The Sorrows of Young Werther
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
translated by Michael Hulse
(Penguin, 1989)
A schoolmaster’s daughter who outlived the writer, dying two years after him in 1834, never forgot either Goethe or the other young gentleman, Jerusalem, and would show visitors to the village a wooden seat (the Wertherstuhl) which Goethe had sat on.
Page 5.
‘His affection for a woman who was already promised to someone else, his efforts to make masterpieces of foreign literature a part of our own, and his own, and his endeavours to capture Nature not only in words but also with a pencil and brush, albeit without any proper technique: any of these would have been sufficient to swell his heart and weigh upon his breast.’
Pages 7-8.
Goethe was in Wetzlar from 6 to 11 November, and took the opportunity to find out the details of Jerusalem’s death. Later that month he also received a meticulous written account which he had asked Kestner for, and on which he was to base the final pages of his novel in due course. Once in possession of the precise facts, Goethe (according to Dichtung und Wahrheit) beheld the structure of the novel in its entirety.
Page 10.
Between midnight and one, Jerusalem shot himself. A Franciscan monk head the shot and saw the flash of the powder, but, since everything remained quiet, he thought no more about it. Jerusalem appeared to have killed himself sitting at his desk, Kestner reported.
Page 10.
Jerusalem died around midday, and was buried the same night shortly before eleven. Kestner reported that barbers’ apprentices bore him to the grave, and that a cross was carried ahead of Jerusalem. He added the plain statement which Goethe subsequently chose to use as the final words of the novel: ‘No priest attended him.’
Page 11.
Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, published by Weygand in Leipzig later in 1774, was received in its time (and continues to be read) as partly autobiographical, partly biographical.
Page 11.
In the first part of the novel Werther was Goethe, and in the second Jerusalem.
Page 11.
Werther is the first great achievement of what a later age was to label ‘confessional’ literature.
Page 11.
The knowledge that real events lay behind Goethe’s fiction was taken as an excuse of maudlin indulgences.
Page 11.
Knowing that there was once a reality which had been fictionalized into a different realm of experience was not enough: ‘reality’ had to include the ‘poesy’, and was sanctified by it.
Page 12.
An essential part of the Werther legend has always insisted that there was a spate of ‘Liebestod all over Europe’, in the words of a recent poem by Michael Hofmann. But there seems little evidence that Goethe’s novel prompted a suicide epidemic.
Page 12.
Whether the myth of a suicide epidemic has any truth to it or not, many of Goethe’s contemporaries were ready to assume that the novel might exert a corrupting influence, and a heated debate raged over the question.
Page 13.
When the Leipzig theological faculty applied for a ban on the novel, on the grounds that it recommended suicide, the city council imposed the ban within two days.
Page 13.
Imitating Werther’s life and death was one thing, and imitating the book in which he appeared was another. The success of Werther was rapid and immense. The novel was soon translated into every major European language. There were poems about Werther. There were plays about Werther. … Werther songs were sung. Meissen porcelain showed Werther scenes. Ladies wore Werther jewellery and their scent was Eau de Werther. They carried Werther fans and wore Werther gloves.
Pages 13-14.
The fifteen years following first publication were the heyday of Werther fever.
Page 14.
Those were lean years for English literature. Fielding and Richardson, Sterne and Smollett, Goldsmith and Gray were all dead, and for a few years Goethe’s novel dominated the English scene.
Page 14.
In 1894 the first Japanese translation was made.
Page 16.
The proto-Romantic cult of the genius exempt from the customary rules and judgements of society was characteristic of German writing of the Sturm und Drang, and once it was coupled with that sentimental, melancholy sensitivity which was known as Empfindsamkeit it produced an intellectual and emotional mood in which everyone (as Goethe put it in Dichtung und Wahrheit) felt he could be the Prince of Denmark.
Page 17.
