Suicide is an event of human nature which, whatever may be said and done with respect to it, demands the sympathy of every man, and in every epoch must be discussed anew. Montesquieu grants his heroes and great men the right of killing themselves as they think fit, since he says that it must be free to every one to close the fifth act of his tragedy as he pleases. But here the discourse is not of those persons who have led an active and important life, who have sacrificed their days for a great empire, or for the cause of freedom, and whom one cannot blame if they think to follow in another world the idea which inspires them, as soon as it has vanished from the earth. We have here to do with those whose life is embittered by a want of action, in the midst of the most peaceful circumstances in the world, through exaggerated demands upon themselves. Since I myself was in this predicament, and best knew the pain I suffered in it, and the exertion it cost me to free myself, I will not conceal the reflections which I made, with much deliberation, on the various kinds of death which one might choose.
There is something so unnatural in a man tearing himself away from himself, not only injuring, but destroying himself, that he mostly seizes upon mechanical means to carry his design into execution. When Ajax falls upon his sword, it is the weight of his body which does him the last service. When the warrior binds his shield-bearer not to let him fall into the hands of the enemy, it is still an external force which he secures, only a moral instead of a physical one. Women seek in water a cooling for their despair, and the extremely mechanical means of fire-arms ensure a rapid act with the very least exertion. Hanging, one does not like to mention, because it is an ignoble death. In England one may first find it, because there, from youth upwards, one sees so many hanged, without the punishment being precisely dishonourable. By poison, by opening the veins, the only intention is to depart slowly from life; and that most refined, rapid, and painless death by an adder, was worthy of a queen, who had passed her life in pleasure and brilliancy. But all these are external aids, enemies with which man forms an alliance against himself.
When now I considered all these means, and looked about further in history, I found among all those who killed themselves no one who did this deed with such greatness and freedom of mind, as the Emperor Otho. He, having the worst of it as a general, but being by no means reduced to extremities, resolves to quit the world for the benefit of the empire, which, in some measure, already belongs to him, and for the sake of sparing so many thousands. He has a cheerful supper with his friends, and the next morning it is found that he has plunged a sharp dagger into his heart. This deed alone seemed to me worthy of imitation; and I was convinced that whoever could not act in this like Otho, had no right to go voluntarily out of the world. By these convictions, I freed myself not so much from the danger as from the whim of suicide, which in those splendid times of peace, and with an indolent youth, had managed to creep in. Among a considerable collection of weapons, I possessed a handsome, well polished dagger. This I laid every night by my bed, and before I extinguished the candle, I tried whether I could succeed in plunging the sharp point a couple of inches deep into my heart. Since I never could succeed in this, I at last laughed myself out of the notion, threw off all hypochondriacal fancies, and resolved to live. But to be able to do this with cheerfulness, I was obliged to solve a poetical problem, by which all that I had felt, thought, and fancied upon this important point, should be reduced to words. For this purpose I collected the elements which had been at work in me for a few years; I rendered present to my mind the cases which had most afflicted and tormented me; but nothing would come to a definite form; I lacked an event, a fable, in which they could be overlooked.
Jerusalem's Death.
All at once I heard the news of Jerusalem's death, and immediately after the general report, the most accurate and circumstantial description of the occurrence, and at this moment the plan of Werther was formed, and the whole shot together from all sides, and became a solid mass, just as water in a vessel, which stands upon the point of freezing, is concerted into hard ice by the most gentle shake. To hold fast this singular prize, to render present to myself, and to carry out in all its parts a work of such important and various contents was the more material to me, as I had again fallen into a painful situation, which left me even less hope than those which had preceded it, and foreboded only sadness, if not vexation.
It is always a misfortune to step into new relations to which one has not been inured; we are often against our will lured into a false sympathy, the incompleteness[6] of such positions troubles us, and yet we see no means either of completing them or of removing them.
