THE SORROWS OF YOUNG WERTHER
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
Many of the lovers of Goethe will no doubt say that his longer works, “Wilhelm Meister” or “Elective Affinities,” are his most important productions in the field of fiction; but it always seemed to me that, as a portrait of actual life, his earliest and simplest story is entitled to the highest rank. The first part of “Werther” is one of the most charming bits of idyllic literature extant. The character of the hero appears very clearly and naturally from his letters to his friend. He has a sensitive, impressionable, sympathetic, unaffected, lovable, and simple nature, subject to sudden transitions from joy to wretchedness. He loves children; he is interested in the lowly. To his eyes, at this time, the world and the people in it are all good. His descriptions of natural scenery are filled with a lively and poetic charm, and so, too, are his accounts of those he meets. Most attractive of all is his portrait of Charlotte, when he first sees her, cutting bread for her little brothers and sisters, then at the dance, and afterwards, on almost every page in which her name appears. The incidents of this story, except the concluding portion of it, are taken largely from the author’s own experience, and Goethe, inconstant as he was in his affections, knew not only how to love passionately, but how to describe the object of his passion as she appeared to him; and he has given us here a girl so attractive that we become enamored of the portrait. Her outbursts of merriment, her constant cheerfulness, her deep, sympathetic nature, the delicate home touches in her conduct of the household, all go to make up a character the charm of which is irresistible. But she is engaged to be married. Werther knows this from the time he has first seen her; yet, like a moth, he flits around the candle; and when Albert, her betrothed, arrives,—a character whose cool temper and sound understanding are a sharp antithesis to his own passionate and volatile nature,—life in his eyes suddenly changes. We see this even in the changing views with which he regards Nature. The universe, instead of being the source of universal joy, has grown to be a fearful monster, forever devouring its own offspring. His buoyant spirits become depressed; he broods over the one thought of his love for Charlotte, until he resolves to flee. He takes service under an ambassador, whom he describes as “the most punctilious blockhead under heaven.” He writes with utter contempt of the hollow society by which he is surrounded, with its meaningless gradations; and when at last he inadvertently remains at a reception at which his rank does not entitle him to be present, and is asked to leave, whereupon scandal arises, he resigns his place in disgust.
In the meantime, Albert and Charlotte have become married, but the one great passion of Werther’s life brings him back to her. He recognizes his folly, but he can not resist it. His thoughts circle around her alone, and his imaginations become morbid and feverish. “If Albert should die!” “How much better fitted am I to be her husband!” Her pity for him, and the tenderness with which she treats his hopeless passion, inflame him all the more.
Werther’s letters to his friend are now interrupted, and the editor fills in the gaps with a narrative and observations of his own. Werther becomes gloomy, morose, unbalanced, and finally resolves upon suicide. Charlotte asks him not to visit her, but in spite of this he goes, and reads to her some melancholy passages from Ossian, not very apposite in the facts they describe, but quite in tune with his feelings in their mournful and melancholy character. When he sees her sympathy with his affliction, a passionate outbreak ensues, and she parts from him, declaring that she can never see him again. He wanders distraught at night over the crags, and, returning home, makes his preparations for death. He sends to Albert, asking to borrow his pistols for a journey. Albert directs Charlotte to give them to the messenger, which she does. A long letter from Werther to Charlotte and a simple description of the final catastrophe end the narrative.
There is a great inconsistency between Werther’s character as it appears in the last part of the book and that shown by his earlier letters, an inconsistency which it seems to me is not wholly due to the transformation in his feelings caused by his hopeless love. The last letter which Werther writes to Charlotte is of a most compromising character, telling her that he knows she loves him, and that she is to be his in that curious future world which he pictures to himself, where it would seem that passion rather than virtue is to be rewarded. He insists on describing the harrowing details of his contemplated suicide, reminding her that it is from her hand that he has received the pistol, and throwing upon her the responsibility, all this accompanied by the most tender endearments. Is this love? Is it even a tolerable form of insanity? It may be said that no course of action is unreasonable for a madman, yet to me the final pages seem inartistic. In this part of the book the author evidently had to rely upon his unaided imagination rather than upon the memory of his own experience, and Werther’s frame of mind after he had resolved upon suicide is one which I think Goethe had felt very imperfectly in his own consciousness.
But whatever the incongruities of the story so far as the hero is concerned, it must be said that fiction has rarely, if ever, drawn a character more womanly, in the best sense of the word, than Charlotte. She is one of the most attractive types in literature.