Part 3

Yes, it becomes certain to me, dear friend, certain and ever more certain, that little—very little—depends upon the existence of a creature. A friend came to visit Lotte, and I went into the adjoining room to take a book, and could not read, and then I took a pen to write. I heard them speaking softly; they were telling each other insignificant things, bits of town news: how this one is marrying, how that one is sick, very sick. “She has a dry cough, her bones stick out of her face, and she keeps fainting; I wouldn’t give a farthing for her life,” said one. “N. N. is in a bad way too,” said Lotte. “He is already swollen,” said the other. And my lively imagination transported me to the bedside of these poor women; I saw with what distaste they turned their backs on life, how they—Wilhelm! And my little women spoke of it as one speaks of such things—that a stranger is dying. And when I look around and survey the room, and see Lotte’s clothes all about me, and Albert’s papers, and these pieces of furniture to which I have now grown so attached, even this inkwell, and think: see what you now are to this house! All in all. Your friends honor you! You often make them glad, and your heart seems as if it could not be without them; and yet—if you were now to go, if you departed from this circle? Would they, and how long would they, feel the gap that your loss tears into their fate? How long?—O, so perishable is man, that even there where he has the very certainty of his existence, there where he makes the sole true impression of his presence, in the memory, in the soul of those who love him, even there he must fade, vanish, and that so soon!

On October 27

I would often tear open my breast and dash in my brains, that one can be so little to another. Ah, the love, joy, warmth, and bliss that I cannot bring, the other will not give me, and with a whole heart full of felicity I cannot make happy the one who stands cold and powerless before me.

I have so much, and the feeling for her devours all; I have so much, and without her all becomes nothing to me.

On October 27, in the evening

If I had not a hundred times stood on the point of throwing my arms around her neck! God Almighty knows how it wrings one, to see so much loveliness crossing before one and not be allowed to seize it; and yet seizing is the most natural impulse of humanity. Do not children grasp at everything that comes into their heads?—And I?

On October 30

God knows! I often lie down to sleep with the wish, yes sometimes with the hope, not to wake again; and in the morning I open my eyes, see the sun once more, and am wretched. O that I could be peevish, could lay the blame on the weather, on a third person, on a failed undertaking—then the intolerable weight of discontent would rest only half on me. Woe is me! I feel too truly that all the fault lies in me—not fault! Enough, that within me the source of all misery is spoiled, as once the source of all bliss. Am I not still the very same who once hovered in the full abundance of feeling, to whom on every step a paradise followed, who had a heart to embrace a whole world lovingly? And this heart is now dead, no raptures flow from it anymore, my eyes are dry, and my senses, no longer refreshed by quickening tears, draw my brow together anxiously. I suffer much, for I have lost what was the sole joy of my life, the holy, animating power with which I created worlds around me; it is gone! When I look from my window at the distant hill, how the morning sun breaks through the mist above it and lights the quiet meadow-vale, and the gentle river winds toward me between its leafless willows—O! when this glorious nature stands so rigid before me like a lacquered picture, and all that loveliness cannot pump one drop of blessedness from my heart up into my brain, and the whole fellow stands before the face of God like a dried-up spring, like a leaky bucket. I have often thrown myself on the ground and begged God for tears, as a husbandman begs for rain when the heaven is brazen above him and the earth about him thirsts.

But, ah, I feel it, God gives rain and sunshine not to our impatient prayers, and those times whose memory torments me, why were they so blessed, but because with patience I awaited His spirit, and received the bliss He poured over me with a whole, inwardly grateful heart!

On November 8

She reproached me for my excesses! Ah, with so much charm! My excesses, that I sometimes let myself be tempted by one glass of wine to drink a bottle. “Do not do it!” she said, “think of Lotte!” “Think!” I said, “need you bid me that? I think—I do not think! You are always before my soul. Today I sat at the spot where you lately stepped down from the carriage.” She spoke of something else, to keep me from going deeper into the matter. Dearest, I am lost! She may do with me what she will.

