Book One

I have gathered with care everything I could find about poor Werther's story, and I lay it before you, knowing that you will thank me for it. You cannot refuse his spirit and character your admiration and love, nor his fate your tears.

And you, good soul, who feel the same longing as he did, take comfort from his sufferings, and let this little book be your friend, if through fate or your own fault you can find no nearer one.

4 May 1771. How glad I am to be away! Dearest friend, what a thing is the heart of man! To leave you, whom I love so, from whom I was inseparable, and to be glad! I know you will forgive me. Poor Leonore! And yet I was not to blame. Could I help it if a passion grew in her poor heart while her sister's charms amused me? And yet — am I wholly blameless? I will change, dear friend; I will no longer chew over the little troubles that fate sends us, as I always have. I will enjoy the present, and let the past be past.

Tell my mother I will see to her business as well as I can. My aunt is not at all the shrew they made her out to be; she is a lively, warm-hearted woman. As for the rest, I am very well here. Solitude is a precious balm to my heart in this paradise of a country, and spring warms my shivering heart with all its fullness. Every tree, every hedge is a bunch of blossom, and one would like to become a May beetle, to float about in that sea of scents. The town itself is unpleasant; but round it is an indescribable beauty of nature. The late Count M. laid out a garden on one of the hills; it is simple, and you feel at once that it was planned not by a learned gardener but by a feeling heart that wanted to enjoy itself there.

10 May. A wonderful serenity has taken possession of my whole soul, like these sweet spring mornings that I enjoy with all my heart. I am alone, and glad of my life in this place, which was made for souls like mine. When the lovely valley steams around me, and the high sun rests on the surface of the impenetrable dark of my forest, and only a few stray beams steal into the inner sanctuary, and I lie in the tall grass by the falling brook and, close to the earth, a thousand little grasses become remarkable to me; when I feel the swarming of the little world among the stalks, the countless forms of the worms and the gnats, nearer to my heart, and feel the presence of the Almighty, who made us in his image — then, my friend, I often long and think: ah, if you could express it, if you could breathe onto paper what lives in you so full and warm, so that it became the mirror of your soul, as your soul is the mirror of the infinite God! — My friend — but I perish of it; I am overpowered by the splendour of what I see.

12 May. There is a spring outside the town, a spring that holds me like a spell. You go down a little hill and come to a vault, where some twenty steps lead down to the clear water gushing from the marble rock. Not a day passes but I sit there an hour. And the girls come from the town to fetch water, the most innocent and the most necessary of tasks, which once the daughters of kings performed themselves. When I sit there, the old patriarchal life comes alive around me, how they made friends and courted at the well.

13 May. You ask whether you should send me my books. For heaven's sake, dear friend, keep them away from me! I don't want to be guided, roused and spurred on any more; this heart seethes enough by itself. I need a cradle song, and I have found it in abundance in my Homer. How often I lull my rebellious blood to rest! For you have never seen anything so unsteady, so restless, as this heart. Indeed, I treat my poor heart like a sick child; it gets its every wish. Don't tell anyone.

15 May. The common people here know me already and love me, especially the children. A young servant girl had set her jug on the lowest step of the spring and was looking round for a companion to help her lift it onto her head. I went down and looked at her. "Shall I help you, miss?" She blushed all over. "Oh, sir!" — "No ceremony." She settled her head-ring, and I helped her. She thanked me and went up the steps.

17 May. I have made all sorts of acquaintances, but not yet found company. What people are here, I can't tell you. A uniform kind of thing, the human race. Most of them spend the greater part of their time working to live, and the little freedom that is left them frightens them so much that they look for any means to be rid of it. Oh, the destiny of man!

