Those are some more of your quirky notions, said Albert, you exaggerate everything, and in this case, at least, you are quite wrong when you compare suicide, which is the subject under discussion, with great deeds: since it cannot be regarded as anything but a weakness. There can be no question that it is easier to die than to endure steadfastly a life of torment.
I was about to break off; for no argument makes me lose my composure more quickly than the introduction of some vacuous commonplace when I am speaking from the bottom of my heart. But I pulled myself together, because I had often heard it and had more often become angry on hearing it, and I responded with some vehemence: You call that weakness? I beg of you, don’t be misled by appearances. A people groaning under the unbearable yoke of a tyrant, do you call them weak when they finally rise up and break their chains? A man who, terror-stricken when he sees his house on fire, feels all his strength at its peak and easily carries away loads that he can barely move when he is composed; someone who, infuriated by an insult, attacks six men and overpowers them—should these men be called weak? And, my good man, if exertion is strength, why should extreme exertion be the reverse?—Albert looked at me and said: No offense, but the examples you give seem not at all relevant.—That may be, I said, I have often been criticized for combining ideas sometimes to the point of blathering. So let us see whether we can find a different way to imagine the state of mind of the man who decides to cast off what is normally the pleasant burden of life. After all, only to the degree that we sympathize do we have the right to speak about a subject. Human nature, I continued, has its limits: it can endure joy, sorrow, pain up to a certain degree, and it perishes the minute it is exceeded. Here, then, the question is not whether one is weak or strong but rather whether one can endure the measure of one’s suffering—be it moral or physical; and I find it just as odd to say that the man who takes his own life is a coward as it would be improper to call the man who dies from a malignant fever a coward. Paradoxical! Very paradoxical! exclaimed Albert.—Not so much as you think, I replied. Grant me this: we call it a sickness unto death when human nature is so assaulted that its forces are partly consumed, partly so lamed that it is no longer able to recover, through no fortunate turn of events able to restore the normal circulation of life.
Now, my dear friend, let us apply that to the mind. Look at a man within his limitations, the way impressions affect him, ideas become entrenched in him, until finally a growing passion robs him of all his powers of calm reflection and destroys him.
It is futile for the composed, rational man to appraise the condition of the unhappy person, futile to cheer him up! Just as a healthy man who stands at the bed of a sick person cannot impart to him the least part of his powers.
For Albert that was all too general. I reminded him of a girl who had recently been found in the water, dead, and repeated her story to him.—A young thing, who grew up in the narrow circle of domestic occupations, specific weekly chores, who knew no further prospect of pleasure than, say, strolling through town of a Sunday with girls like her, in a pretty outfit pieced together over time, perhaps going to dances on all the major holidays, and for the rest chatting away her spare hours with a neighbor with all the liveliness of genuine participation about the cause of a quarrel or about some calumny, and now her fiery nature has finally come to feel more burning needs, which are heightened by the flatteries of men; bit by bit her former pleasures become distasteful, until finally she meets a man to whom she is irresistibly drawn by a strange new feeling, and now she puts all her hopes in him, forgets the world around her, hears nothing, sees nothing, feels nothing but him, her one and only, longs only for him, her one and only. Unspoiled by the vapid pleasures of a fickle vanity, her desire moves directly toward its goal, she wants to become his, bound to him for all eternity, she wants to encounter all the happiness she lacks, enjoy the union of all the joys she longs for. A repeated promise that seals the certainty of all her hopes, bold caresses that increase her desires, wholly captivate her soul; she hovers in a muffled awareness, a premonition of all the joys, she is in a state of extreme tension, finally she stretches out her arms to embrace all her desires—and her lover abandons her.—Paralyzed, out of her senses, she stands before an abyss; darkness is all around her, no prospect, no consolation, no intimation of a future! for he has abandoned her, the man in whom alone she felt her being. She does not see the great world that lies before her, the many men who could make up her loss, she feels herself alone, abandoned by the whole world—and blindly, cornered by the terrible need of her heart, she plunges down to stifle all her pains in the death that envelops her all around.—Look, Albert; that is the story of so many people! and tell me, isn’t it the same with sickness? Nature finds no way out of the maze of these tangled and conflicting forces, and the man or woman must die.
