"My work simply cannot be popular. Anyone who thinks it can be—and who tries to win popularity for it—is making a mistake. I haven’t written for people in general, people en masse—I’ve written for individuals—people who are looking for something that engages with their individuality (with what makes them not part of the crowd, with what makes them lonely) and whose mind tends in the same rough direction as mine."
- Goethe in Conversations with Eckermann
"Werther is not much read nowadays, especially in England." - George Henry Lewes
Every few Summers, since around 1999, I have tried to always re-read a wonderful little book called The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Published in 1774, it tells the story of Werther, a sensitive young man driven to suicide by an unhappy love affair. And yet, far from being the depressing read that you might expect, it is actually a beautiful, life-affirming piece of literature.
Told almost entirely in letter form (Werther recounts his experiences to his friend, Wilhelm), it is the perfect late Summer read. This year I've read most of it in the New Forest, surrounded by heather, wild ponies and horses, and particularly chaffinches, as mine and my wife Lydia's favourite picnic spot is by a tree which is well inhabited by chaffinches and which we have, of course, called Chaffinch Tree. It has certainly added a remarkable immediacy and magic to some of the passages being in such a splendid location. It is a novella that represents something of a high point in European Romanticism, and the principal character, Werther, philosophises about life, love, freedom, meaning, and death. He acknowledges that he is "supra-sensitive", ill-suited to the harshness of human life and existence, but deep in his soul he is a lover, an artist and most of all, a worshipper. Not just of life and Nature but also, perhaps to an extreme, to romantic love and the woman who has stolen his heart: Lotte.
At the opening of the story he has just left his hometown and settled in a quiet rural town. At first he is enchanted by the natural world about him and is contented as contentment can be:
"A wonderful serenity has taken possession of my entire soul, as these sweet spring mornings have, which I am enjoying with my whole heart... When the vapours rise about me in this impenetrable darkness of my forest, and only single rays steal into the inner sanctum, and I lie in the long grass by the tumbling brook, and lower down, close to earth, I am alerted to the thousand various little grasses; when I see the teeming of the little world among the stalks, the countless indescribable forms of insects and flies, closer to my heart, and feel the presence of the Almighty who created us in His image, the breath of the All-loving who bears us aloft in perpetual joy and holds us there... then I am often filled with longing..." (pp. 26-27)
There are glimpses into Werther's troubled soul even before the main reason for his shift into despondency, as when Werther instructs his friend, Wilhelm, not to send him any books as what his turbulent heart needs most is soothing lullabies and not to have his passions stirred by tales of romance, heroes and tragedy, and he describes his near bi-polar state when he writes: "... You who have so often endured seeing me pass from sorrow to excessive joy, from sweet melancholy to destructive passion!" Werther describes many idyllic scenes as he meets the humble local villagers, and enjoys being out in Nature. But his much needed serenity is soon to be shattered by the arrival into his life of a woman who will alter his life forever. When he tells a new companion that he has been invited to attend a ball that evening, he is informed how that means he "will be getting to know a beautiful young woman. Be on your guard! And take care not to fall in love as she is already promised to a very worthy man!" (p.37) Werther takes no notice of these comments, but indeed, on meeting this woman later, soon finds himself falling headlong under her spell. They talk for hours and soon discover they have much in common, and before the evening has finished the band play an English Waltz and and Werther is able to watch Lotte dance, and he becomes ever more entranced under Lotte's aura. He writes to his friend Wilhelm: "You should see her dance! Her whole heart and soul are in it, and her body is all harmony, so carefree and relaxed, as if there were nothing else, as if she had not a single other thought or sensation; and in that moment, undoubtedly everything else ceases to exist for her." (p. 40). Before the evening comes to its close, Werther himself actually gets to dance with Lotte and he is sent into further raptures: "Never in my life have I danced so well. I was no longer a mere mortal. Holding the most adorable of creatures in my arms and flying about with her like lightning, so that I forgot everything about me." (p.41)
They finish their dance and he sits down whilst Lotte dances with other partners, and he is reminded by another guest that Lotte is already engaged to a "dear, honest man" who is currently working away, named Albert. Although Werther had of course been told this earlier in the day he had completely forgotten about it and it sends his heart into a tail spin: "In brief, I was confused, forgot what I was at... everything was in disarray." (p. 41) Before the evening is over, he and Lotte venture outside where a storm has recently passed, filling the warm night air with the most refreshing radiance, and both discover that their favourite poet is Klopstock. Werther asks Lotte if he would be admitted to call on her the following day and she agrees. Werther returns home in a state of ecstasy.
