The Sorrows of Young Werther and Selected Writings Read online

  That’s as much as I remember of it, for I never came across it again, but I cut out the vignette and put it away with my favorite engravings. Then, in a secret, harmless mood of revenge, I wrote a little satirical poem, “Nicolai at Werther’s Grave,” that I couldn’t very well publish. The urge to dramatize everything was alive in me this time, too. I composed a dialogue in prose between Lotte and Werther that turned out to be quite funny. Werther complained bitterly that his salvation through chicken blood had ended so badly. He had remained alive, true, but he had shot out his eyes and was in despair because he was Lotte’s husband but could not see her, for the sight of her as a whole meant more to him than the sweet details he could now assure himself of only by feeling. Lotte, as can be imagined, wasn’t too happy either, with her blind husband, all of which offered an opportunity to give Nicolai a dressing-down for meddling, without being asked to, in affairs that were none of his business. The whole thing was written drolly and was in a way an early reaction to Nicolai’s unfortunate and benighted urge to concern himself with things to which he wasn’t equal, with the result that he soon made a lot of difficulties for himself and others and in the end completely lost his literary reputation. The original draft of this little joke was never printed and has been lost for years. The piece was a special favorite of mine. The pure and passionate feelings of the two characters were intensified rather than weakened by the comic-tragic situation in which they found themselves. The whole thing was handled tenderly; I even treated the antagonist humorously, not bitterly. But I wasn’t so considerate when, paraphrasing an old rhyme, I wrote:

  Presumptuous man! We’ll let him

  As dangerous me defame—

  A clumsy fellow who can’t swim

  The water likes to blame.

  What care I for the Berlin ban?

  A bigoted lot, indeed!

  Let him who cannot understand

  First of all learn to read!

  Prepared as I was for any objections that might be raised against Werther, such controversy didn’t bother me in the slightest, but I had not taken into consideration that sympathizing, well-wishing souls were going to become such an unbearable nuisance. Instead of saying something nice about the book just as it was, all of them wanted to know how much of it was true! This made me very angry, and my reply was invariably extremely rude. For, in order to answer this question, I would have had to tear apart and destroy the form of this little book over which I had brooded for such a long time to give it some elements of poetic unity; and the actual parts—even if they were not ruined—would have been scattered and dissipated. On second thought, I couldn’t really blame these people. Jerusalem’s fate had created a sensation. A cultured, likable, blameless young man, the son of a leading theologian and writer, healthy and well-to-do, suddenly decides to leave this world without any apparent reason. Everyone was asking how it could possibly have happened. When there was talk of an unhappy love affair, the young people became excited; when there was talk of the minor vexations he had encountered in high society, the middle class was in an uproar, and everyone wanted to know the facts. Now, in Werther, they had a comprehensive description in which they thought they could find the life and character of the young man. Locale and personalities were right, and the naturalness of the representation made them feel that now they knew all, and satisfied them. On the other hand, anyone who cared to take a closer look could find that many things did not fit; and those who were seeking the truth found it an unprofitable business, because the critics who like to sift things had to come up with quite a few doubtful factors. It turned out to be impossible to get to the bottom of the matter, because it was impossible to clarify what I had contributed to the composition from my own life and sufferings, since, as an unnoticed young man, I had lived my life, if not secretly, then certainly inconspicuously.

  It had become evident to me, as I worked, how advantageous it had been for the artist who was given the opportunity to compose a Venus out of many beauties.8 Similarly, I took the liberty of composing Lotte according to the shape and characteristics of several pretty young girls, although I took her main features from the one I loved best. My investigative readers could therefore discover in her a similarity to several women, and it was not a matter of indifference to the ladies to believe that they were the one. This profusion of Lottes was a terrible nuisance because everyone who even looked at me wanted to know where the real one was. I tried to extricate myself like Nathan with the three rings,9 and took a way out that might have been very well suited for loftier purposes but satisfied neither my credulous nor my reading public. I hoped I would soon be rid of these embarrassing inquiries, but unfortunately they pursued me throughout my entire life. I tried to protect myself from them by traveling incognito, but was thwarted in this respect as well. So, if I did something wrong or harmful in writing Werther, I was certainly punished for it sufficiently—I would say more than sufficiently—by all these inescapable importunities.

  Oppressed in this fashion, I became only too aware of the fact that the author and his public are separated by an immense abyss, both of them fortunately having no idea of its dimensions. And I had recognized long ago how useless all forewords were, for the more one tries to explain one’s intentions, the more confusion one causes. The author may write as many prefaces as he likes; the reader will always go right on demanding that which the author is trying to avoid. I also came in contact early with a related and humorous attribute of the reader who likes to see his opinions in print. He lives in the delusion that, because the author has accomplished something, he has become the critic’s debtor, and of course the author always falls short of the mark, even if the man—before he saw the work—hadn’t the slightest idea that any such thing existed or was even possible.