Woe to him who can look on and say: Foolish girl! Had she only waited, had let time work its wonders, her despair would have subsided, another would certainly have come forward to comfort her.—That’s the same as if someone were to say: The fool, dies of a fever! Had he waited until his strength had returned, his humors improved, the tumult of his blood calmed down: everything would have been well, and he would be alive to this day!
Albert, who was still not persuaded by the comparison, made a few further objections, among them this one: I had spoken only of an ignorant girl; but how an intelligent man, who was not so limited, who commanded a wide view of many relationships, might be excused was something he could not conceive.—My friend, I exclaimed, a man is a man, and the modicum of reason he might have counts for little or nothing when passion rages and the limits of human being press against him! Rather—Another time for that, I said, and reached for my hat. Oh, my heart was so full—and we parted without having understood one another. As in this world no one readily understands the other.
AUGUST 15
There is no doubt that in this world nothing but love makes another person indispensable. I can tell from Lotte that she would not like to lose me, and the children have no other idea than that I’ll be back the following day. I went today to tune Lotte’s piano, but I could not get to it because the children pestered me to tell them a story, and Lotte herself said that I should do what they wanted. I sliced their bread for supper, which they now accept almost as gladly from me as from Lotte, and told them my favorite story of the princess whose servants were hands. I learn a lot from this, I assure you, and I am amazed at the impression it makes on them. There are times when I have to invent some crucial detail, which by the second telling I’ve forgotten, and then they immediately say, it was different last time, so that now I practice reciting to them like clockwork, with an unvarying singsong intonation. From this I’ve learned how an author will inevitably do harm to his book in a second, revised version of his story, even though it may now be so much better poetically. The first impression finds us willing, and man is so constituted that he can be persuaded of the most outlandish things; but these details also attach themselves firmly, and woe to him who now wants to scrap them and extirpate them.
AUGUST 18
Does it have to be this way, that whatever it is that makes a man blissfully happy in turn becomes the source of his misery?
The full, warm feeling of my heart for living nature, which flooded me with such joy, which turned the world around me into a paradise, has now become an unbearable torturer, a tormenting spirit that pursues me wherever I turn. When, looking out from these rocks across the river to those hills, I used to survey the fruitful valley and was aware of the sprouting and swelling of all that surrounded me; when I saw those hills clothed from foot to peak with tall, closely ranked trees, saw those valleys with their many turnings shaded by the loveliest woods and the gentle stream gliding between the lisping reeds and mirroring the lovely clouds that the gentle evening winds rocked, as in a cradle, across the sky; when I heard the birds around me lend life to the forest while a million swarms of gnats boldly danced in the last red ray
s of the sun, whose final quivering glance roused the humming beetle from the grass, and the whirring and weaving around me made me look to the ground and to the moss that wrests its nourishment from these hard rocks, and the shrubbery that grows along the barren sand dunes revealed to me the innermost glowing sacred life of nature: how my warm heart enfolded all that, how I felt like a god among the overflowing abundance, and the glorious shapes of the infinite world entered and quickened my soul. Enormous mountains surrounded me, chasms lay before me, and swollen brooks plunged downward, streams rushed beneath me, and woods and mountains resounded; and I saw them, all the unfathomable forces, entwined in their hustle and bustle in the depths of the earth; and now, above the earth and under the skies swarm all the species of the manifold creatures, and everything, everything is populated with a thousand shapes; and then men shelter together in their little houses and build their nests and think they govern the whole wide world! Poor fool, who thinks so little of everything because you are so little.—From the inaccessible mountains across the deserts where no one has set foot, to the ends of the unexplored oceans wafts the spirit of the eternally creative One, delighting in every speck of dust that senses it and lives.—Oh, then, how often did I long to have the wings of the crane soaring above me to fly to the shores of the uncharted oceans, to drink that surging joy of life from the foaming beaker of infinity, and to feel for even a moment in the confined power of my breast a drop of the bliss of that Being that brings forth everything in and through Itself.
