The Testament of Werther in Poetry and Drama [Reprint 2013 ed.] 9780674280212, 9780674730540

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HARVARD STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE I.

THREE PHILOSOPHICAL POETS

LUCRETIUS, DANTE, AND GOETHE B Y GEORGE SANTAYANA II.

CHIVALRY IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

CHAUCER, M A L O R Y , SPENSER, AND SHAKESPEARE BY W I L L I A M HENRY SCHOFIELD III.

THE COMEDIES OF HOLBERG

B Y OSCAR J A M E S CAMPBELL, JR. IV.

MEDIAEVAL SPANISH ALLEGORY B Y CHANDLER RATH FON POST

V.

MYTHICAL BARDS AND THE LIFE OF W I L L I A M WALLACE B Y W I L L I A M HENRY SCHOFIELD VI.

ANGEVIN BRITAIN AND SCANDINAVIA B Y HENRY GODDARD LEACH

VII.

CHAUCER AND THE ROMAN POETS B Y EDGAR FINLEY SHANNON

VIII.

SPENSER AND THE TABLE ROUND B Y CHARLES BOWIE MILLICAN IX.

EGER AND GRIME

B Y J A M E S RALSTON CALDWELL X.

VIRGIL THE NECROMANCER

BY JOHN WEBSTER SPARGO XI. CHAUCER'S USE OF PROVERBS B Y BARTLETT JERE WHITING XII.

ENGLISH LITERATURE AND CULTURE IN RUSSIA

(1553-1840)

BY ERNEST J . S I M M O N S XIII.

D'EDMOND SPENSER À ALAN SEEGER

POÈMES ANGLAIS TRADUITS EN VERS FRANÇAIS B Y FERNAND BALDENSPERGER XIV.

PROVERBS IN THE EARLIER ENGLISH DRAMA B Y BARTLETT JERE WHITING

XV. CATULLUS IN STRANGE AND DISTANT BRITAIN B Y J A M E S A. S. MCPEEK XVI.

JEAN RACINE

B Y ALEXANDER F. B. CLARK XVII.

U N VOYAGEUR-PHILOSOPHE A U XVIII e SIECLE L'ABBÉ JEAN-BERNARD LE BLANC B Y HÉLÈNE MONOD-CASSIDY

XVIII. A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE THEOPHRASTAN CHARACTER IN ENGLISH WITH

SEVERAL PORTRAIT CHARACTERS

B Y CHESTER NOYES GREENOUGH AND J . M . FRENCH

HARVARD STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE FOUNDED BY W I L L I A M HENRY SCHOFIELD

• XIX · THE TESTAMENT OF WERTHER I N POETRY AND DRAMA

LONDON : GEOFFREY

CUMBERLEGE

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

The Testament Of

WERTHER Jn Poetry and Ό rama

BY

STUART PRATT ATKINS

HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE

·

MASSACHUSETTS

I 9 4 9

COPYRIGHT ·

1949

BY THE PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

PREFACE Pro captu lectoris habent sua fata libelli. Although no more sentimental in the popularly pejorative sense of the term than Flaubert's L'Éducation sentimentale,1 since its appearance in 1774 Goethe's The Passion of Young Werther has been regarded by an overwhelming proportion of its readers as a sentimental novel, and frequently as the quintessence of sentimentality even by many of the discriminating. Why this has been true and still tends to be so is thus the main, if by no means only, theme of The Testament of Werther in Poetry and Drama. Begun in 1937 as a semi-bibliographical survey of one aspect of Goethe's influence on world literature,2 in its present form The Testament of Werther is above all else an evaluation of the effect of imitation and notoriety upon the interpretation of a literary work. Of necessity it is therefore also a study in comparative literature: Werther's first success, as international as sentimentality, can only be explained in the light of the main currents of eighteenth-century European literature; and the later history of the protean Werther, like a history of Goethe's many reputations, must ever and again involve the exposition of more or less complex international cultural and literary relations. In telling as 1 C f . S. Atkins, " J . C. Lavater and Goethe: Problems of Psychology and Theology in Die Leiden des jungen Werthers" Publications of the Modern Language Association, L X I I I (1948), pp. 520-576. 2 "Werther Plays and Werther Poems" (a dissertation presented to the faculty of the Graduate School of Yale University in candidacy for the degree of doctor of philosophy, 1938).

vili

PREFACE

a whole a story so many episodes of which have already been separately treated, I have tried to use illustrative material neglected in earlier investigations; this is one, although as the reader will discover by no means the primary, reason for my special preoccupation with poetry and drama which in some way represent evaluations of Werther or of Goethe as Werther's creator. Anyone familiar with what may well be called Goethe philology will appreciate my material indebtedness to previous investigators as well as the impracticability of offering a full bibliography of their contributions; 3 on the other hand, he will realize that I have had much to reinterpret and many lacunae to fill, and that my method and the conclusions which I reach are my own. Largely on the basis of new literary evidence, I offer in Chapter II an account of Werther in England very different from the traditional one, traces of which can be found in so recent a work as Fritz Strich's Goethe und die Weltliteratur* Chapter III, surprisingly enough, has no scholarly forebears, since there has never been a history of the Werther theme in German poetry; if Chapter I V does not cover entirely virgin territory, it at least opens up an occasional vista to the east and south of Europe, something it could not do if my pattern were simply the old one of single national literatures; Chapter V , finally, is the first systematic survey of Werther in drama and spectacle. T h e appended check-list of Werther poems and plays eloquently testifies that Werther is verily a work of world literature; although it can hardly be considered more than approximately definitive, it is more complete 3 In the "Bibliography of Werther Poems and Werther Plays" are listed only those special studies which I have found indispensable or which have exerted a marked influence on other accounts of Werther's influence. 4 Bern, 1946 (esp. pp. 204f., 291 f.).

PREFACE

ix

—and, I hope, much more usable—than any former bibliography comprehending the same subject. Professor Carl F. Schreiber, Curator of the William A. Speck Collection of Goetheana at Yale University, who originally suggested that Werther imitations could profitably be reinvestigated, has given me invaluable criticism, advice, and encouragement, especially during the first writing of this book, and has placed his knowledge and skills at my disposal on the many occasions when I have had need of them; Professor Fernand Baldensperger, when at Harvard University, allowed me to use his manuscript addenda to his Bibliographie critique de Goethe en France, and then and since has, as experienced comparatiste, brought to my attention material and lines of investigation which could be advantageously exploited; Professor Orie W . Long has in various ways encouraged me to complete a work repeatedly interrupted by more immediate civilian and military duties; Professor Hermann J. Weigand, without whose training in criticism this book might have been little more than a bibliographie raisonnée, made me aware of certain defects in its first version which I trust have since been remedied; Professor Karl Viëtor has offered suggestions which helped me present the story of Werther in Germany more clearly and accurately; Professor Alphonse R. Favreau kindly scrutinized the first draft of Chapter IV with an eye to its factual accuracy; Mr. A. Curtis La France generously made me translations of several Rumanian texts; Dr. Anton Kippenberg of the Insel-Verlag graciously allowed me to use material which I found only in his private Goethe collection, formerly at Leipzig; Professor Taylor Starck has carefully read my final manuscript, which has been advantageously emended in several places as a result of his criticisms; Professor Harry

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PREFACE

Levin, who read my manuscript with the general reader in mind, has also suggested improvements which I gladly adopted: to these, my teachers, colleagues, and friends, and to the scholars and members of library staffs here and abroad who have personally assisted me in many different ways in my long and geographically extensive study of Wertheriana, I express heartfelt gratitude. The cost of publication of this book has been in part defrayed by a liberal grant from the William H. Schofield Fund, administered by the Department of Comparative Literature in Harvard University. It is a pleasure to acknowledge helpful assistance from members of the staff of the Harvard University Press, particularly from Phoebe deKay Donald of the editorial department. And to the severe but modest critic who has read and reread it many times in manuscript and proof is discreetly dedicated The Testament of Werther in Poetry and Drama. Cambridge, Massachusetts

S. P. A.

CONTENTS

i Jhe Cult of Werther

ι

Fame · Poems and Plays · Notes

π English Werther Poetry

10

The Assimilability of Werther · Exploitation of a Best Seller • Landscape and Elegy · Sensibility and Virtue · The Forces of Conservatism · The Attempt at Positive Critical Evaluation · Romanticism and After • Notes

in Qerman Werther Poetry

64

The First Reception of Werther · The Affirmation of Sentiment · Rationalist and Irrationalist Morality · Criticism of the Werther Critics · Werther and the Romanticists · Evaluations in Biographical and Historical Perspective · The Achievement of Objectivity · Notes

IV French Werther Poetry

116

The First Interest in Werther · Early Werther Poems in French · Sentimental Treatment of the Werther Theme · Werther and French Preromanticism · Wertherian Preromanticism in Poland · Werther and French Romanticism · Werther Poetry after Romanticism · Notes

ν Werther in the Oranta The Dramatic Value of Werther · A Dutch Neoclassical Tragedy · A French Middle-class Tragedy · An Italian Tragicomedy · A French Middleclass Drama · An English Tragedy in Blank Verse · Werther Criticism and Parody • The Werther Theme in Post-Romantic Drama · Werther as a Symbol · Notes

159

CONTENTS

Jbe Legacy of Werther Imitation and Influence · Imitation and Appreciation • Notes

Bibliography of Werther and Werther Plays Index

Poems

THE T E S T A M E N T OF

WERTHER IN POETRY AND DRAMA

I

7he Cult of

Werther

FAME

ESS than a year after his historical drama, Götz von Berlichingen, had won him some literary reputation throughout Germany, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, by profession a lawyer, had completed several new works, among them one that he described as "eine Geschichte"

£

. . . darinn ich einen iungen Menschen darstelle, der mit einer tiefen reinen Empfindung, und wahrer Penetration begabt, sich in schwärmende Träume verliert, sich durch Spekulation untergräbt, biss er zuletzt durch dazutretende unglückliche Leidenschafften, besonders eine endlose Liebe zerrüttet, sich eine Kugel vor den Kopf schiesst.1 A few months later, in the early autumn of 1774, this story, Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, was published at Leipzig in two slim volumes. It was only a matter of a few years until an allusion to the passionate Werther, or to Charlotte, the object of his endless love, was as certain of being understood by European readers as one to Hero and Leander or to Héloïse and Abelard. Goethe could not have foreseen that within a decade his objective study of self-destructive speculation would become vulgarly known to persons of many different nationalities, and of all social classes and degrees of education, as a love story in which the hero is driven to suicide by frustrated passion. The notoriety of Werther hardly

2

T H E TESTAMENT OF WERTHER

seemed to Goethe an unmixed blessing; as he declared on the occasion of his first trip to Italy: Ach wie hab ich so oft die Die mein jugendlich Leid Wäre Werther mein Bruder gen, Kaum verfolgte mich so

törigten Blätter verwünschet, unter die Menschen gebracht. gewesen, ich hätt' ihn erschlarächend sein trauriger Geist.2

Whatever his later achievements, he was never allowed to forget that his world reputation had begun with the fame of Werther, and the novel of his youth was a main topic of many a conversation or interview with him in after years, as when he met with Napoleon at Erfurt in 1808. Many of Goethe's works achieved immediate success or notoriety in Germany, and many have been ultimately acknowledged as classics of modern European literature, but none won international fame so rapidly as did his Werther. Novelists, playwrights, poets, composers, choreographers, and iconographers ranging from reputable painters and illustrators to anonymous waxworkers, all unrestrained by any laws of copyright and inspired by their own or others' interest in Goethe's popular novel, quickly appropriated its themes to their peculiar talents. In addition, the cult of Werther was exploited by the trade: eau de Werther was sold, and Charlotte and Werther, figures long as familiar and ubiquitous as Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck today, appeared on fans and gloves, on bread-boxes and jewelry, on delicate Meissen porcelain and the enterprisingly commissioned china to which Goethe referred in the lines: Deutschland ahmte mich nach, und Frankreich mochte mich lesen. England! freundlich empfingst du den zerrütteten Gast.

THE CULT OF WERTHER

3

Doch was fördert es mich, dasz auch sogar der Chinese Mahlet, mit ängstlicher Hand, Werthern und Lotten auf Glas.8 Although blatant commercial exploitation of the popularity of a literary work is no evidence of critical appreciation, in the case of Werther it was a factor in diffusing familiarity with certain details of the novel and thus guaranteeing their comprehensibility when not too sophisticatedly exploited with artistic intent. Impressions received from imitations of Werther soon partly supplanted those obtained from the original work, but appreciation of its literary merits can have been only slightly affected by the more ingenuous manifestations of Werther enthusiasm. Both writing and painting inspired by the novel did, however, have significant influence on its interpretation and gave currency, sometimes by common emphasis on certain aspects and details, to distorted ideas of the work as a whole. Lotte's homely virtues, for example, seemed especially memorable, and we find an allusion to "ready viands" for her younger brothers and sisters accompanied in Anne Francis' Charlotte to Werter, A Poetical Epistle by a footnote referring to H. W . Bunbury's once widely known picture, "First Interview of Werter." 4 A still more popular motif of Werther imitations, Lotte weeping at Werther's grave, is not to be found in Goethe's novel, and yet the author of a Swedish imitation of Thomson's The Seasons declares that he often contemplates an engraving of this scene, which reminds him of what he has read in Werther's letters.6 Werther and Werther have long been indiscriminately confused. From the first enthusiastic reception of the novel until the present day, "Werther" has remained a concept that cannot be simply equated with the charac-

4

THE TESTAMENT OF WERTHER

ter portrayed by Goethe in either the first or the definitive version of his novel, let alone with the novel itself. The educated reader must still force himself to distinguish between a historical Goethe and the hero of Werther; between a Werther with many attractive personal qualities and a maudlin sentimentalist; between a man who speculated boldly, if dangerously, about questions of fundamental metaphysical importance and a romantic and somewhat operatic lover. Interpretation of Goethe's novel was long influenced by distorting factors. What these were and how they operated is a story not without a moral for hopeful authors and confident critics; for the following pages show that the fame of Werther has represented and, in some degree, still represents the cumulative effect of countless popular interpretations, corrected and amended by tireless critical efforts which range from simple ridicule of the aberrations of Werther enthusiasm and hostility, to careful analyses of sources, cultural-historical implications, and aesthetic values. POEMS AND PLAYS

Goethe's Werther is a classic psychological novel and an important document for the study of its author's development, but it is also an example of the international literature of sentiment which flourished in the latter half of the eighteenth century. The story of its fame therefore begins with its reception by the public of the time when it was written; but it should not stop there, for the process by which a work becomes a classic continues over generations and is advanced or hindered by many seemingly unrelated factors. And because Werther has in some sense belonged to world literature ever since it

THE CULT OF WERTHER

5

first appeared, its history must transcend the limits of national literatures. A survey of special treatments of the historical importance of Werther reveals that there has been collected a great body of material known, often properly, as Wertheriana: apparently inspired by a pious desire to demonstrate the rapid growth of "Goethe appreciation," many an author has produced a compilation which could well begin with the opening words of Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, "Was ich von der Geschichte des armen Werthers nur habe auffinden können, habe ich mit Fleisz gesammelt und leg es euch hier vor, und weis, dasz ihr mir's danken werdet." ® Apart from a few essays, speculative rather than factually convincing, such as Karl Hillebrand's Die Werther-Krankheit in Europa, interpretations of the fame of Werther neglect either the historical or the international implications of their theme, and sometimes both.7 Although there exist excellent accounts of Werther in France, England, America, and elsewhere, all put together do not give the total story of Werther; for the larger significance of many facts, including the repeatedly observed pattern of popularity and notoriety later followed by objective historical evaluation, becomes evident only in a frame of reference more comprehensive than that afforded by comparison of a literary work with interpretations and imitations of it in a given language.8 There is, moreover, so much Wertheriana from the first sentimental period of Werther enthusiasm that attempts to present all the evidence of interest in Goethe's novel leave a clear impression only of that first period. It is true that "die Darstellung der Wertherzeit, aus unzählbar vielen Einzelheiten der Forschung zusam-

