considered to be pleasant. Because we have the right to talk about a thing only when we can feel for it.

  “Human nature,” I continued, “has its limitations. It can bear joy and suffering, and pain to a certain degree, but perishes when this point is passed. Here there can therefore be no question of whether a man is strong or weak, but of whether he can endure his suffering, be it moral or physical. And I find it just as astonishing to say that a man who takes his own life is a coward, as it would be improper to call a man a coward who dies of a pernicious fever.”

  “Paradox! Paradox!” cried Albert.

  “Not to the extent you would have it,” I replied. “You must admit that we call it a fatal illness when Nature is attacked in a fashion that destroys a part of her powers and incapacitates the rest to such an extent that she cannot rise again and is incapable of restoring a normal flow of life. Well, my dear fellow, let us apply this precept to the spirit of man. Look at man, with all his limitations—how impressions affect him, how ideas take hold of him until finally a passion grows within him to such an extent that it robs him of his peace of mind and ruins him. The calm, sensible man overlooks the poor fellow’s plight to no avail and encourages him with as little success, just as the healthy man, standing beside a sickbed, cannot imbue the invalid with any of his strength.”

  Albert found too much generalization in all this. I reminded him of a girl who had been found in the river, drowned, not long ago, and told him her story. She was a sweet young thing who had grown up in a world narrowed down by household duties and the regimentation of her daily chores. She knew no better pleasure nor could hope for anything more than a Sunday walk with girls like herself, in finery accumulated gradually, bit by bit. Perhaps she went dancing on our feast days or passed a few hours chatting with a neighbor, with all the liveliness of hearty participation in the cause of a quarrel or some other bit of gossip. And then her passionate nature begins to feel more intimate needs and
they are increased by the flattery of the men she meets. Slowly the little things that used to please her grow stale, until she at last meets a man to whom she is irresistibly attracted by a feeling hitherto unknown. Now she puts all her hopes in him, forgets the world around her, hears nothing, sees nothing, feels naught but him, longs only for him—he is her all. Unspoiled by the empty pleasures of fickle vanity, her desire has but one goal—to be his. In an eternal union with him she hopes to find all the happiness she lacks and enjoy all the pleasures she longs for. Promises, repeated over and over again, seem to assure the fulfillment of her hopes; bold embraces increase her desire and make her soul captive. With her consciousness dulled, she wavers in the anticipation of happiness and reaches the highest possible degree of tension. At last she stretches out her arms to grasp all she desires—and her lover leaves her. Petrified, out of her mind, she stands in front of an abyss. All is darkness around her; she has no comfort, nothing to hope for, because he, in whom she had her being, has left her. She doesn’t see the wide world in front of her nor the many people who might make up for what she has lost. She feels alone, abandoned; and blindly, cornered by the horrible need in her heart, she jumps and drowns her torment in the embrace of death. And you see, Albert, that is the story of quite a few people, and tell me—would you not call it a sickness? Nature finds no way out of a labyrinth of confused and contradictory powers and has to die.

  “What a wretch, the man who sees it happen and can say, ‘Foolish girl! If only she had waited, if only she had let time take effect, her despair would have left her; another would have come forward to comfort her.’ That is as if someone were to say, ‘The fool! He died of a fever. Why didn’t he wait until he regained his strength, until his physical condition improved and the tumult in his blood died down? Then everything would have turned out well and he would be alive today!’”

  Albert, who still couldn’t see the point, had a few things to say—among others, that I had spoken about a simple girl. But he could not understand how any sensible person, not so limited, with a broader outlook on life, could be excused for similar behavior.