The Editor to the Reader

How I wish that enough testimony in our friend’s own hand had come down to us from his last remarkable days that I would not have to interrupt the sequence of the letters he left behind with a narrative.

I have made it my business to gather exact accounts from the mouths of those who could be well informed about his story; it is simple, and all the accounts of it agree with one another except in a few small details; only about the dispositions of the persons involved do opinions differ and judgments divide.

What remains for us but to relate conscientiously what we have been able to learn by repeated effort, to insert the letters the departed left behind, and not to think lightly of the smallest scrap of paper found; especially since it is so hard to discover the most personal, true motives of even a single action when it takes place among people who are not of the common sort.

Dejection and listlessness had struck ever deeper root in Werther’s soul, had wound themselves ever more tightly together, and had gradually taken possession of his whole being. The harmony of his mind was completely destroyed; an inner heat and violence, which churned all the powers of his nature together, produced the most adverse effects and in the end left him only an exhaustion out of which he struggled upward still more anxiously than he had fought with all his ills before. The anguish of his heart consumed the other powers of his mind, his liveliness, his acuteness; he became a sad companion, ever more unhappy, and ever more unjust the unhappier he became. At least that is what Albert’s friends say; they maintain that Werther could not judge rightly a pure, calm man who had now come into a long-desired happiness, nor his conduct in seeking to keep this happiness for the future as well, he who, as it were, used up his whole fortune every day, only to suffer and go in want in the evening. Albert, they say, had not changed in so short a time; he was still the same man whom Werther had known from the beginning and so esteemed and honored. He loved Lotte above everything; he was proud of her and wished her to be acknowledged by everyone as the most glorious of creatures. Could he be blamed, then, if he wished to avert every appearance of suspicion, if at that moment he had no desire to share this precious possession with anyone, even in the most innocent way? They admit that Albert often left his wife’s room when Werther was with her, but not out of hatred or dislike for his friend, only because he had felt that his friend was oppressed by his presence.

Lotte’s father had been taken with an ailment that kept him indoors; he sent her his carriage, and she drove out to him. It was a fine winter day; the first snow had fallen heavily and covered the whole countryside.

Werther followed her the next morning, so that, if Albert did not come to fetch her, he could escort her back to town.

The clear weather could do little for his gloomy spirits; a dull weight lay on his soul, the sad images had fixed themselves in him, and his mind knew no movement but from one painful thought to the next.

Since he lived in endless discord with himself, the state of others too seemed to him only the more precarious and confused; he believed he had disturbed the fine relationship between Albert and his wife, and he reproached himself for it, and with these reproaches a secret resentment against the husband was mingled.

His thoughts turned to this subject on the way as well. “Yes, yes,” he said to himself, secretly gnashing his teeth, “that is the intimate, friendly, tender companionship that shares in everything, the calm, lasting faithfulness! It’s satiety, and indifference! Doesn’t every wretched piece of business draw him more than his dear, precious wife? Does he know how to value his happiness? Does he know how to respect her as she deserves? He has her; well and good, he has her—I know that, as I know other things too; I think I am used to the thought; it will drive me mad yet, it will kill me yet—and has his friendship for me held up? Doesn’t he already see in my attachment to Lotte an encroachment on his rights, in my attentions to her a silent reproach? I know it well, I feel it: he doesn’t like to see me, he wishes me gone, my presence is a burden to him.”

Often he checked his rapid pace, often he stood still and seemed about to turn back; but he kept setting his course forward again, and with these thoughts and these conversations with himself he finally arrived, almost against his will, at the hunting lodge.

He went in at the door and asked for the old man and for Lotte, and found the house in some commotion. The eldest boy told him that over in Wahlheim there had been a misfortune; a farmer had been struck dead!—This made no further impression on him.—He went into the room and found Lotte trying to talk the old man out of going over, in spite of his illness, to investigate the deed on the spot. The culprit was still unknown; the dead man had been found that morning in front of the house door; there were suspicions: the murdered man was the hired man of a widow who had previously had another in her service, and he had left the house on bad terms.

When Werther heard this, he started up violently.—“Is it possible!” he cried. “I must go over there; I can’t rest a moment.”—He hurried off toward Wahlheim; every memory came alive in him, and he did not doubt for a moment that the deed had been done by the man he had talked with so often, who had become so dear to him.

Since he had to pass through the lindens to reach the tavern where they had laid the body, he was horrified at the place he had once loved so much. That threshold on which the neighbors’ children had so often played was smeared with blood. Love and faithfulness, the finest human feelings, had turned into violence and murder. The strong trees stood leafless and white with hoarfrost; the lovely hedges that arched over the low churchyard wall were bare, and the gravestones, covered with snow, showed through the gaps.

As he approached the tavern, in front of which the whole village had gathered, a shout suddenly went up. A troop of armed men could be seen in the distance, and everyone cried that the culprit was being brought in. Werther looked and was not long in doubt. Yes, it was the farmhand who had loved that widow so much, whom he had met some time before, going about with that silent fury, that secret despair.

“What have you done, unhappy man!” Werther cried, going straight up to the prisoner.—The man looked at him quietly, said nothing, and at last replied quite calmly, “No one will have her; she will have no one.”—They took the prisoner into the tavern, and Werther hurried away.

By this terrible, violent shock everything in his being had been shaken together. For a moment he was torn out of his grief, his ill humor, his indifferent resignation; sympathy took irresistible hold of him, and an unspeakable desire seized him to save the man. He felt him to be so unhappy, he found him, even as a criminal, so innocent, he put himself so deeply into his situation, that he was sure he could convince others of it as well. Already he wished he could speak for him; already the liveliest plea was crowding to his lips; he hurried to the hunting lodge and on the way could not keep from speaking aloud, half under his breath, everything he meant to put to the magistrate.

When he came into the room, he found Albert there, and this put him out for a moment; but he soon collected himself and set out his views to the magistrate with fire. The magistrate shook his head several times, and although Werther brought forward with the greatest liveliness, passion, and truth everything that one human being can say in excuse of another, the magistrate, as may easily be imagined, was not moved by it. On the contrary, he did not let our friend finish, contradicted him heatedly, and rebuked him for taking a treacherous murderer under his protection; he showed him that in this way every law would be abolished, all the security of the state destroyed; he added, too, that in such a matter he could do nothing without taking the gravest responsibility on himself; everything must go in order, in the prescribed course.