My brother, the very memory of those hours makes me glad. Even the effort of summoning up and expressing once again those ineffable feelings lifts my soul and makes me feel twice over the fear of the condition that now enfolds me.
It is as if a curtain had been drawn back from my soul, and the spectacle of infinite life is transformed before my eyes into the abyss of an ever-open grave. Can you say: This is what is! since everything passes, since everything rolls on with the swiftness of a passing storm, so rarely does the entire force of its existence last, oh! torn along into the river and submerged and shattered on the rocks? There is no moment that does not consume you and those near and dear to you, no moment when you are not a destroyer, must be one; the most innocent stroll costs the lives of thousands and thousands of tiny creatures; one footstep shatters the laboriously erected structures of the ant and pounds a tiny world into a miserable grave. Ha! I am not moved by the great, rare disasters of this world, those floods that wash away your villages, those earthquakes that swallow your cities; my heart is undermined by the destructive force that is concealed in the totality of nature; which has never created a thing that has not destroyed its neighbor or itself. And so I stagger about in fear! heaven and earth and their interweaving forces around me: I see nothing but an eternally devouring, eternally regurgitating monster.
AUGUST 21
In vain I stretch out my arms to her in the morning when I wake dazed from oppressive dreams, in vain I seek her in the night in my bed when a happy, innocent dream has deceived me into thinking that I am sitting beside her on the meadow, holding her hand, and covering it with a thousand kisses. Oh, when then, half dizzy with sleep, I grope my way toward her and wake myself—a river of tears breaks from my anxious heart, and disconsolate, I weep as I face a dark and gloomy future.
AUGUST 22
It is a catastrophe, Wilhelm, my powers of action have been jangled into a restless indolence; I cannot be idle, and yet I cannot do anything either. I have no power of imagination, no feeling for nature, and books repel me. When we are inadequate in ourselves, everything seems inadequate to us. I swear to you, sometimes I wish I were a day laborer, if only on waking in the morning I could have a clear view of the day to come, a striving, a hope. Often I envy Albert, whom I see up to his ears in screeds, and I imagine how content I’d be in his place! More than once I’ve been tempted to write to you and the minister to apply for the position with the embassy, which, as you assure me, I would not be refused. I myself believe that to be true. The minister has been fond of me for a long time, and for a long time he has urged me to devote myself to some occupation or other; and for an hour at a time I’m inclined to do so. But then, when I think it over and am reminded of the fable of the horse that, having grown impatient of its freedom, asks to be saddled and harnessed and is ridden until it falls—I don’t know what I ought to do.—And, my dear friend! isn’t my longing for a change of condition an inner, discontented impatience that will follow me wherever I go?
AUGUST 28
It’s true, if my sickness could be cured, these people would cure it. Today is my birthday, and early in the morning I received a little package from Albert. When I opened it, I immediately caught sight of one of the pink ribbons that Lotte wore the first time I saw her and for which I had asked her several times since. There were two small volumes in duodecimo, the little Wetstein Homer, an edition that I’d so often longed for, so that I would not have to drag the Ernesti volume on my walks. You see! This is how they anticipate my wishes, this is how they contrive all the little favors of friendship that are a thousand times more valuable than those dazzling gifts that serve only to crush us with the giver’s vanity. I kiss this ribbon a thousand times, and with every breath I draw I drink in the memory of the bliss with which those few, happy, irretrievable days glutted me. Wilhelm, this is how things are, and I’m not complaining: the flowers of life are only fleeting apparitions! How many fade without leaving a trace behind, how few bear fruit, and how few of these fruits ripen! And yet enough remain; and yet—Oh, my brother!—can we neglect ripened fruit, spurn it, allow it to rot unenjoyed?
Farewell! It is a glorious summer; I often sit in the fruit trees in Lotte’s orchard with the long, spiked pole, and fetch the pears from the treetop. She stands below and takes them when I hand them down to her.