On November 15

I thank you, Wilhelm, for your heartfelt sympathy, for your well-meaning counsel, and beg you to be at peace. Let me endure to the end; I still have strength enough, amid all my wretchedness, to hold out. I honor religion, you know that; I feel that it is a staff to many a wearied one, refreshment to many a fainting one. Only—can it, must it, be that to everyone? If you look upon the great world, you see thousands to whom it was not, thousands to whom it will not be, preached or un-preached, and must it be so to me? Does not the Son of God Himself say that those would be with Him whom the Father had given Him? And if I am not given to Him? If the Father will keep me for Himself, as my heart tells me? I beg you, do not misinterpret this; see no mockery in these innocent words; it is my whole soul that I lay before you; otherwise I would rather I had been silent: as indeed of all this, of which everyone knows as little as I, I would not gladly lose a word. What is it but the lot of man, to suffer his measure, to drain his cup?—And if the cup was too bitter on the lip of man for the God from heaven, why should I make a boast and pretend it tastes sweet to me? And why should I be ashamed in that terrible moment when my whole being trembles between being and not-being, when the past lights up like a flash over the dark abyss of the future and all around me sinks and with me the world perishes? Is it not then the voice of the creature wholly driven into itself, lacking itself and plunging down irretrievably, to gnash in the inner depths of its vainly striving powers: “My God! My God! Why hast Thou forsaken me?” and should I be ashamed of the expression, should I fear the moment which did not spare even Him who rolls together the heavens like a garment?

On November 21

She does not see, she does not feel, that she is preparing a poison which will ruin her and me; and I with full voluptuousness drain the cup she reaches out to me for my destruction. What means the kindly glance with which she often—often?—no, not often, but yet sometimes looks at me, the complaisance with which she receives an involuntary expression of my feeling, the pity for my suffering that traces itself on her brow?

Yesterday, as I went away, she offered me her hand and said: “Farewell, dear Werther!”—Dear Werther! It was the first time she called me dear, and it went through my marrow and bone. I have repeated it a hundred times, and last night, when I was about to go to bed and was chatting various things to myself, I suddenly said: “Good night, dear Werther!” and then had to laugh at myself.

On November 22

I cannot pray: “let her be mine!” and yet she often seems to me as my own. I cannot pray: “give her to me!” for she is another’s. I toy with my pains; if I gave way to it, there would be a whole litany of antitheses.

On November 24

She feels what I endure. Today her glance pierced deep through my heart. I found her alone; I said nothing, and she looked at me. And I no longer saw in her the lovely beauty, no longer the radiance of an excellent spirit—that had all vanished from before my eyes. A far nobler glance acted upon me, full of the expression of the most intimate sympathy, of the sweetest compassion. Why might I not throw myself at her feet? Why might I not answer on her neck with a thousand kisses? She took refuge at the clavichord and breathed, with sweet, low voice, harmonious sounds to her playing. Never have I seen her lips so charming; it was as if they opened thirstily to sip those sweet tones that welled from the instrument, and only the secret echo rang back from her pure mouth—yes, if I could tell you so! I resisted no longer, bent down and swore: never will I dare to press a kiss on you, lips on which the spirits of heaven hover.—And yet—I will—ha! You see, that stands like a partition before my soul—this bliss—and then perished, to atone for this sin—sin?

On November 26

Sometimes I say to myself: your fate is singular; call the rest happy—so none has yet been tormented. Then I read a poet of olden time, and it is to me as if I saw into my own heart. I have so much to bear! Ah, were men before me then so wretched?

On November 30

I should not, I should not come to myself! Wherever I step, I meet an apparition that throws me out of all composure. Today! O fate! O humanity!