6

THE TESTAMENT OF WERTHER

mengesetzt, würde ein Mosaik von köstlichem Reiz ergeben," 9 but any full account of the early reception of Werther must contain so many details that those of later literary-historical significance become indistinguishable. Accordingly, in this study of the fame of Werther emphasis is on literary manifestations of interest in Goethe's novel, particularly on poems and plays in which there are direct allusions to Werther or to characters and situations in it. Such poems and plays reflect not only the enthusiasm inspired by the novel and the notoriety that it attained, but also the history of Werther criticism in all its opposing tendencies and on every cultural level. Since the fortune of Werther was influenced by its reputation among others than the literate or literary, Werther plays, many of them the work of competent dramatists sensitive to the public taste, have a certain value as evidence of how familiar and popular the novel was at various times and places. Qualitatively more important are Werther poems, which have been written not only by literary hacks and self-deluded amateurs, but also by authors once, and sometimes still, highly esteemed; they represent either sincere tributes to the author of a novel which could profoundly affect its readers, or sincere reactions to opinions current about it; and they are of peculiar literary interest in the light of the observation of so distinguished a critic as Friedrich Gundolf, "Als Gedichtzyklus hätte sich . . . die Darstellung der Wertherkrise denken lassen."10 Werther novels, however, are here deliberately disregarded, for unlike Werther plays and poems they illustrate only one period of interest in Werther, that most easily documented, and are more exclusively the work of mediocre writers. In previous Werther studies analysis of these novels has demanded space disproportionate to their literary and historical value; in

THE CULT OF WERTHER

7

the present pages new and reinterpreted material from Werther poetry and drama replaces their evidence. Although the story of Werther is part of the history of romanticism in the wider sense of the term, it has developed and still develops according to a pattern of its own. Plentiful documentation of the literary notoriety of Werther makes it possible to trace this story without taking the whole for the part, and thus there is ordinarily no need also to consider works which are Werther-like in some very general way. Werther, not Wertherism or Werther-Krankheit as the equivalent of sentimentality or mal du siècle, is here emphasized; works which perhaps resemble Werther fortuitously — or like Goethe's Torquato Tasso, unintentionally — are ignored.11 English Werther poetry alone illustrates every facet of the sentimental appeal of Goethe's novel, and helps explain the curiously short life of general literary interest in the Werther theme among English-speaking peoples. Elsewhere the history of Werther can be traced with hardly an interruption down to the present. Storm-and-Stress as well as sentimental enthusiasm is reflected in early German and Swedish Werther poems, but later German poetry shows how Werther, nearly always thought of in connection with its author, could become almost inseparably associated with literary-biographical and historical-critical problems. More purely literary preoccupation with Werther themes is characteristic of French Werther poetry, which is relatively slight in volume because it includes few sentimental effusions like those so numerous in other languages, but which is highly significant because it corresponds in tone and purpose to the Werther imitations of Romance and Slavic writers influenced at various times by French literature and criticism. Werther plays, many of which have had a place in the international dramatic

8

THE TESTAMENT OF WERTHER

repertory, demonstrate the forms of vulgar interest in the plot and situations of Goethe's novel which knew no national boundaries; and the variety of serious plays, representing many different types of drama, shows that Werther-inspired writers have belonged to the most dissimilar literary schools. The story of Werther in poem and play told in the following chapters is, then, the literary history of the fame of Werther. NOTES 1. Der junge Goethe, ed. M. Morris (Leipzig, 1910, 4:26. Letter to G. F. E. Schönborn, 1. Juni 1774. 2. See < E l e g i e n > II. — The source of quotations from poems or plays not otherwise indicated can be found in the appended bibliography. Footnotes have ordinarily been omitted if the first line of a poem is quoted or its author is named in the body of the text. References to the bibliography are introduced, as here, by see; except when the language or literary genre of a reference is not clear from the text, only a first line, title, or author entry is given. [The foregoing reference is to be read: See Bibliography, German Poetry. GOETHE, < E l e g i e n > II.] For further explanation of symbols employed see the introduction to the bibliography. 3. Cf. F. Α. Hünich, "Werther und seine Zeit," in: J . W . von Goethe, Die Leiden des jungen Werther, ed. M. Hecker (Leipzig, 1922), pp. xxviii-xxix and ill. 33, for perfume, fans, jewelry; infra, p. 186, for gloves; M. Sauerlandt, "Werther-Porzellane," Jahrbuch der Sammlung Kippenberg (Leipzig, 1923), 3:100-106; J. W . Appell, Werther und seine Zeit (Oldenburg, 1896), p. 252, for china. Professor Harold S. Jantz of Northwestern University possesses a bread or cake box decorated with Werther illustrations. 4. For another allusion to this picture see English Poetry, CRABBE. Bunbury's illustrations are also mentioned by the English poet William Meyler; also see "Charms that the bliss of Eden might restore." O 5. Johan Henrik Denell, Arstiderna (1786): "Och du sköna Estampe som jag sá ofta betragtar; du LOTTA med boken i handen grätende vid VERTHERS Urn! du erindrar mig hvad jag med okända känslor — last i hans brefvar." (Quoted: W . G. Johnson, James Thomson's Influence on Swedish Literature in the Eighteenth Century [Urbana, 1936], p. 139. 6. This quotation is used as added title of F. Meyer's AntiquariatsKatalog Nr. 100 (Leipzig, Mai, 1911). 7. See Bibliographies, Catalogues, General Studies (listed at beginning of appended bibliography). — The studies of Hillebrand and

THE CULT OF WERTHER

9

Hermenj at concern sentimentality, mal du siècle and romanticism more than Werther; despite the title Werther und seine Xeit, Appell's book contains much miscellaneous evidence of the notoriety and influence of Goethe's novel throughout Europe in the nineteenth century; the bibliographies and collections of Goetheana offer uninterpreted materials. The remaining titles represent limited comparative treatments, except Strich's Goethe und die Weltliteratur, in which, however, "was über Goethes Tod hinausreicht, möchte nur als gelegentlicher Exkurs betrachtet werden" (p. 9), and in which there are many valid generalizations that do not particularly apply to the story of Werther. 8. See Special Studies. (The most important treatments of so-called Werther influences on single literatures are listed at the beginning of the appropriate sub-sections of the appended bibliography.) — In studies modeled after Baldensperger's Goethe en France (for example, Carré, Goethe en Angleterre; Zhirmunskiï, G e te ν russkoî poèzii; van der Laan, Goethe in de Nederlandsche Letterkunde) later interest in Werther is naturally lost sight of as other aspects of Goethe's work and personality successively become important themes. The careful investigations of Werther in England (O. W . Long) and France (L. Morel) have unfortunately appeared as series of separate articles in which translation, criticism, and imitation — this last subdivided by literary genre — are treated as special topics; Morel's studies, moreover, do not all cover the same chronological periods. 9. F. A. Hünich, "Aus der Wertherzeit," JbS.Kipp. 4:249. [For this and other abbreviated titles see introduction of appended bibliography.] 10. F. Gundolf, Goethe (Berlin, 1918), p. 176. 11. Goethe declared, "Sehr treffend nennt er [Ampère] daher auch den Tasso einen gesteigerten Werther." J.-J. Amjpère had written in Le Globe, Paris, 20 mai 1826, "Dans cette poesie si delicate, si harmonieuse, il y a du 'Verther.' " See F. W . Biedermann, Goethes Gespräche, Gesamtausgabe (Leipzig, 1910), 3:384.— The strict application of the criterion formulated in the text has kept much dubious Wertheriana out of the appended bibliography, and explains the lack of any reference to such a work as Schiller's early tragedy of suicide, Oer Student von Nassau (see his Werke, ed. Güntter-Witkowski [Leipzig, n.d.], 9:11-12), or to Vicenzo Monti's poems Al Principe Don Sigismondo Chigi and Venneri d'Amore, noteworthy for stylistic influence from Werther (see H. Lohner, Deutschlands Anteil an der Italienischen Romantik, [Bern, Leipzig, 1936], pp. 3-16).

II

English Werther

Poetry

THE ASSIMILABILITY OF WERTHER

HEN, in Dichtung und Wahrheit, Goethe is about to explain the great success which Werther enjoyed in Germany immediately upon its appearance, he makes an excursion into English literary history. His purpose is to show how, under the influence of English literature, a natural tendency of youth to feel sated with life manifested itself in Germany more generally and in more extreme forms during the period prior to the publication of Werther than it would otherwise have done. Goethe characterizes English literature as pessimistic, tracing its pessimism back to social and political phenomena of English life, and declares that members of his generation, according to their temperaments, either favored the despairing pessimism of Edward Young and other moral-didactic poets, or the lighter elegiac tone of Gray and of Goldsmith's The Traveller and The Deserted Village. Hamlet's monologues were known by heart, and readers delighted in the ghostly world of Ossian, for Goethe's young contemporaries, lacking any worth-while outlet for their energies, consoled themselves for the frustrations of their existence with the thought that they at least had the freedom to end it at their own pleasure. Goethe observes that the malady of his generation was perfectly familiar to the English, and

ENGLISH WERTHER POETRY

II

quotes in evidence "die wenigen bedeutenden, vor dem Erscheinen Werthers geschriebenen Zeilen" (which are from Thomas Warton's ode, The Suicide) : To griefs congenial prone, More wounds than nature gave he knew, While misery's form his fancy drew In dark ideal hues and horrors not its own. After this, he goes on to a discussion of suicide, which leads logically to the story of the writing of Werther under the stimulus of the news of Jerusalem's suicide. Goethe's characterization of English literature may neglect more buoyant realists and humorists, but it is a valid picture of the literary sentimentality of eighteenthcentury England which for many years strongly influenced German writers. If Werther was enthusiastically received by sentimental readers in Germany because, for one reason, they were steeped in an English tradition, it could appeal with equal intensity to sentimental readers in the country to which that tradition was native, and only in England did it, in fact, achieve popularity as rapidly and to almost the same degree as in Germany. Goethe did not exaggerate when he wrote the pentameter, "England! freundlich empfingst du den zerrütteten Gast," for Werther, anglicized as Werter, was a name known to persons of every social station within five years of the publication, in 1779, of the first English translation of Goethe's novel. Before Werther could become a popular figure in England, however, the novel had to become known to the reading public and achieve literary success. With its moving portrayal of a despairing fatalist Werther was, despite its German setting, perfectly comprehensible to readers long devoted to works in which elegiac themes were dominant. In addition, many specific features of the novel were in keeping with es-

12

THE TESTAMENT OF WERTHER

tablished literary tastes. The sympathetic treatment of children and the descriptions of patriarchal country life recall passages in The Vicar of Wakefield.1 Werther's enthusiasm for nature, and the landscapes described in his letters, correspond with aspects of descriptive nature poetry as cultivated in England in the eighteenth century. Ossian, whom Werther comes to prefer to Homer, had numerous English admirers able to appreciate Werther's point of view and Goethe's tribute to Macpherson. As a middle-class novel of sentiment, Werther suited those readers who enjoyed Pamela, Clarissa, La Nouvelle Héloïse, and imitations of them in which a sense of virtue comparable to Charlotte's had an important place, while its epistolary form was in principle the same as that of countless sentimental novels in vogue at the time of its English debut. The Sorrows of Werter: A German Story offered no obstacles to an English reader, and even its German origin, which would have discredited it earlier in the century, was at least no discommendation since works of Klopstock, Wieland, Lessing, and, especially, Gessner had become favorably known in England. What most obviously distinguishes Werther from the mass of sentimental literature is its intensity. Werther's intensity of feeling is expressed in his language as well as in his actions, while Goethe's technique of presenting Werther's version of events almost exclusively eliminates the diffuseness of most epistolary novels. The first English translator of Werther, Daniel Malthus, appreciated its stylistic superiority even in the French translation of Deyverdun: About two years since the English translator met with it [Werther]·, and being struck with the uncommon genius and originality of the thoughts, and the energy with which they are expressed, translated some of the letters from the

ENGLISH WERTHER POETRY

13

French; and led on by the beauty of the work, which increased in proportion as it was attended to, the whole was insensibly finished.2 Werther was not presented to English readers as simply another novel bound to interest them because of its sensational plot or because its themes were currently fashionable, but as a work of poetic originality distinguished both in detail and as a whole. It is as a work of poetry that Werther exerted its great literary influence in England during the 1780's, and English poems inspired by it helped much to maintain an interest in a novel which remained popular while other works of sentiment were read only to be almost immediately forgotten. A brief survey of the state of English literature at the time when the cult of Werther was at its height will indicate why one novel, to be sure a masterpiece but translated from the German of an unheard of author, could loom so large on the literary horizon. Although English literature at the beginning of the eighteenth century gave expression to the confident rationalism of an age of enlightenment, by the end of the Augustan period a less optimistic note was being sounded even by classicistic poets.3 An elegiac tone long popular in broadsides, memorial poems, and religious verse soon became the literary fashion, and in The Complaint, or Night Thoughts on Lije, Death, and Immortality ( 1742 ) the pious Young gloomily observed: How sad a Sight is human Happiness To those whose Thoughts can pierce beyond an Hour! The same strain is heard in philosophical odes and descriptive poems, regardless of the religious views of their authors, through the rest of the century, for the first op-

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THE TESTAMENT OF WERTHER

timism of the Enlightenment had been followed by widespread emotional and intellectual pessimism.4 Although the English novel and drama of the period sometimes reflected a healthy realism and sense of humor, poetry, dominated in a far greater degree by tradition, was strictly limited in style and theme by classicistic principles still generally accepted. As the term Nature ceased to mean primarily Man, a reawakened feeling for nature in a wider sense was expressed in heroic couplets and epithet-packed stanzaic odes. An attempt to satisfy the want of something new was made by poets who turned from classical to medieval antiquity, and even to contemporary foreign literatures, for inspiration. Poetic values were discovered by Macpherson in Gaelic legend, Percy collected his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, and Chatterton ascribed his poems to a forgotten Rowley. Novels of sentiment or horror, filling long unsatisfied instinctive desires for pathos and fantasy, were uncritically admired by readers whose literary standards, sufficient for evaluating the correctness of neoclassical compositions, had given them no general criteria such as sincerity of purpose, objectivity, or organic unity. By the time The Sorrows of Werter appeared critical taste was generally at a low level, and a great body of mediocre writers felt no pressure to meet a high standard. Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, Smollett, and Goldsmith, as well as Gray, Collins, and Chatterton, had died by 1779; Sheridan's contributions to English comedy ceased with The Critic ( 1779) ; but the corpus of English literature continued to increase. Active writers included such minor figures as the novelists Richard Graves and Fanny Burney, the dramatist Hannah More, and the poets Cowper and Anna Seward. Countless volumes of anacreontic, elegiac, and occasional verse were published — chiefly in imita-

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tion of older English poets — but the twenty years following the publication in 1777 of The School for Scandal and Chatterton's Rowley poems were lean ones for literature. Crabbe's The Village (1783) and Cowper's The Task (1785) were outstanding literary events of this period, which coincides with Werther enthusiasm in England. William Blake's Poetical Sketches (1783) remained long unappreciated, so that the only popular author of lasting significance to appear on the literary scene was Burns, whose Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect were published in 1786. Werther had reached the height of his popularity by this year, when over a score of Werther imitations in prose and verse were printed and when Werter: A Tragedy was being produced at the theatres royal. Although popular interest began to decline after Werther was no longer a novelty, it was the one novel and one of a very limited number of works of literature bearing the mark of greatness to reach the English reading public in the last decades of the century, so that its literary importance and influence, coinciding with this period, were temporarily disproportionate.5 In eighteenth-century England poetry rivaled the drama and the novel in popularity, for the Augustans, with their verse essays, fables, and dramas, had created a large poetry-reading public. The taste for poetry was uncritical, but it was strong enough to survive the unpoetic eighties and early nineties, and to guarantee the success during their lifetime of many greater and lesser poets from the romanticists on. Although Werther contains many lyric passages whose poetic beauty has been appreciated as such by readers less starved for poetry than those of late eighteenth-century England, the latter hardly realized that their enjoyment of the novel was the more intense because it better filled an emotional need

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than did the verse of their favorite poets. On the other hand, Werther's emotions and feeling for nature were of a kind long familiar in English verse, so that it is not surprising that in a period of imitation Werther became the inspiration of numerous poetic efforts, especially when writers had been satisfying the demand for poetry by versifying such writers as Cicero, Macpherson, and Rousseau.6 Furthermore, Goethe's vivid and visual language, distinguished by what the translator Malthus termed "the uncommon genius and originality of the thoughts, and the energy with which they are expressed," furnished verse writers markedly lacking in originality and genius with a wealth of poetic imagery as well as with "thoughts." English Werther poetry was produced by writers now almost completely forgotten, yet these mediocrities constituted "English literature" in their day. The authors were mostly sentimentalists who, if they did not write, admired sentimental novels, and their preoccupation with Werther as a source of poetic inspiration preferred to any other single literary work is symptomatic of a vaguely felt vacuum in English literature. The sensational denouement of Werther, which paralleled the suicide of Chatterton (differently motivated), and the resemblance between the relation of Werther to Charlotte and that of the attempted suicide James Hackman to Martha Reay, are factors which may have helped create a popular interest in the novel, but they did not help to maintain its literary currency. Werther was continually brought to the attention of the reading public through imitations, chiefly in verse form, so that Werther and Charlotte were as familiar literary personages as any in English literature. The Sorrows of Werter enjoyed gratuitous advertisement, while more Werther poems