AUGUST 30
Wretched creature! Are you not a fool? Aren’t you deluding yourself? What is the meaning of this raging, endless passion? I have no prayers other than those directed to her; no shape appears to my imagination other than hers, and I see everything in the world around me only in relation to her. And that gives me many happy hours—until I must once again tear myself away from her! Oh Wilhelm! the things my heart often urges me to do!—When I have sat beside her for two or three hours and feasted on her figure, her demeanor, the heavenly expression of her words, and all my senses are gradually stretched to the breaking point, when it grows dark before my eyes, when I can hardly hear and my throat feels seized by an assassin, then my wildly beating heart seeks to release my plagued senses and only increases their confusion—Wilhelm, often I do not know whether I belong to this world! And—except when, from time to time, melancholy gets the better of me and Lotte allows me the miserable solace of weeping tears of anguish over her hand—then I must leave, must go away! and then I roam far and wide over the fields; then my joy lies in climbing a steep mountain, hacking a path through an impassable forest, through hedges that hurt me, through thorns that tear at me! Then I feel a little better! A little! And when, on my way, I sometimes lie down from weariness and thirst, sometimes in the deep of night, when the full moon stands high above me, I sit on a gnarled tree in the lonely forest so as to give my torn soles some relief and then fall into a slumber in an exhausted calm at the first glow of dawn! Oh Wilhelm! the lonely dwelling of a cell, the hair shirt, and a girdle of thorns would be the balm for which my soul languishes. Adieu! I see no end to this misery except the grave.
SEPTEMBER 3
I must go away! I thank you, Wilhelm, for making my wavering decision definite. For two weeks now I have harbored the thought of leaving her. I must go away. She is in town again, visiting a friend, a lady. And Albert—and—I must go away!
SEPTEMBER 10
What a night that was! Wilhelm! Now I can live through anything. I shall never see her again! Oh, that I cannot throw my arms around your neck and with a thousand tears and ecstasies, my dear friend, express the feelings that assa
il my heart. Here I sit, gasp for breath, try to calm myself, wait for morning, and the horses have been ordered for dawn.
Ah, she is sleeping peacefully and has no idea that she will never see me again. I have torn myself away, and I was strong enough not to betray my intentions during a conversation that lasted two hours. And, good God, what a conversation!
Albert had promised to be in the garden with Lotte immediately after the evening meal. I stood on the terrace under the tall chestnut trees and kept my eyes on the sun, which was now setting for me for the last time over the lovely valley, over the gentle stream. How many times had I stood here with her, watching the same glorious spectacle, and now—I paced back and forth along the avenue of trees that was so dear to me; a secret sympathy had so often held me here, even before I knew Lotte, and how happy we were when, at the beginning of our acquaintance, we discovered our shared affection for this spot, which truly is one of the most romantic I have ever seen produced in art.
First, you have the distant prospect between the chestnut trees—Ah, I remember, I have already written you, I think, a lot about it, how high walls of beeches finally enclose you, and how an abutting grove makes the avenue ever darker, until finally everything ends in an enclosed small spot around which hover all the thrills of solitude. I still feel the sense of secrecy I experienced when I entered for the first time one day at high noon; I dimly felt what a stage that could become for bliss and for pain.
For about half an hour I had been savoring the devastating, sweet thoughts of parting, of meeting again, when I heard them coming up to the terrace. I ran to meet them, and with a chill I took her hand and kissed it. We had just arrived at the top when the moon rose behind the bush-covered hill; we spoke of many things, and without being aware of it, we approached the dark little garden house. Lotte entered and sat down, Albert beside her, and I as well; but my restlessness did not let me sit for long; I stood, went over to her, paced back and forth, sat down again: I was in an anxious state. She called our attention to the fine effect of the moonlight, which at the end of the high walls of beech trees lit up the entire terrace before us: a glorious sight, all the more striking because deep dusk encircled us. We were quiet, and after a while she began: I never walk in the moonlight, never, without being reminded of those dear to me who have died, without being overcome by the feeling of death, of what’s to come. We shall be! she continued in a voice full of the most glorious feeling; but, Werther, shall we find one another again? Know one another again? What do you feel? What do you say?
The Sufferings of Young Werther: A New Translation Page 6