Beyond the struggles of one individual to assert his own larger sense of his place in Creation, beyond Werther’s frustration at feeling trapped by society’s trammelling rules, a very real and discontented sense of the gap between aristocratic high society and the common folk remains persistently and fretfully present in the novel.
Page 18.
Werther is a signal accomplishment, the first great tragic novel, a work of exhilarating style and insight.
Page 18.
Werther has often been translated into English, but it seems that since the first fever of the 1780s it has not been very much read, and Longfellow’s feeling that ‘it is not understood’ may still be true today.
Page 19.
To complain of Werther’s self-pity or lack of will is like complaining of Hamlet’s procrastination. The weaknesses in Werther’s character are certainly there. They are there for a reason. They are there as an essential part of the portrait of a man ill-equipped to cope with his life. They are there as the fatal flaws in a character likeable, generous, creative, spontaneous, responsive and full of vitality.
Page 19.
What a creature is Man, that he may bewail himself!
Page 25.
I mean to enjoy the present moment, and what is past will be over and done with.
Page 25.
The pains people endure would be less if only … they did not put so much imaginative energy into recalling the memory of past misfortune, rather than bear an indifferent present with equanimity.
Page 25.
If you ask how the people are here I have to answer: just as they are everywhere! The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it.
Page 29.
All our learned teachers and educators are agreed that children do not know why they want what they want; but no one is willing to believe that adults too, like children, wander about this earth in a daze and, like children, do not know where they come from or where they are going, act as rarely as they do according to genuine motives, and are as thoroughly governed as they are by biscuits and cake and the rod.
Page 31.
Only Nature has inexhaustible riches, and only Nature creates a great artist. A good deal can be said of the advantages of rules, much the same as can be said in praise of bourgeois society. A man shaped by the rules will never produce anything tasteless or bad, just as a citizen who observes laws and decorum will never be an unbearable neighbour or an out-and-out villain; and yet on the other hand, say what you please, the rules will destroy the true feeling of Nature and its true expression!
Page 32.
Whenever my mind is tottering all the tumult is soothed to quiet by the sight of a creature like this living in the small daily round of her existence in a state of happy tranquility, getting by from one day to the next, seeing the leaves fall and thinking nothing but that winter is coming.
Page 34.
Must we go tinkering about with Nature before we can enjoy it?
Page 35.
I have made an acquaintance who has touched my heart very closely! … I am unable to tell you how, and why, she is perfection itself; suffice to say that she has captivated me utterly.
Page 36.
My entire soul was transfixed by her figure, her tone, her manner.
Page 38.
Never in all my life have I danced so well. I was no longer a mere mortal. Holding the most adorable of creatures in my rms and flying about with her like lightning, so that I forgot everything about me.
Page 41.
The thunder was passing by and a wonderful rain was falling on the land, filling the warm air with the most refreshing fragrance.
Page 43.
The sun and moon and stars can go about their business as they please, but as for me, I do not know if it is day or night, and the whole world is as nothing to me.
Page 43.
My days are as happy as any God set aside for his saints.
Page 44.
Distance is like the future: before our souls lies an entire and dusky vastness which overwhelms our feelings as it overwhelms our eyes … And then, ah! Once we hasten onwards, and what lay ahead becomes the here and now, everything is just as it was, and there we are as poor and confined as ever our souls longing for the elusive balm.
Page 44.
It is good that my heart can feel the simple and innocent pleasure a man knows when the cabbage he eats at table is one he grew himself; the pleasure he takes not only in eating the cabbage but in remembering all those good days, the fine morning he planted it, the mellow evenings he watered it and the delight he felt in its daily growth.
Page 45.
Nothing on earth is closer to my heart than children. When I watch them and see in the smallest of creatures the seeds of all the virtues and strengths they will one day need so badly; when I see their obstinacy as future resolution and firmness of character and their caprice as good humour and that light touch which makes it easy to negotiate the troubles of life, and all of it so unspoilt, so intact!
Page 45.