Werther did not give up yet, but only begged the magistrate to look the other way if someone helped the man to escape! This too the magistrate refused. Albert, who finally joined in the conversation, also took the old man’s side. Werther was outvoted, and he set off in terrible suffering, after the magistrate had said to him several times, “No, he cannot be saved!”

How much these words must have struck him we see from a little note that was found among his papers and was certainly written on that same day:

“You cannot be saved, unhappy man! I see well that we cannot be saved.”

What Albert had said last about the prisoner’s case in the magistrate’s presence had been extremely repugnant to Werther: he thought he had noticed some irritation against himself in it, and although on further reflection his acuteness did not fail to see that both men might be right, still he felt as if he would have to renounce his innermost being if he were to admit it, to concede it.

A little sheet that refers to this, and that perhaps expresses his whole relationship to Albert, we find among his papers: “What good does it do to tell myself again and again that he is decent and good? It tears my very entrails apart; I cannot be fair.”

Because it was a mild evening and the weather was beginning to turn toward a thaw, Lotte walked back with Albert. On the way she looked around now and then, just as if she missed Werther’s company. Albert began to talk about him; he found fault with him while doing him justice. He touched on his unhappy passion and wished it might be possible to send him away.—“I wish it for our sake too,” he said, “and I beg you,” he went on, “try to give his behavior toward you a different direction, to make his visits less frequent. People are taking notice, and I know there has been talk about it here and there.”—Lotte said nothing, and Albert seemed to have felt her silence; at least from that time on he did not mention Werther to her again, and when she mentioned him, he let the conversation drop or turned it elsewhere.

The vain attempt Werther had made to save the unhappy man was the last flaring up of the flame of a dying light; he sank only the deeper into pain and inactivity; above all he was almost beside himself when he heard that he might even be called as a witness against the man, who had now taken to denying everything.

Everything unpleasant that had ever befallen him in his active life, the vexation at the legation, everything else that had gone wrong for him, that had ever hurt him, rose and fell in his soul. By all this he found himself, as it were, entitled to inactivity; he found himself cut off from every prospect, incapable of grasping any of the handles by which one takes hold of the business of ordinary life; and so at last, wholly given over to his strange feeling, his strange way of thinking, and an endless passion, in the eternal sameness of a sad companionship with the lovable and beloved creature whose peace he was disturbing, storming against his own strength and wearing it out without purpose or prospect, he drew ever nearer to a sad end.

Of his confusion, his passion, his restless driving and striving, his weariness of life, some letters he left behind are the strongest testimony, and we will insert them here.

December 12

Dear Wilhelm, I am in the state those unhappy people must have been in who were believed to be driven about by an evil spirit. Sometimes it seizes me; it is not fear, not desire—it is an inner, unknown raging that threatens to tear my breast apart, that chokes my throat! Woe! Woe! And then I roam about in the terrible night scenes of this season so hostile to man.

Last night I had to go out. A thaw had suddenly set in; I had heard that the river had overflowed, all the brooks were swollen, and from Wahlheim down, my dear valley was flooded! At night, after eleven, I ran out. A fearful sight, to see from the rock the churning floods whirling in the moonlight, over fields and meadows and hedges and everything, and the wide valley, up and down, one storming sea in the howling of the wind! And when the moon came out again and rested above the black cloud, and before me the flood rolled and resounded in a fearfully glorious reflection: then a shudder came over me, and then again a longing! Ah, I stood with open arms facing the abyss and breathed down! Down! And lost myself in the rapture of hurling my torments, my sufferings down there! Of roaring away like the waves! Oh!—And you could not lift your foot from the ground and put an end to all torments!—My clock has not yet run down, I feel it! O Wilhelm! How gladly I would have given up being human to tear the clouds apart with that storm wind, to seize the floods! Ha! And will this rapture not perhaps be granted one day to the prisoner?

—And as I looked down sadly at a little spot where I had rested with Lotte under a willow on a hot walk—that was flooded too, and I could hardly make out the willow! Wilhelm! And her meadows, I thought, the country around her hunting lodge! How ravaged our arbor must be now by the raging torrent! I thought. And the sunbeam of the past glanced in, as a dream of herds, meadows, and offices of honor comes to a prisoner. I stood!—I do not scold myself, for I have the courage to die.—I would have—now I sit here like an old woman who gleans her wood from fences and begs her bread at doors, to prolong and ease her dying, joyless existence one moment more.

December 14

What is this, my dear friend? I am frightened of myself! Is my love for her not the holiest, purest, most brotherly love? Have I ever felt a guilty wish in my soul?—I will not protest—and now, dreams! Oh, how truly those people felt who attributed such contradictory effects to alien powers! Last night! I tremble to say it: I held her in my arms, pressed close to my breast, and covered her mouth, whispering love, with endless kisses; my eyes swam in the intoxication of hers! God! Am I guilty that even now I feel a bliss in calling back these glowing joys with all my heart? Lotte! Lotte!—And it is all over with me! My senses are getting confused; for a week now I have had no power of reflection left; my eyes are full of tears. I am well nowhere, and well everywhere. I wish for nothing, ask for nothing. It would be better for me to go.

The resolve to leave the world had during this time, under these circumstances, gained ever more strength in Werther’s soul. Since his return to Lotte it had always been his last prospect and hope; but he had told himself that it should be no overhasty, no rash deed; he wanted to take this step with the firmest conviction, with the calmest possible resolution.

His doubts, his struggle with himself, show through in a little note that is probably the beginning of a letter to Wilhelm and was found undated among his papers:

Her presence, her fate, her sympathy with mine still press the last tears from my scorched brain. To lift the curtain and step behind it! That is all! And why the hesitating and shrinking? Because we do not know what it looks like back there? And because there is no coming back? And because it is the nature of our mind to imagine confusion and darkness where we know nothing definite.

At last he grew ever more familiar and friendly with the sad thought, and his intention firm and irrevocable, as the following ambiguous letter, which he wrote to his friend, bears witness.

December 20

I thank your love, Wilhelm, for catching up the word as you did. Yes, you are right: it would be better for me to go. The suggestion you make that I come back to you all does not quite please me; at least I would still like to make a detour, especially since we can hope for lasting frost and good roads. I am also very glad that you want to come and fetch me; only wait another two weeks, and expect another letter from me with further details. Nothing must be picked before it is ripe. And two weeks more or less make a great difference. Tell my mother that she should pray for her son, and that I ask her forgiveness for all the trouble I have caused her. That was my fate, to grieve those to whom I owed joy. Farewell, my dearest friend! All the blessings of heaven upon you! Farewell!