I walk by the water at noon; I had no, no desire to eat. All was desolate, a damp cold evening wind blew from the mountain, and the gray rain-clouds drew down into the valley. From afar I see a person in a green, poor coat, who was crawling about among the rocks and seemed to be seeking herbs. As I came nearer to him and he turned around at the noise I made, I saw a most interesting physiognomy, in which a quiet sorrow made the principal trait, but which otherwise expressed nothing but an upright, good sense; his black hair was pinned up in two rolls with pins, and the rest braided into a thick plait that hung down his back. Since his clothing seemed to mark him as a person of low estate, I thought he would not take it ill if I paid attention to his occupation, and therefore asked him what he sought?—“I seek,” he answered with a deep sigh, “flowers—and find none.”—“That is not the season either,” said I, smiling. “There are so many flowers,” said he, coming down toward me. “In my garden are roses and honeysuckles of two kinds, one was given me by my father, they grow like weeds; I have been looking for them two days and cannot find them. Out there are always flowers too, yellow and blue and red, and the centaury has a pretty little blossom. None can I find.” I noticed something uncanny, and therefore asked by a roundabout way: “What does he want with the flowers?”—A strange, twitching smile distorted his face. “If he will not betray me,” said he, pressing his finger to his mouth, “I promised my sweetheart a nosegay.”—“That is fine,” said I.—“O!” said he, “she has many other things, she is rich.”—“And yet she loves his nosegay,” I replied.—“O!” he went on, “she has jewels and a crown.”—“What is her name then?”—“If the States-General would pay me,” said he, “I’d be another man! Yes, there was once a time when I was so well off! Now it is over with me. I am now—” A moist glance toward heaven expressed it all.—“He was happy then?” I asked.—“Ah, would I were so again!” said he, “then was I so well, so merry, so light as a fish in water!”—“Heinrich!” cried an old woman coming along the path, “Heinrich, where are you hiding? We have looked for you everywhere, come to eat.”—“Is that your son?” I asked, stepping toward her.—“Yes, my poor son!” she answered. “God has laid a heavy cross on me.”—“How long has he been thus?” I asked.—“So quiet,” said she, “he has been now for half a year. Thank God he is only so far; before that he was raving mad for a whole year, and lay in chains in the madhouse. Now he does no one any harm, only he is always busy with kings and emperors. He was such a good, quiet fellow, who helped support me, his beautiful hand wrote, and all at once he became thoughtful, fell into a fever, and from that into madness, and now he is, as you see him. If I were to tell you, sir—” I interrupted the stream of her words with the question: “what was that time of which he boasts, that he was so happy, so well off in it?”—“The foolish man!” she cried with a pitying smile, “he means the time when he was beside himself, that he always boasts of; that is the time when he was in the madhouse, where he knew nothing of himself.” That struck me like a thunderclap; I pressed a piece of money into her hand and left her hastily. “That you were happy! I cried, walking quickly toward the town, “that you were well off as a fish in water!—God in heaven! Have you made it the fate of men, that they are not happy save before they come to their reason and when they lose it again!—Wretch! And yet how I envy your melancholy, the confusion of your senses in which you pine! You go out hopefully to gather flowers for your queen—in winter—and mourn that you find none, and comprehend not why you find none. And I—and I go out without hope, without aim, and return home as I came. You fancy what man you would be, if the States-General paid you. Blessed creature, that can ascribe the want of its happiness to an earthly hindrance! You feel not, you feel not, that in your destroyed heart, in your shattered brain, your misery lies, from which all the kings of the earth cannot help you. Perish comfortless he who mocks a sick man that travels to the remotest spring, which will increase his sickness, make his lingering more painful! He who rises above the oppressed heart that, to be rid of its qualms of conscience and to cast off the sufferings of its soul, makes a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre. Every footstep that cuts his soles on the unbeaten path is a drop of relief to the anguished soul, and with every endured day’s journey the heart lies down lighter of many oppressions.—And may you call that delusion, you word-mongers on your cushions?—Delusion!—O God! You see my tears! Must you, who created man poor enough, also give him brothers who rob him of that little poverty, that little trust in you, which he has—in you, you All-Loving! For the trust in a healing root, in the tears of the vine, what is it but trust in you, that you have laid healing—and mitigating power into all that surrounds us, of which we stand in hourly need? Father, whom I know not! Father, who once filled my whole soul and now has turned His face from me, call me to You! Be silent no longer! Your silence will not stay this thirsting soul—and could a man, a father, be angry, at whose neck his unexpectedly returning son threw himself and cried: ‘I am here again, my Father! Be not angry that I break off the wandering which by Your will I should have prolonged. The world is everywhere the same, reward and joy for toil and labor; but what is that to me? I am well only where You are, and before Your face would I suffer and enjoy.’—And You, dear heavenly Father, would You thrust him from You?

On December 1

Wilhelm! The man of whom I wrote to you, the happy unhappy one, was a clerk in Lotte’s father’s service, and a passion for her, which he nourished, concealed, discovered, and for which he was dismissed from service, has driven him mad. Feel, at these dry words, with what folly the story seized me, as Albert told it to me with the same composure as you perhaps read it.

On December 4

I beg you—see, it is over with me, I can bear it no longer! Today I sat with her—sat, she played on her clavichord, manifold melodies, and all the expression! All!—All!—What would you have?—Her little sister was dressing her doll on my knee. Tears came into my eyes. I bent down, and her wedding-ring fell into my face—my tears flowed—and suddenly she struck into the old, heavenly-sweet melody, so suddenly, and through my soul went a feeling of comfort and a remembrance of the past, of the times when I heard the song, of the dark intervals of displeasure, of the failed hopes, and then—I walked up and down the room, my heart stifled under the thronging. “For God’s sake,” said I, breaking out violently and turning toward her, “for God’s sake, stop!” She held and looked at me fixedly. “Werther,” said she with a smile that went through my soul, “Werther, you are very ill, your favorite dishes disgust you. Go! I beg you, compose yourself.” I tore myself from her—and—God! You see my misery and will end it.

On December 6

How the figure haunts me! Waking and dreaming it fills my whole soul! Here, when I close my eyes, here on my brow, where the inner sight is united, stand her black eyes. Here! I cannot express it to you. When I close my eyes, they are there; like a sea, like an abyss they rest before me, in me, fill the senses of my brow.