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were written in English than in any other language, including German. As a result of the demand for poetry and of the poetic inspiration offered by Werther, a vicious circle from novel to verse and back and forth again and again established The Sorrows of Werter in the literary consciousness as the sentimental novel par excellence. EXPLOITATION OF A BEST SELLER

The first English imitation of Werther was, characteristically, a poem. It appeared early in 1780 in an anonymous volume entitled Love and Madness: A Story too True: In a Series of Letters between Parties, whose Names would perhaps be mentioned, were they less known, or less lamented. This work purports to contain the correspondence of James Hackman with Martha Reay, whom Hackman had murdered the year before as she was leaving Covent Garden theater. Hackman's motive was jealousy and despair, for Miss Reay, the talented mistress of Lord Sandwich, had decided that even for love she could not break with the earl, who was the father of her children. After killing Martha Reay, Hackman had immediately attempted to shoot himself. Wounded only slightly, he was held for trial and eventually executed. There was great public interest in the case, which inspired various pamphlets and ballads, and Love and Madness went through seven editions in as many years.7 The Hackman-Reay letters combine passionate outbursts with pedantic compilations of instances of tragic love in all times and climes. The latter element reveals the hand of an editor who knew how the Hackman-Reay affair was to end, and in a postscript to the fifth London edition authorship of the majority of the letters was, in fact, claimed by Sir Herbert Croft, whose

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life of Young (Johnson's Lives of the Poets) was considered noteworthy even by contemporaries for its parading of historical and literary analogues.8 Love and Madness represents literary exploitation of a cause célèbre, but Croft hedged against any decline of interest in Hackman and Reay by including a letter, half the length of his volume, devoted to a life of Chatterton which he had compiled from original sources obtained from the poet's sister, apparently under false pretenses. H e further assured popular interest in Love and Madness b y showing the pernicious influence exerted on Hackman by The Sorrows of Werter, already a much-discussed novel, and by making Hackman the author of a poem inspired by it. Since there was no English translation of Werther until the year of Hackman's death, C r o f t carefully makes clear that Hackman knew a French version, to which the first reference is made in a letter dated "Ireland, ι July, 76." Anticipating Miss Reay's refusal to send him "the French book you mention, Werther" Hackman writes: If you don't, I positively never will forgive you. Nonsense, to say that it will make me unhappy, or that I shan't be able to read it! Must I pistol myself, because a thickblooded German has been fool enough to set the example, or because a German novelist has feigned such a story? 9 H e receives this answer: The book which you mentioned, is just the only book you should never read. On my knees, I beg you never, never to read it! Perhaps you have read it — Perhaps!10 So Croft was able to credit Hackman with Lines found, after Werteres death, upon the ground by the pistol, a title in which the spelling of Werter was changed from the English to the French-German form in editions subsequent to the first.11

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The Hackman-Croft Werther poem is supposed to have been included with papers Hackman sent a friend the morning of his execution, and is introduced with his account of its composition: Among my papers you will see some lines which I wrote on reading Goethe's "Werther," translated from German into French; which, while I was in Ireland, she refused to lend me. When I returned to England, I made her let me read it. But I never showed these lines to her, for fear they should make her uneasy. — Unhappy Werther! Still less pretence hadst thou for suicide than I. After quietly seeing thy Charlotte marry another man, without so much as offering to marry her thyself, hadst thou a right over thy existence because she was not thy wife? Yet wast thou less barbarous than I; for thou didst not seek to die in her presence — but neither didst thou doubt her love. — We can neither of us hope for pardon.12 However possible it was for Hackman to have known Werther, he would hardly have written the following lines in which Werther warns Miss Reay against letting Hackman read his story lest he commit suicide: If chance some kindred spirit should relate T o future times unhappy Werther's fate; Should, in some pitying, almost pardoning age, Consign my sorrows to some weeping page — And should the affecting page be haply read By some new Charlotte — mine will then be dead — (Yes, she shall die, sole solace of my love! And we shall meet, for so she said, above) — O Charlotte, M — , by whatever name Thy faithful Werther hands thee down to fame — O be thou sure thy Werther never knows The fatal story of my kindred woes! O do not, fair one! — do not let thy feeling friend Shed his sad sorrows o'er my tearful tale: — Example, spite of precept, may prevail.

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Nay, much-loved M — , though a fond desire To prove thy husband, prove thy childrens' fire; Tho' these, and other duties, would, you know, Withhold his hand from death's forbidden blow — Yet might my gloomy tale full surely shroud His brightest day in melancholy's cloud; Yet might thy H. lead, to his last breath, A life more shocking than even Werther's death. Werther's interest in the notorious Hackman is more opportune than artistically convincing, and the forcing of the Hackman-Reay relationship into a WertherCharlotte pattern results in tortuous thinking characteristic of Croft's own disorganized and often fragmentary polemics and essays. The literary allusiveness of these lines — the opening couplet is a bald imitation of two lines in Gray's "Elegy": If chance, by lonely contemplation led, Some kindred spirit shall enquire thy fate — marks them as a typical production of an Alexandrian period. Hackman's concern with the moral justification of Werther's suicide as expressed in the introductory note is hardly in character, while his Werther's allusion to "my sorrows" anticipates the title of a supposedly still unpublished English translation of Werther. With its moral and artistic dissonances, Lines found, after Werter's death, upon the ground by the pistol illustrates characteristics which mark the bulk of English Werther poems; and the motive for its composition, opportunistic exploitation of a popular literary work, explains why certain obviously shoddy verse treatments of the Werther theme were produced and published. A striking contrast with Croft's disingenuous adaptation of Werther to the needs of Love and Madness is

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furnished by the text of one of the "favourite Songs sung at Vauxhall Gardens" in 1785. By this time the story of Werter and Charlotte was familiar even to the illiterate, who had seen numerous prints illustrating scenes from the novel or showing Charlotte at Werter's grave, and who could see at Mrs. Salmon's Royal Historical WaxWork in Fleet Street "the much-admired Group of The Death of Werter, attended by Charlotte and her Family," so that the song "The Sorrows of Werter" represents an interpretation of Goethe's novel as deliberately unsophisticated as any production of Tin Pan Alley today: When Werter fair Charlotte beheld, As she danc'd with the nymphs on the green, He thought ev'ry maid she excell'd, And he prais'd the soft grace of her mien; But all her accomplishments known, Gentle Werter began to adore, He sighs for a heart not her own, And the joys of poor Werter are o'er. Tho' vows the fair Charlotte engag'd, As a friend gentle Werter was dear, Her smiles oft his sorrow asswag'd, While pity has dropt a soft tear; Urg'd by love he grew bold, and she cry'd, ["] Werter leave, and see me no more — [ " ] He sigh'd — he obey'd — and he dy'd, Then the sorrows of Werter deplore. Ye nymphs let not Cupid deceive, Under pity's soft garb hide his dart, Werter's sorrows are laid in the grave, While pity still wrings Charlotte's heart; And oft o'er his grave has she cry'd, While with flow'rets she deck'd it all o'er — ["] He saw me - he lov'd - and he dy'd, ["] Then the sorrows of Werter deplore.

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The merits of this rollicking doggerel can only be fully appreciated when it is realized that it was sung by Mrs. Kennedy, pupil of Thomas Arne, of whom her contemporary John Williams noted that "she . . . brought more money to Covent Garden than any other female vocal performer, and supposedly had the only contralto voice ever heard in England." 13 Williams' The Children of Thespis contains a description of her vocal style, one highly appropriate to " T h e Sorrows of Werter": She touches the ballads of love-lorn despair, With accents denoting a mind worn with Care: But no sick'ning cantabiles clog the essay, Or mar the intent of her pastoral lay.14 The song writer who demanded that the listener deplore the sorrows of Werter may have been acquainted with Goethe's novel, but he has given an impression of it such as the more naïve sentimental reader, unconcerned with issues of morality and indifferent to nice psychological distinctions, actually did have. How strong was the temptation to exploit the popularity of Werter and Charlotte can best be seen from the following excerpts from a letter to his publisher by William James, who is urging the merits of his novel,

The Letters of Charlotte during Her Connexion 'with Werter (1786): With respect to "Charlotte," I trust it will be needless for me to point out the many reasons which can not but insure its sale. "The Sorrows of Werter" has gone thro' several editions, and is universally read: the public are perpetually reminded of it by the print shops; and by enquiries at public libraries, I find it is read just as much as ever. — I have so contrived it, that "The Letters of Charlotte" shall form two vols, of exactly the same size as "The Sorrows of Werter". . . I do not offer them as a work of which any doubt can be made of the sale; for I am confident that a

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collection of nonsense, under the same title would at least sell an edition . . . You will see I have dedicated them, I think with some propriety, to the Queen [Charlotte!]; and as I mean to present them to her Majesty and to have it mentioned in the public prints . . . I can not but think it will contribute very much to the sale.15

James's Wertheriad fulfilled all his predictions and was successful in French, German, Russian, and Swedish translation as well. Frequent quotations from English poetry and numerous allusions to English poets show James's keen awareness of the taste of his contemporaries for verse, to which he panders deliberately in two poems on themes very loosely connected with Werther. One of these is supposed to be by Theresa W., a friend of Charlotte's of whom the latter writes, "I wish Providence would so ordain it, that the charms of Theresa may influence Werter." 16 What Charlotte terms Theresa's "effusions" honor "a tenth muse in Hygeia the goddess of health": O shades of Walheim! and ye streams that give Melodious murmurs to the passing gale, Once more I breathe among your healthy groves, Once more I drink the music of the vale. Hygeia! goddess of the smiling hours! Daughter of Temperance and of chaste Desire! To thee once more I lift the cheerful eye, To thee once more I strike the sylvan lyre.

The five remaining stanzas express Theresa's appreciation of rural charms in the same diffuse style, so that there is unintentional irony in Charlotte's comment, "I expect these verses to have no small influence with Werter, I assure you." 17 The other poem communicated by Charlotte is attributed to her father's sometime secretary, "the unfortunate Henry." She writes, "The follow-

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ing are the lines which discovered his passion to my father and occasioned his dismission:" 18 G o , simple verse, with Charlotte's matchless strain, — T h e humble daisy with the eglantine — Reveal w h a t artless H e n r y strives to hide: Reveal the w o e that drowns this heart of mine.

After thirty-two further lines of lamentation, Henry concludes with a stanza climaxed by a line with sextuple alliteration: But, O presumptuous youth! forbear to tell W i t h w h a t emotions t h y fond breast m a y g l o w : — H i e thee, vain youth, in some sequester'd shade, W h e r e W a l h e i m ' s w a v i n g willows w e e p t h y w o e !

The literary quality of William James's Werther poems is about the same as that of similar efforts by most of his contemporaries, even those who, unlike the author of The Letters of Charlotte,19 sincerely admired Werther or the artistry of Goethe's novel. The composition of correct verses was a pursuit to be cultivated for its own sake, however, so that William James may well have half believed that there was some truth in Charlotte's observation on the "Henry" poem: "You may discover, in this hasty composition, the seeds of genius, which time and cultivation might have ripened to maturity." 20 Except for obvious doggerel, like that of "When Werter fair Charlotte beheld" and similar songs,21 it is impossible, in view of the general popularity of verse composition at the end of the eighteenth century, to be certain that any given English Werther poem of the period was not a sincere literary effort. Certainly the following lines from Edward Taylor's longish heroic epistle, Werter to Charlotte (1784), seem meretricious and sensational by modern standards:

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5

The happy Albert folds thee in his arms, Glues to thy lips, and riots on thy charms; He checks thy terrors with an ardent kiss, Those virgin terrors that augment the bliss. The critic of the Monthly Review found the epistle "neither animated, elegant, nor interesting," and added insult to injury by observing, "We do not insinuate that [Werter's celebrity] had any weight in recommending it to the present writer." An almost diametrically opposite judgment was passed by the critic in the English Review, who noted "symptoms of a genius that promises better things." Werther poetry must be taken at its face value; even when not inspired, it reflects the interpretation of Werther accepted by one significant section of the reading public. LANDSCAPE AND ELEGY

The Sorrows of Werter furnished welcome inspiration to writers who, bogged down in a tradition which had made elegiac description the chief theme of lyric poetry, lacked any inner compulsion to strike out in new directions. Typical of her generation was Charlotte Smith, author of several well-written novels of above average merit, who made her literary debut in 1784 with a volume of Elegiac Sonnets and Other Essays, of which a reviewer in The Gentleman's Magazine wrote: " A very trifling compliment is paid to Mrs. Smith, when it is observed how much her Sonnets exceed those of Shakspeare and Milton. She has undoubtedly conferred honour on a species of poetry which most of her predecessors in this country have disgraced." 22 Among the long popular sonnets of Charlotte Smith there were at first three, and in later editions five, "supposed to be written by

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Werter." T h e y are neither more nor less original than the other Elegiac Sonnets, which Anna Seward correctlycharacterized "as a mere flow of melancholy and harmonious numbers, full of notorious plagiarisms, barren of original ideas and poetical imagery." 23 Charlotte Smith's verse sounds less artificial than that of most of her contemporaries because in following the accepted practice of building up poems with felicitous phrases from the works of her predecessors she wisely sacrificed wit in the favored Augustan manner to euphony, and even Anna Seward conceded that her sonnets were "melodious" and "not inelegant." 24 In The Sorrows of Werter Mrs. Smith found material exactly suited to her taste for the descriptive and elegiac: a tragic hero and, more important, unusually vivid descriptions that had been translated with loving care (unfortunately from the French) by a writer greatly interested in landscape.25 T h e following sonnet illustrates her method and style: Make there my tomb; beneath the lime-trees shade, Where grass and flowers in wild luxuriance wave; Let no memorial mark where I am laid, Or point to common eyes the lover's grave! But oft at twilight morn, or closing day, The faithful friend, with fault'ring step shall glide, Tributes of fond regret by stealth to pay, And sigh o'er the unhappy suicide. And sometimes, when the Sun with parting rays Gilds the long grass that hides my silent bed, The tears shall tremble in my CHARLOTTE'S eyes; Dear, precious drops! — they shall embalm the dead; Yes! CHARLOTTE o'er the mournful spot shall weep, Where her poor WERTER — and his sorrows sleep. Werther's last letters are the source of this sonnet, which is an elaboration of two references to his grave:

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Wenn du hinauf steigst auf den Berg, an einem schönen Sommerabende, dann erinnere dich meiner, wie ich so oft das Thal herauf kam, und dann blicke nach dem Kirchhofe hinüber nach meinem Grabe, wie der Wind das hohe Gras im Schein der sinkenden Sonne hin und her wiegt. 26 — Auf dem Kirchhofe sind zwey Lindenbäume, hinten im Ecke nach dem Felde zu, dort wünsch ich zu ruhen . . . Ach ich wollte, ihr begrübt mich am Wege, oder im einsamen Thale, dasz Priester und Levite vor dem bezeichnenden Steine sich segnend vorübergieng, und der Samariter eine Thräne weinte.27

Mrs. Smith utilizes Werther's vision of his own grave in the light of the setting sun and, more freely, a few other details of his letters, for her descriptive lines, but adds the sentimental pictures of a faithful friend visiting the grave by stealth and of a weeping Charlotte. The total effect is one of exaggerated pathos, explicitly emphasized in the elimination of any market for Werther's grave. Charlotte Smith's interest in Werther may have been sentimental, but in treating passages from it in her elegiac Werther sonnets she reveals her indifference to the psychological element. Goethe lets Werther go out at night to see the effects of a flood, and Werther writes how the sight of the turbulent waters in the light of the reappearing moon affected him with an intense desire to put an end to all his sufferings by quitting his prison and becoming one with the elements.28 Mrs. Smith, in one of the two Werther sonnets added later to her collection, makes use of Goethe's descriptions without concerning herself with their emotional connotations: Towards thy bright beams I turn my swimming eyes, Fair, fav'rite planet! which in happier days Saw my young hopes, ah! faithless hopes! — arise; And on my passion shed propitious rays!