  But putting all this aside, the greatest good fortune—or disaster—was the fact that everyone wanted to know more about the strange young author who had suddenly put in such a bold appearance. They demanded to see me and talk to me; those far away wanted to hear something about me. I therefore experienced a high degree of popularity that was sometimes pleasant, sometimes disagreeable, and always distracting. For plenty of unfinished work lay before me—in fact I had things planned that would take years to complete, even if I applied myself to them ardently. But I had been dragged out of my stillness, out of the twilight and darkness that alone favor the purity of creation, into the noise of daytime, where one loses oneself in others and becomes confused by sympathy as well as by coldness, by praise as well as by reproof, for these external encounters never coincide with the present stage of one’s inner life. Therefore, since they cannot benefit us, they must do us harm.

  Excerpts dealing with the conception and writing of Werther, from Goethe’s memoirs, Aus Meinem Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit (My Life: Poetry and Truth), Books XII and XIII, published in 1814.

  GOETHE IN SESENHEIM

  Very few biographies succeed in portraying the straightforward, serene, and regular progress of an individual. Our life is like the Allness in which we are contained, and it is put together in an unfathomable fashion out of freedom and necessity. Our intention is a foretelling of what we are going to do under any circumstances, but these “circumstances” affect us in their own way. The “what” of things lies in us, the “how” rarely depends on us, and we are not allowed to ask “why.” We are therefore justly advised to say “because.”

  —GOETHE,

  Dichtung und Wahrheit, Book XI

  How far behind I was in all things concerning modern literature is demonstrated quite clearly by the kind of life I led in Frankfurt and what I chose to study there, and my sojourn in Strassburg did very little for me in this respect. Then Herder came, bringing with him—apart from his profound knowledge—so many other resources, and the latest writings. Among these, he assured us that The Vicar of Wakefield was an excellent work and he intended to introduce it to us by reading the German translation aloud to us himself.

  His way of
reading aloud was unique. Whoever has heard him preach will have some idea of it. He propounded everything, including this piece of fiction, earnestly and simply. Far from seeking any dramatic effects, he even avoided the diversity of expression that is not only permissible but actually prerequisite for epic delivery—a slight change of expression when more than one character is speaking so that what each man says stands out and the actor is separated from whoever is telling the story. Without being monotonous, Herder read aloud in one tone, as if nothing were happening in the present but everything were historical, as if the shades of these poetic creatures were not behaving in a lively fashion but were only passing gently by. Even so, coming from him, this way of reading had infinite charm because he felt deeply everything that was happening and knew how to appreciate the diversity of such fiction. The result was that its merits stood out all the more clearly and purely, since one was not disturbed or jolted out of one’s impressions by any sharply expressed detail, all of which served to make a lasting impression.

  A Protestant country clergyman is perhaps the most beautiful subject for a modern idyll; he appears like Melchizedek, as priest and king in one, and he can be associated with the most innocent of all conditions—that of a tiller of the soil—because his occupation is very often similar, and his family relationships may well be the same. He is father, master of his house, a man of the earth, and thus completely a member of the community. His lofty profession rests on this clear and beautiful terrestrial foundation. It has been entrusted to him to lead his flock through this life, to attend to their spiritual education, to bless them at all the major milestones of their existence, to give them strength and console them, and, when the comfort he can give is inadequate for their present misery, it is he who invokes and guarantees the hope for a happier future. If one can conjure up such a man, with pure human convictions and strong-minded enough not to deviate from them under any circumstances—which already elevates him above the multitude from whom purity and resoluteness cannot be expected—if one gives this man the knowledge that goes with his office, and a blithe, even-tempered way of officiating that may even be called passionate, since he never misses an opportunity to do good, then one can say that he has been well equipped. At the same time, one should endow him with the modesty necessary to endure life, not only in his own small circle—he should be capable of passing over into even narrower confines. He should be given good humor, a forgiving heart, steadfastness, and every other laudable attribute that stands out in any resolute character and, above all, a gay tractability and smiling tolerance of his own mistakes and those of others, and we have more or less assembled our admirable Wakefield.

  The description of this character as he experiences joy and suffering, and the growing interest of the story itself through a combination of the completely natural with the extraordinary, make this novel one of the best ever written. In addition, it has the great advantage of being utterly moral and, in the purest sense, Christian. It demonstrates the rewarding of good and the perseverance of justice; it reaffirms an unquestioning faith in God and confirms the final triumph of good over evil—and all this without a trace of bigotry or pedantry. The author was preserved from both pitfalls by a fine intuition that makes itself felt throughout as irony, enabling this little work of art to make an impression that is not only pleasant but wise. The author, Dr. Goldsmith, unquestionably has great insight into the world of morality, its values and frailties; at the same time, he should acknowledge gratefully the fact that he is an Englishman and should rate highly the advantages his country has to offer. The family he describes lives on the very lowest level of social comfort yet comes in contact with the highest; their narrow circle, which in the course of the story becomes even more constricted, intervenes in the events of a larger world via quite natural and bourgeois course of events; their little bark moves on the rich, agitated waves of English life and can expect harm or aid in good or ill fortune from the immense fleet sailing all around it.