"My days are as happy as any God sets aside for his saints," writes Werther two days later, and for the next two months he lives in a state of near perpetual bliss. He and Lotte spend a great deal of time together, walking in the fields, reading, and talking at great depth about philosophy and life. Their relationship is intimate but completely platonic, and part of what Werther admires so much about Lotte is her faithfulness, but he still yearns for more and finds himself looking for little hints that she might feel more for him than only friendship. But after two months, her intended Albert suddenly returns. Lotte has nothing to hide so Albert and Werther are introduced and the three of them spend a great deal of time together. But gradually, Werther begins to find the situation intolerable. He is desperately in love with Lotte, and Albert and Lotte begin to find his attentions are putting a strain on their relationship. Lotte asks Werther to spend less time with them but Werther is unable to keep to his word to do so: "Who could abide by such a decision?... I am too close to her magic realm. My grandmother used to tell me a story about a magnetic mountain: ships that sailed too close were suddenly stripped of all their ironwork, the nails flew to the mountain and the wretched travellers perished." (p. 56) Although Albert is friends with Werther, a decidedly strained relationship is growing between them, and when Albert suggests that Werther should be less emotional and passionate, Werther cuttingly replies to him, "Ah, yes... you sensible people! Passions! Intoxication! Insanity! You are so calm and collected, so indifferent, you respectable people, TUT-Tutting about drunkenness and holding unreasonable behaviour in contempt, thanking God that you are not as those types of men. I have been intoxicated more than once, my passions have never been far off insanity, and I have no regrets... You should be ashamed of yourselves, you sensible people, you sages, jealous of people who are intoxicated!" (p.61)
Following this scene, Werther become more agitated and unhappy. He does manage to see less of Lotte but even his once adored walks in Nature don't bring him the joy they did previously: "It is as if a curtain had been drawn from before my soul, and this sense of infinite life has been transformed before my eyes into the abyss of the grave, forever open wide. Can you say anything is, when in fact all is transient? And so I go my fearful way betwixt heaven and earth and all their active forces; and all I can see is a monster, forever devouring, regurgitating, chewing and gorging." (p.66) Wilhelm finds that he is sinking ever further into despondency, and not only has he lost all of his feeling for Nature but his imagination has dried up also. The situation with Lotte and Albert has also become intolerable and he finally agrees to take up his friend's advice and agrees to move away and take up an embassy position in a distant town. But hardly as he begun his new life when his new environment and money obsessed associates bring him crashing down once again, as not only do they have no feeling whatsoever for nature, love or art, they also concern themselves with nothing but the most trivial amusements. Werther explains to Wilhelm how, "There is nothing at all they do not spoil. Their health, their happiness, their leisure! At times I could go down on my knees and beg them not to do such reckless damage to their own hearts." (p. 79) Shortly after this, Werther is mortally offended at a ball he had been invited to because he wasn't as aristocratic and upper class as the other guests. Werther can take it no longer, and cursing Wilhelm and his family, who had persuaded him to take a position he had no natural disposition for in the first place, he quits and moves in with a Prince where he can be closer once again to Lotte. Werther had been profoundly unsuited to that commercial, cut-throat materialistic world, and he reflects how much he despised the business people he had been mixing with, and "the glittering misery, the tedium of those awful people cooped up together and their greed for rank, and the way they are forever watchful for financial gain or precedence: the most wretched of passions." (p. 75)
Werther, of course, is lost without Lotte, and although he has now received the news that she and Albert have married, he still returns to the area so he can be closer to her. But despite their reacquaintance, Werther finds everything has changed and the things which brought him so much joy now only bring him the memory of happier times and he feels himself lost. He starts to act in a way that is not acceptable towards Lotte, and Albert refuses to talk to him when he is in his and Lotte's presence any longer. Eventually, in a despairing scene, he tells Lotte how much he loves her and they share an intoxicating kiss: "Yes, all of it passes away; but a whole eternity will not extinguish that living fire that I enjoyed on your lips yesterday, and which I feel burning within me," he tells her. But Lotte tells him how she loves Albert and how they can never be together. And with very astute psychological insight, she tells Werther the great concern of her heart: "I fear, I fear very much, that what makes the desire to possess me so attractive is its very impossibility." Things have gone too far between them now, and in order to save her marriage, reputation and sanity, she tells Werther that they must part forever. Werther acknowledges this and says he will be out of hers and Albert's lives as they require. But with his soul in pieces, he has no escape route from his heartbreak and using a pistol that belongs to Albert and which he had been actually given by Lotte, he shoots himself.