What is man, the praised demigod! Do not his powers fail him precisely where he needs them most? And when he soars up in joy or sinks in suffering, is he not in both just there held back, just there brought back to the dull, cold consciousness, where he longed to lose himself in the fullness of the Infinite?

The Editor to the Reader

How earnestly I could wish that of the last remarkable days of our friend so many authentic testimonies had remained to us, that I might not need to interrupt the sequence of his posthumous letters by narration.

I have taken pains to collect exact accounts from the mouths of those who could well be informed of his history; it is simple, and all narratives of it agree, except for a few trifles; only as to the dispositions of the persons acting, opinions differ and judgments are divided.

What remains for us, but to relate conscientiously that which we can learn with repeated effort, to insert the letters left by the departing one, and not to think lightly of the smallest scrap found; the more so as it is so hard to discover the most proper, true springs even of a single action, when it passes among men who are not of common sort.

Discontent and melancholy had struck ever deeper root in Werther’s soul, entwined themselves more firmly together, and by degrees taken possession of his whole being. The harmony of his mind was wholly destroyed; an inward heat and vehemence, which wrought all the powers of his nature into confusion, produced the most adverse effects and left him at last only an exhaustion, from which he strove upward more anxiously than he had hitherto struggled with all evils. The anguish of his heart consumed the remaining powers of his mind, his liveliness, his acuteness; he became a sorrowful companion, ever more unhappy, and ever more unjust, the more unhappy he grew. At least this is what Albert’s friends say; they maintain that Werther, who as it were consumed his whole fortune every day, to suffer and starve in the evening, could not judge a pure, calm man, who had now become partaker of a long-wished-for happiness, and his conduct to preserve this happiness also for the future. Albert, they say, had not changed in so short a time; he was still the same whom Werther had known from the beginning, esteemed and honored so highly. He loved Lotte above all, he was proud of her, and wished her acknowledged by everyone as the most glorious creature. Was it then to be blamed in him, if he also wished to avert every appearance of suspicion, if at the moment he had no desire to share this precious possession even in the most innocent way with anyone? They admit that Albert often left his wife’s room when Werther was with her, but not out of hatred nor aversion to his friend, but only because he had felt that the other was oppressed by his presence.

Lotte’s father had been seized by an illness that confined him to the house; he sent her his carriage, and she drove out. It was a fine winter day; the first snow had fallen heavily and covered the whole region.

Werther went after her the next morning, to accompany her in, if Albert should not come to fetch her.

The clear weather could have little effect on his gloomy mind; a dull pressure on his soul, the sad images had fixed themselves in him, and his mind knew no movement but from one painful thought to another.

As he lived in eternal discord with himself, the condition of others also seemed to him only more questionable and confused; he believed he had disturbed the fair relation between Albert and his wife, he made himself reproaches for it, into which a secret ill-will against the husband mingled.

His thoughts also fell on this subject by the way. “Yes, yes,” said he to himself, with secret gnashing of teeth, “that is the intimate, friendly, tender intercourse, sharing in all things, the calm, enduring fidelity! It is satiety and indifference! Does not every paltry business attract him more than the dear, precious wife? Does he know how to value his happiness? Does he know how to honor her as she deserves? He has her, well, he has her—I know that, as I know something else too; I believe I am growing used to the thought, he will yet drive me mad, he will yet kill me—and has then his friendship for me held fast? Does he not already see in my attachment to Lotte an encroachment on his rights, in my attentiveness to her a silent reproach? I know it well, I feel it, he sees me unwillingly, he wishes my removal, my presence is burdensome to him.”

Often he halted his quick step, often stood still, as if about to turn back; but he always directed his course forward again, and with these thoughts and soliloquies arrived at last, as it were against his will, at the hunting-lodge.

He stepped through the door, asked after the old man and Lotte, and found the house in some commotion. The eldest boy told him that a misfortune had happened over at Wahlheim, a peasant had been slain! It made no further impression on him. He entered the room and found Lotte busy persuading the old man, who, notwithstanding his illness, wanted to go over to examine the deed on the spot. The perpetrator was still unknown; the slain man had been found before the house door in the morning, and there were surmises: the dead man was servant to a widow who had previously had another in service, who had left the house in discord.

When Werther heard this, he started up violently. “Is it possible!” he cried, “I must go over, I cannot rest a moment.” He hastened to Wahlheim; every remembrance became alive in him, and he did not doubt for an instant that the man he had so often spoken with, who had become so dear to him, had committed the deed.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”