Lotte, I said, as I took her hand in mine and as my eyes filled with tears, we shall see each other again! Here and there we shall see each other again!—I could not continue—Wilhelm, did she have to ask me that just when my heart was full of this fearful departure! And if the dear departed know about us, she continued, if they sense, when all is well with us, that we think of them with warm love? Oh! The figure of my mother forever hovers nearby when I sit in the quiet of an evening amid her children, amid my children, and they are gathered around me as they were gathered around her. Then, when I look heavenward with a tear of longing and wish that she could look in on us for a moment and see how I keep the promise I made her at the hour of her death: to be the mother of her children. With what emotion I exclaim: Forgive me, dearest, if I am not to them what you were to them. Ah! I do everything I can; they are clothed, fed, and, ah, what is more, cared for and loved. If you could see the harmony between us, dear saint! with the most ardent thanks you would glorify God whom you asked for the welfare of your children with your last, most bitter tears.
She said that! Oh, Wilhelm, who can repeat what she said! How can the cold, dead letter represent this divine blossoming of the spirit! Albert gently interrupted her: This affects you too strongly, dear Lotte! I know that your soul is deeply attached to these ideas, but I beg of you.—Oh, Albert, she said, I know you haven’t forgotten the evenings when all of us sat at the little round table when Papa was traveling and we had put the little ones to bed. Often you had a good book, and you so rarely got to read anything—wasn’t the company of this glorious soul greater than anything else? This beautiful, gentle, cheerful woman, always busy! God knows the tears with which I so often threw myself on the bed before Him: that He make me be like her.
Lotte! I cried, as I threw myself before her, took her hand, and moistened it with a thousand tears, Lotte! God’s blessing rests upon you, and so does your mother’s spirit!—If you had known her, she said, as she squeezed my hand—she was worth your knowing her!—I thought I would faint. Never before had a grander, prouder sentence been uttered about me—and she continued: and this woman had to die in her prime, when her youngest son was not yet six months old! Her illness was not a long one; she was quiet, resigned, in pain only for her children, especially the little one. As the end approached, she said to me: Bring them to me, and I brought them in, the little ones, who did not understand, and the older ones, who were beside themselves, how they stood around her bed, and how she lifted her hands and prayed over them and she kissed them one by one and she sent them away and said to me: Be their mother!—I gave her my hand as a pledge.—You promise a lot, my daughter, she said, a mother’s heart and a mother’s eye. I have often seen by your tears of gratitude that you feel what these things mean. Have them for your brothers and sisters, and for your father have the loyalty and obedience of a wife. You will comfort him.—She asked for him, he had gone out to conceal from us the unbearable grief that he felt, the man was utterly broken.
Albert, you were in the room. She heard footsteps and inquired and asked that you come to her, and how she looked at you and me, with her comforted, calm gaze, seeing that we were happy, would be happy together.—Albert threw his arms around her neck and kissed her and cried: We are! We shall be!—Albert, the calm one, had completely lost his composure, and I was no longer conscious of myself.
Werther, she began, that this woman should have passed away! God! when I think sometimes how we allow the loveliest thing in life to be carried off, and no one feels that so keenly as the children, who went on bewailing that the Black Men had carried Mama off.
She stood, and I was aroused and shaken, remained seated, and held her hand.—We should leave, she said, it’s time.—She wanted to pull her hand back, and I grasped it more tightly.—We will meet again, I cried, we will find each other, we will know each other among all the shapes. I’m going, I continued, I go willingly, and yet, although I should have said forever, I could not bear it. Farewell, Lotte! Farewell, Albert! We will meet again.—Tomorrow, I think, she replied jokingly.—I felt that tomorrow! Oh, she did not know, when she took her hand from mine.—They went out along the tree-lined avenue, I stood, gazed after them in the moonlight, and threw myself on the ground and wept and wept and jumped up and ran out onto the terrace and still saw below in the shadow of the tall linden trees her white dress shimmering at the garden door, I stretched out my arms, and it vanished.
BOOK TWO
OCTOBER 20, 1771
WE ARRIVED yesterday. The ambassador is indisposed and so will keep to his quarters for several days. If he weren’t so disagreeable, everything would be well. I see, I see that fate has some hard tests in store for me. But be of good cheer! A light heart can put up with anything! A light heart? It makes me laugh, the way this word slips from my pen. Oh, a touch more lightheartedness would make me the happiest man under the sun. What! There, where others, with their bit of vigor and talent, swagger around before me, complacent and self-satisfied—there, am I to doubt my vigor, my gifts? Dear God, Who endows me with all I have, why didn’t You withhold half and give me self-confidence and contentment? Patience! Patience! It will get better. Because I tell you, dear friend, you’re right. Ever since I’ve been knocking around every day among these people and see what they do and how they go about it, I hold myself in much higher regard. Certainly, since we are so constituted as to compare everything with ourselves and ourselves with everything, our happiness or misery lies in the objects with which we are associated, and so there’s nothing more dangerous than solitude. Our imagination, urged by its nature to elevate itself, nourished by the visionary images of poetry, conjures up a series of beings of whom we are the meanest, and everything outside ourselves seems more splendid, everyone else more accomplished. And that happens quite naturally. So often we feel that we lack so much, and precisely what we lack often seems to us to be possessed by someone else, to whom we then also attribute everything that we possess, and on top of that a certain idealized contentment. In this way, this fortunate person is completely perfect, the creature of our own making.
