The Sorrows of Young Werther (Modern Library) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Author:Johann Wolfgang von Goethe [Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2004-02-17T00:00:00+00:00

from him, a letter before which I knelt down and worshiped its high, noble, wise import. How he reprimanded my all too excessive feeling, how he honored as youthful courage my inflated notions of being effective, of influence on others, of getting through to others on matters of business. He wrote this not to root them out but only to mitigate them and attempt to lead them to where they could have their true play, their powerful effect. And for a week I was strengthened and at one with myself. Calmness of soul is a glorious thing, and joy in oneself. Dear friend, if only the precious stone were not just as fragile as it is beautiful and costly.

FEBRUARY 20

God bless you, my dear ones, and give you all the good days He strips away from me!

I thank you, Albert, for deceiving me: I was waiting for news when your wedding day would be, and had planned on that day to solemnly take down Lotte’s silhouette from the wall and bury it under other papers. Now you are a couple and her image is still there! Well, let it stay! And why not? I know I am with you both too, am, without injuring you, in Lotte’s heart, have, yes, have the second place in it and will and must maintain it. Oh, I would go mad if she could forget— Albert, a hell lies in the thought. Albert, farewell! Farewell, angel from heaven! Farewell, Lotte!

MARCH 15

I have had a vexation that will drive me away from here. It makes me grind my teeth! Damn! It can’t be made good, and it’s all your fault, all you who drove and tormented me and spurred me on to take a position that was against my inclination. This is what I get! This is what you get! And so you won’t say again that my exaggerated ideas ruin everything, here, my dear sir, is a narration, plain and simple, as a chronicler would record it.

Count von C . . . loves me, honors me, that is well-known, I have written you that a hundred times. Yesterday I dined with him, it happened to be on the day the aristocratic society of ladies and gentlemen gathers at his house in the evening, which had never occurred to me, nor that we subordinates had no business there. Fine. I dine with the Count, and afterwards we walk up and down in the great hall; I am talking with him and with Colonel B . . . , who joins us, and the hour for the gathering draws near. God knows, I’m thinking nothing at all. Then overgracious Lady von S . . . enters with her Sir Spouse and well-hatched gosling daughter with the flat chest and sweet little beanpole body, widen en passant their ancestrally aristocratic eyes and nostrils, and as I despise the whole nation of them from the bottom of my heart, I was on the point of taking my leave and was only waiting for the Count to be free from the dreadful twaddle when my Fräulein B .

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