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Now nightly wand'ring 'mid the tempests drear That howl the woods, and rocky steeps among, I love to see thy sudden light appear Thro' the swift clouds — driven by the wind along; Or in the turbid water, rude and dark, O'er whose wild stream the gust of Winter raves, Thy trembling light with pleasure still I mark, Gleam in faint radiance on the foaming waves! So o'er my soul short rays of reason fly, They fade: — and leave me, to despair and die! In these lines, as in the sonnet first quoted, Werter is an unhappy lover with an appreciative eye for beauty in nature; he is a sentimentalist who only superficially resembles Goethe's tormented hero of momentarily pantheistic leanings. Of the numerous elegies inspired by The Sorrows of Werter, almost all contain flowery descriptive passages. In Robert Grosvenor's Charlotte: An Elegy, comprising twenty elegiac stanzas which culminate in the unhappy heroine's death by lightning as she clasps the urn on Werter's tomb, the night landscape with its flood and storm is carefully modeled after the scene in the second part of Werther already exploited by Charlotte Smith. The majority of elegiasts, however, merely took a few details suggested in Werther and then padded their verse with reminiscences of their classical predecessors. Thus the "fairy forms" that sang the dirge of the brave in Collins' Ode Written in the Year 1746 found a place in Werter's Epitaph four decades later: Around his tomb, the sweetest grass shall spring; And annual flowers shall ever blossom here; Here fairy forms their loveliest gifts shall bring, And passing strangers shed the pitying tear.29 It requires eight lines before the author of An Elegy upon Charlotte and Werter can free himself from the

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spell of G r a y and begin to use such elements from Werther as its lindens and moonlit nights: The day was sinking in the Western sky, The air grew cold, and wind began to rise, On weary'd wing, the flocks returning fly, And ev'ry object fades away — and dies. The tinkling folds were lulling to repose, The owl's complaint went piteous thro' the grove: The tulip, cowslip, did their beauties close, As Charlotte stray'd to yonder green alcove. T h e element of travesty so patent in these elegiac efforts was not offensive to the English reader of the time, but it surely contributed to the ultimate general impression that the work which had served as their inspiration was itself mediocre. Although most English Werther poets failed entirely to capture the spirit of simplicity so characteristic of the descriptions in Goethe's novel, even those who, like Mrs. Smith, almost achieved it managed to spoil their effects by falling into sentimental banality. Thomas Ingall's sonnet, The Sorrows of Werter, supposedly addressed to Charlotte, begins auspiciously: When in a summer's eve you pensive rove, T o where the lime-trees cast their solemn shade; Where sleeps the victim of despairing love, Where hapless Werter, and his griefs are laid, And when the ev'ning breeze shall gently blow, So soft it scarce disturbs the limpid spring; Yet shall it wave the leaves which o'er me grow, And to your mind, a fresh remembrance bring. Despite faint Shakespearean echoes, and even despite the rhetoric of the third and fourth lines, Ingall seems to

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have reproduced the tone of certain passages in Werther's last letters, but he vitiates his effect by adding an appeal for pity which terminates in the couplet: Ah, lovely Charlotte, 'twas for thee I died. Then give one tear unto the Suicide.

The total impression is no better than that of some completely un-Wertherian poem like Mrs. Horrel's description of Charlotte's tomb, with the lines: The red breast oft is seen at evening hours Dressing her grave with never-fading flow'rs; And Philomel has near her built her nest, And sings in mournful strains her soul to rest.

The unity of style in these lines makes them seem almost meritorious by comparison with those by Ingall, but only attempts like the latter's can show the striving toward a new style which was to flower in the period of English romanticism. Although Werther seems to have been completely repudiated as meritless after its short period of literary fashionableness, the grappling with stylistic problems presented by treatment of its themes in English verse exemplifies the working of one aspect of preromanticism in England. SENSIBILITY AND VIRTUE

In an age of sentimentality excesses of feeling find many outlets. The power of sympathy which inspired rapturous appreciation of landscape and favored elegiac effusions enabled readers to enter into all the moods and sentiments of Werther and Charlotte, even into those not explicitly elaborated upon in Goethe's novel. The theme of Werther's passionate love was freely developed by verse writers who reveled in emotional violence for

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which they probably had little opportunity in the world of prosaic reality. The frequently reprinted Werter to Charlotte, A little before his Death, which first appeared at the end of the 1784 edition of The Sorrows of Werter, well illustrates how the specific emotional crisis treated by Goethe inspired the imagination of a mature man of letters. It was written by the rector of Claverton, Richard Graves, who had carried on the original negotiations in the matter of The Sorrows of Werter between the publisher, Dodsley, and the translator, Malthus. The poem opens with an invocation to Charlotte, whose "ruby lips," "melting voice," "waving locks," and "ivory neck" are described, and the enraptured Werter asks: How bid my passion yield to Reason's voice, When Reason's self must justify my choice? The sixty-odd year old Graves then lets his rational hero continue in what he can only have considered a highly moral tone: Woe to the man that would thy heart beguile, And that angelic soul with guilt defile! Who'd dare to violate the nuptial rights, (That sacred bond which one to one unites.) I love, but covet not, good Albert's wife, Nor would destroy, my friend, thy peace for life. But when at length those blissful realms we gain, Where no connubial claims our thoughts restrain, Where selfish, human laws shall cease to bind, And universal love reigns unconfin'd: Then, free as air, congenial souls shall meet: And sex, with holy rapture, sex shall greet: Then will I snatch dear Charlotte to my arms, And chastely revel in celestial charms: Ecstatic bliss shall grosser love succeed, And Charlotte make that scene — a heav'n indeed.

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It is possible that these lines were written to counteract misgivings about sympathizing with so passionate a character as Werther, but after the careful distinction between love and covetousness the poet is carried away by thoughts of heavenly love which do not lack erotic overtones. At a time when sensibility was itself considered a virtue, it was natural that the sentimentalist interpreted the conduct of the sympathetic figure of Werther as essentially virtuous — no small achievement in view of the immensity of the crime of suicide. Graves's portrayal of a Werther deeply imbued with a conventional moral sense was certainly acceptable to his readers, and the numerous continuations of Werther which dealt with Charlotte's reactions to his death demonstrate that she was a virtuous heroine. Although not every reader cherished Werther and Charlotte equally, both these figures had their champions. A Monday meeting at the Spring-Gardens Coffee House in London was devoted to the serious question whether Charlotte was justified in accepting Werther's visits after her marriage to Albert,80 which would imply that not all admirers of Werther necessarily considered Charlotte to be flawless, but that some at least considered her position defensible. The normal sentimental attitude was that "Werter's misfortunes and his Charlotte's pray'rs May meet compassion at the hands of God," as one elegiast happily put it,81 while in the numerous verse farewells which Werther addressed to Charlotte optimism permitted him to express some such sentiment as "I speed to taste in bliss seraphic love."82 Even when Werther succumbs to passion, the sentimentalist refuses to deny him virtue. In Werter's Epitaph, by the American poet Ladd, the statement is made:

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Altho' his soul with ev'ry virtue mov'd; And at his birth deceitful fortune smil'd; In one sad hour too fatally he lov'd; False fortune frown'd — and he was sorrow's child. Heaven gave him passions, as she virtue gave, But lent not power those passions to suppress; By them subdued, he slumbers in the grave, The soul's last refuge from terrene distress. So unsympathetic a critic of Werther's character as the author of On Reading The Sorrows of Werter, who ventures to suggest that A little time had shewn e'en Charlotte's charms Had shrunk and faded in a Werter's arms, is forced to concede that his virtuous restraint may gain him divine forgiveness: None dare say Mercy wont extend its aid; But who of that would not have been afraid, If with a kiss thou Charlotte hadst betray'd.33 Greater certainty characterizes Atkinson's Charlotte at the Tomb of Werter, in which justification by sentiment is unhesitatingly proclaimed: Chaste were his thoughts, of soul sincere Tho' doomed by destiny severe A hapless lot to prove. . . . A pitying tear will be forgiven Even Albert wept, has mingled sighs with mine. Charlotte has mourn'd her dearest friend in heaven, Whisper in those realms of bliss All boasted human Laws shall cease And every doubt remove Here mutual souls unblest before Enraptur'd meet to part no more Posses'd of boundless Love.

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The final impression gained from such passages as these is one of a moral chaos in which a subjective standard of feeling exploited ethical concepts arbitrarily and willfully confused almost conflicting values for "virtue." It was natural that a critic of sentimental morality should see in Werther an example of the confusion of values evident in the effusions inspired by it. In an address "to the visitors of the Young Ladies' Academy in Philadelphia" delivered in July 1787, two months after Ladd's Werther poems were printed in The American Museum published in that city, Benjamin Rush condemned the sentimental novel in general and Werther in particular: The abortive sympathy which is excited by the recital of imaginary distress, blunts the heart to that which is real; and, hence, we sometimes see instances of young ladies, who weep away a whole forenoon over the criminal sorrows of a ficticious Charlotte or Werter, turning with disdain at three o'clock from the sight of a beggar, who sollicits in feeble accents or signs, a small portion only of the crumbs which fall from their fathers' tables.34 Less systematic critics were content to protest against the sympathetic treatment of a passion for which there was, indeed, no accepted ethical justification, and the tone of many reviews and discussions of Werther and its imitations is captured in a succinct observation on Anne Francis' Charlotte to Werter, A Poetical Epistle by a reviewer who declared: "The female pen which has given us this epistle of Charlotte to Werter might have been more innocently employed." 35 The very virtue with which Werther was credited by admirers and apologists was a weapon to be turned against him by the strictly moral critic, so that an anonymous "Lady" could write:

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Thy soft-wrought sorrows, Werter, while I view, Why falls not o'er the page sweet Pity's dew? Is Tenderness no more . . . ? No! — o'er this bosom fifty winters old, Love, wedded Love, still points his shafts of gold. . . . Horror check'd the tear. . . . From the gloomy page I learn'd to know That virtuous tears alone for virtuous sorrows flow. Only once did an eighteenth-century English reader of Werther publicly venture to take a stand which went beyond the limits of contemporary Christian or sentimental morality. Lady Eglantine Wallace, who had already separated from her husband and who was to leave England after a license was refused her comedy The Whim and who was to become the friend of General Charles François Dumouriez, repudiated the popular interpretation of Charlotte as the heroine of The Sorrows of Werter. Through the undistinguished heroic couplets of her poem The Ghost of Werter, published in 1787, is revealed a spirit hostile to conventional moral values: You thought it virtue Nature to deny — Heroic fortitude to see me die! Mistaken woman! know, by Heav'n's decree, By soft humanity, all judg'd shall be. 'Tis not those laws giv'n out by feeble man — 'Tis rectitude of heart should give the plan! . . . Unhappy Charlotte! poor will be their claims Who sacrifice their truth for empty names! Alas! you for the fame of being chaste, Forget each virtue in the soul is plac'd! 36 Although The Ghost of Werter offers no extended revaluation of values, Lady Wallace's refusal to accept an essentially negative concept of morality distinguishes her from the great mass of readers who saw only a senti-

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mental Werther. Goethe himself did not go beyond letting Werther raise the unanswered question whether conventional Christian moral standards were valid: "Nie will ich's wagen, einen Kusz euch einzudrücken, Lippen, auf denen die Geister des Himmels schweben — Und doch — ich will — Ha siehst du, das steht wie eine Scheidewand vor meiner Seelen — diese Seligkeit — und da untergegangen, die Sünde abzubüssen — Sünde?" 37 Hardly mentioned by reviewers, The Ghost of Werter, with its sharp criticism of the virtuous Charlotte, with its affirmative world outlook akin to that of the Stormand-Stress generation, is unique among the great mass of Werther imitations at a time when uncritical sentimentality was still the fashion of the day. Werther and Charlotte shared the popularity of the most artificial school of sentimental English versifiers, the Delia Cruscans, who seem to have lacked all critical sense. Certain members of the English colony at Florence, gP oziosi, had, as Mrs. Piozzi tells us, written poems as a diversion "and to say kind things to each other," and these had been printed over poetic names in the style of the Italian academies. After his return to England, one of the group, Robert Merry,38 contributed a poem over his alias of Della Crusca to The World, a daily paper edited by Captain Topham of the Horse Guards. He was answered by "Anna Matilda," and the notoriety and piquancy of the ensuing poetic correspondence won fame for the poems of The World, which went through several editions and were often reprinted in anthologies. Merry contributed an "Elegy Written after Having Read The Sorrows of Werter" which, in the grotesquely ornamented style favored by all the Delia Cruscans, exploits the elegiac-descriptive elements of his theme, as in this stanza:

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To view the Moon's pale glimpse illume the wave, To list the sweeping blasts that sadly blow; Down the rough steep, to hear the cat'racts rave; Such were the pleasures of this Man of WOE. And, characteristically, it ends with a justification of suicide in cases of hypersensibility: Sure he was right, for if th'Almighty hand, That gave his pulse to throb, his sense to glow, Gave him not strength his passions to withstand, Ah! who shall blame him? he was forc'd to go . . . And since there are — amid this wond'rous world, Some of a class distinct, of ardent mind, Thro' Woe's wild waves, by keen emotions hurl'd, As the toss'd barks before the boist'rous wind; Th'Eternal Pow'r, to whom all thoughts arise, Who ev'ry secret sentiment can view, Melts at their flowing tears, their swelling sighs, Then gives them force to bid the world adieu. Here the doctrine to be formulated as "Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner" is only part of a sentimental philosophy of weakness which exempts sensitive souls from all moral or social responsibility, and which even creates a deity to its own specifications. The "Elegy to the Memory of Werter" contributed to The World in 1789 by "Laura" (Mrs. Mary Robinson, sometime mistress of George I V ) is, in style, a Delia Cruscan pastiche of all elegies in the Gray tradition: When from D A Y ' S closing eye, the lucid tears Fall lightly on the bending lily's head, When, o'er the crimson sky, N I G H T ' S curtains spread, And the blue mountain's summit scarce appears; When languid E V E N I N G , sinking to repose, Her filmy mantle o'er the landscape throws — Of T H E E I'll sing!

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In content, it is a tribute to and an apology for the power of sentiment: Yes, hopeless SUFFERER! friendless, and forlorn — Sweet victim of LOVE'S power, the silent tear

Shall oft at twilight's close, and blushing morn, Gem the pale primrose that adorns thy bier; And as the balmy dew ascends to heaven, T h y crime shall steal away, thy frailty be forgiven!

The preciosity of the simile with which the elegy concludes almost conceals the fact that it not only restates the doctrine of justification by passion and weakness, but even attributes to tears of sympathy quasi-sacramental powers: For the lorn TRAV'LER, doom'd afar to roam, From the dear comforts of his native home, A glimm'ring star puts forth a silvery ray, Warms his sad heart, and marks his thorny way; The short-liv'd radiance chears the gloom of night, And decks HEAVEN'S spangled dome with transitory light. So, from the mournful CHARLOTTE'S dark-orVd lids, The sainted tear of pitying V I R T U E flows, And the last boon, the "Churlish Priest" forbids, On thy lone grave the sacred drop bestows; There shall the glitt'ring dews of EVENING shine, And HEAVEN'S own INCENSE consecrate the SHRINE.

The effusions of the Delia Cruscans mirror the artistic and the ethical uncertainty of the age of sentimentality. The concept of "a class distinct," the conduct of whose members could only be judged by natural, here pitying, virtue, anticipates the principle of the exception of genius soon to be formulated by a more self-confident generation. T H E FORCES OF CONSERVATISM

Although Werther had been offered to English readers as a work of outstanding stylistic merit and had served

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as inspiration for reputable or serious-minded English verse writers, it soon became familiarly known as a tragic tale of love and suicide. In a country whose inhabitants were popularly believed by other Europeans to be especially prone to melancholy and self-destruction — in December of 1777 the Scottish poet Mrs. Cockburn dated a letter "Edinburgh, Saturday night, 15 th of the gloomy month when the people of England hang and drown themselves" —39 doubts were naturally soon expressed about the morality of a novel whose sympathetic hero both seeks to justify and commits suicide. Those in England who condemned Werther failed to rouse a controversy such as flared up in Germany when the work was published; nor did they apparently affect its popularity with literary, or wider, circles. Yet there was disapproval in highest places, for Queen Charlotte's considered opinion has been recorded by Fanny Burney, who adds her own as well: "Do you like the Sorrows of Werter?" [Her Majesty inquires.] "I—I have not read it, ma'am, only in part." "No? Well, I don't know how it is translated, but it is very finely writ in German, and I can't bear it." "I am very happy to hear that, for what I did look over made me determine never to read it. It seemed only writ as a deliberate defence of suicide." "Yes; and what is worse, it is done by a bad man for revenge." 40 For the large group of conservative readers who saw in the treatment of suicide in Werther an expression of evil intentions there could be no aesthetic evaluation of the novel, nor did they need the explanation of the motive for its composition which Queen Charlotte offers as an afterthought to feel duty bound to defend morality by attacking the work.

