The foolish figure I cut when I’m in company and her name is mentioned—you should see me! Especially when others ask me how I like her—Like? I hate this word to death. What sort of person must it be who likes Lotte, whose senses, whose heart she does not completely fill? Like! Recently someone asked me how I liked Ossian!
JULY 11
Frau M. is in a very bad way; I pray for her life because I share Lotte’s suffering. Occasionally I see her at my friend’s, a lady, and today she told me an amazing thing.—Old Herr M. is a stingy, grasping lout who during their life together kept his wife on a short leash and harassed her grievously, but she always knew how to manage. A few days ago, when the doctor told her that she did not have long to live, she sent for her husband—Lotte was in the room—and spoke to him thus: I must confess something that could cause confusion and aggravation after my death. I have always kept house as properly and thriftily as possible, but you will forgive me that for these thirty years I have gone behind your back. At the beginning of our marriage you fixed a small sum to cover the kitchen and other domestic expenses. As our household grew larger, and our business expanded, you could not be persuaded to increase my weekly allowance accordingly; in short, you know that in the times when our expenses were greatest, you insisted that I get by on seven gulden a week. I took that money without complaint, and at the end of each week I made up what was needed from the till, since no one would suspect your wife of helping herself to the receipts. I wasted nothing, and I would have been content to meet my maker without confessing, except that the woman who has to manage your household after I’m gone won’t be able to do it, and you could always insist that your first wife managed to make do with her allowance.
I discussed with Lotte the unbelievable self-deception of the human mind, that a man should never suspect that something else is involved when his wife makes do with seven gulden for expenses that evidently amount to almost twice that sum. But I myself have known people who would have accepted the prophet’s perpetual cruet of oil in their houses and never been surprised.
JULY 13
No, I am not deceiving myself! I read in her black eyes genuine concern for me and what may befall me! Yes, I feel, and in this I know I may trust my heart, that she—oh may I, can I express heaven in these words—that she loves me!
Loves me!—And how I begin to value myself, how I—I can certainly tell you, you understand such things—how I worship myself ever since she has come to love me!
Is this presumption or a correct sense of our real relationship?—I do not know the man whose place in Lotte’s heart could make me afraid. And yet—when she speaks about her fiancé with such warmth, such love—I feel like a man deprived of all his honors and titles and stripped of his sword.
JULY 16
Oh, what a thrill I feel running through my veins when my finger inadvertently touches hers, when our feet meet under the table! I pull back as if from fire, and a secret force draws me forward again—all my senses grow dizzy.—Oh! and her innocence, her naïve soul does not suspect how much these little intimacies torment me. When in conversation she actually lays her hand on mine and when, to heighten our exchange, she moves closer to me so that her divine breath brushes my lips—I feel as if I’m sinking away, as if struck by lightning.—And, Wilhelm! if ever I dared . . . this heaven, this trust—! You understand me. No, my heart is not so depraved! Weak! Weak enough!—And isn’t that depravity?—
She is sacred to me. All lust falls silent in her presence. I never know what I feel when I am near her; it is as if my soul ran every which way through all my nerves.—There is a tune that she plays on the piano with the touch of an angel, so simple and so soulful! It is her favorite song, she needs only to strike the first note, and I am cured of all my pain, confusion, and gloom.
No claim of the old magic power of music is implausible to me. How this simple song affects me! And she knows just when to introduce it, often at moments when I feel like putting a gun to my head! The confusion and darkness of my soul disperse, and I breathe freely again.
JULY 18
Wilhelm, what is the world to our heart without love! What a magic lantern is without light! No sooner have you set the little lamp inside than the most colorful pictures glow on your white screen! And if it were nothing more than that—fleeting phantoms—we are always happy when we stand before them like expectant boys and are charmed by these wondrous apparitions.
Today I could not see Lotte: an unavoidable social gathering kept me away. What was to be done? I sent my servant to her, just to have someone around me who had been near her today. How impatiently I waited for him, how joyously I welcomed him back! I would have liked to clasp his head and kiss him if I hadn’t been embarrassed.