What went on in Lotte’s soul during this time, what her feelings were toward her husband, toward her unhappy friend, we hardly dare to put into words, although, from what we know of her character, we can well form a silent idea of it, and a fine woman’s soul can think itself into hers and feel with her.

This much is certain: she was firmly resolved within herself to do everything to send Werther away, and if she hesitated, it was out of a heartfelt, friendly forbearance, because she knew how much it would cost him, even that it would be almost impossible for him. But during this time she was pressed harder to act in earnest; her husband kept entirely silent about this relationship, as she too had always kept silent about it, and so she was all the more anxious to prove to him by her deeds that her feelings were worthy of his.

On the same day on which Werther had written the letter to his friend inserted last, it was the Sunday before Christmas, he came to Lotte in the evening and found her alone. She was busy putting in order some toys she had made ready as Christmas presents for her little brothers and sisters. He spoke of the pleasure the little ones would have, and of the times when the unexpected opening of the door and the sight of a decorated tree with wax candles, sweets, and apples put you into a paradise of delight.—“You too,” said Lotte, hiding her embarrassment under a sweet smile, “you too shall get a present, if you are very good; a little wax taper and something else.”—“And what do you call being good?” he cried. “How am I to be? How can I be? Dearest Lotte!”—“Thursday evening,” she said, “is Christmas Eve; the children are coming, and my father too; everyone gets his present; you come too—but not before.”—Werther was taken aback.—“I beg you,” she went on, “that is how it is; I beg you, for the sake of my peace of mind; it can’t, it can’t go on like this.”—He turned his eyes away from her and walked up and down the room, muttering “it can’t go on like this!” between his teeth.—Lotte, who felt the terrible state into which these words had thrown him, tried to divert his thoughts with all sorts of questions, but in vain.—“No, Lotte,” he cried, “I will never see you again!”—“Why?” she replied. “Werther, you can, you must see us again; only control yourself. Oh, why did you have to be born with this violence, this passion that clings so unconquerably to everything you once take hold of! I beg you,” she went on, taking him by the hand, “control yourself! Your mind, your learning, your talents, what a wealth of pleasures they offer you! Be a man; turn this sad attachment away from a creature who can do nothing but pity you.”—He ground his teeth and looked at her darkly.—She held his hand. “Only one moment of calm reflection, Werther!” she said. “Don’t you feel that you are deceiving yourself, deliberately destroying yourself? Why me, Werther? Just me, who belong to another? Just that? I am afraid, I am afraid it is only the impossibility of possessing me that makes this wish so attractive to you.”—He drew his hand out of hers, looking at her with a fixed, resentful look. “Wise!” he cried, “very wise! Was it perhaps Albert who made that remark? Politic! Very politic!”—“Anyone could make it,” she replied, “and is there really no girl in the whole wide world who could fulfill the wishes of your heart? Bring yourself to it, look for her, and I swear to you, you will find her; for a long time now I have been anxious, for you and for us, about the confinement in which you have shut yourself up all this while. Master yourself; a journey will, must distract you! Seek, find a worthy object for your love, and come back, and let us enjoy together the bliss of a true friendship.” “That,” he said with a cold laugh, “could be printed and recommended to all tutors. Dear Lotte! Leave me a little peace a while longer; everything will come right!”—“Only this, Werther: that you do not come before Christmas Eve!”—He was about to answer, and Albert came into the room. They wished each other a frosty good evening and walked up and down the room side by side in embarrassment. Werther began some trivial conversation, which soon ran out; so did Albert, who then asked his wife about certain errands and, when he heard they had not yet been done, said a few words to her that struck Werther as cold, even harsh. He wanted to go; he could not, and lingered until eight, his ill humor and resentment growing all the while, until the table was laid and he took his hat and stick. Albert asked him to stay, but he, thinking he heard only an empty compliment, thanked him coldly and went away.

He came home, took the candle out of the hand of his servant, who wanted to light his way, and went alone to his room, wept aloud, talked to himself in agitation, paced violently up and down the room, and at last threw himself on the bed in his clothes, where his servant found him when, toward eleven, he ventured to go in and ask whether he should take off his master’s boots; he allowed this and forbade the servant to come into the room the next morning until he called him.

On Monday morning, the twenty-first of December, he wrote the following letter to Lotte, which was found sealed on his writing desk after his death and brought to her, and which I will insert here in sections, as the circumstances make it clear he wrote it.

“It is decided, Lotte, I am going to die, and I’m writing this to you without any romantic exaggeration, calmly, on the morning of the day on which I will see you for the last time. When you read this, my dearest, the cool grave will already cover the stiffened remains of the restless, unhappy man who knows no greater sweetness for the last moments of his life than to talk with you. I’ve had a terrible night and, ah, a merciful night. It is the night that has strengthened and settled my resolve: I am going to die! When I tore myself away from you yesterday, in the fearful turmoil of my senses, when all of it came crowding in on my heart and my hopeless, joyless existence beside you seized me with its horrible cold—I barely reached my room; I threw myself on my knees, beside myself, and O God! you granted me the last comfort of the bitterest tears! A thousand plans, a thousand prospects raged through my soul, and at last it stood there, firm, whole, the last, the only thought: I am going to die!—I lay down, and in the morning, in the calm of waking, it still stands firm, still strong in my heart: I am going to die!—It isn’t despair; it is the certainty that I have carried it to the end, and that I am sacrificing myself for you. Yes, Lotte! Why should I keep it from you? One of us three must go, and I want it to be me! O my dearest! In this torn heart it has crept about raging, often—to murder your husband!—you!—myself!—So be it, then!—When you climb the mountain on a fine summer evening, remember me then, how I so often came up the valley, and then look across toward the churchyard, toward my grave, and see how the wind rocks the tall grass to and fro in the light of the setting sun.—I was calm when I began; now, now I’m weeping like a child, as all this comes alive around me.—”

Toward ten o’clock Werther called his servant, and while dressing he told him that he would be going away in a few days, so he should brush out the clothes and get everything ready for packing; he also ordered him to ask everywhere for the accounts, to fetch some books that had been lent out, and to pay some poor people, to whom he was accustomed to give something every week, their allowance two months in advance.