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So powerful an organ of conservatism as The Gentleman's Magazine was following a consistently antiWerther policy by 1784, when its "Obituary of considerable Persons" reported the sudden death of Miss Glover, whose late father had been an eminent dancing master: "The Sorrows of Werter were found under her pillow; a circumstance which deserves to be known, in order, if possible, to defeat the evil tendency of that pernicious work." 41 The attack was continued, in the magazine's supplement for the same year, with an essay combatting "the evil tendency of Werterits author had been inspired to read the novel after seeing Miss Glover's obituary, and a note observes that "a similar circumstance attended the sudden death of a Dutch officer." 42 The following year The Gentleman's Magazine gave favorable mention to the Wertheriad, Eleonora, From the "Sorrows of WerterA Tale, apparently only because "to the insidious and dangerous poison of the former Tale, the writer has laudably opposed an antidote, relative to the prevalency of suicide." 43 It is not surprising, then, that the reviewer of Charlotte Smith's Elegiac Sonnets who preferred them to those of Shakespeare and Milton did not hesitate to criticize her evident Werther enthusiasm by declaring that "the wretched suicide Werter is too much flattered by her notice." 44 Although the weight of such authority did not affect the general popularity of Werther — Werther poems kept appearing regularly in the poetry columns of other journals and in collections of verse, while Mrs. Smith's Werther sonnets remained in the many subsequent editions of her collection — some writers with an eye on the weather vane of public opinion undoubtedly preferred to eschew the otherwise fruitful Werther theme. Others, who had already exploited some aspect of

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Werther, were careful to make their own orthodoxy clear. When Sir Herbert Croft claimed credit for Love and Madness, he added a three-page footnote to the supposed Hackman fragment containing Lines found, after Werter's death, upon the ground by the pistol. It is ironi-

cal that Croft, who was to become a great admirer of Goethe's works a decade later,45 should declare: "Werther was clearly a bad man. Had he not died by his own hand, he did not deserve to live. What sort of a man is the writer who either relates or feigns his dangerous story?" 46 Croft's note, which even mentions the suicide of Miss Glover that had so concerned The Gentlemân's Magazine, served not only to demonstrate his unimpeachable moral position, but also to attack the Irish publishers of Love and Madness whose pirated editions were cheating him of royalties, a fact he carefully refrains from mentioning in his concluding strictures: The Editor thinks it his duty to observe, that the Irish editions of his W o r k omit such parts of this note as reflect on Werther, and only say where Werther may be bought. The bookseller thought it of more consequence that he should gain a few shillings, than that any number of his fellow-creatures should be saved from suicide. But have Irish booksellers no wives, no sons or daughters, of their own? 4 7

The ease with which Croft turns against others a charge that might have been made against himself permitted him to exploit Werther in two seemingly irreconcilable ways at the same time, surely no small, but hardly a creditable, achievement. In view of the charges of immorality brought against Werther, it was natural that members of the clergy should inveigh against it. A less ambiguous change of attitude than in the case of Croft, who had, to be sure,

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trained for the church, is represented by Richard Graves's verses On Suicide which, Graves wrote, "I wish could be prefix'd to any future Edition of Werter, as I have been censur'd by a Clergyman, for being instrumental in publishing it." 48 In his already quoted Werter to Charlotte of 1784 Graves had portrayed a rational lover able to make careful moral distinctions, but he had also revealed a sentimental enthusiasm and degree of sympathy of which the clerical author of The Spiritual Quixote, with its burlesque treatment of religious dissenters, might sincerely repent. "Does love, like Werter's, thy fond breast inspire?" is the question Graves asks in On Suicide, and he answers it with rationalist advice, "Let reason quench, at once, th'adult'rous fire." Apparently most publishers had "no wives, no sons or daughters, of their own," for after its publication in 1786 On Suicide appeared in only two editions of Werther, while Werter to Charlotte was reprinted in at least eight. Despite all warnings against the unorthodox doctrines expressed in it, The Sorrows of Werter remained popular with sentimental readers, so that a quarter of a century after it first appeared in English the Reverend Charles Wicksted Ethelston wrote, as he noted, the title poem of his volume The Suicide; ivith other Poems to counteract that "polished tale of artificial woe." Besides offending conservatives by its specific treatment of an irrational, even unchristian, passion and death, Werther was also open to attack as an outstanding example of the sentimental novel. In discussions of sentimentality, f e w critics at the time went so far as to raise, like Benjamin Rush, the fundamental question of the value of "abortive sympathy which is excited by the recital of imaginary distress." but contented themselves

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with the principle that "virtuous tears alone for virtuous sorrows flow." Criticism of Werther both as a particular story and as a work representative of dangerous sentimental fiction is, however, the double theme of a six-page passage in Adriano; or The First of June by an imitator of Cowper, the Reverend James Hurdis. His Sophia, a young woman weeping the loss of a brother who has just been swept out to sea, is discovered with a book in her hand by Adriano, who gratuitously assumes that her tears are caused by "some tender tale of virtuous suff'ring." He seiz'd the book And found it Werteres Sorrows. 'Aye, my child, Ά wretched tale, but not to be believ'd. Ό pestilent example, to describe 'As worthy pity and the fair one's tears 'Deeds by no arguments to be excused.' The suicide, Adriano argues, is guilty of foulest murder, for his cowardly and rash deed, though not strictly prohibited by any written law, violates the laws of nature which are the laws of God. After Adriano has pointed the lesson to be learned from Christ's fortitude on the cross and condemned the unchristian conduct of Cato, the supposedly grief-stricken Sophia takes up the attack on the novel: 'And she who loves,' Replied Sophia, 'and divides her heart, 'Giving it not entire to him she weds, 'Deserves no pity, suffer what she will.' Adriano is pleased that Sophia recognizes "the fatal tendency of tales like these" through which the devil "inflames the hungry passions," but he is not satisfied until he has demonstrated the general principle that senti-

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mental literature can undermine the ethical standards of readers who are, like Sophia, otherwise fully aware of the impropriety of certain attitudes and courses of conduct in particular cases. Lest "the thirsty tongue may taste the spring it nauseates and abhors, till custom make it sweet," reading should be limited to "thy Creator in his word and works," to philosophy and history, and to poetry such as that of Gray or Hannah More. The judgments of ethical orthodoxy, regardless of how they were expressed, failed to affect the popularity of Werther. When, in 1788, Amelia Pickering's uninspired treatment of the story of Werther in a series of versified letters appeared, it did not receive a single favorable review, but the long list of subscribers to it, which includes William Hayley, Charlotte Smith, both the Wartons, as well as Mrs. Mary Robinson, testifies to the respectability of the theme. Some critics, like the one whom Amelia Pickering's poem inspired to ask in The English Review of 1789 if The Sorrows of Werter would never have an end, may have begun to weary of Werther poetry, yet three years later the same journal published a review of Sarah Farrell's equally undistinguished Werther poem, a sequel to the novel, and stated: "Mrs. Farrell could not have chosen a subject with more felicity: who does not feel himself interested in the fate of the unfortunate Charlotte?" In the last years of the eighteenth century the intellectual stagnation which had permitted Werther to acquire disproportionate literary importance began to disappear, as concern with the forces let loose by the French Revolution seriously occupied men's minds. Interest in the national welfare had undoubtedly motivated attacks on Werther as a defence of suicide, but they had been based on principles of individualistic morality.

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"The Sorrows of Wertera fellow bluestocking had written to Elizabeth Montagu in 1784, " I have always thought a detestable book; but I know of no other in German that is exceptionable in the same horrid way." 49 A decade later, the leaders of national unity were condemning modern German literature, represented by Goethe, Schiller, and Kotzebue, along with Jacobinism; the revolutionary spirit of Götz von Berlichingen, Clavigo, or Die Räuber, and the moral radicalism of Werther and Stella now seemed only too apparent. The following passage and note from The Shade of Alexander Pope on the Banks of the Thames represents the new attitude: When Novels die, and rise again in plays: N o Congress props our Drama's falling state, The modern ultimatum is, "Translate." Thence sprout the morals of the German school; The Christian sinks, the Jacobin bears rule: No virtue shines, but in the peasant's mien, N o vice, but in patrician robes, is seen; [note] Through four dull acts the Drama drags, and drawls; The fifth is stage-trick, and the Curtain falls. [.Note:] The modern productions of the German stage . . . are too often the licensed vehicles of immorality and licentiousness, particularly in respect to marriage. . . . The German Doctors of the sock and buskin are now making no indirect attacks on the very fundamentals of society and established government, subordination, and religious principle; the vauntcouriers of French anarchy, national plunder, and general misery.50 Here a reawakened consciousness of the hierarchical social principle of British democracy has found a really effective basis, given the needs of the day, for destroying uncritical Werther enthusiasm; the allusions to the author of Stella and Werther are clear, and the latter work was

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one of the novels that had risen as a play in the form of Frederick Reynolds' sentimental verse tragedy. Apart from Edmund Burke, the leading literary counterrevolutionary of the period was William Gifford, later of the Quarterly Review. His verse satire, The Baviad (1791), had laid bare the aesthetic and moral shortcomings of Delia Cruscan poetry as it appeared to an admirer of Milton and Pope, and when he returned to the attack on the Delia Cruscans four years later in his Maeviad he also directed shafts against their plays and those of other writers such as Reynolds; all this, as he later noted, before "taste . . . was to be utterly destroyed by successive importations of the heavy, lumbering, monotonous stupidity of Kotzebue and Schiller." " In 1797 and 1798 Gifford then published the enormously successful Anti-Jacobin, or Weekly Examiner, a systematic repudiation of alien influences including German literature, which was there attacked in a dramatic parody entitled "The Rovers, or The Double Arrangement." One scene of the satire, whose complicated plot recalls Kabale und Liebe, Die Räuber, Stella, and various plays by Kotzebue, takes a thrust at Werther when Casimir, corresponding to Fernando in Stella, tells his radical English friends Beefington and Puddingfield the story of his love for Matilda: Alighting at a Peasant's Cabin, I saw her on a charitable visit, spreading bread and butter for the Children, in a light blue riding-habit. — The simplicity of her appearance — the fineness of the weather — all conspired to interest me — my heart moved to hers — as if by a magnetic sympathy — We wept, embraced, and went home together — She became the Mother of my PATALOWSKY - But five years of enjoyment have not stifled the reproaches of my conscience — her ROGERO is languishing in captivity — If I could only restore her to him!

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At a moment of national revival and before a full impression of his personality and works could become more generally diffused, Goethe, and with him his Werther, began to lose prestige as patriotic conservatives condemned revolutionary German literature and its sentimental English admirers and imitators. THE A T T E M P T AT POSITIVE CRITICAL EVALUATION

Whereas almost all hostility towards Werther had its source in traditional systems of values loyally adhered to, most Werther enthusiasm was the expression of a naïve sentimentality with no clearly established moral, let alone aesthetic, standards. As a result, the sentimental reader offered no constructive critical estimate of Werther; carried away by emotions it aroused, he may have been persuaded against his better judgment of "the uncommon genius and originality of the thoughts" without going so far as to appreciate with a Malthus "the energy with which they are expressed." Even an early admirer of German literature like Henry Mackenzie, author of The Man of Feeling ( 1771 ), felt constrained to distinguish between the artistic effectiveness and the moral validity of Goethe's sentimental works: "Stella is strongly marked with that enthusiastic sentiment and refined sensibility, which, in the Sorrows of Werter, he has so warmly indulged; and in point of immoral effect, the drama is equally reprehensible with the novel." 62 This statement is from Mackenzie's Account of the German Theatre, read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh in April 1788, and published in its Transactions two years later; a paper which interested Scott and some of his friends in the study of German and its literature, and which helped create the preoccupation with good and bad German dramas soon to be devastatingly ridi-

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culed in William Gifford's satirical publications. Mackenzie succeeded where his English contemporaries failed, for he pointed out positive values of characterization, composition, and style in works which other critics and readers evaluated b y more exclusively emotional or ethical standards. In Scotland, where national literature had a living force in Robert Burns, Werther enthusiasm remained less intense and less general than in England. Although Burns and his circle knew Werther, they expressed neither extreme approval nor violent disapproval of it.53 Moral and aesthetic issues were not confused, and even a conservative critic with an anti-sentimental bias emphasized morality no more than his classicistic position necessitated when he expressed greater esteem for the "simplicity and excellent moral turn" of Gessner's idylls than for the "romantic and unnatural" sentiment of The Sorrows of Werter.M N o fanaticism or strong partisanship can be detected in a letter of 1789 whose author declares that she admires the novel because it contains "no exaggerated description, no unnatural or inflated language, no gilding or glitter," although her husband, whose hero is Albert, considers Werther "a weak though amiable enthusiast." 65 O n l y t w o Scottish writers produced Werther poetry; s e against the background of critical moderation that existed in Scotland the determined but fruitless efforts of one of them to establish for Goethe, author of Werther, a position of acknowledged literary importance become comprehensible. Alexander Thomson, whose Werther poems surpass all others in English, combined sincere and well-considered enthusiasm for the sentimental with genuine catholicity of literary taste. H e was born in 1763, too early to come under the full influence of the combination of forces which was to produce the romantic genera-

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tion. In addition to receiving a sound classical education in the humanistic tradition, he acquired at Winchester College a lasting love of literature inspired by no less liberal a teacher than Joseph Warton.57 A student of oriental, classical, and modern languages,88 Thomson pursued linguistic interests in order to enjoy "great writers" as fully as possible, and in 1792 he declared that German literature had afforded him more pleasure than any other save English or Greek.59 Among his favorite books was Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, which he came to regard as the representative work of modern sentimentality. It furnished epigraphs for many of his lyric poems, while his poetic treatment of situations and ideas in the novel bespeaks a thorough familiarity with it only comparable to that later demonstrated by certain enthusiastic French romanticists. Thomson's Elegy II (1786), with the motto from Werther "Ach! was ich weis, kann jeder wissen — Mein Herz hab ich allein," 60 contains his earliest tribute to Goethe and is significant as a statement of the poet's stand on the issue now known as primitivism. In it Rousseauist doubts about the worth of civilization and culture are countered with the words: Couldst thou consent to be again confin'd Within the limits of thy native tongue; Depriv'd of all that beam'd from HOMER'S mind, Of all that PETRARCH sigh'd, and VIRGIL sung? Robb'd of thy darling CAMOENS' epic page, Shut out from all VOLTAIRE'S enchanting prose — From all the nicer strokes of QUIXOTE'S rage, And all the glowing tints of WERTER'S woes? Seek not in vain what Nature has denied, At once to taste the clear and quiet spring, And draw your bev'rage from its ampler tide, T o which a thousand streams their tribute bring.

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Although the elegy concludes with a restatement of the original position — "The speech was full of truth to Reason's ear, But stronger Feeling found, his words were vain" — the skillful dialectic and echoes of Pope reveal a strong unconscious loyalty to rationalism. Thomson never became a Storm-and-Stress or a romantic writer, and he has been remembered when at all for Whist ( 1791 ), which is a mock-heroic poem in the Augustan tradition. The two works which contain Thomson's critical apologies for modern sentimental literature are in verse. The first, his Essay on Novels (1793), bears on its title page Sébastien Mercier's revolutionary words "Richardson sera mon Homère." Whereas in his French contemporary's Mon Bonnet de nuit the traditional classics fare very badly, there is no depreciation of them in Thomson's volume, which seeks only to combat classicistic intolerance. In conventional heroic couplets Thomson sings the praise of Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Mackenzie, Smith, and Burney, and beside these English novelists he mentions Rousseau and Goethe. The last named is credited with the highest achievement, and although Thomson refuses to condone the treatment of the suicide theme in Werther, he declares that Werther's farewell at the end of the first part of the novel is even more affecting than Hector's to Andromache in the Iliad. The Paradise of Taste, Thomson's second essay in poetic criticism, appeared in 1796, the year of his German Miscellany, a volume of translations from the German. One canto of this allegorical survey of world literature is devoted to poets of sympathy ranging from Euripides and Sappho to Rousseau and Goethe. The poet's guide is Taste, who conducts him through the Vale of Pity to the Vault of Woe, "Where mournful passion reach'd its

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last degree." Here the Priest of Virtue (Richardson) reclines on a sable coffin: T w o pensive pupils at his feet were laid, W h o drew sweet pictures of domestic life; Whose art in Virtue's tend'rest robe array'd T h e forms of WOLMAR'S and of ALBERT'S w i f e .

T h e friend of JULIA, from her soul, refin'd, Obtain'd a balm to soothe his am'rous woe; While here no rest could WERTER'S spirit find, But rush'd indignant to the shades below.