Frau von Laroche had married her eldest daughter at Frankfort, and often came to visit her, but could not reconcile herself to the position which she herself had chosen. Instead of feeling comfortable, or endeavouring to make any alteration, she indulged in lamentations, so that one was really forced to think that her daughter was unhappy; although, as she wanted nothing, and her husband denied her nothing, one could not well see in what her unhappiness properly consisted. In the meanwhile I was well received in the house, and came into contact with the whole circle, which consisted of persons who had partly contributed to the marriage, partly wished for it a happy result. The Dean of St. Leonhard, Dumeitz, conceived a confidence, nay, a friendship for me. He was the first Catholic clergyman with whom I had come into close contact, and who, because he was a clear-sighted man, gave me beautiful and sufficient explanations of the faith, usages, and external and internal relations of the oldest church. The figure of a well-formed though not young lady, named Servières, I still accurately remember. I likewise came into contact with the Alossina-Schweizer, and other families, forming a connexion with the sons, which long continued in the most friendly manner, and all at once found myself domesticated in a strange circle, in the occupations, pleasures, and even religious exercises of winch I was induced, nay, compelled to take part. My former relation to the young wife, which was, properly speaking, only that of a brother to a sister, was continued after marriage; my age was suitable to her own; I was the only one in the whole circle in whom she heard an echo of those intellectual tones to which she had been accustomed from her youth. We lived on together in a childish confidence, and although there was nothing impassioned in our intercourse, it was tormenting enough, because she also could not reconcile herself to her new circumstances, and although blessed with the goods of fortune, had to act as the mother of several step-children, being moreover transplanted from the cheerful vale of Ehrenbreitstein and a joyous state of youth into a gloomily-situated mercantile house. Amid so many new family connexions was I hemmed in, without any real participation or co-operation. If they were satisfied with each other, all seemed to go on as a matter of course; but most of the parties concerned turned to me in cases of vexation, which by my lively sympathy I generally rendered worse rather than better. In a short time this situation became quite insupportable to me; all the disgust at life which usually springs from such half-connexions, seemed to burden me with double and three-fold weight, and a new strong resolution was necessary to free myself from it.
Jerusalem's death, which was occasioned by his unhappy attachment to the wife of his friend, shook me out of the dream, and, because I not only visibly contemplated that which had occurred to him and me, but something similar which befel me at the moment, also stirred me to passionate emotion, I could not do otherwise than breathe into that production, which I had just undertaken, all that warmth which leaves no distinction between the poetical and the actual. I had completely isolated myself, nay, prohibited the visits of my friends, and internally also I put everything aside that did not immediately belong to the subject. On the other hand, I embraced everything that had any relation to my design, and repeated to myself my nearest life, of the contents of which I had as yet made no practical use. Under such circumstances, after such long and so many preparations in secret, I wrote Werther in four weeks without any scheme of the whole, or treatment of any part, being previously put on paper.
Werther.
The manuscript, which was now finished, lay before me as a rough draught, with few corrections and alterations. It was stitched at once, for the binding is to a written work of about the same use as the frame is to a picture; one can much better see whether there is really anything in it. Since I had written thus much, almost unconsciously, like a somnambulist, I was myself astonished, now I went through it, that I might alter and improve it in some respects. But in the expectation that after some time, when I had seen it at a certain distance, much would occur to me that would turn to the advantage of the work, I gave it to my younger friends to read, upon whom it produced an effect so much the greater, as, contrary to my usual custom, I had told no one of it, nor discovered my design beforehand. Yet here again it was the subject-matter which really produced the effect, and in this respect they were in a frame of mind precisely the reverse of my own; for by this composition, more than by any other, I had freed myself from that stormy element, upon which, through my own fault and that of others, through a mode of life both accidental and chosen, through design and thoughtless precipitation, through obstinacy and pliability, I had been driven about in the most violent manner. I felt, as if after a general confession, once more happy and free, and justified in beginning a new life.