There is nothing I find more irritating than when people torment each other, and it is worst of all when young people in their prime, who might be enjoying all the pleasures life offers, ruin the few sunny days they have by puling miserable faces, and never realize the error of their ways till it is too late to do anything about it.
Page 47.
No one knows the extent of his own power till he has tested them.
Page 48.
‘Woe betide those,’ I said, ‘who use the power they have over someone’s heart to rob it of the simple joys that are in its nature.’
Page 49.
My whole heart was full at that moment; the recollection of various events in the past pressed upon my soul, and tears came to my eyes.
Page 49.
‘Every day we should remind ourselves,’ I exclaimed, ‘that there is nothing we can do for our friends but to leave them their pleasures and to increase their happiness by enjoying it with the.’
Page 49.
We should treat children as God treats us; He makes us happiest when He leaves us our pleasant delusions.
Page 51.
I can feel that she loves me!
Page 53.
She loves me! - And I have grown in stature in my own eyes - I can tell you this, you who understand such things - I worship myself, ever since she loves me!
Page 53.
How the thrill of it shoots through me if my finger happens to touch hers or our feet meet beneath the table!
Page 53.
I never know what I am about when I am with her; it is as if my very soul were throbbing in every nerve.
Page 53.
The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honour or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.
Page 55.
I cannot bear it any more, I behave like a complete fool, and clown about, and talk gibberish.
Page 57.
What use is caution? We cannot anticipate every possible danger.
Page 60.
‘A man wholly under the influence of his passions has lost his ability to think rationally, and is regarded as intoxicated or insane.’
Page 61.
‘I have been intoxicated more than once, my passions have never been far off insanity and I have no regrets: because I have come to realize, in my own way, that people have always felt a need to decry the extraordinary men who accomplish great things, things that seemed impossible, as intoxicated and insane.’
Page 61.
‘You are certainly wrong to compare suicide, which is what we were talking about, with great accomplishments, since it cannot be considered as anything but a weakness. After all, it is easier to die than to endure a harrowing life with fortitude.’
Page 61.
‘The question, therefore, is not whether a man is weak or strong, but whether he can endure the full extent of his sufferings, be they of a moral or physical nature. And in my opinion it would be as misconceived to call a man cowardly for taking his own life as it would be to say a man who dies of a malignant fever was a coward.’
Page 62.
It is never easy for men to understand each other in this world.
Page 64.
The only thing that makes Man’s life on earth essential and necessary is love.
Page 64.
Mankind comes building its nests, crowding together safely in little houses, and supposes it rules over the whole wide world!
Page 65.
Can you say that anything is, when in fact it is all transient?
Page 66.
It is not the major but rare catastrophes of the world, the floods that wash away your villages, eh earthquakes that swallow up your cities, that move me; what wastes my heart away is the corrosive power that lies concealed in the natural universe - in Nature, which has brought forth nothing that does not destroy both its neighbour and itself. And so I go my fearful way betwixt heaven and earth and all their active forces; and all I can see is a monster, forever devouring, regurgitating, chewing and gorging.
Page 66.
Once we are lost unto ourselves, everything else is lost to us.
Page 67.
Life’s blossoms are but an illusion!
Page 68.
I often sit up in the fruit trees in Lotte’s orchard, using a pole to get at the pears on the topmost branches. She stands below and takes them as I pass them down.
Page 68.
She will be sleeping peacefully, without a suspicion that she will never see me again.
Page 69.
‘There will be a life for us after death, Werther! She went on, her voice full of the most exalted emotion; ‘but will we find each other again? and know each other?’
Page 70.
She tried to withdraw her hand, but I held it more tightly. - ‘We shall see each other again,’ I cried. ‘We shall find each other, we shall pick each other out from among the many. I am going,’ I continued, ‘going of my own free will, yet if I thought we were parting for ever I could not bear it. Farewell, Lotte! Farewell, Albert! We shall meet again.’