In his eclectic way Thomson was gradually achieving a romantic aesthetic, for in the preface to The Paradise of Taste he denies the universal applicability of pseudoclassical standards, and in the poem he demonstrates not only a confident catholicity of taste but also, at least in the great variety of verse forms which he employs, a for him new and more liberal conception of stylistic unity. The poem was announced as an introduction to a more detailed verse survey of literature from Old Testament to modern times. The first volume of this ambitious work appeared in 1799. Anticipatory allusions in it demonstrate an undiminished admiration for German literature, but the whole was never completed.61 Thomson divided his energies between various critical and historical studies, and his death in 1803 fulfilled the prophecy of a youthful elegy: But much I fear, the same perplexing strife Of rival plans will vex each fruitless day; Till, like some idle dream, the whole of life In wild romantic schemes be past away. 62

Except for six sonnets appended to An Essay on Novels, Thomson did not publish the many Werther lyrics he wrote between 1787 and 1792 until 1801, well after the time when educated readers still naively wel-

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comed all imitations of a once less systematically depreciated novel. His Werther sonnets, as he himself pointed out, are concerned far more with general subjects than with Werther's "unfortunate attachment," and contain no allusion to the novel's "dreadful catastrophe." 63 They thus represent a phase in the development of Thomson's literary taste and at the same time constitute a later, purely disinterested tribute to the author of Werther. No attempt to capture in English verse the lyric quality of Goethe's prose had been an unqualified success, and even Thomson, working directly from the German text, failed whenever faithful re-creation of his source depended on expressing the mercurial quality of Werther's character. T w o sonnets based on Werther's first letter demonstrate how completely a change of form may distort: How weak, my Friend, is oft the human heart! How strange, at times, its wild vagaries be! That I from such a Friend should wish to part, And now rejoice that I am far from thee. Of what perverse and uncomplying stuff Has Nature kneaded up this frame of ours! That Life's own ills are not esteem'd enough, Unless Reflection add her tort'ring hours. But what is Man, that thus he dares complain? I will, my Friend, I will at last be wise; Nor longer thus augment my share of pain, By turning backward still my pensive eyes. No more shall sorrows past my mind annoy, Nor past delight my present bliss destroy. With what untir'd delight I wander here! How sweet is solitude in scenes like these! Where ev'ry charm that decks the youthful year, My wild, romantic heart conspires to please. On ev'ry hedge what painted blooms appear! What flow'ry wealth embroiders all the trees!

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From ev'ry grove what music meets the ear! What fragrance breathes in ev'ry passing breeze! So charming seems the honied Spring to me That I could almost wish my state to change, Some vernal insect for a time to be, And here through seas of richest odour range; Where I with ease ambrosial food might find, And sport for ever on the wanton wind. T h e first sonnet presents ideas of Werther's in an order more logical than in his letter, and is hence less characteristic; in addition, all indications that Werther is reacting to someone else's criticisms ("Gewiss du hast recht, Bester") have disappeared. In the second, an incidental fancy illustrative of the pleasantness of Walheim becomes an overelaborate pastoral almost two-thirds again as long as the text on which it is based. And both poems contain similar incongruous combinations of Wertherian sentimentality and Augustan wit. It is tragically ironic that Thomson's expressions of revolt against the classicistic standard are couched in language still under its spell, as in the case of the following sonnet, which uses an image from Werther64 that a French romanticist was to single out for special praise many years later: 65 Ah, why so seldom does the stream of Song Break forth, by Genius swell'd beyond controul, So seldom pour its mighty waves along, And whelm, with Rapture's flood, th'astonish'd soul? W h y , but for this — that all along the shore The pedant Sons of classic Taste reside, W h o tremble when they hear the waters roar, For all their pretty works on either side; Lest all that swells their feeble hearts with pride, Their scentless, tiny beds of Tulips gay, Their Roots so rare, and summer Domes beside, Should by the torrent rude be swept away;

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TESTAMENT

OF

WERTHER

Whose force they strive incessant to restrain, By many a critic Dam, and many a formal Drain.

In these lines Thomson momentarily captures the spirit of Storm and Stress, only to lose it in the epigrammatic antithesis which leaves the reader with a final impression of negating passivity uncharacteristic of Werther's temporary mood. The fact that five of Thomson's sonnets treat the farewell scene at the end of the first part of Werther shows how strongly he was under the influence of sentimentality. At the same time, however, he was groping his way toward the style and world outlook that were to characterize the romantic generations, and nowhere is this clearer than in the first Werther sonnet he wrote: Each Schoolboy now (so wise our age is grown) Can sagely tell you that the World is round, And tells it in such pert, conceited tone, As if himself had guess'd the truth profound. But by our honest Sires this was not known; They spoke in words which more like Nature sound, Of Earth's green end, to mortal eyes unknown, And Ocean's lake, whose limits ne'er were found. Such dreams are dearer far than truth to me, More pleasing far to this enamour'd mind; For in that endless waste of lonely sea, Some verdant isle might Fancy hope to find, Where I with L O T T A might securely roam, And fear no A L B E R T ' S voice to call her home.68

Here is much of the spirit of Wordsworth's "The world is too much with us, late and soon" — a repudiation of the Enlightenment and a longing for new faith. Although Thomson did not influence the estimate of Werther finally crystalizing in the English mind as it turned away from eighteenth-century sentimentality, he exemplifies one of the earliest instances of Goethe-inspired interest

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in German literature in the Anglo-Saxon world, and his unsuccessful attempts to capture in English verse the spirit of Die Leiden des jungen Werthers make clear how very much had to be achieved by the literary revolution known as English romanticism. ROMANTICISM AND AFTER

The Werther theme had already lost its novelty by the time of The Anti-Jacobin and the revival of political nationalism. As fresher and more vigorous voices won themselves a hearing, The Sorrows of Werter, long associated with the sentimentality of an inferior generation of writers, seemed to belong to a past better forgotten. Within ten years after the publication of Lyrical Ballads the last new serious Werther poems in English had appeared. Anna Seward's Werther elegy and sonnets of 1799 aroused no comment, although fifteen years before her sentimental Louisa, a Poetical Novel had been condemned as equally reprehensible with Werther.67 N o w she could bluntly note that "there has been much ridiculous cant about the fancied immorality of [The Sorrows of Werter]."88 Anne Bannerman, Barbara Hoole, and Olivia Serres belonged chronologically with the newer literary generation, but their innocuous Werther poetry was outmoded even when it was first offered to the reader. In George Crabbe's The Parish Register (1807) matter-of-fact mention is made of a decent farmhouse room where Fair prints along the paper'd wall are spread; There, Werter sees the sportive children fed, And Charlotte, here, bewails her lover dead. There could be no serious preoccupation with a novel that had become gesunkenes Kulturgut and whose in-

ζ6

THE T E S T A M E N T OF WERTHER

fluence on English literature was associated with the sentimental mediocrity and melodramatic bathos parodied in Southey's The Amatory Poems of Abel Shufflebottom (1799) and in the Rejected Addresses (1812) of Horace and James Smith. Isolated admirers of German literature were unable to counteract the impression that Werther represented "grossness and perversity of sentiment . . . a sort of sour krout" to quote the words used by a reviewer of Foscolo's Ultime Lettere di Jacopo Ortis,69 so that hearsay began to replace any firsthand acquaintance with the novel. The relative unsuccess of English theatrical parodies of Werther at a time when Goethe's hero was a familiar comic figure on the French and German stage seems to indicate the general public's lack of familiarity with the work parodied, while neither appreciation nor understanding of the novel is reflected in the occasional literary allusions made to it. In The Waltz Byron ineptly characterizes Werther as "to decent vice though much inclined, Yet warm, not wanton; dazzled, but not blind." A little later, in 1819, the author of a verse satire could cavalierly mention how "Heloise and Werter wail and bounce," 70 and John Keats chose the name of Werter for the languid humanitarian of one of his poems: A fly is in the milk-pot. Must he die Circled by a humane society? No, no; there, Mr. Werter takes his spoon, Inserts it, dips the handle, and lo! soon The little straggler, sav'd from perils dark, Across the teaboard draws a long wet mark. The same year the Reverend C. W . Ethelston, who had published a poetic antidote to The Sorrows of Werter fifteen years before, defended the Manchester Mas-

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sacre and so inspired a belated and only review of his literary efforts by a critic whose greater concern with social than individual morality well symbolizes the rise of new interests leaving little place for Wertherian sentimentality.71 Few nineteenth-century English readers were able to approach Werther without having already been influenced by various disparaging allusions to it which, added to the normal difficulty of appreciating a work written in a very different age, created insuperable barriers to comprehension. Longfellow recorded and explained a long-prevalent attitude toward Werther when he noted in his journal in 1835, "In England and America the book is sneered at. I think it is not understood." 72 Goethe's reputation was to grow, but it was still true twenty years later that "Werther is not much read nowadays, especially in England, where it labours under the double disadvantage of a bad name and an execrable translation." 73 In America, where writers were only indirectly concerned with the forces that had effectively combined to bring serious English interest in Werther to a sudden end, the novel fell more gradually into oblivion, and earnest concern with its morality is apparent in a dialogue published as late as 1841.74 Men like Bancroft, Longfellow, and Emerson helped win prestige for Goethe's writings, so that when Thackeray visited the United States in 1852 and 1853 he found Goethe more appreciated there than in England. Thackeray discussed Goethe seriously with Ticknor while in Boston, but the literary autograph which he wrote in Richmond for the editor of The Southern Literary Messenger was a bit of froth whose subsequent influence he can hardly have forseen:

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THE T E S T A M E N T OF WERTHER

Werther had a love for Charlotte, Such as words could never utter, Would you know how first he met her? She was cutting bread and butter. Charlotte was a married lady, And a moral man was Werther, And for all the wealth of Indies Would do nothing that might hurt her. So he sighed and pined and ogled, And his passion boiled and bubbled; Till he blew his silly brains out, And no more was by them troubled. Charlotte, having seen his body Borne before her on a shutter, Like a well conducted person Went on cutting bread and butter. Soon reprinted in other journals and later published in facsimile, Thackeray's comical ballad became better known than the novel the naïve interpretation of which it may have originally satirized. Fifty years before Thackeray another novelist, Jane West, had summarized the "impious" and "immoral" Sorrows of Werter with somewhat similar emphasis: Seeing Charlotte in the act of cutting bread and butter for her brothers and sisters, he falls in love with her . . . [ Werther] closes, as all the printshops tell you, with Charlotte's weeping over his tomb. I read it many years ago, and I may have misstated some particulars; but I can swear to the captivating slices of bread and butter.75 Thackeray's is not the only English Werther poem which burlesques the novel,76 nor the only English satire to exploit what Longfellow had in mind when he observed that "in one or two places the author has suf-

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fered the love for simple homely virtue to carry him too far; as Wordsworth has done in his poetry." 77 It can, however, be appreciated without any acquaintance with Werther, and so it remains in its own right a classic of English humor. T o the first generation of its English readers The Sorrows of Werter had afforded a vicarious expression of emotional experience far more intense than that of their daily lives and literary fare. In the new age which had begun with the French Revolution there was both a conscious repudiation of the decadent sentimentality represented by the vulgarized Werther and an unconscious want of more positive values than those to be found in a novel symbolizing failure and negation. By comparison with Werther, the despairing Byronic hero seems a man of action; later in the century there was no place beside the works of earnest humanitarians for a pessimistic novel devoted to the personal tragedy of a passive hero. Thackeray's Werther poem is essentially a Victorian condemnation of unsocial elements in Werther's character and of his inability to take any course of action except suicide. It was well over a century before the romanticists' prejudice against Augustan literature could begin to be overcome; perhaps with time otherwise well educated English readers will again be able to see Werther through their own as well as through a Victorian's eyes. NOTES 1. Cf. O. Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield, especially chapter vi, in which Mr. Burchall, who sings ballads and tells chapbook stories, has the same success with children as does Werther. 2. The Sorrows of Werter: A German Story. The Second Edition (London, 1780), l:vi. 3. See I. A. Williams, The Shorter Foems of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1923), introduction passim. There is a tone of desperation in The Dunciad.

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WERTHER

4. See J. W . Draper, The Funeral Elegy and the Rise of English Romanticism (New York, 1929); H. N. Fairchild, Religious Trends in English Poetry, vol. II, 1740-1780 (New York, 1942), in which the influence of nonorthodox Christianity is also emphasized. 5. Popular interest in Werther increased steadily until 1786, then declined at a more rapid rate, as can be seen by the appearance of twenty-six Werther illustrations between 1781 and 1786, after which only two appeared. See J. M. Carré, Bibliographie critique et analytique de Goethe en Angleterre (Paris, 1920), pp. 20-24. 6. Late instances of the practice of versifying prose works are found in the English translations of Werther by Gotzberg (1802) and Pratt (1809), both of whom replace Macpherson's prose with verse imitations of Ossian. A few of the English Werther poets who also exploited Ossian are Bannerman, Burrell, Ladd, Thomson, Upton. 7. There were at least nine English editions of Love and Madness (see E. H. Lewis, "Are the Hackman-Reay Love-Letters Genuine?" Modern Language Notes, 10:228 [1895]). A French translation was published in 1809 (see English Werther Poetry: CROFT) ; the thirty-sixth letter of Love and Madness is the source of [John George Hamilton Bourne's] The Eagle of Idria: A German Tale, In Three Cantos (London, 1833), where it is quoted in the appendix. 8. See Lewis, "Hackman-Reay Love-Letters," pp. 227-232. 9. Love and Madness. A New Edition, Corrected (London, 1786), p. 82. 10. Love and Madness, p. 84. 11. In later editions of Love and Madness Croft also revised several lines of this poem. 12. Love and Madness, pp. 315-318. 13. Anthony Pasquin [i.e., John Williams], Poems (London, 1789), 2:204. 14. Ibid. 15. Quoted: W . A. Speck, "Revealing Two Secrets of the Sorrowful Werther," Literary Digest International Book Review, 4:382 (May, 1926). 16. Letters of Charlotte (London, 1810), p. 51. 17. Ibid., p. 52. 18. Ibid., p. 130. 19. In the letter to his publisher already quoted in part in the text, James claims that he has written The Letters of Charlotte to counteract the "tendency" of The Sorrows of Werter. 20. Letters of Charlotte, p. 132. 21. For example, the verses beginning,

ENGLISH WERTHER POETRY

6l

"I sing of the days that are gone, Of Werter who now is no more; Unhappy the hour I was born, His loss I shall ever deplore." 22. 2Î. 24. 25.

Gentleman's Magazine, 56(1) :334 (April, 1786). Letters of Anna Seward (Edinburgh, 1811), 2:162. Ibid., 2:217, 223. Daniel Malthus, translator of Girardin's De la Composition des paysages. 26. Zweyter Theil, "den ein und zwanzigsten December." (Die Leiden des fangen Werthers is quoted from the text of Der junge Goethe, ed. M. Morris, 4:220-329.) 27. Zweyter Theil, "nach eilfe." 28. Zweyter Theil, "am 8. Dez." 2 9 . See:

LADD.

30. Deutsche Zeitung (1786), no. 137; quoted by P. Gerlach, Goethe in Danzig (Danzig, 1935), p. 15. 31. See A., C. ("Whence are those groans that pierce the midnight air?"). 32. See "Farewell, dear Charlotte! — take this last adieu." 33. See LAURA ("Mistaken youth! thy love, to frenzy wrought"). 34. B. Rush, Essays, Literary, Moral and Philosophical (2d edition; Philadelphia, 1806), p. 82 ("Thoughts upon Female Education, Accommodated to the Present State of Society, Manners and Government, in the United States of America," pp. 75-92). 35. English Review, 12:123 (1787). 36. A Letter to a Friend, with a Poem, called The Ghost of Werter. By Lady — (London [1787]), p. 18. 37. Zweyter Theil, "am 24. Nov." 38. Merry's wife, Elizabeth Brunton, had created the role of Charlotte in Reynolds' Werter: A Tragedy. Merry wrote the prologue for Reynolds' The Dramatist, and made an English adaptation of the Fênelon of the French Werther playwright M. J. Chénier. 39. J. G. Lockhart, Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart. (Edinburgh, 1837), 1:87.—Suicidal melancholy as an English characteristic is the theme of Joseph Patrat's comedy, L'Anglais, ou Le Fou raisonnable (Paris, 1781). Suicide is called an English "Modelaster" in J. F. Teller's anti-Wertherian Vernunft- und Schriftmässige Abhandlung über den Selbstmord (Leipzig, 1776), pp. 95f. 40. Fanny d'Arblay, Diary & Letters (London, 1904), 2:346 (Monday, December 19, 1785). 41. See 54(2):876. 42. Ibid., p. 946.