On the other hand, if with all our weakness and effort we simply continue to work, we often find that, with all our delaying and tacking, we make better headway than others do with their sailing and rowing—and—it is indeed a true sense of self to keep up with others or actually run ahead of them.
NOVEMBER 26
I’m beginning to feel reasonably well here, as far as that goes. The best part of it is that there is enough to do; and then the variety of people, all sorts of new figures, stage a colorful spectacle for my soul. I have met Count C., a man I cannot help but admire more and more each day, a broad-minded, powerful intellect who, even though he has so comprehensive a view, is not coldhearted; whose company radiates so much capacity for friendship and love. He took a well-meaning interest in me when I was sent to him on some business, and at our first words he realized that we understood one another, that he could speak with me as he could not speak with everyone. Nor can I praise his frank behavior toward me highly enough. There is no joy in the world so true or heartwarming as seeing a great soul opening itself to one.
DECEMBER 24
The ambassador is causing me a great deal of annoyance, I saw it coming. He is the most exacting fool in the world; one step at a time and as fussy as a maiden aunt; a man who is never satisfied with himself and whom, therefore, it is impossible to please. I like to work quickly, and however it comes out, that’s how it stands; but then he’s capable of returning a document to me and saying—It’s good, but go over it again, you can always find a better word, a nicer expression.—That raises my hackles. Not a single “and” or any other little conjunction may be omitted, and he is a mortal enemy of the inverted word order that sometimes escapes me; if you don’t crank out a complex sentence according to the traditional melody, he understands nothing of what’s in it. It is agony to have to deal with such a man.
Count C.’s confidence is still the
one thing that makes up for it. The other day he told me quite frankly how dissatisfied he is with the ambassador’s slowness and pettifoggery. Such persons make life difficult for themselves and others; and yet, he said, one must resign oneself to it like the traveler who must climb over a mountain; of course, if the mountain were not there, the road would be much easier and shorter; but in the last resort it is there, and one must get over it!—
The old man certainly senses the Count’s preference for me over him; this annoys him, and he seizes every opportunity to say mean things about the Count to me. I contradict him, of course, only making matters worse. Yesterday he really vexed me with a remark that was aimed at me as well: The Count was quite good at worldly affairs, such work comes easily to him, and he writes well, but like all dilettantes, he lacks genuine erudition. With this he made a face as much as to say: Did you feel the thrust? But it did not have the desired effect on me; I despise a man who can think and behave like that. I held my own and fought back quite vehemently. I said the Count was a man whom one had to respect for his character as well as his knowledge. I have not known anyone, I said, who had succeeded so well in enlarging his mind and extending it over countless subjects and yet keeping an aptitude for ordinary life.—This was all Greek to his small brain, and I took my leave so as not to choke on even more gall over such nonsense.
And it is all your fault—you people who talked me into this yoke and made such a song and dance about being active. Activity! If the man who plants potatoes and rides to town to sell his grain doesn’t do more than I do, I’ll spend another ten years slaving away in the galleys to which I am now shackled.
And the perfect misery, the boredom among these vile people on view here, cheek by jowl! Their thirst for rank, how they are ever on the alert, looking to gain the advantage of one tiny step ahead of the other; the most miserable, pitiable passions, all nakedly on display. There is a woman, for example, who tells everyone about her noble rank and her country, so that every stranger must think: What a fool, who considers herself wonderful for her little bit of nobility and the importance of her country.—But it is much worse: this same woman is from around here, the daughter of a local magistrate’s clerk.—You see, I can’t comprehend a breed of humanity that has so little sense as to disgrace itself so stupidly.
Of course, dear friend, I do notice more and more every day how foolish it is to judge others by oneself. And because I am so preoccupied with myself and this heart of mine is so stormy—alas, I’ll gladly let the others go their own way, if only they would let me go mine.
What irritates me most are the disastrous social conditions. Of course, I know as well as anyone how necessary class distinctions are, how many advantages I myself derive from them: but they should not stand in my way just where I might still savor a little joy, a glimmer of happiness on earth. Recently, on a walk, I met a Fräulein von B., an adorable creature who has retained a great deal of naturalness in the midst of this rigid life. We were both pleased with our conversation, and as we were parting, I asked for permission to call on her. She agreed so straightforwardly that I could hardly wait for a suitable moment to pay my visit. She is not from here and lives with an aunt. I did not like the expression on the old woman’s face. I was very attentive to her, my remarks were mainly addressed to her, and in less than half an hour I had essentially figured out what the young lady herself confessed to me subsequently: that in her old age her dear aunt lacked everything, had no respectable income, no intellect, and no support other than her ancestry, no security other than the social class in which she barricaded herself, and no pleasure other than looking down from her upper landing over the heads of the bourgeoisie. She is supposed to have been beautiful in her youth but squandered her life, first by tormenting many a poor fellow with her whims, and in her more mature years by bowing down obediently to an elderly officer, who for such a reward and a passable income spent his bronze age with her and died. Now in her iron age she finds herself alone and would not even be noticed if her niece were not so agreeable.