I have met a young man named V., an open, good-hearted fellow, fresh from the university, who thinks he knows a great deal; he told me he had read all of Batteux, Wood, de Piles and Winckelmann. And I have met an excellent man, the Amtmann, the prince's steward, a frank, true-hearted man. They say it does one's soul good to see him among his children, of whom he has nine; they make a great deal of his eldest daughter. He has invited me to visit him, and I shall do so soon. He lives in one of the prince's hunting lodges, an hour and a half from here; he moved there after his wife's death, since staying in the town and in the official house was too painful.

22 May. That the life of man is only a dream has occurred to many people before me, and the feeling goes with me everywhere. When I see the narrow limits within which our active and inquiring powers are confined; when I see how all our activity is aimed at satisfying needs which have no purpose but to prolong our wretched existence — then I fall silent, Wilhelm. I go back into myself and find a world! The happiest are those who, like children, live from one day to the next. And yet, however confined he is, a man always keeps in his heart the sweet feeling of freedom: that he can leave this prison whenever he wishes.

26 May. About an hour from the town lies a village called Wahlheim. It is very pleasantly placed on a hill, and in front of the inn stand two lime trees whose spreading branches cover the little square before the church. I had a table and a chair brought out, and drank my coffee there, and read my Homer. The first time I came there, on a fine afternoon, the square was empty; only a boy of about four sat on the ground, holding a child of about six months between his feet. I sat down on a plough opposite and drew the two brothers with great pleasure. I added the fence nearby, a barn door and a few broken cartwheels, just as they stood, and after an hour I had a well-arranged, very interesting drawing without adding the least thing of my own. This strengthens my resolve to keep to nature alone. Nature alone is inexhaustibly rich, and she alone forms the great artist. Much can be said for rules, much as for the laws of society. But rules destroy the true feeling of nature. It is like love. A young man hangs on a girl, spends every hour of the day with her, squanders his powers and his fortune to show her that he gives himself up to her. Then comes a philistine, a man in a public office, and says to him: "My fine young gentleman, to love is human, but you must love in moderation!" — and the love is finished, and if the young man is an artist, so is his art.

27 May. The mother of the two children came at last, with a basket on her arm: "Philipp, you're a good boy!" She told me her eldest, Hans, had gone to town with her; and her husband had gone to Switzerland to fetch an inheritance from a cousin. I gave each of the children a kreuzer, and one for the youngest, for a roll to his soup. Since then I am often out there. The children know me; they get sugar when I take my coffee, and share my bread and butter and my sour milk in the evening.

30 May. What I said lately about painting is true of poetry too. Today I saw a scene which, if it were simply written down, would make the loveliest idyll in the world. A young farmhand came out of a house, and I spoke to him, and he told me he was in the service of a widow, and he spoke of her with such love and such devotion that I could see he loved her with his whole heart. She was no longer young, he said, and her first husband had treated her badly, and she would not marry again; but how he hoped she would choose him, so that he might make her forget her first husband's faults! Never in my life have I seen such pure desire, such ardent longing. I shall not try to see her; I would rather see her through the eyes of her lover.

16 June. Why don't I write to you? You ask that, you who are a learned man? You should guess that I am well, and indeed — in short, I have met someone who touches my heart. I have — I don't know.

I had to go to a country ball, and I offered to take a girl and her aunt in my carriage, and on the way we were to fetch Charlotte S., the Amtmann's daughter. "You'll meet a beautiful girl," said my companion. "Take care you don't fall in love; she's promised already, to a very good man, who is away just now settling his affairs."

I got out of the carriage at the lodge, and a maid asked me to wait a moment. I went across the courtyard into the house, and in the hall I saw the most charming scene I have ever beheld. Six children, from eleven to two years old, were swarming round a girl of medium height, beautifully made, in a simple white dress with pale red ribbons at the arms and breast. She was holding a loaf of black bread and cutting a slice for each of the little ones, in proportion to their age and appetite, and giving it with such kindness, and each one called out its "Thank you!" so naturally, holding up its little hands before the slice was even cut. "Forgive me," she said, "for making you come in, and the ladies wait. While I was dressing I forgot to give the children their supper, and they won't have their bread cut by anyone but me."