Page 72.
Since we are so constituted as to be forever comparing ourselves with others and our surroundings with ourselves, our happiness or misery depends on the things in our environment; and, this being so, nothing is more dangerous than solitude.
Page 73.
It gives us a genuine sense of ourselves, to keep pace with others or indeed outstrip them.
Page 74.
There is no truer, warmer pleasure in this world than to behold a great soul opening up towards oneself.
Page 74.
I know as well as anyone that differences of class are necessary, and that they work greatly to my own advantage: but I wish they would not place obstacles in my way when I might enjoy a little pleasure, some scrap of happiness in this world.
Page 76.
What fools they are not to see that the position one occupies is in reality immaterial, and that he who is in the topmost position so rarely plays the most important role!
Page 77.
I cannot quit my bed; during the daytime I look forward to the delights of moonlight, and then I stay in my room. I do not quite know why I rise or why I go to bed.
There is no sour dough in my life to set it working and rising; I have lost the delights that kept my spirits up in the depths of night, and the charms that awoke me in the mornings are gone.
Page 78.
I felt annihilated, and am still in a rage within. I wish someone would have the courage to mock me to my face, so that I might thrust my sword through his body; the sight of blood might afford me some relief. Ah, I have snatched up a knife a hundred times, meaning to relieve my sorely beset heart.
Page 83.
I made my pilgrimage to my hoe parts with all the reverence of a true pilgrim, and was moved by a number of unanticipated feelings. I had the carriage stop by the great linden tree a quarter of an hour’s walk form the town on the road to S., and got down, telling my postilion to drive on, so that on foot I might let my heart dwell on all the freshness and vividness of every recollection. So there I stood beneath the linden, which in my boyhood served as both the goal and the limit of my walks. How things have changed! In those days, blissfully ignorant, I longed to go out in the unknown world, where I hoped my heart would find the sustenance and pleasure to meet and satisfy the ambitions and desires that were in my breast. And now I was returning from that wide world - and oh! my friend, how many of my hopes had gone awry, how many of my plans had been destroyed!
Page 85.
What use it is if I, like any schoolboy, can now parrot that the earth is round? Man needs only a small patch of earth for his pleasures, and a smaller one still to ret beneath.
Page 86.
I am sorry to hear the prince often speaking of things he has merely heard tell of, or read about; when he does so, he adopts the points of vie3 of the one who presented the matter to him.
Page 86.
The things I know, anyone can know - but my heart is mine and mine alone.
Page 86.
Indeed, I am nothing but a wanderer and a pilgrim on this earth!
Page 87.
I laugh at his hear of mine - and do as it dictates.
Page 88.
It sends a tremble through my whole body, Wilhelm, when Albert takes her by her slender waist.
Page 88.
I am not the only unfortunate. All men are disappointed in their hopes and cheated out of their expectations.
Page 89.
When I go out by the gateway, taking the road I drove along that first time I picked up Lotte for the ball, how very different it all is! It is all over, all of it! There is not a hint of the world that once was, not one pulse-beat of those past emotions. I feel like a ghost returning to the burnt-out ruins of the castle he built in his prime as a prince, which he adorned with magnificent splendours and then, on his deathbed but full of hope, left to his beloved son.
Page 89.
Why should I not keep the things that trouble and grieve me to myself?
Page 90.
Ah, this void! This terrible void I feel in my breast! - I often think that if only I could hold her to my heart for once, just once, that void would be entirely filled.
Page 96.
I value religion, as you know, and feel that it affords support to the weary and solace to o the afflicted.
Page 99.
I am reluctant to speak on matters of which I know no more than anyone else.
Page 99.
It is everywhere the same in this world, toil and labour, joys and rewards; what of it?
Page 104.
My eye was caught by her wedding ring, and the tears flowed.
Page 105.
It is so difficult to discern the true and peculiar motives of even a single action of men who are not of a common order.
Page 106.