JANUARY 8, 1772
What sort of people are these, whose whole soul rests on ceremony, whose thoughts and struggles are bent on shoving themselves year after year one seat higher up at the table! And it is not as if they had nothing else to do: no, on the contrary, work piles up precisely because petty annoyances prevent them from attending to important matters. Last week there were quarrels during the sleigh ride, and all the fun was ruined.
Those fools, who do not see that it is not the position that matters and that the person who has the top position so rarely plays the top role! How many kings are ruled by their ministers, how many ministers by their secretaries! And who, then, is first? The one, it seems to me, who can see through the others and who has enough power or cunning to harness their strengths and passions to the execution of his plans.
JANUARY 20
I must write to you, dear Lotte, here in the taproom of a lowly peasant tavern, where I’ve taken refuge from a heavy storm. For as long as I roamed around the dreary hick town of D——, among strangers, people who are entirely strangers to my heart, I have not had a moment, not one, in which my heart urged me to write to you; and now, in this hovel, in this solitude, in this confinement, with snow and hailstones beating against the windowpane, here you were my first thought. As I came in, I was overcome with your image, the memory of you, oh Lotte! so sacred, so warm! Good God! The first happy moment once again.
If you could see me, my dearest, in this tumult of distractions! How parched my senses are becoming! Not One moment of fullness of the heart, not One blessed hour! nothing! nothing! I stand as if in front of a peep show and see the manikins and tiny horses jerk around in front of me, and I often ask myself whether it is not an optical illusion. I play along, or rather, I am played like a marionette, and sometimes I take my neighbor’s wooden hand and shrink back with a shudder. At night I resolve to enjoy the sunrise, and I do not get out of bed; during the day I hope to enjoy the moonlight, and I stay in my room. I do not really know why I get up and why I go to bed.
The leaven that used to set my life in motion is missing; the charm that kept my spirits up in the depths of the night, that woke me from my sleep in the morning is gone.
Here I’ve found a single female being, a Fräulein von B., she is like you, dear Lotte, if anyone can be like you. Oh my! you’ll say, the fellow is resorting to pretty compliments! That’s not entirely untrue. For some time I have been very gallant because I cannot be anything else, I’m very witty, and the ladies say: No one could ever hand out praise as elegantly as I (or tell lies, they add, for without doing so, it cannot be done, don’t you agree?). But I wanted to talk about Fräulein B. She has a great soul, which shines out from her blue eyes. Her social class is a burden to her, one that gratifies none of her heart’s desires. She longs to be away from the hubbub, and for many an hour we fantasize about rustic scenes of unalloyed bliss; oh! and about you! How often must she pay homage to you; must not, does so willingly, is so glad to hear about you, loves you.—
Oh, were I sitting at your feet in that dear, intimate little room, and the little dears were romping around me, and if they grew too noisy for you, I would gather them around me and quiet them with a spine-chilling fairy tale.
The sun is setting gloriously over a countryside gleaming with snow, the storm has passed, and I—have to lock myself in my cage again.—Adieu! Is Albert with you? And how—? God forgive me this question!
FEBRUARY 8
For the past week we have had the most abominable weather, and it is good for me. Because for as long as I’ve been here, there has not been one beautiful day in the sky that someone hasn’t spoiled or ruined for me. If now it rains hard and blows and freezes and thaws—ha! I think, it can’t be any worse in the house than it is outside, or vice versa, and so all is well. If the sun rises in the morning and promises a fine day, I can never resist crying out: There they have another gift from heaven that they can ruin for each other
! There is nothing that they do not ruin for each other. Health, reputation, joy, recreation! And for the most part out of silliness, lack of understanding, and narrow-mindedness, and, to hear them tell it, with the best of intentions. Sometimes I feel like falling on my knees and begging them not to tear themselves to pieces in such fury.
FEBRUARY 17
I’m afraid that my ambassador and I will not be able to stand each other much longer. The man is completely intolerable. His way of working and waging business is so ridiculous that I can’t help contradicting him and often doing the thing according to my lights and in my fashion, which then, of course, he cannot accept. For this reason he has recently complained about me at the Court, and the Minister has reprimanded me, gently, to be sure, but it was still a reprimand, and I was on the point of tendering my resignation when I received a private letter† from him, a letter to which I bowed down and whose lofty, noble, wise intelligence I worshiped. How he rebukes my excessive sensitivity, how, of course, he ascribes my high-minded ideas about efficiency, influencing others, and succeeding in business to youthful high spirits; and though he honors them and has no wish to eradicate them, he seeks only to tone them down and to guide them to where they can truly come into play, have the most powerful effect. And so I have been strengthened for the past eight days and become one with myself. Calmness of soul is a splendid thing and a joy in itself. Dear friend, if only the jewel were not every bit as fragile as it is beautiful and precious.
The Sufferings of Young Werther: A New Translation Page 7