  I am taking for granted that my reader knows this work and remembers it, but whoever hears about it here for the first time as well as he who may be stimulated to read it again—both will thank me for it. For them I would like to say, just in passing, that the vicar’s wife is a good, active soul who doesn’t let herself or her dear ones lack anything and consequently thinks quite well of herself and them. And I do not want to leave out two daughters—Olivia, beautiful and inclined to be superficial, and Sophie, charming and more serious—and a diligent, rather austere son who tries to emulate his father.

  If Herder could be reproached for one thing when he read aloud, then it was his impatience. He couldn’t wait until his hearers had heard and grasped a certain aspect of the events and felt them properly, as was their due; he was always in a hurry to see the effect they made, yet wasn’t pleased with what he saw when it was produced! He reprimanded me for an excess of emotion, which overflowed step by step as we moved along. I experienced everything he read as a human being, and as a young man. All of it came to life for me, was true and present. But he, who paid attention only to content and form, of course noticed at once that I was letting myself be overwhelmed only by the events, and he didn’t approve of that. Pegelow’s reflections, which were not the most refined, made an even worse impression on him. But he was especially furious over our lack of discernment—that we didn’t foresee the contracts of which the author made so much use, but let ourselves be touched and carried away by them without noticing the literary devices that turned up again and again. He couldn’t forgive us for not recognizing or at least suspecting, right at the beginning, that Burchell, when he switches from the third person to the first in the course of something he is telling, is actually the lord of whom he is speaking, and when we were childishly delighted over the discovery and transformation of a poor, miserable wanderer into a rich and eminent gentleman, he referred us back to the place we had overlooked, just as the author intended; and gave us a lecture berating our stupidity. It is clear, therefore, that he looked upon the novel only as a work of art and expected the same of us, who were still meandering along in the condition in which it is permissible to let a work of art affect one like a product of nature.

  I did not let Herder’s invectives confuse me in the slightest, for young people have the good or bad fortune that they must assimilate anything that has affected them by themselves. Sometimes this has good, sometimes disastrous results. The Vicar of Wakefield made a very strong impression on me, which I could not rightly account for. All in all, though, I was in agreement with the irony that raises itself above circumstances, above happiness and misfortune, good and evil, life and death, and can thus embrace a truly poetic world. I became conscious of this, naturally, only much later; just the same, even at the time, it gave me plenty of food for thought. But I had never expected to be removed from this fictitious world into a similar real one.

  Weyland, my companion at table, who from time to time brightened his tranquil, industrious life by visiting friends and relatives in Alsace—he was born there—was most helpful to me on my short excursions in that he introduced me to various places and families, sometimes personally, sometimes by recommending them to me. He had spoken to me often of a country parson who had a good parish six hours from Strassburg, near Drusenheim, where he lived with an intelligent wife and two attractive daughters. Whenever Weyland spoke of the family, he praised their hospitality and charm. More was scarcely necessary to inspire a young horseman who had already formed the habit of spending all his leisurely days and hours riding in the fresh air. So we decided to take this little trip, and I made my friend promise to say nothing good or bad about me when he introduced me. He was to treat me with indifference and permit me to appear, not exactly badly dressed, but looking rather poor and neglected. He agreed and seemed to think he would get some fun out of it, too.

  To lay aside his material advantages on occasion and let his own innermost human aspects shine forth more clearly is an excusable caprice in
the eminent man. That is why princes traveling incognito and the adventures resulting from it somehow always have a pleasant effect. Gods appear disguised and can count every kindness they receive double, and are in a position to take every unpleasantness lightly or go out of its way. That Jupiter with Philemon and Baucis, or Henry IV among his peasants after the hunt, enjoyed being incognito is as natural as it is pleasing. But that a young man of no importance or fame should hit upon the idea to get some fun out of traveling disguised, might seem unpardonable arrogance to some people. However, our interest here is not in applauding or criticizing this viewpoint and these actions but rather in determining how much they reveal and what the results are, so let us, this time at least and for our entertainment, forgive the young man his presumption, all the more since I must add that the urge to disguise myself had been alive in me ever since I could remember and was even stimulated by my very serious father.

  With some of my own old things and a few borrowed items, and by the way I combed my hair, I did not exactly disfigure myself—still, I was so marvelously put together that my friend couldn’t restrain his laughter as we rode along, especially since I could imitate perfectly the position and behavior of persons who, when they are on horseback, are referred to as “bookworm” riders. The beautiful highway, the glorious weather, and the proximity of the Rhine put us in the best of moods. We stopped for a few moments in Drusenheim—Weyland to spruce up, I to find my way back into my characterization, which I was very much afraid of losing. The region there has all the characteristics of Alsace—it is wide open and flat. We rode across fields on a pretty little footpath and soon reached Sesenheim, where we left our horses at the inn and walked in a leisurely fashion to the parsonage.