He had his dinner brought to his room, and after dinner he rode out to the magistrate, whom he did not find at home. He walked up and down the garden, lost in thought, and seemed to want to heap upon himself, at the last, all the melancholy of memory.

The little ones did not leave him in peace for long; they ran after him, jumped up on him, and told him that when tomorrow, and tomorrow again, and one more day had come, they would fetch their Christmas presents from Lotte’s, and they told him of the wonders their little imaginations promised them.—“Tomorrow!” he cried, “and tomorrow again! And one more day!”—and he kissed them all warmly and was about to leave them when the littlest one wanted to whisper something more in his ear. He let him into the secret that the big brothers had written beautiful New Year’s wishes, so big! And one for Papa, one for Albert and Lotte, and one for Mr. Werther too; they were going to present them early on New Year’s morning. That overcame him; he gave each of them something, mounted his horse, sent his regards to the old man, and rode away with tears in his eyes.

Toward five he came home and told the maid to see to the fire and keep it going until late at night. He told the servant to pack books and linen at the bottom of the trunk and to sew the clothes into their covers. Then, probably, he wrote the following section of his last letter to Lotte.

“You are not expecting me! You think I’ll obey and not see you again until Christmas Eve. O Lotte! Today or never again. On Christmas Eve you will hold this paper in your hand, trembling, and wet it with your dear tears. I will, I must! Oh, how good it feels to have made up my mind.”

Lotte, meanwhile, had fallen into a strange state. After her last conversation with Werther she had felt how hard it would be for her to part from him, and what he would suffer if he had to go away from her.

It had been said, as if in passing, in Albert’s presence, that Werther would not come again before Christmas Eve, and Albert had ridden to see an official in the neighborhood with whom he had business to settle, and where he had to stay overnight.

She was sitting alone now; none of her brothers and sisters was with her; she gave herself up to her thoughts, which roamed quietly over her situation. She saw herself now bound forever to the man whose love and faithfulness she knew, to whom she was devoted with all her heart, whose calm, whose reliability seemed truly destined by heaven for a good woman to found the happiness of her life on; she felt what he would always be to her and to her children. On the other hand, Werther had become so dear to her; from the very first moment of their acquaintance the harmony of their minds had shown itself so beautifully; the long companionship with him, so many situations lived through together, had made an indelible impression on her heart. Everything she felt and thought that was of interest she was used to sharing with him, and his going away threatened to tear a void in her whole being that could never be filled again. Oh, if she could have changed him into a brother at that moment, how happy she would have been! If she had been allowed to marry him to one of her friends, she could have hoped to restore his relationship with Albert completely as well!

She had gone through her friends one by one in her mind and found something to object to in every one of them; she found none she would have been willing to give him to.

Over all these reflections she felt deeply for the first time, without making it clear to herself, that her heartfelt, secret desire was to keep him for herself, and at the same time she told herself that she could not keep him, must not keep him; her pure, lovely mind, usually so light and so quick to help itself, felt the weight of a melancholy to which the prospect of happiness is closed. Her heart was oppressed, and a dark cloud lay over her eyes.

So it had come to half past six when she heard Werther coming up the stairs and soon recognized his step, his voice asking for her. How her heart beat, and we may almost say for the first time, at his arrival. She would gladly have had him told she was not at home, and when he came in, she cried out to him with a kind of passionate confusion, “You have not kept your word.”—“I promised nothing,” was his answer.—“Then at least you should have granted my request,” she replied. “I asked it for the sake of our peace, both of us.”

She did not really know what she was saying, any more than what she was doing, when she sent for some of her friends so as not to be alone with Werther. He put down some books he had brought and asked about others, and she wished now that her friends would come, now that they would stay away. The maid came back with the message that both sent their excuses.

She thought of having the maid sit with her work in the next room; then she changed her mind again. Werther walked up and down the room; she went to the clavier and began a minuet; it would not flow. She collected herself and sat down calmly beside Werther, who had taken his usual place on the sofa.

“Haven’t you anything to read?” she said.—He had nothing.—“In there, in my drawer,” she began, “is your translation of some of Ossian’s songs; I haven’t read it yet, for I kept hoping to hear it from you; but since then there has never been the chance, it has never come about.”—He smiled and fetched the songs; a shudder came over him as he took them in his hands, and his eyes filled with tears as he looked into them. He sat down and read.

“Star of the darkening night, fair you sparkle in the west, you lift your radiant head from your cloud, you walk in stately fashion along your hill. What are you looking at on the heath? The stormy winds have fallen; from far off comes the murmur of the torrent; roaring waves play far off at the rock; the hum of the evening flies swarms over the field. What are you looking at, fair light? But you smile and go; joyfully the waves surround you and bathe your lovely hair. Farewell, quiet beam. Appear, you glorious light of Ossian’s soul!

“And it appears in its strength. I see my departed friends; they gather on Lora, as in the days that are gone.—Fingal comes like a moist pillar of mist; around him are his heroes, and, see! the bards of song: gray Ullin! stately Ryno! Alpin, lovely singer! And you, softly lamenting Minona!—How changed you are, my friends, since the festal days on Selma, when we vied for the honor of song, as spring breezes along the hill bend by turns the faintly whispering grass.

“Then Minona came forward in her beauty, with downcast look and tearful eye; heavy flowed her hair in the restless wind that blew down from the hill.—Gloom came into the souls of the heroes when she raised her lovely voice; for often they had seen the grave of Salgar, often the dark dwelling of white Colma. Colma, forsaken on the hill, with her harmonious voice; Salgar promised to come; but all around the night closed in. Hear Colma’s voice as she sat alone on the hill.

“Colma. It is night!—I am alone, lost on the stormy hill. The wind roars in the mountains. The torrent howls down the rock. No hut shelters me from the rain, forsaken on the stormy hill. Step out, O moon, from your clouds; appear, stars of the night! Let some beam lead me to the place where my love rests from the toil of the hunt, his bow unstrung beside him, his dogs panting around him! But here I must sit alone on the rock of the overgrown stream. The stream and the storm roar; I do not hear the voice of my beloved.