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43. See 55(2):81i 44. Gentleman's Magazine, 56(1):334. 45. See S. Atkins, "Sir Herbert Croft and German Literature," Modern Language Quarterly, 5:193-200 (1944). 46. Love and Madness (1786), p. 316. 47. Ibid., p. 317. 48. Letter to the publisher Dodsley; cf. C. J. Hill, "The First English Translation of Werther," Modern Language Notes, 47:8-12 (1932). 49. Letters from Mrs. Elizabeth Carter to Mrs. Montagu (London, 1817), 3:224 (letter of September 3, 1784). 5 0 . See

MATHIAS, T . G.

51. W . Gifford, The Baviad, and M aviad (London, 1811), p. 61. 52. Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1790), Lit. Class, 2:167. 53. Maria Riddell, to whom Burns mentions having sent Werter, edited the collection which contains "Thy soft-wrought sorrows, Werter, while I view," while Helen Craik was "steeped" in the novel. See J. D. Ferguson, The Letters of Robert Burns (Oxford, 1931), 2:227, 346. 54. Robert Alves, Sketches of a History of Literature (Edinburgh, 1794), p. 110. 55. Anne Grant, Letters from The Mountains: being The Real Correspondence of a Lady, between the Years 1773 and 1802 (Boston, 1809), 1:269, 271-272. 5 6 . See

BANNERMAN;

THOMSON.

57. Cf. A. Thomson, Sonnets, Odes, and Elegies (Edinburgh, 1801), p. 201. (Sonnet cxxxiii. "On the Death of Dr. Joseph Warton.") — A fuller account of Thomson's life than that given in DNB can be found in W . P. Courtney, English Whist Players (London, 1894), pp. 326-329. 58. Thomson translates from or quotes in Persian, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and German. Only the name of his teacher of Hebrew (George Campbell) is known; see Sonnets, Odes, and Elegies, p. 84. 59. Sonnets, Odes, and Elegies, p. 145. Sonnet lxxviii. " G E R M A N I A ' S Muse . . . Whose pow'rful charms were destin'd to diffuse So much of pleasure o'er my future days; That (save our own, and GRECIA'S Muse divine) I would each tuneful Maid for her resign." 60. Zweyter Theil, "am 9. May." 61. Thomson's Pictures of Poetry; Historical, Biographical, and Critical (Edinburgh, 1799), is the only volume published. It contains tributes to the German drama (pp. 28f.) and to Klopstock (pp. 73f.), and mentions the dramatic efforts of Gottsched and his wife. In The Paradise of Taste Thomson places Gessner above Theocri-

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62. 63. 64. 6î. 66. 67. 68. 69.

63

tus (p. viii, pp. 39f.), mentions and quotes Haller (pp. x-xi, p. 3), and quotes Schiller (p. 17). "Elegy VI. For December 31, 1788," Sonnets, Odes, and Elegies, p. 63. "Preface," Sonnets, Odes, and Elegies, p. vi. Erster Theil, "am 26. May." C. A. Sainte-Beuve, "Diderot," Premiers Lundis (Paris, 1886), 1:372-373. See Werther, Zweyter Theil, "am 9. May." The European Magazine, and London Review, 7:106-112 (February, 1785). Note to her poem "O thou, who turnest this impassioned leaf." Quarterly Review, 8:442 (1812).

7 0 . See

TURNER.

71. [An Old Radical], Suicide, with other Foems, by the Rev. C. W. Ethelston, M. A. Rector of Worthenbury. 1803 (London, 1819). 72. Quoted: O. W . Long, Literary Pioneers Early American Explorers of European Culture (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 193S), p. 175. 73. G. H. Lewes, The Life and Works of Goethe (London, 1855), 1:220.

74. [Thomas Tracy (translator of Undine)], "Werter's Warning," in: Miniature Romances from the German (Boston, 1841). 75. J. West, Letters Addressed to a Young Man, on His First Entrance into Life (Charlestown, 1803), 2:52-53. 76. The hero of Mynheer Werter's First Interview with Charlotte (1826) declares that as the six children clamored for bread and butter Charlotte "With such grace cut each slice, That I found in a trice She had cut a large slice From the heart of poor me!" See "Having promised to call." 77. See German Poetry: Chicago Sonntags-Zeitung. Longfellow's journal quoted by Long, Literary Pioneers, p. 175.

Ill

Qerman Werther Poetry THE FIRST RECEPTION OF WERTHER

in England the Werther theme was popular with the broadest public for ten years only to be soon forgotten except by a few, usually hostile, critics, in Germany Die Leiden des jungen Werthers made a more lasting impression. Werther not only became a part of the heritage of every educated German; for almost a century the story of Lotte and Werther was familiar to Germans of all classes. There were half a dozen editions of a Werther chapbook early in the nineteenth century; 1 as late as the 1850's Werther parodies could be performed successfully on the stages of Germany and Austria; and some Werther poems, set to music or sung to old tunes, even became folk songs. Among the factors which made the reception of Werther different in Germany from that which it met with in any other country are the identification of Werther with Jerusalem and, of less general interest at first, that of Albert and Lotte with the Kestners. As early as the beginning of 1775 there appeared a biographical Berichtigung der Geschichte des jungen Werthers, and later in the year Goué, who had been a ministerial secretary at Wetzlar when Jerusalem committed suicide there on October 30, 1772, published a dramatization of the latter's life inspired by Goethe's novel. A HEREAs

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further circumstance contributing to the notoriety of Werther was also one of identity: although Die Leiden des jungen Werthers appeared anonymously, it was credited to Goethe in the Meszverzeichnis and hence its authorship was an open secret. Well-known as the author of Götz von Berlichingen, Goethe was inevitably put into the category of Storm-and-Stress radicals. Only a few months before the publication of Werther he had again enjoyed notoriety as the author of Götter, Helden und Wieland: this impudent attack on Wieland was disapproved by many who respected both writers, for it was interpreted either as lese majesty or as a misuse of creative ability.2 A new work of Goethe's was bound to attract the widest attention in the literary world of Germany, ready to defend a god or to destroy an idol. Werther was welcomed for its intrinsic worth by the reading public of those countries where it was the first work of Goethe to become known. It would certainly have been equally successful in Germany even if it had not been the work of an already famous author or the story of an easily identifiable suicide. A frustrated generation sensed in the novel the highly poetic representation of its own spiritual crisis, for Werther's suicide was the outstanding expression, in the form of an action, of the doubts which many had about the value of life in what was no longer generally felt to be the best of all possible worlds, while his character mirrored the almost solipsistic subjectivism of much Storm-and-Stress thought. What is even more important, Werther was a sentimental novel in which could be recognized familiar elements of melancholy, pathos, despair, social revolt, and idealized nature, for by 1774 sentimentality had perhaps made greater advances in Germany than anywhere else in Europe.

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The fact that a German read Die Leiden des fungen Werthers in the original and not in translation did not, as might be expected to have been the case, make for its better interpretation and appreciation; his attention was usually concentrated upon content and ideas rather than upon form.3 Still, Werther was written in his language, so that the German reader was able to understand Goethe's meaning and appreciate the quality of his style somewhat more fully than one who read the novel in some translation the very title of which indicated limitations: The Sorrows of Werter, Les Peines du jeune Werther. Goethe's mastery of words reflected the vitality of a language whose potentialities writers had only begun to appreciate after they saw the achievements of Klopstock. The style of Werther was not stereotyped at the time of its publication, and it is still remarkable for its freshness. No translation into English, French, or Italian, at least, was entirely able to recapture this newness of the original, for it had to be translated into a literary language that already existed. The attempts to turn Werther into English and French verse, into a conventionally lyrical style, suggest an awareness of the insufficiency of prose translations. Although in other languages there were numerous versifications of passages from Werther, by way of contrast there exist but two in German.4 Contemporary criticism was for the most part favorable, but it nevertheless reveals how little real understanding most readers had for Goethe's novel.5 Representing in Der Teutsche Merkur the older generation, Wieland commends the author of Werther for having produced a psychological novel instead of a romance of adventure. He notes that objections which have been made to the theme of suicide are invalid, and even praises

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the popular philosophy with which the whole production is spiced.® T h e pedagogical optimism of the older generation also voices itself in the comments of Christian Garve, who, conceding the complete poetic truth of Werther, seems to cherish only the faintest doubts about mankind's ever happier, and calmer, future: Es webt und regt sich jetzt mehr in allen menschlichen Köpfen, als sonst. — Wird dadurch das Loos unsrer Nachkommen besser werden? . . . Wird einmal eine Zeit kommen, wo die immer abwechselnde, immer gleich eingeschränkte Sinnlichkeit durch den immer gleich groszen, unendlich weiten Verstand, der vom Anfang bis zum Ende alle Oerter und alle Einwohner und Begebenheiten umfaszt, wird überwogen und dadurch die Ruhe des Geistes und Herzens festgestellt werden?7 There was little place in the inflexible patterns of enlightened thinking for the underlying pessimism of Werther. Sentimentalists were usually very vague in their socalled reviews, saying even less about the novel itself than did other critics. Matthias Claudius, for example, states that he has been moved to tears by it, and then hastens to exhort young people to raise their heads joyously, "denn es giebt Tugend, die, wie die Liebe, auch durch Leib und Leben geht." 8 T h e Werther-like Lenz wrote what purported to be Briefe über die Moralität der Leiden des jungen Werthers, a good instance of bad criticism by a sentimental Storm-and-Stress writer.® He repudiates charges that Werther is an immoral book with a doctrine familiar to Herder, Goethe, and all those who had felt the influence of Shaftesbury and the neoplatonic revival, by protesting that as a work of beauty it cannot be other than good. Carried away by enthusiasm, he writes:

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Dasz man aber mit eben dem kalten Blute sich hinsetzt und nach der Moral der Leiden des jungen Werthers fragt, da mir als ichs lasz, die Sinnen vergiengen, ich ganz in seine Welt hineingezaubert mit Werthern liebte, mit Werthern litt, mit Werthern starb — dasz kann ich nicht vertragen.10 Lenz's remarks were never published at the time. Although they represent a grandiose confession of faith, it was probably realized that they would serve no good purpose. The numerous attacks on the morality of Werther which had inspired Lenz to compose his Letters appeared not only in literary and popularly philosophical journals, but also as tracts for popular consumption. Johann Melchior Goeze of ultimate Anti-Goeze fame published in pamphlet form the various gratuitous criticisms he had made in the Frey willige Bey träge zu den Hamburgischen Nachrichten aus dem Reiche der GelehrsamkeitChoosing the style of a sermon, Goeze took two texts and applied them to Werther: Einem jeden Christen, der für das Wort seines Heylandes: Ich sage euch, wer ein Weib ansieht, ihr zu begehren, der hat schon die Ehe mit ihr gebrochen in seinem Herzen, Matth. 5, 28. noch einige Ehrerbietung hat, der die Worte des heil. Johannes: Wir wissen, dasz ein Todtschläger nicht hat das ewige Leben bey ihm bleibend, 1. Joh. 3, 15. als einen Lehrsatz ansiehet, welcher sich auf ein unveränderliches Urtheil unseres allerheiligsten und allerhöchsten Richters gründet, musz nothwendig das Herz bluten, wenn er die Leiden des jungen Werthers lieset. Das gelindeste Urtheil, das man von dieser Schrift fällen kann, ist dieses: sie ist der verwegenste Widerspruch gegen bey de™ All criticism based on orthodox morality followed the same verbose pattern. Rationalists were usually more succinct in their condemnation of the sympathetic portrayal of a suicide; Lichtenberg noted: "Die schönste Stelle

GERMAN WERTHER POETRY

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im Werther ist die, wo er den Hasenfusz erschieszt." 13 T o complete this brief sketch of the first reception of Werther by the reading public in Germany, it is necessary to mention Nicolai's Freuden des jungen Werthers — Leiden und Freuden Werthers des Mannes. Voran und zuletzt ein Gespräch (Berlin, 1775), the first of a long series of discussions utilizing the form of dialogue or drama to deal with Goethe's novel. Nicolai claims that Werther is ungrateful to a world which has given him so much, and then attempts to show how Werther could have been happy if Lotte had not happened to be formally engaged to Albert. When, before any marriage to Lotte and before Goethe's Werther had felt suicidal despair, he lets Werther borrow his pistols, Albert places bladders of chicken blood in them instead of loading them properly. After Werther has shot himself and believes that he is dying, Albert explains his trick and renounces Lotte. The following account of Werther's married life is a tale of domestic misfortunes which, thanks to the enlightened Albert, ends happily. There were far less charitable criticisms of Werther than Nicolai's, for some writers did not even concede its artistic merit as the author of Freuden des jungen Werthers actually did, but this was the only one Goethe ever acknowledged. In March of 1775 he wrote the three lines, Vor Werthers Leiden, Mehr noch vor seinen Freuden Bewahr' uns, lieber Herre Gott! At the same time he circulated the rather rude poem which begins, "Ein junger Mensch, ich weisz nicht wie, Starb einst an der Hypochondrie . . .

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Goethe's too evident irritation perhaps arose from the fact that the text of Nicolai's parody consists of Werther passages put into a banal context, a desecration of a work of art which added insult to injury. Certainly Goethe never forgot it, and in Dichtung und Wahrheit recalls how he let Werther address Nicolai as follows: Mag jener dünkelhafte Mann Mich als gefährlich preisen; Der plumpe, der nicht schwimmen kann, Er will's dem Wasser verweisen! Was schiert mich der Berliner Bann, Geschmäcklerpf äffenwesen ! Und wer mich nicht verstehen kann, Der lerne besser lesen. Long after the first smart, he could still write for the Xenien: Worauf lauerst du hier? — Ich erwarte den dummen Gesellen, Der sich so abgeschmackt über mein Leiden gefreut. Indifferent to the virulence of incomprehending moralists like Goeze, Goethe chose to remember the one Werther criticism that had felt out the weakest spot in Stormand-Stress ideology, its anti-social individualism. H e could not forgive the representative of an inflexible philosophy of life diametrically opposed to his own for having made his objections in the very words used to express what had been an intense personal experience, and for then having denied the validity of that experience. These widely differing judgments reveal how controversial a book Werther was. It was inevitable that as such it should be ardently defended or wittily attacked in the literary works of contemporaries. It was so well

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known that a reference to it could -not fail to be understood. And as a work of genius — and of a sometimes acknowledged genius —it made an impression on writers of all schools. Their reaction is often a better indication of what it meant to readers than are the incoherent or inimical statements of reviewers. T H E AFFIRMATION OF

SENTIMENT

A short verse playlet by Charlotte von Stein records some of the sensation which the arrival in Weimar of the author of Werther occasioned among members of the fair sex. In the scene which represents Goethe's presentation to court society, Gerthruth, who is the ten-years married Frau von Stein, observes: Gleichgültig ist er mir eben nicht, Doch weisz ich nicht ob er oder Werther mir spricht. T o this, the more impulsive Kunigunde (Frau von Werthern) decisively declares: Ja, ja s'ist Werther ganz und gar So liebenswert, als er mir immer war. Although Frau von Stein apparently intended to characterize herself as endowed with certain powers of discrimination, her own identification of Goethe with Werther went further than she realized, for, when asked by Gerthruth if he enjoys dancing, Goethe replies like a true romantic: Manch mal, doch meistens schleicht mit mir Herrum ein trauriges Gefühl Uber das ewge Erden gewühl. After his departure from the company, Gerthruth, who contributes nothing to the ensuing chatter, has only the

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thought, "Ist mir doch als wär das Intresse der Gesellschaft vorbey." 14 Intense interest in Werther was a sentimental fashion, and so was literary Werther imitation, but among Werther poems are to be found documents which permit more than a glimpse into the hidden unhappiness and frustration which underlay the fashions of sentimentality. The not too successful lives or careers of writers like Charlotte Smith and Alexander Thomson are reflected in their melancholy sonnets, which were, at least those of the former, significantly popular. Similarly, the presence of manuscript copies of the earliest German Werther poem among the papers of both Frau von Stein and of Goethe's unhappy contemporary, Lenz, affords poignant insight into how a reader of Die Leiden des jungen Werthers might easily identify himself with either Werther or Charlotte.15 The poem, entitled Lotte auf Werthers Tod, opens with a delineation of Lotte's horror and remorse when she learns of Werther's death; in the copy from Frau von Stein's papers, which differs considerably from that of Lenz, it begins: O Gott! so ist es wahr das schreckenvolle Bild Das mir das Innerste mit bangem Schauder füllt? Das die beklemmte Brust, umsonst sich selbst verheelet, Und schuldlos als ich bin, mit bitt'rer Reue quälet! — Ists Pflicht, sich sinnenlos, uneingestandne Pein, Verstummend, unerklährt, im Herzen zu verzeihn? Musz ich Unglückliche schon ein Verbrechen wagen; Dein trauriges Geschick — Geliebter! — zu beklagen? — Hab' ich Dir einen Blick von Hoffnung, je gegeben? Sucht' ich die Leidenschaft im Busen zu beleben . . .1β

The often repeated protestation of innocence leads up eventually to the revealing statement, "Ein allzuzärtlich Herz verlangte Albert nicht," and it becomes clear that

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Charlotte's dominant emotion is a sense of guilt for having failed to cherish her husband. "Von Vorwurf und von Schmerz Bald abgehärmt," she concludes, "folgt dir mein allzufühlbar Herz!" The clumsy alexandrines of this poem do not completely disguise its extraordinary intensity, and an enjambment like that concealed by the comma at the end of the fifth line shows that here feeling was more important than correctness of form. In Lenz's version of Lotte auf Werthers Tod, which represents rather a man's point of view, Werther is relieved of all moral responsibility; Charlotte cries: Ja, ich, ich war's, die 's ihm aus seiner Brust fortrisz, Durch mich beweint in hoffnungsloser Kümmernis Die Mutter den geraubten Sohn Und Wilhelm seinen Freund, den er dort fern vom Thron, Dem Abadona gleich, vielleicht von weiten sieht Und heiliger, verklärt, von ihm nun traurig flieht.