There is a story about the Bonona stone, which when placed in the sun, attracts its rays and for a while glows at night. So it was for me with this fellow. The feeling that her eyes had rested on his face, his cheeks, the buttons of his jacket, the collar of his overcoat made all of these so sacred, so valuable to me! In that moment I wouldn’t have parted from him for a thousand thalers. His presence made me so happy.—God forbid that you laugh at me. Wilhelm, can these be phantoms if we feel so happy?
JULY 19
I’m going to see her! I exclaim in the morning when I wake up and with serene good cheer look out at the glorious sun; I’m going to see her! and then, for the entire day, I have no other wish. Everything, everything is consumed by this one prospect.
JULY 20
I cannot yet accept your idea that I ought to go with the ambassador to ***. I do not like being anyone’s subordinate, and we all know that on top of this the man is odious. You say that my mother would like to see me actively employed; that made me laugh. Am I not now actively employed? and when you come down to it, isn’t it the same whether I count peas or lentils? Everything in the world ends up as the same paltry rubbish, and anyone who works himself to the bone to please others, for money or honor or whatever else, without its being his own passion, his own necessity, is a perfect fool.
JULY 24
Since it is so important to you that I not neglect my drawing, I would much prefer to skip the whole subject than tell you how little I’ve been doing.
I’ve never been happier, my feeling for nature, right down to the smallest pebble, the smallest blade of grass, has never been more complete and more intense, and yet—I don’t know how to express myself, my power of depiction is so weak, everything swims and wavers so before my soul that I cannot seize an outline; but I imagine that if I had clay or wax, I could probably shape it. I will surely take clay, if this continues, and knead it: and even if it should turn out to be mud pies!
I’ve begun Lotte’s portrait three times, and three times I’ve made a mess of it. That depresses me all the more because not long ago I was very good at doing likenesses. Instead I did a silhouette of her, and that will have to do.
JULY 26
Yes, dear Lotte, I will fetch everything and order everything; only charge me with more errands, and often. I ask one thing: Stop strewing sand on the little notes you send me. Today I hastily pressed one to my lips, and my teeth crackled.
JULY 26
I’ve resolved more than once not to see her so often. Yes, but who could keep to that! Every day I succumb to temptation, and I swear a sacred promise to myself: Tomorrow you will stay away, and when tomorrow comes, again I find an irresistible reason, and before I know it, I am at her house. Either the previous evening she said: You’re coming tomorrow, aren’t you?—then who could stay away? Or she asks me to run an errand, and I consider it only proper to deliver the answer in person; or the day is simply too beautiful, I walk to Wahlheim, and once I’m there, it’s just another half-hour to her place—I am too close to her aura—whoosh! and I’m there. My grandmother used to tell a story about a magnetic mountain: ships that sailed too close were suddenly stripped of all their ironwork, the nails flew to the mountain, and the poor wretches foundered in the cra
sh of the collapsing planks.
JULY 30
Albert has arrived, and I shall leave; even if he were the best, the noblest of men, one to whom I’d be ready to subordinate myself in every way, it would still be unbearable to see him take possession of such perfection—Possession!—Enough, Wilhelm, the fiancé is here! A fine, dear man, whom one cannot help but like. Fortunately I was not present at his arrival! It would have rent my heart. And he is so honorable and has not kissed Lotte even once in my presence. May God reward him for that! I have to love him for the regard he shows her. He means well by me, and I assume that is Lotte’s doing more than his own feeling: for in this matter women have a delicate sense, and they are right: if they can keep two admirers on good terms with one another, they will always have the advantage, no matter how rarely that succeeds.
Meanwhile, I cannot deprive Albert of my esteem. His calm exterior stands in sharp contrast to my natural restlessness, which cannot be concealed. He is a man of feeling and knows what a treasure he has in Lotte. He appears to have few bad moods, and you know that is the sin in a person that I hate more than any other.