All the way to the ball we talked, and I hardly knew what I said; I was so absorbed in her black eyes. At the dance I danced the minuet with her, and then a waltz, and then the German dance, and we flew round and round like the spheres. Never have I moved so lightly. I was no longer a man. To have the loveliest creature in my arms and fly round with her like the wind, till everything round us vanished — and I swore to myself that a girl I loved, and had a claim on, should never waltz with anyone but me, if I were to die for it.

Then lightning began to flash over the hills, and the thunder drowned the music; the women were frightened, and Lotte took us into a room, and made us play a counting game, and boxed the ears of whoever made a mistake; and I got two hard ones, which pleased me more than I can say. Afterwards we stood at the window. The storm was moving away, a refreshing rain was falling on the land, and the sweetest scent rose up to us in the warm air. She stood leaning on her elbow, looking out over the country; she looked up at the sky and at me, and I saw her eyes full of tears, and she laid her hand on mine and said: "Klopstock!" I knew at once the glorious ode she was thinking of, and was lost in the flood of feelings that one word poured over me. I could not bear it; I bent over her hand and kissed it with the most joyful tears. And looked into her eyes again. Noble poet! If you had seen your apotheosis in that look!

19 June. Where I left off, I don't know; I only know that it was two in the morning when I went to bed. We drove home at sunrise; the others slept; she asked me whether I wouldn't like to sleep too. "As long as I see those eyes open," I said, "there's no danger." Since then sun, moon and stars may go their way as they please; I know neither day nor night, and the whole world fades away around me.

21 June. I live such happy days as God keeps for his saints; and whatever becomes of me, I can't say that I haven't tasted joy, the purest joy of life. You know Wahlheim; I have settled there entirely. From there it is only half an hour to Lotte. When I go out to Wahlheim at sunrise, pick my peas in the inn garden myself, and sit down to shell them and read my Homer, and choose a pot in the little kitchen and cut my butter and put my peas on the fire, then I feel so vividly how the suitors of Penelope slaughtered and roasted their oxen and swine.

29 June. The day before yesterday the doctor from the town came out to the Amtmann's and found me on the floor among Lotte's brothers and sisters, some of them clambering over me and some teasing me, while I tickled them and made a great noise. The doctor, a very dogmatic puppet who arranges the frills of his cuffs as he talks, found this beneath the dignity of a sensible man. Yes, dear Wilhelm, children are nearer my heart than anything on earth. When I watch them, and see in the little creatures the seeds of all the virtues and powers they will one day need — I always repeat the golden words of the teacher of mankind: "Except ye become as one of these!" And yet, my dear friend, we treat them, who are our equals and whom we ought to take as our models, as our subjects.

1 July. What Lotte must be to a sick person I feel in my own poor heart. She is to spend some days in town with a good woman who, the doctors say, is near her end. Last week we visited the pastor of St —, a village an hour away in the mountains. We found the good old man on a bench at his door under a great walnut tree; Lotte sat down by him, and took his youngest grandchild in her lap, and talked so well that he grew quite young. His daughter Friederike came, with Mr Schmidt, her admirer, a sulky fellow who would not join in our talk. And when the conversation turned on bad temper, I broke out against it with all my heart: we complain that our good days are few and our bad days many, and mostly it is our own fault; ill humour is a vice, which wounds those around us and robs them of their joy. Lotte gave me a look; and I came near to tears, thinking of a deathbed I once sat by.

6 July. She is still with her dying friend, and still the same, always the same helpful, lovely creature, who softens pain and makes people happy wherever she looks. In the evening she went for a walk with Marianne and little Malchen. I knew it and met them, and we went to the spring. Lotte sat down on the wall, and we stood before her. Malchen came up the steps with a glass of water, and Lotte gave her a kiss; the child, who believed that the spring water would wash away the harm of the kiss, scrubbed her cheeks at the spring with both hands. I stood and watched the child with reverence, as if I were watching a baptism. That evening I could not keep myself from telling it to a man who found it superstitious; and I thought: we should treat children as God treats us.