Living as he did in a state of constant distress, he found the condition of others increasingly cause for concern and bewilderment.
Page 107.
He felt cut off from all his prospects, incapable of taking a grip on the affairs of everyday life.
Page 111.
I have been unable to think straight, my eyes are full of tears. Nowhere do I feel at ease, and yet I am content everywhere. I wish for nothing, and make no demands. It would be getter if I were gone.
Pages 112-113.
Because one does not know what lies beyond? and because one cannot return? It is characteristic of our human spirit to suspect that all is confusion and darkness where we know nothing for certain.
Page 113.
It seems it has been my fate to sadden those I should have made happy.
Page 114.
Why did you have to be born with this intense spirit, this uncontrollable passion for everything you are close to!
Page 115.
I am resolved to die! - It is not despair; I am convinced I have endured my fill of sorrows, and that I am sacrificing myself for you.
Page 116.
My life flies away like a dream.
Page 121.
It is an incomparable feeling, and yet it is like a half-waking dream, to say to oneself: this is my last morning.
Page 126.
To die! - what does it mean? when we speak of death we are only dreaming. I have seen people die; but there are such constraints on human nature that we have no feeling for the beginning and ending of our existence.
Pages 126-127.
As I approach the grave I see things more clearly. There will be a life for us! and we shall see each other again!
Page 128.
Werther, as we have seen from his letters, had never made a secret of his longing to quit this world. Albert had frequently debated the question with him, and he and Lotte had also talked of it at times.
Page 129.
I feel you cannot hate the man who bears such passion for you.
Page 131.
What is there that does not remind me of you! You are all about me! and, like a child, I have insatiably seized upon every little thing that you might have touched.
Page132.
I wish to be buried in these clothes, Lotte; you touched them and they are sacred.
Page 133.
A neighbour saw the flash of the powder and heard the shot; but, since everything remained quiet, he thought no more about it.
Page 133.
He had shot himself above the right eye, blowing out his brains. To crown it all, a vein was opened in his arm; the blood flowed; he still continued to breathe.
Page 134.
It was twelve midday when he died. The presence of the officer, and the precautions he took, prevented any disturbance. About eleven that night he had him buried at the place he had chosen for himself. The old gentleman and his sons followed the corpse, but Albert was unable to. There were fears for Lotte’s life. Guildsmen bore the body. No priest attended him.
Page 134.
When Werther gives distances, he does so in terms of walking time.
Page 136.
Bool Two of the novel is based on the tragic end of Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem (1747 – 72), who took his own life on seeing the misery and impossibility of his love of Elisabeth Herd, a married woman.
Page 140.
The notion of a falling-off from a glorious Golden Age to a later and comparatively wretched Iron Age, by various stages, was familiar to all who read the classics. In Hesiod’s Works and Days, for example, five stages are distinguished, from the (first) Golden Age through the (third) Brazen Age to the (fifth and final) Iron Age.
Page 141.
The eighteenth century saw the first attempts at textual and historical criticism of the Bible. The English theologian Benjamin Kennicot (1718 – 83) was pre-eminent in Old Testament textual criticism in Werther’s day. Johann Salomo Semler (1725 – 91) was Professor of Theology at Halle and insisted on the distinction between the Word of God and what was written in the Bible by human hand. Johann David Michaelis (1717 – 91) laid the foundation, as Professor for Oriental Languages at Gӧttingen, for undogmatic historical analysis of the Bible.
Page 142.
After Jerusalem’s death it was uncertain whether he would find a resting place in the churchyard, since the Rev. Pilger, a churlish priest of the kind Laertes complained of, opposed the idea. The Count von Spauer, a friend of the deceased, supported the efforts of Heinrich Buff, and Jerusalem was buried in a remote corner of the graveyard; but the Rev. Pilger, according to Friedrich Christian Laukhard, then a student in Giessen, could not forbear from preaching repeated sermons on the evil of suicide.
Page 144.