Goethe's novel was a sensation when it was published, becoming a world bestseller. There was even a "Werther cult," and many sensitive, artistic young men dressed in the style of Werther - most famously by wearing a blue frock coat like the one worn by Werther in the novel - and it even became a scandal and was banned for a while in some countries, as pious folk thought the book "recommended suicide." For me, though, as I said earlier, it is in fact quite the opposite. It is a deeply sensitive book, and explores without judgement the way an individual can respond to life so glowingly and lovingly, and yet, for many reasons, find that they cannot continue living any longer. It is also a robust and unsentimental exploration of the facts of our existence, and Werther tries to find an authentic way to live in the world with the uncomfortable truths that life contains. For instance, he adores Nature and the beauty of the living world, but he also refuses to not acknowledge that nature is also cruel and that everything that lives basically feasts upon something else and that eventually they (and we) will be feasted upon and ousted by the next generation in turn. This is an uncomfortable fact that most people who claim to love Nature usually refuse to acknowledge, and thus not only sentimentalise Nature itself but also love it in Bad Faith. For all his faults, Werther could never be accused of living in Bad Faith. His sharp intellect would see that as an unforgivable weakness and flaw. He sees the world around him, in all its chaos and contradiction, and finds that only Love can make life worth living. And when the woman he worships informs him that they can never be together as she is already married to another, in his mind, he has no reason to go on living. And this is where Goethe's novel is perhaps a precursor to not only Freud and Psychoanalytic thought, but Existentialism, too. For what Werther is really suffering from, and the term used then would probably have been melancholia, is depression. As I read the letters that Werther was sending his friend Wilhelm as he was becoming more and more unhappy, I felt myself wanting to write back saying, "Werther... You need to get away! Go and live by the sea for a while, take some time for yourself and then gradually reintegrate yourself into society. Life is not lost for you, you have so much to offer. The world needs souls who interpret life the way you do with such sensitivity and great depth of feeling." But, of course, we cannot do that as Werther is a character in a novel, but Goethe teases that response in the reader's mind and perhaps this is one of the reasons why his book is still read and admired today. For reading this little novel is not a passive experience, you get drawn into Werther's world and at different times you want to shout at him, laugh with him, roll your eyes at him, and sometimes cry with him, too. Mainly, though, is Goethe's insights into behaviours that would now quite possibly be clinically diagnosed as bi-polar and manic depression. Werther swings from an exalted state to complete despair, and no wonder Freud admitted that all of his theories were already presented in the works of great artists and poets and how much they helped him in his research into the deepest corners of the human mind. It is also interesting to consider how the story is based on autobiographical details, and Goethe later admitted that it was in part through writing the novel that he navigated his own way through a broken heart because of an unhappy love affair.
And finally, for me, it is a book that is filled with sensitivity, beauty, and wistfulness. I have read it many times, and the first time I did so it was in the church garden of a little village in North Wales called Northop, the village where I grew up in a little brick house with my Mum, Nain and Taid. And under a beautiful tree that was in the church garden, in Late Summer, with the bees still humming, and the birds chirping away, it was a wonderful experience. I would return there to do so until we moved away from the area, and, after my Nain and Taid had passed away, I always felt closer to them when I was in that serene church garden, and it truly felt like they were sitting there with me under that wise old tree, listening to the birds and the insects busily going about their business. It also helps me remember not to be intellectually lazy when it comes to living life and that to be authentic is Werther's principal message, not the melancholy end that he succumbs to.
I hope you are all enjoying the late Summer and don't forget to Love Life and embrace the beauty it contains wherever possible.
Until next time... xxx
- Northop Church