8 July. What a child one is! How one hungers for a look! We had been at Wahlheim; the ladies drove away, and I looked into Lotte's black eyes; and she did not look at me. And then, as the carriage went, her head turned, and she looked back. At me? Dear friend, I am wavering. Perhaps she looked round at me.

13 July. No, I am not deceiving myself. I read in her black eyes a true sympathy for me and for my fate. Yes, I feel it, and I may trust my heart in this: she loves me! And when she speaks of her betrothed, with such warmth, such love, then I am like a man who has been robbed of all his honours and his rank, and whose sword has been taken from him.

16 July. Oh, how it runs through all my veins when my finger accidentally touches hers, when our feet meet under the table! I draw back as from fire, and a secret force draws me on again. She plays a melody on the piano with the strength of an angel, so simple and so full of spirit. It is her favourite song, and the very first note of it takes away all my pain, my confusion and my fancies.

18 July. Wilhelm, what is the world to our hearts without love? A magic lantern without the light. I could not go to Lotte today, so I sent my servant to her, just to have someone near me who had been near her today.

20 July. I shall not go with the envoy, as you and my mother wish. I do not like subordination, and the man is disagreeable besides. Whether a man counts peas or lentils is all one in the end; and whoever drudges for money or honour without his own passion or need driving him is always a fool.

24 July. I have never been so happy, and never felt nature more fully; and yet my powers of expression are so weak, everything swims and wavers before my soul so, that I cannot hold an outline. Three times I have begun Lotte's portrait, and three times disgraced myself. So I have cut her silhouette, and that must do.

26 July. I have often resolved not to see her so often. If only one could keep such a resolve! Every day I give in to the temptation, and promise myself: tomorrow you will stay away; and when tomorrow comes, I find an irresistible reason, and before I know it I am with her. My grandmother had a story about the magnetic mountain: ships that came too near it lost their iron, the nails flew to the mountain, and the poor sailors were wrecked among the falling planks.

30 July. Albert has come, and I shall go. If he were the best and noblest of men and I in every respect beneath him, I could not bear to see him in possession of so much perfection. Possession! Enough, Wilhelm; the betrothed is here. A good, kind man, whom one cannot help liking. Fortunately I was not there to see her greet him; it would have torn my heart. And he is so considerate: he has never once kissed Lotte in my presence. God reward him! He esteems me, and that pleases me. Whatever I am, my joy in being with Lotte is gone. Is this folly or blindness? What need is there for names? The thing speaks for itself. I knew everything I know now before Albert came; I knew I had no claim on her, and made none — and now I make big eyes because the other really comes and takes the girl away from me.

8 August. Forgive me, dear Wilhelm. You say: either you have hope of Lotte, or you have none. If you have, try to win her; if not, pull yourself together and shake off a wretched feeling that must consume your strength. Well said; and easily said. There are few either-ors in the world; feelings and actions shade into each other as many ways as there are colours between an aquiline nose and a snub nose. Can you ask a man who is slowly wasting away under a lingering disease to put an end to his torment at once with a dagger? Does not the disease that eats away his strength take away the courage to free himself?

12 August. Albert is truly the best man under heaven. I went to say goodbye to him, for I meant to ride into the mountains, and I saw his pistols. "Lend me your pistols for the journey." "Gladly," he said, "if you'll take the trouble to load them; they hang there only for form." He told me how a servant had once been playing with one and it had gone off, with the ramrod still in it, and shot through the thumb of a maid. Since then he kept them unloaded.

I took one of the pistols and held the muzzle against my forehead, over my right eye. "Ugh!" said Albert, and pulled it down. "What does that mean?" "It's not loaded," I said. "Even so. I can't imagine how a man can be so foolish as to shoot himself; the very thought revolts me."