He considers me a person of sensibility; and my affection for Lotte, my sincere pleasure in all her actions, heightens his triumph, and he loves her all the more for it. Whether he torments her at times with little jabs of jealousy is a subject I shall not explore; at any rate, in his place I would not be wholly safe from this devil.
Be that as it may! My joy in being with Lotte is gone. Shall I call that foolishness or delusion?—Why does it need a name! The thing explains itself!—I knew everything that I now know before Albert came; I knew that I had no claim on her, nor did I make one—that is, insofar as it is possible to feel no desire in the presence of such loveliness.—And now this fool is wide-eyed with surprise when another man actually appears and takes the girl away from him.
I grit my teeth and scoff at my misery, and I would scoff doubly and triply at those who would say I ought to submit, since nothing can be done.—Get these scarecrows away from me!—I roam through the woods, and when I come to Lotte’s and find Albert sitting with her under the arbor in the little garden, and I cannot go on, I become boisterously foolish and play pranks and do a lot of confused stuff.—For God’s sake, Lotte said to me today, please, not another scene like the one last night! You are frightful when you’re so merry.—Between you and me, I wait for the moment when he is busy with something; whoosh! I’m there, and I’m always happy when I find her alone.
AUGUST 8
I beg your pardon, dear Wilhelm, I certainly did not mean you when I called people intolerable who demand our submission to an unavoidable fate. I truly did not think that you could be of a similar mind. And basically you’re right. Only one thing, my good friend: In this world it is seldom a matter of either-or; feelings and actions display as many shadings as the gradations between a hawk nose and a turned-up one.
And so you won’t be offended if I concede your entire argument and still search for a way to slip in between the either and the or.
Either, you say, you have hopes of winning Lotte, or you have none. Fine, in the first case, try to bring them to a conclusion, try to seize the fulfillment of your wishes: in the other case, be a man and try to rid yourself of a miserable passion that must consume all your powers.—My dear friend! That is well said—and easily said.
And can you require of the unfortunate man whose life is inexorably ebbing away by degrees from an insidious disease, can you require of him that he put an end to his torment once and for all with the thrust of a dagger? And does not the disease that is consuming his strength at the same time rob him of the courage to free himself?
Of course you could answer with a similar analogy: Who would not rather cut off his arm than risk his life through dallying and delay?—I don’t know!—And we don’t want to nip at each other with analogies. Enough.—Yes, Wilhelm, there are moments when I feel a fit of the courage to spring up and shake it all off and then—if only I knew where to, I think I would go.
EVENING
My diary, which I have neglected for some time, fell into my hands again today, and I am amazed at how knowingly I went into all this, step by step! How I have always seen my situation so clearly and yet have acted like a child; even now I see it so clearly, and still there is no sign of improvement.
AUGUST 10
I could be leading the best, the happiest life if I weren’t a fool. Wonderful circumstances such as those in which I now find myself do not easily come together to delight a man’s soul. Oh, it is so certain that it is our heart alone that makes for happiness.—To be a member of the charming family, to be loved by her father as a son, by the little ones as a father, and by Lotte!—then the honorable Albert, who never disturbs my happiness with moody behavior; who accepts me with sincere friendship; for whom, next to Lotte, I am the dearest person in the world.—Wilhelm, it is a joy to hear us when we go for a walk, speaking to one another of Lotte: nothing in the world has been invented that is more ridiculous than this relationship, and yet it often brings tears to my eyes when he tells me about her honest, virtuous mother: how on her deathbed she handed her house and her children over to Lotte and gave Lotte into his care; and how since that time a quite different spirit has inspired Lotte, how she, in her concern for the household and in her seriousness, had become a true mother, how not a moment of her time passes without active love, without work, and yet despite this, her good cheer, her blitheness have never left her.—I walk along beside him and pluck flowers by the roadside, piece them very carefully into a bouquet and—toss them into the stream that flows by and gaze after them as the current carries them gently downstream.—I don’t know whether I’ve written to you that Albert will remain here and will receive a position with a nice income from the Court, where he is very well liked. I have rarely seen his equal for orderly and diligent competence in business.