“Why does my Salgar delay? Has he forgotten his word?—There is the rock and the tree, and here the rushing stream! At nightfall you promised to be here; ah! where has my Salgar strayed? With you I would have fled, left father and brother, the proud ones! Long have our races been enemies, but we are not enemies, O Salgar!

“Be silent a while, O wind! Be still a little while, O stream, that my voice may ring through the valley, that my wanderer may hear me. Salgar! It is I who call! Here is the tree and the rock! Salgar! My love! Here I am; why do you delay to come?

“See, the moon appears, the flood gleams in the valley, the rocks stand gray up the hill; but I do not see him on the height; his dogs before him do not announce his coming. Here I must sit alone.

“But who are they that lie down there on the heath?—My beloved? My brother?—Speak, O my friends! They do not answer. How anguished is my soul!—Ah, they are dead! Their swords red from the fight! O my brother, my brother, why have you slain my Salgar? O my Salgar, why have you slain my brother? You were both so dear to me! Oh, you were fair on the hill among thousands! He was terrible in battle. Answer me! Hear my voice, my beloved ones! But ah, they are mute, mute forever! Cold as the earth is their breast!

“O from the rock of the hill, from the summit of the storming mountain, speak, spirits of the dead! Speak! I will not be afraid!—Where have you gone to rest? In what vault of the mountains shall I find you?—No faint voice do I hear in the wind, no wafted answer in the storm of the hill. I sit in my grief; I wait for the morning in my tears. Dig the grave, you friends of the dead, but do not close it until I come. My life is vanishing like a dream; how should I stay behind! Here I will rest with my friends, by the stream of the sounding rock—when night comes on the hill, and wind comes over the heath, my spirit shall stand in the wind and mourn the death of my friends. The hunter hears me from his shelter of boughs, fears my voice and loves it; for sweet shall my voice be for my friends; they were both so dear to me!

“That was your song, O Minona, Torman’s softly blushing daughter. Our tears flowed for Colma, and our soul grew dark.

“Ullin came forward with the harp and gave us Alpin’s song—Alpin’s voice was kind, Ryno’s soul a beam of fire. But already they rested in the narrow house, and their voice had died away in Selma. Once Ullin came back from the hunt, before the heroes had yet fallen. He heard their contest of song on the hill. Their song was gentle, but sad. They lamented the fall of Morar, first of the heroes. His soul was like Fingal’s soul, his sword like the sword of Oskar—but he fell, and his father lamented, and his sister’s eyes were full of tears, Minona’s eyes were full of tears, the sister of glorious Morar. She drew back before Ullin’s song, like the moon in the west that foresees the storm rain and hides her lovely head in a cloud.—I struck the harp with Ullin for the song of lament.

“Ryno

“Past are the wind and the rain; the noon is so bright; the clouds divide. Fleeting, the inconstant sun lights up the hill. Reddish flows the mountain stream down the valley. Sweet is your murmur, stream; but sweeter the voice I hear. It is Alpin’s voice; he laments the dead. His head is bowed with age, and red his tearful eye. Alpin, excellent singer, why alone on the silent hill? Why do you lament like a gust of wind in the forest, like a wave on the distant shore?

“Alpin

“My tears, Ryno, are for the dead, my voice for the dwellers in the grave. Slender you are on the hill, fair among the sons of the heath. But you will fall like Morar, and on your grave the mourner will sit. The hills will forget you; your bow will lie unstrung in the hall.

“You were swift, O Morar, as a roe on the hill, terrible as the night fires in the sky. Your wrath was a storm, your sword in battle like sheet lightning over the heath. Your voice was like the forest torrent after rain, like thunder on distant hills. Many fell by your arm; the flame of your wrath consumed them. But when you came back from the war, how peaceful was your brow! Your face was like the sun after the storm, like the moon in the silent night, your breast calm as the lake when the roaring of the wind has died down.

“Narrow now is your dwelling, dark your place! With three steps I measure your grave, O you who were once so great! Four stones with mossy heads are your only memorial; a leafless tree, long grass whispering in the wind, shows the hunter’s eye the grave of mighty Morar. No mother have you to weep for you, no girl with tears of love. Dead is she who bore you, fallen the daughter of Morglan.

“Who is that on his staff? Who is it whose head is white with age, whose eyes are red with tears? It is your father, O Morar, the father of no son but you. He heard of your renown in battle; he heard of scattered foes; he heard of Morar’s glory! Ah! Nothing of his wound? Weep, father of Morar, weep! But your son does not hear you. Deep is the sleep of the dead, low their pillow of dust. Never will he heed the voice, never wake at your call. Oh, when will it be morning in the grave, to bid the sleeper: Awake!

“Farewell, noblest of men, you conqueror in the field! But never will the field see you again, never will the dark wood shine with the gleam of your steel. You left no son, but song shall keep your name; times to come shall hear of you, hear of fallen Morar.

“Loud was the grief of the heroes, loudest Armin’s bursting sigh. It reminded him of the death of his son; he fell in the days of his youth. Carmor sat near the hero, the chief of echoing Galmal. ‘Why does Armin’s sigh sob so?’ he said. ‘What is there here to weep for? Does not a song ring out, a lay, to melt the soul and to delight it? They are like a soft mist that rises from the lake and drifts over the valley, and the moisture fills the blooming flowers; but the sun comes back in its strength, and the mist is gone. Why are you so full of grief, Armin, ruler of sea-girt Gorma?’

“‘Full of grief! That I am, and not slight the cause of my woe.—Carmor, you lost no son, lost no blooming daughter; Colgar the brave lives, and Annira, fairest of maidens. The branches of your house flourish, O Carmor; but Armin is the last of his line. Dark is your bed, O Daura! Heavy is your sleep in the grave—when will you wake with your songs, with your melodious voice? Rise, you winds of autumn! Rise, storm over the dark heath! Forest torrents, roar! Howl, streams, in the tops of the oaks! Walk through the broken clouds, O moon, show your pale face by turns! Remind me of the terrible night when my children perished, when Arindal the mighty fell, when Daura the lovely passed away.

“‘Daura, my daughter, you were fair, fair as the moon on the hills of Fura, white as the fallen snow, sweet as the breathing air! Arindal, your bow was strong, your spear swift on the field, your look like mist on the wave, your shield a cloud of fire in the storm!

“‘Armar, renowned in war, came and sought Daura’s love; she did not resist long. Fair were the hopes of her friends.