"Why must you people," I cried, "always say: this is foolish, this is wise, this is good, this is bad? Have you looked into the inner circumstances of an act? Do you know why it happened, why it had to happen?" Human nature, I said, has its limits: it can bear joy, sorrow, pain up to a certain point, and when that point is passed, it is destroyed. The question is not whether a man is weak or strong, but whether he can endure the measure of his suffering; and it is as absurd to call a man a coward who takes his own life as to call a man a coward who dies of a malignant fever. And I told him of a girl who had been found in the river: a good young creature, who knew nothing of the world but her week's work and her Sunday finery; who met a man and gave him her whole heart, and was abandoned; and who stood before the abyss, with the whole world gone, and threw herself in to drown her pain in death. "That is the story of many a man," I said. Albert did not understand me, and we parted without understanding each other.

15 August. Nothing in the world makes a man so necessary as love. I feel that Lotte would lose me unwillingly. Yesterday I told the children a fairy tale, and they made me tell it again; and when I changed a detail, they protested: "Last time it was different." So I have learned that an author does his book harm if he alters a story in a second edition, however much better it becomes poetically. The first impression finds us willing, and whoever tries to rub it out again is lost.

18 August. Must it be so, that what makes a man happy should become the source of his misery? The full, warm feeling of my heart for living nature, which flooded me with so much joy and made the world round me a paradise, has become an unbearable tormentor, a demon that pursues me everywhere. Heaven and earth and all their weaving forces round me: I see nothing but an eternally devouring, eternally chewing monster.

21 August. In vain I stretch out my arms for her in the morning, when I wake from troubled dreams; in vain I seek her at night in my bed, when a happy, innocent dream has deceived me that I sat beside her in the meadow and held her hand and covered it with kisses. Ah, when I feel for her, half drunk with sleep, and wake — a stream of tears breaks from my oppressed heart, and I weep without comfort.

22 August. It is a misfortune, Wilhelm; my powers are all turned to a restless idleness. I cannot be idle, and yet cannot do anything. I have no imagination any more, no feeling for nature, and books disgust me. Sometimes I wish I were a labourer, so that in the morning I had something to look forward to.

28 August. It is my birthday, and early this morning I received a little parcel from Albert. As soon as I opened it I saw one of the pink ribbons Lotte wore when I first met her, which I had begged her for several times since. And with it two little books, the small Wetstein Homer, an edition I had often wished for, so as not to drag the big one about on my walks. See how they anticipate my wishes! I kiss the ribbon a thousand times.

30 August. Unhappy man! Are you not a fool? Are you not deceiving yourself? What is this endless raging passion? I have no prayers left but to her. I sit with her two or three hours and feast on her figure, her bearing, the heavenly expression of her words, and gradually all my senses are strained to the utmost; it goes dark before my eyes; and then I go out into the fields at night, and climb a steep mountain, and force my way through pathless woods, and tear myself on the thorns, and feel better. Wilhelm, I see no end to this misery but the grave.

3 September. I must go away. Thank you, Wilhelm, for steadying my wavering resolve. For a fortnight I have been thinking of leaving her. I must go. She is in town again with a friend. And Albert — and — I must go!

10 September. What a night, Wilhelm! Now I can bear anything. I shall not see her again. I sat in the garden, in the avenue of chestnuts, where I had so often watched the sun set, and they came, Lotte and Albert, and we sat together in the moonlight. And Lotte spoke of the dead: "We shall see each other again," she said; "shall we know one another?" And she spoke of her mother, who had died, and of how she had promised her at her deathbed to be a mother to the children; and of how her mother had blessed Albert and her. I took her hand and wet it with tears. "Lotte, God's blessing is upon you, and your mother's spirit!" She rose, and they went down the avenue. "We shall see each other again," she said, "we shall find each other again, in whatever form." I stood and watched them go in the moonlight, and threw myself on the ground and wept; and then I saw her white dress glimmering in the shade of the tall limes by the garden gate; I stretched out my arms, and it vanished.