Introduction Note on the TranslationSelect BibliographyA Chronology of Johann Wolfgang von GoetheTHE SORROWS OF YOUNG WERTHERExplanatory Notes
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BOOK ONE4 May 1771How glad I am to be away! My dear friend, what a thing the human heart is! I leave you, whom I love so much, from whom I was inseparable, and I am glad! You will forgive me, I know. Were not all my other dealings with people expressly designed by Fate to alarm and distress a heart like mine: Poor Leonore!* And yet I was innocent. Could I help it that whilst her charming and heedless sister was amusing me, a real passion was forming in poor Leonore’s heart? And yet—am I wholly innocent? Did I not foster her feelings? Was I not myself delighted by the wholly truthful expressions of her nature, which, though not in the least laughable, so often made us laugh, and did I not—? But what sense is there in berating ourselves? My dear friend, I promise you I will mend my ways and Cease forever chewing over the small evils that Fate put sin our path. I will enjoy the present and be done with the past. Dear friend, you are quite right, there would be less pain among people if they would desist—God knows what makes them do it—from so busily employing their imaginations in remembering past ills rather than in enduring an indifferent present. I‘d be grateful if you would tell my mother that I shall do my very best in her affair and that I‘ll write to her about it just as soon as I can. I’ve spoken to my aunt* and found her not at all the wicked woman our family makes her out to be. She is lively, spirited, and very good-hearted. I explained my mother‘s grievances over the portion of the inheritance being withheld; she told me her grounds ,the reasons, and the conditions on which she would be prepared to release everything, and more than we were asking for.—In brief, I don‘t want to write about it now: tell my mother all will be well. And in this small matter, my friend, I have realized once again that misunderstandings and lethargy can cause more going wrong in the world than cunning and wickedness do. At least, those two are certainly less common. Beyond that, I very much like being here, in this paradisal part of the country solitude is a precious balm for my heart.，and that heart，so often struck cold, is warmed by the youthful season in all abundance. Ever tree, every hedge is a bouquet of blossom. Oh to be a maybug and flit where you like in that sea of scents and get all your nourishment there!The town itself is disagreeable but all around the beauty of nature is beyond expression. This induced the late Count M.* to lay out his garden on one of the numerous hills that in lovely variations cross their courses here, forming the sweetest valleys. The garden is simple and you feel the moment you enter that it was designed not by a scienti?c gardener but by a feeling heart desiring to enjoy itself. In the dilapidated little Summer house that was once his favourite place and is now mine, I have wept more than once in memory of the dead man. I’ll soon be the lord of the garden. After only these few days the gardener is well disposed towards me—and he won’t be the laser by it.10 MayA wonderful cheerfulness has taken complete possession of my soul , like the beautiful spring mornings that I am enjoying so wholeheartedly. I am alone and am glad of my life in this locality made for souls like mine. My dear friend, I am so happy and hate sunk so deep into the feeling of calm existence that my art suffers under it. I couldn’t do a drawing now, not a line of one, and yet was never a greater artist than I am in these moments. When the moisture rises in a mist in the sweet valley all around me and the high sun rests on the surface of the forest’s impenetrable darkness and only occasional beams ?nd their way into the inner sanctum and l lie in the tall grass by the tumbling stream and, thus close to the earth, become aware of the myriad varieties of grasses, and when I feel the seething of the world of small things among the stalks, feel against my heart the countless unfathomable shapes and form: of the tiny creatures that ?it and crawl, and I feel the presence of the Almighty who created us in his image, the wafting breath of the Love that encompasses all, that upholds and sustains us in an eternal joy, oh my friend, at the dawning then before my eyes when the world and the heavens reside in my soul completely like the bodily shape of a beloved woman, then how I yearn and often have said to myself. Oh could you give that some answering expression, only breathe into the page what is so fully and warmly alive in you till it becomes the mirror of your soul just as your soul is the mirror of the unending deity!—Oh my friend!—But it will be the downfall of me, I lie defeated by the force of the splendour of these phenomena.12 MayI can’t tell whether deceiving spirits hover over this locality or whether it is the warm and heavenly imagination of my heart that makes everything around me so paradisal. Just outside the town there is a well*—to which I am in thrall like Melusina* and her sisters.—You descend a small incline and ?nd yourself at a cupola below which perhaps twenty steps go down to where an utterly clear water bubbles up out of marble. The low wall making an enclosure at the top, the tall overshadowing trees all round, the coolness of the place, it draws me and gives me the shivers too. No day goes by without my sitting there an hour. The girls come from the twon to fetch water, the most innocent and the most necessary of tasks that formerly the very daughters of kings used to perform. As I sit there, the patriarchal idea comes to life very vividly in me, how they, the forefathers, would meet and become acquainted and courtships would begin* and how kind the spirits are that hover around wells and springs. Oh, anyone who after a long summer Walk has ever refreshed himself at the coolness of a well must feel as I do.13 MayYou ask should you send me my books?—For heaven’s sake, my dear friend, do no such thing! I have no wish to be directed, encouraged, ?red up, any more. My heart is in quite enough ferment of itself. I need lulling, and I have had that in abundance from my Homer.* How often he has helped me calm the upheaval of my blood, for nothing you have ever encountered is quite so uneven and unsteady as this heart of mine. But I don‘t need to tell you that, since you, my dear friend, have so often had the burden of watching me shift from sorrow to extravagance and from sweet melancholy to harmful passion. But I tend my heart now like a sick child, grant its every wish. Keep that to yourself—there are people who would begrudge it me.15 MayThe common people hereabouts know me now and like me, especially the children. A sad thing struck me. At ?rst when I approached them and asked them in a friendly way about this or that, some thought I had a mind to make fun of them and put me off very coarsely. I did not let that grieve me but I felt very keenly what I have often remarked: people of a certain social standing will always keep themselves coldly at a distance from the lower orders as though they feared any rapprochement might diminish them; and then there are ?ighty characters and evil jokers who make a show of abasing themselves only so that their superiority may be all the more painfully apparent to the poor.I know very well that we are not equal, nor can we be; but in my view anyone who feels it necessary to keep away from the so-called common hard to make them respect him is as much at fault as a coward who keeps himself hidden from his enemy for fear of defeat.The other day I came to the well and found a young maidservant who had put down her pitcher on the bottom step and was looking round for one of her friends to come and help her lift it onto her head. I went down and addressed her.—Shall I help you, young lady?’—She blushed and blushed—‘Oh no, sir,’ she said—‘Come now.’—She adjusted the coil of cloth on her head and I helped her. She thanked me and climbed the steps.
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