AUGUST 12
Surely Albert is the best man in all creation. Yesterday the two of us had a remarkable scene. I went to say good-bye to him, for I was overcome by the desire to ride into the mountains, whence I’m now writing to you; and while pacing up and down in his room, I caught sight of his pistols.—Lend me the pistols, I said, for my trip.—As you like, he said, if you will take the trouble of loading them; in my house they hang only for show.—I took one down, and he continued: Ever since my caution played such a nasty trick on me, I don’t want to have anything more to do with them.—I was curious to know the story—For some three months, he began, I was staying with a friend in the country, had a brace of unloaded small pistols, and slept peacefully. One rainy afternoon, I was sitting around idly, and it occurred to me, I don’t know why, that we could be attacked, we could have need of the pistols and could—you know how it is.—I gave them to a servant to clean and load; and he fooled around with the maids, meant to frighten them, and God knows how, the weapon went off, and since the ramrod was still lodged in the barrel, he shot the ramrod into the ball of one of the girls’ right hand and shattered her thumb. Then there was her wailing to be put up with, and besides, I had to pay for the treatment, and since that time I keep all weapons unloaded. Oh my dear fellow, what is caution? When it comes to danger, you live and learn! True, but—Now you know that I am very fond of the man, up until his True, but; for isn’t it self-evident that every general statement admits of exceptions? But the man is so eager to justify himself! When he thinks he’s said something in haste, a generality, a half-truth, he won’t stop limiting, modifying, and adding on and taking back, until finally there’s nothing left of the statement. And on this occasion he became deeply enmeshed in his subject: I finally stopped listening altogether, fell into a black mood, and with an abrupt gesture pressed the mouth of the pistol to my forehead over my right eye.—Ugh! said Albert and took the pistol from me, What is that supposed to mean?—It’s not loaded, I said.—Even so, what is that? he replied impatiently. I cannot imagine that a man can be so foolish as to shoot himself; the me
re thought fills me with revulsion.
Why is it that you people, I exclaimed, whenever you speak about anything, immediately find yourself saying: this is foolish, this is clever, this is good, this is bad! And what is that supposed to mean? Have you investigated the deeper circumstances of an action to that end? Are you able to explain the causes definitively, why it happened, why it had to happen? If you had done so, you would not be so hasty with your judgments.
You will grant me, said Albert, that certain actions are vicious however they occur, whatever motives are adduced.
I shrugged and conceded the point.—Still, my dear fellow, I continued, here, too, there are some exceptions. It is true, stealing is a vice; but the man who sets out to steal to save himself and his family from imminent starvation: does he deserve pity or punishment? Who will cast the first stone against the husband who, in righteous anger, makes short shrift of his unfaithful wife and her worthless seducer? Against the girl who, in an hour of ecstasy, gives herself over to the irresistible joys of love? Even our laws, these cold-blooded pedants, can be moved to withhold their punishment.
That is something completely different, replied Albert, because a man swept away by passion loses all his powers of reason and is viewed as a drunkard or a madman.
Oh, you rationalists! I exclaimed, smiling. Passion! Drunkenness! Madness! You stand there, so calmly, without any understanding, you moral men! You chide the drinker, despise the man bereft of his senses, pass by like the priest, thank God like the Pharisee that He did not make you as one of these. I have been drunk more than once, my passions were never far from madness, and I regret neither: for in my own measure I have learned to grasp how all extraordinary men who have achieved something great, something seemingly impossible, have inevitably been derided as drunkards or madmen.
But even in ordinary life it is intolerable to hear what is shouted after almost everyone who has committed a halfway free, noble, unanticipated deed: the man is drunk, he’s crazy! Shame on you, you men of sobriety! Shame on you, you wise men!
The Sufferings of Young Werther: A New Translation Page 5