“‘Erath, the son of Odgal, bore a grudge, for his brother lay slain by Armar. He came disguised as a boatman. Fair was his skiff on the wave, white his locks with age, calm his grave face. “Fairest of maidens,” he said, “lovely daughter of Armin, there by the rock, not far out in the sea, where the red fruit gleams from the tree, there Armar waits for Daura: I have come to carry his love over the rolling sea.”

“‘She followed him and called for Armar; nothing answered but the voice of the rock. “Armar! My love! My love! Why do you frighten me so? Hear, son of Arnarth! Hear! It is Daura calling you!”

“‘Erath the traitor fled laughing to the land. She raised her voice, called for her father and her brother: “Arindal! Armin! Is there no one to save his Daura?”

“‘Her voice came over the sea. Arindal, my son, came down from the hill, rough in the spoils of the hunt; his arrows rattled at his side, he carried his bow in his hand, five black-gray hounds were around him. He saw bold Erath on the shore, seized him and bound him to the oak; fast he bound the cords around his hips; the captive filled the winds with groaning.

“‘Arindal sets out on the waves in his boat to bring Daura back. Armar came in his wrath, let fly the gray-feathered arrow; it sang, it sank into your heart, O Arindal, my son! Instead of Erath the traitor, you perished; the boat reached the rock, he sank down against it and died. At your feet flowed your brother’s blood; what was your grief, O Daura! The waves shatter the boat. Armar hurls himself into the sea, to save his Daura or to die. Swiftly a gust stormed from the hill into the waves; he sank and did not rise again.

“‘Alone on the sea-washed rock I heard the laments of my daughter. Many and loud were her cries, yet her father could not save her. All night I stood on the shore; I saw her in the faint beam of the moon; all night I heard her cries; loud was the wind, and the rain beat sharply against the side of the mountain. Her voice grew faint before the morning came; she died away like the evening air among the grass of the rocks. Laden with grief she died and left Armin alone! Gone is my strength in war, fallen my pride among maidens.

“‘When the storms of the mountain come, when the north wind lifts the waves high, I sit on the sounding shore and look toward the terrible rock. Often, as the moon sinks, I see the spirits of my children; half in twilight they walk together in sad concord.’”

A flood of tears that broke from Lotte’s eyes and gave air to her oppressed heart stopped Werther’s song. He threw down the paper, seized her hand, and wept the bitterest tears. Lotte leaned on her other hand and hid her eyes in her handkerchief. The agitation of both was fearful. They felt their own misery in the fate of those noble ones, felt it together, and their tears mingled. Werther’s lips and eyes burned on Lotte’s arm; a shudder came over her; she wanted to draw away, and grief and sympathy lay on her, numbing, like lead. She drew breath to recover herself and, sobbing, begged him to go on, begged with the whole voice of heaven! Werther trembled; his heart was ready to burst; he picked up the sheet and read, half broken:

“Why do you wake me, breath of spring? You woo me and say: I bedew you with drops of heaven! But the time of my withering is near, near the storm that will strip down my leaves! Tomorrow the wanderer will come, will come who saw me in my beauty; his eye will search the field all around for me and will not find me.—”

The full force of these words fell upon the unhappy man.

He threw himself down before Lotte in utter despair, seized her hands, pressed them to his eyes, against his forehead, and a presentiment of his terrible intention seemed to fly through her soul. Her senses grew confused; she pressed his hands, pressed them against her breast, bent toward him with a sorrowful movement, and their glowing cheeks touched. The world vanished for them. He threw his arms around her, pressed her to his breast, and covered her trembling, stammering lips with furious kisses.—“Werther!” she cried in a stifled voice, turning away, “Werther!” and with a feeble hand pushed his breast away from hers; “Werther!” she cried in the composed tone of the noblest feeling.—He did not resist; he let her go from his arms and threw himself down before her, out of his senses.—She tore herself free and, in anxious confusion, trembling between love and anger, said, “This is the last time! Werther! You will not see me again.” And with a look full of love at the wretched man she hurried into the next room and locked the door behind her.—Werther stretched out his arms after her and did not dare to hold her back. He lay on the floor, his head on the sofa, and stayed in that position for over half an hour, until a noise called him back to himself. It was the maid, who wanted to lay the table. He walked up and down the room, and when he saw himself alone again, he went to the door of the little room and called in a low voice, “Lotte! Lotte! Only one word more! One farewell!”—She said nothing.—He waited and begged and waited; then he tore himself away and cried, “Farewell, Lotte! Farewell forever!”

He came to the town gate. The watchmen, who were used to him by now, let him out without a word. Sleet was driving, and it was not until toward eleven that he knocked again. When Werther came home, his servant noticed that his master’s hat was missing. He did not dare to say anything and undressed him; everything was wet. The hat was later found on a rock that looks down from the slope of the hill into the valley, and it is incomprehensible how he climbed it on a dark, wet night without falling.

He went to bed and slept long. The servant found him writing when, the next morning, at his call, he brought him his coffee. He wrote the following in the letter to Lotte:

“For the last time, then, for the last time I open these eyes. They shall not, ah, see the sun again; a dull, misty day keeps it covered. Then mourn, nature! Your son, your friend, your lover is nearing his end. Lotte, it is a feeling like no other, and yet it comes closest to a twilight dream, to say to yourself: this is the last morning. The last! Lotte, I have no sense for the word: the last! Am I not standing here in all my strength, and tomorrow I will lie stretched out and limp on the ground. To die! What does that mean? You see, we are dreaming when we talk of death. I have seen many people die; but humanity is so confined that it has no sense for the beginning and the end of its existence. Still mine now, yours! Yours, O my love! And one moment—separated, parted—perhaps forever?—No, Lotte, no—how can I pass away? How can you pass away? We are, after all!—Pass away!—What does that mean? That is just another word, an empty sound, with no feeling in it for my heart.—Dead, Lotte! Buried in the cold earth, so narrow! So dark!—I had a friend who was everything to my helpless youth; she died, and I followed her body and stood at the grave as they let down the coffin and the ropes whirred out from under it and shot back up again, then the first shovelful thudded down, and the fearful chest gave back a dull sound, and duller and duller, and at last it was covered!—I threw myself down beside the grave—seized, shaken, frightened, torn in my innermost being, but I did not know what was happening to me—what will happen to me—To die! Grave! I don’t understand the words!

“Oh, forgive me! Forgive me! Yesterday! It should have been the last moment of my life. O you angel! For the first time, for the first time wholly without doubt, the rapturous feeling glowed through my inmost being: she loves me! She loves me! The holy fire that streamed from your lips still burns on mine; a new, warm rapture is in my heart. Forgive me! Forgive me!

“Ah, I knew that you loved me; I knew it from the first soulful looks, from the first pressure of your hand; and yet, when I was away again, when I saw Albert at your side, I lost heart again in feverish doubts.

“Do you remember the flowers you sent me when, at that wretched party, you couldn’t say a word to me or give me your hand? Oh, I knelt before them half the night, and they sealed your love to me. But ah! these impressions passed, as the feeling of his God’s grace gradually fades again from the soul of the believer, to whom it was given in all the fullness of heaven in holy, visible signs.

“All that is transient, but no eternity shall put out the glowing life I tasted yesterday on your lips, which I feel in me! She loves me! This arm has held her, these lips have trembled on her lips, this mouth has stammered against hers. She is mine! You are mine! Yes, Lotte, forever.

“And what does it matter that Albert is your husband? Husband! Would that be, then, for this world—and for this world a sin, that I love you, that I would like to tear you out of his arms into mine? Sin? Good, and I am punishing myself for it; I have tasted it in all its heavenly rapture, this sin, and sucked the balm of life and strength into my heart. From this moment you are mine! Mine, O Lotte! I am going ahead! Going to my Father, to your Father. To him I will make my complaint, and he will comfort me until you come, and I will fly to meet you and hold you and stay with you before the face of the Infinite in eternal embraces.

“I am not dreaming, I am not deluded! Near the grave it grows lighter for me. We shall be! We shall see each other again! See your mother! I will see her, will find her, ah, and pour out my whole heart before her! Your mother, your very image.”

Toward eleven Werther asked his servant whether Albert had come back. The servant said yes, he had seen his horse being led over. Thereupon his master gives him an open note with this content: “Would you be so kind as to lend me your pistols for a journey I am planning? Farewell, and every good wish!”

The dear woman had slept little the night before; what she had feared was decided, decided in a way she could neither have foreseen nor feared. Her blood, which usually flowed so pure and light, was in a feverish turmoil; a thousand different feelings tore at her lovely heart. Was it the fire of Werther’s embraces that she felt in her breast? Was it indignation at his boldness? Was it a resentful comparison of her present state with those days of wholly unselfconscious, free innocence and carefree trust in herself? How was she to meet her husband, how confess to him a scene that she had every right to confess, and that she yet did not dare to confess to herself? They had kept silent toward each other for so long, and was she to be the first to break the silence and, at just the wrong time, make so unexpected a disclosure to her husband? She feared already that the mere news of Werther’s visit would make an unpleasant impression on him, and now, on top of it, this unexpected catastrophe! Could she really hope that her husband would see her in quite the right light, receive it quite without prejudice? And could she wish him to read in her soul? And yet again, could she dissemble before the man before whom she had always stood open and free like a crystal-clear glass, and from whom she had never hidden any of her feelings, nor ever could? One thing and the other troubled her and put her at a loss; and her thoughts kept returning to Werther, who was lost to her, whom she could not let go, whom she—alas!—had to leave to himself, and to whom, once he had lost her, nothing was left.

How heavily it weighed on her now, the deadlock that had set in between them, though at that moment she could not make it clear to herself! Such sensible, such good people had begun to keep silent with each other because of certain secret differences; each brooded over his own right and the other’s wrong, and things grew so tangled and so embittered that it became impossible to untie the knot at the very critical moment on which everything depended. If a happy intimacy had brought them closer again earlier, if love and forbearance had come alive between them in turn and opened their hearts, perhaps our friend might still have been saved.

Another strange circumstance came into it. Werther, as we know from his letters, had never made a secret of his longing to leave this world. Albert had often argued with him about it, and there had sometimes been talk of it between Lotte and her husband too. Albert, who felt a decided repugnance for the deed, had also very often let it be known, with a kind of touchiness that was otherwise quite foreign to his character, that he found good reason to doubt very much the seriousness of such an intention; he had even allowed himself a few jokes about it and shared his disbelief with Lotte. This did reassure her on the one hand, when her thoughts brought the sad picture before her; but on the other hand she felt prevented by it from sharing with her husband the fears that tormented her at that moment.

Albert came back, and Lotte went to meet him with an embarrassed haste; he was not in good spirits; his business was not done; he had found the neighboring magistrate an inflexible, small-minded man. The bad road, too, had put him out of temper.

He asked whether anything had happened, and she answered too quickly that Werther had been there the evening before. He asked whether any letters had come, and was told that a letter and some packets were lying in his room. He went over, and Lotte stayed alone. The presence of the man she loved and honored had made a new impression on her heart. The memory of his generosity, his love and kindness had calmed her mind; she felt a secret pull to follow him; she took her work and went to his room, as she often used to do. She found him busy opening the packets and reading. Some seemed to contain nothing very pleasant. She asked him a few questions, which he answered briefly, and he went to stand at his desk to write.

They had spent an hour side by side in this way, and it grew darker and darker in Lotte’s mind. She felt how hard it would be for her to reveal to her husband, even if he were in the best of humors, what lay on her heart; she fell into a sadness that grew all the more anxious as she tried to hide it and swallow her tears.

The appearance of Werther’s boy threw her into the greatest embarrassment; he handed Albert the note, and Albert turned calmly to his wife and said, “Give him the pistols.”—“I wish him a good journey,” he said to the boy.—That fell on her like a thunderclap; she staggered as she rose; she did not know what was happening to her. Slowly she went to the wall; trembling, she took down the weapons, wiped off the dust, and hesitated, and would have lingered a long time yet if Albert had not urged her with a questioning look. She gave the unhappy instrument to the boy without being able to bring out a word, and when he was out of the house, she gathered up her work and went to her room in a state of the most unspeakable uncertainty. Her heart foretold every terror. At one moment she was on the point of throwing herself at her husband’s feet and revealing everything to him, the story of the evening before, her guilt and her presentiments. Then again she could see no good coming of such a step; least of all could she hope to persuade her husband to go to Werther. The table was laid, and a good friend, who had come only to ask something and meant to leave at once—and stayed, made the conversation at table bearable; they forced themselves, they talked, they told stories, they forgot themselves.

The boy came with the pistols to Werther, who took them from him in rapture when he heard that Lotte had given them to him. He had bread and wine brought, told the boy to go and eat, and sat down to write.

“They have passed through your hands; you wiped the dust from them; I kiss them a thousand times; you have touched them! And you, spirit of heaven, favor my resolve, and you, Lotte, hand me the instrument, you from whose hands I wished to receive death, and ah! now do receive it. Oh, I questioned my boy closely. You trembled when you handed them to him; you said no farewell!—Woe! Woe! No farewell!—Can you have closed your heart to me, because of the moment that bound me to you forever? Lotte, a thousand years cannot wipe out that impression! And I feel it: you can’t hate the man who burns for you like this.”

After dinner he told the boy to finish packing everything, tore up many papers, went out, and settled a few small debts. He came home again, went out again beyond the gate, in spite of the rain, into the count’s garden, roamed further about the countryside, came back as night fell, and wrote.

“Wilhelm, I have seen field and forest and sky for the last time. Farewell to you too! Dear mother, forgive me! Comfort her, Wilhelm! God bless you both! My affairs are all in order. Farewell! We shall see each other again, and more joyfully.”

“I have repaid you badly, Albert, and you forgive me. I have disturbed the peace of your house; I have brought mistrust between you. Farewell! I mean to end it. Oh, that my death might make you both happy! Albert! Albert! Make that angel happy! And so may God’s blessing dwell upon you!”

That evening he rummaged a good deal more in his papers, tore up much of it and threw it in the stove, and sealed some packets addressed to Wilhelm. They contained short essays, fragmentary thoughts, several of which I have seen; and after he had had more wood put on the fire at ten o’clock and a bottle of wine brought to him, he sent his servant to bed; the man’s room, like the bedrooms of the household, was far at the back, and he lay down in his clothes so as to be at hand early, for his master had said the post horses would be at the door before six.

After eleven

“Everything is so still around me, and my soul so calm. I thank you, God, for giving these last moments this warmth, this strength.

“I step to the window, my dearest, and see, and still see, through the storming clouds flying past, single stars of the eternal sky! No, you will not fall! The Eternal One carries you at his heart, and me. I see the stars in the shaft of the Wagon, the dearest of all the constellations. When I left you at night, as I came out of your gate, it stood across from me. With what intoxication I have often looked at it, often, with hands raised, made it a sign, a holy landmark of my present bliss! And still—O Lotte, what does not remind me of you! Do you not surround me! And have I not, like a child, never satisfied, snatched up all sorts of little things that you, holy one, had touched!

“Dear silhouette! I bequeath it back to you, Lotte, and beg you to honor it. A thousand, thousand kisses I have pressed on it, waved a thousand greetings to it when I went out or came home. I have asked your father in a little note to protect my body. In the churchyard there are two linden trees, at the back in the corner toward the field; there I wish to rest. He can, he will do that for his friend. Ask him too. I will not expect pious Christians to lay their bodies beside a poor unhappy man. Ah, I wish you would bury me by the wayside, or in the lonely valley, so that priest and Levite might bless themselves as they passed by the marked stone, and the Samaritan shed a tear.

“Here, Lotte! I do not shudder to take the cold, terrible cup from which I am to drink the frenzy of death! You handed it to me, and I do not falter. All! All! So all the wishes and hopes of my life are fulfilled! To knock so cold, so stiff, at the brazen gate of death.

“That I might have been granted the happiness of dying for you! Lotte, of giving myself up for you! I would die bravely, I would die gladly, if I could restore to you the peace, the rapture of your life. But ah! that was given only to a few noble souls, to shed their blood for their own and by their death to kindle a new, hundredfold life for their friends.

“In these clothes, Lotte, I want to be buried; you have touched them, made them holy; I have asked your father for this too. My soul hovers over the coffin. My pockets are not to be searched. This pale pink ribbon that you wore at your breast when I first found you among your children—oh, kiss them a thousand times and tell them the fate of their unhappy friend. The dear ones! They swarm around me. Ah, how I clung to you! From the first moment I could not let you go!—This ribbon is to be buried with me. You gave it to me on my birthday! How I devoured all that!—Ah, I did not think the road would lead me here!—Be calm! I beg you, be calm!

“—They are loaded—it is striking twelve! So be it, then!—Lotte! Lotte, farewell! Farewell!”

A neighbor saw the flash of the powder and heard the shot; but since everything stayed quiet, he paid no further attention.

In the morning at six the servant comes in with the light. He finds his master on the floor, the pistol, and blood. He calls, he takes hold of him; no answer; there is only a rattle in his throat now. He runs for the doctors, for Albert. Lotte hears the bell pulled; a trembling seizes all her limbs. She wakes her husband; they get up; the servant, howling and stammering, brings the news; Lotte sinks down fainting before Albert.

When the doctor came to the unhappy man, he found him on the floor past saving; the pulse was beating, the limbs were all paralyzed. He had shot himself through the head above the right eye; the brain had been driven out. They opened a vein in his arm, though it was of no use; the blood ran; he was still drawing breath.

From the blood on the arm of the chair one could conclude that he had done the deed sitting at his writing desk, then had sunk down and rolled convulsively around the chair. He lay on his back toward the window, drained of strength, fully dressed, in his boots, in the blue tailcoat with the yellow waistcoat.

The house, the neighborhood, the town were in an uproar. Albert came in. They had laid Werther on the bed, his forehead bandaged, his face already like a dead man’s; he did not move a limb. His lungs were still rattling fearfully, now weakly, now more strongly; they were waiting for his end.

Of the wine he had drunk only one glass. Emilia Galotti lay open on the desk.

Of Albert’s dismay, of Lotte’s grief, let me say nothing.

The old magistrate came galloping in at the news and kissed the dying man amid the hottest tears. His eldest sons soon followed him on foot; they fell down beside the bed in the most unrestrained grief and kissed his hands and his mouth, and the eldest, whom he had always loved best, hung on his lips until he was gone and the boy had to be torn away by force. At twelve noon he died. The magistrate’s presence and the arrangements he made prevented any commotion. At night, toward eleven, he had him buried in the place he had chosen for himself. The old man followed the body, and the sons; Albert could not. They feared for Lotte’s life. Craftsmen carried him. No clergyman went with him.