Her final words, "Versteinert bleibt mein Herz als Monument hier stehen,"17 are highly flattering to a WertherLenz whose self-pity verges on the narcissistic. Common to both the versions of this first Lotte auf Werthers Tod is the comparison of Werther with Abadonna, the fallen but eventually pardoned angel of Klopstock's Messias. Klopstock, who had prepared the way for sentimental literature in Germany, exerted directly or indirectly a strong influence on German elegiac verse and hence on all serious German Werther poetry, and the biblical flavor of many passages in Werther facilitated the association of its themes with the style of Goethe's older and more pious contemporary.18 The importance of sentimentality to Sturm und Drang is symbolically expressed in Lenz's dramatic sketch, Pandaemonium germanicum, by a scene in which it is Klopstock who welcomes Goethe to the Temple of Fame. The Messias and

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Oden of Klopstock are distinguished less by lyricism than by pathos, and it is the latter quality which characterizes all the sentimental tributes in German verse to the ill-starred Werther. Goethe himself had paid homage to the author of Die Frühlingsfeyer in the passage of Werther where, after a violent thunderstorm, appreciation of the freshness of nature brings tears to Lotte's eyes and then to Werther's as she speaks the name of Klopstock. The sanctity of sentiment is an article of faith, inherited from Klopstock by the members of the Hainbund, which explains their consistent repudiation of the anacreontic style so long fashionable in Germany. N o t quite so elevated in tone as the writings of Klopstock, the poetry of Hölty and Claudius served as models for various effusions at the grave of Werther. One of the first and certainly the best remembered of these is Reitzenstein's elegy written in the person of Lotte. After lamenting her double loss of peace of mind and of Albert's love, Lotte declares — in words later sung by the journeyman tailor of Heine's Harzreise: Einsam weil' ich auf der Rasenstelle, Wo uns oft der späte Mond belauscht, Jammernd irr' ich an der Silberquelle, Die uns lieblich Wonne zugerauscht . . . Her sleep disturbed by dreams, she has stolen from Albert's side to the grave of Werther: Heilige, mit frommen kalten Herzen, Gehn vorüber und — verdammen dich: Ich allein, ich fühle deine Schmerzen, Teures Opfer, und beweine dich! Werde weinen noch am letzten Tage, Wenn der Richter unsre Tage wiegt . . . Dann, o! dräng ich zu des Thrones Stufen

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Mich an meines Alberts Seite zu, Rufen wird er selbst, versöhnet rufen: Ich vergeh ihm: O, verschone du! Und der Richter wird Verschonung winken; Ruh empfängst du nach der langen Pein, Und in einer Myrtenlaube trinken Wir die Seligkeit des Himmels ein.

The combination of religious enthusiasm with sentimental pathos found in these lines is the same as that of Hölty's An den Mond (1774), in which the sympathy of higher forces is similarly demanded: Enthülle dich, dasz ich die Stätte finde, W o oft mein Mädchen sasz . . . Dann, lieber Mond, dann nimm den Schleier wieder Und traur' um deinen Freund, Und weine durch den Wolkenflor hernieder, Wie dein Verlassner weint.

The apposition of the forgotten Reitzenstein and of Hölty is not arbitrary, for the tears of Lotte in the moonlight are testimony of a mood as purely elegiac as Hölty's, and a contemporary elegiast did not hesitate to declare of his own Laura an Adolfs Grab (1780), "Hin und her aus Hölty und dem ungenannten Verfasser der Lotte an Werthers Grab geraubt." 19 Reitzenstein's elegy was printed both as a pamphlet and in such reputable journals as Der Ternsche Merkur and Schubart's Deutsche Chronik. In the latter it was offered to the reader with the comment: "Recensiren? Behüte Gott, mittheilen will ich dir diesz Cypressensträuszchen auf Werthers Grab." The text was a favorite of late eighteenth-century German composers; the Viennese court pianist Steffan, for instance, gave Reitzenstein's poem the same consideration as texts of Klopstock, Ewald von Kleist, Haller, and Goethe.20 In Friedrich

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Christian Laukhard's autobiography a procession to Jerusalem's grave in the spring of 1776 is described; various Werther songs were rendered, but at the grave itself the group sang as pièce de résistance Reitzenstein's "Ausgelitten hast du, ausgerungen." Many later Werther poems and novels contain allusions or parallels to the Reitzenstein elegy, which, although not the earliest Werther poem, was the first to be published. Thus in an anonymous Russian Wertheriad, NeskoVko pisem moego druga (1794-95), the hero recites it, in German, at the request of the married heroine, while the author notes that he will not offer a new Russian translation of the well-known work. There exists a highly graphic account of the effect of a musical rendition of Lotte bei Werthers Grab in Reinhardt poem with the same title (1778). 21 As fair Luise sings, each listener is spellbound: Einen schüchternen Blick erhob ich, und sähe von Wehmut Jedes Auge, wie meins, nieder zur Erde gebeugt. — Tief, tief atmet die Brust, wenn leise, sterbende Töne, W i e das Säuseln am Grab, wimmern im traurigen Lied: "Ausgelitten hast du! Den Todesstreit hast du gerungen, Armer Jüngling! Mit Blut hast du die Liebe gebüszt!" Strebt dann empor — wie feierlich-ernst! — mit dem Echo der Saiten Ach! zu der Leiden Lohn — ach! zu dem Leben vom Tod!

Regardless of age or position, all weep with Lotte: . . . selber der Greis . . . Amtlicher Würde vergasz und der gravitätischen Miene, Und den tränenden Blick feurig zum Himmel erhob.

Reinhardt Rousseauist idealizations of unspoiled nature in Otahiti and in a Gessnerian Switzerland, expressed in other writings, explain why, even apart from the fact that he belonged to the age of sentimentality, he should have

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sympathized with Werther the nature lover and have been especially affected by an elegy on his death. Inspired by Reitzenstein, a reflective poet of the school of Wieland let Werther answer the lamenting Lotte in lines beginning, "Weine nicht! — es ist der Sieg erkämpfet, Dieser Sieg, errungen durch ein Grab. . . ." 22 He assures her that God has judged mildly and that her Werther is at peace: Überall umschweb' ich deine Spuren, Und mein Hauch berührt im Westen dich, A u f dem Mondstrahl zittr' ich durch die Fluren, Und in jedem Veilchen pflückst du mich . . .

This passage, in a tradition to which Goethe himself contributed later with "Ich denke dein, wenn mir der Sonne Schimmer Vom Meere strahlt" and "In tausend Formen magst du dich verstecken," echoes the Ossian passages of Werther. Written in the spirit of Werther's own religious love of nature, the poem combines it with Christian elements in the typical fashion of the period. The language of German sentimentality derived from that of the mystics by way of pietism.23 There was in every way a close relationship between sentimentality and religion. In his ode of 1748, An Gott, Klopstock went so far as to declare that pure human love could heighten the poet's power to sing the love of God.24 A comparable identification with religious feeling of other emotions is extensively reflected in German Werther poetry. The grave, the scene of so many laments for Werther, is consistently termed a haven of refuge, while the words Ruhe and ruhen occur again and again.25 The Lotte of one poetess pleads (at Werther's grave) with God in six-line strophes constructed like those of some of Klopstock's odes:

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Gnade, ach! Gnade Für meinen Werther; Mich, seine Mörderin, treffe dein Zorn! Brünst'ger, empfindlicher Als alle Engel Wird Werther ewig singen dein Lob.28 In almost all these elegies Werther is assured divine forgiveness on the grounds that his sufferings were a martyrdom. "Leiden trankst du aus der Marterquelle," writes another woman poet: Werther! Werther! sankst im Blute nieder; Aber deine Seel' erhob sich wieder Und empfing des Jammers Lohn — Schwermut machte deine Sinnen trübe, — Gott versöhnt, — belohnt die Qual der Liebe, Hebt dich auf zum lichten Thron.27 Werther's Passion on earth is, moreover, compensated for by an eventual Heavenly Reunion with Lotte in which perfect mystic bliss is achieved: Leb wohl, bis wir uns wiedersehn Vor jenem hohen Thron, Wo wir die Weisheit ganz verstehn, Ganz die Religion . . . W o Myriaden Geister sich Durch Sonnenwelten drehn Und vor der Himmel Angesicht Des Schöpfers Ruhm erhöhn. Dann sucht mein forschend Auge dich Durch tausend Welten auf, Es forscht, es sucht, und findet dich Und schwingt sich zu dir auf. Ach Lotte! welche Seligkeit! O Lotte! welch ein Band! Von Ewigkeit zu Ewigkeit Geführt von deiner Hand.

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These lines are akin in spirit to the pathetic and exalted poetry of the young Schiller, whose Phantasie an Laura shows love holding universes harmoniously together and describes an ultimate eternity of love: Einst — so hör' ich das Orakel sprechen — Einsten hascht Saturn die Braut; Weltenbrand wird Hochzeitfackel werden, Wenn mit Ewigkeit die Zeit sich traut. Eine schönere Aurora rötet, Laura, dann auch unsrer Liebe sich, Die so lang als Jener Brautnacht dauert. Laura! Laura! freue dich! Sometimes the Werther theme served only as a starting point for the expression of personal religious feelings. T h e following excerpts from Arvelius's Bei Werthers Grabe reflect eighteenth-century religious optimism in a very personal application: Ahnend seh' ich selbst das schwächste Wesen Künftiger Vollkommenheit sich nahn; Nicht nur einige zum Glück erlesen, Alle, alle, und dann bet' ich an. Dann erleichtert sich des Lebens Bürde; Lieb' und Dank erwärmt mein fröhlich Herz; Und ich fühl' in Demut meine Würde; Trage still und standhaft Glück und Schmerz. Sel'ge Hoffnung mindert meine Schwäche, Ohne Zittern blick' ich in die Gruft; Denn ich sehe nichts als Lebensbäche, Keinen Feuerpfuhl und ew'ge Kluft! Halleluja, Jüngling! ja, es trinket Deine Seele dort den Lebensbach, Und ich folge, wenn mir Gott einst winket, Dir zu dessen Quelle dürstend nach! . . .

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Täglich offenbart sich uns die Wahrheit Und des Daseins Zweck und unsre Pflicht, Jauchzend sehn wir dann in ew'ger Klarheit Gott von Angesicht zu Angesicht! Lines such as these demonstrate vividly how the triumph of popular philosophy over theology performed as great a disservice to philosophy as to religion. Thus the interdependence of religiosity and sentimentality is revealed jn a large group of Werther poems. It mirrors the importance of Hölty and Klopstock to preromantic German literature, for both the forms and the motifs of German Werther poetry derive primarily from the works of these two writers.28 The revolt against the rococo and anacreontic traditions was continued and strengthened by this poetry, which could not itself endure. Even avowed rationalists occasionally succumbed to the wave of Werther enthusiasm, although they never expressed their appreciation in the extreme manner of the sentimentalists. In an epigram An den Unbestand Johann von Alxinger praises inconstancy as the genius that prevents too frequent use of "Wertherische Pistolen," yet he also wrote a few lines to be placed upon a monument to Werther: Alxinger admired Goethe's novel without condoning enthusiasts who chose to idealize its protagonist.29 His friend and fellow rationalist Blumauer lets Dido read Werther s Leiden in an Aeneis travesty, the last stanza of which is a thrust at sentimentalism: Und seit dem jämmerlichen Brauch, Aus Liebe sich zu morden, Ist unter unsern Damen auch Das Hängen Mode worden: Sie hegen gleichen Appetit, Und hängen sich, wenn einer flieht, Sogleich — an einen Andern.

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While Blumauer clearly questioned the emotional sincerity, or at least the intelligence, of those who wept over Werther's fate, he was sufficiently the urbane man of the Enlightenment merely to laugh at what more earnest moralists vigorously condemned as an expression of emotional instability and even dishonesty. The tone of detached irony was not often heard, however, in this age of sentimentality, for it was too great a struggle for. most rationalists to resist the power of sympathy. If they were not angry at their own emotion, they were at least weakened by it: W i e ofte hab' ich dich, o Werther! nicht gelesen, Geweint, gefühlt mit dir, doch durch Vernunft gesiegt, Den Kampf der Leidenschaft, so hart er auch gewesen, Durch Hoffnung und Geduld, so schwer er war, bekriegt.

The significance of such a criticism is that it is so favorable to Werther, for it demonstrates how sentimentalism moved even those whose own philosophies and poetic methods were rooted in rationalism. RATIONALIST AND IRRATIONALIST MORALITY

Up to the time of the French Revolution Goethe was hardly known outside of Germany except as the author of the sentimental Werther, and yet as early as 1781 the Swedish poet Thomas Thorild apostrophized him thus: Mäktige GÖTHE! hög, rousseauisk, shakespearisk! Själens herrskare! vâldsam, ljuf! underfull, ossianisk!80

Similar enthusiasm for Goethe, as distinguished from enthusiasm for Werther, was first expressed — more cautiously — in England and Scotland some years later, and in France not until the very end of the century. The fact that certain young Swedish writers visited Germany during the Werther period explains Thorild's unqualified

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praise, for there they had come in direct contact with the revolutionary intellectual ferment of the Storm-andStress movement of which Goethe was the recognized leader. Werther's radical individualism, at best faintly reflected in the sonnets of Alexander Thomson, distinguishes him from run-of-the-mill sentimentalists; and so Bengt Lidner, another Swedish poet impregnated with the new spirit, did not hesitate to place Werther and Charlotte in the same category as immortal lovers like Romeo and Juliet in his vision of the Last Judgment — a work in which the biblical theme is treated with borrowings from Dante, Milton, Young, Thomson ( T h e Seasons), Klopstock, and Ossian, all giants of literature by Storm-and-Stress standards.81 In Germany, then, Werther was for many readers something more than just a sentimental novel. Although it is hardly as violent in tone as Götz von Berlichingen, the Storm-and-Stress Werther is not without occasional bluntness of language, and many of the themes and ideas which Goethe develops in the novel are restatements of doctrines belabored by Rousseau and Herder. The "Natur" of "Zum Schäkespears Tag, Goethe's passionate and Herder-like protest against artificiality, is also the standard of Werther —even in art: "[Die Natur] allein bildet den groszen Künstler."32 Werther has no good word for the abstract aesthetics of the Enlightenment, turns to literature which describes a patriarchal and primitive society — Homer and Ossian —and disregards rationalistic objections to tolerance of the traditional beliefs of the common people. Werther is unlike the typical Storm-and-Stress hero in his extreme fatalistic passivity, but even this arises from the same heightened individualism: "Ich kehre in mich selbst zurück, und finde eine Welt!" 3

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One of the most common expressions of the revolt against convention was praise of the free style of landscape gardening that had come to the Continent from England. Werther's favorite place of meditation is in a garden created by a "fühlendes Herz." In the first version of Schiller's Don Karlos, which represents the end of Storm and Stress, the queen anachronistically condemns the artificiality of the park at Aranjuez, praising her Einsiedelei: "Hierher — so scheint es — hat sich die Natur von den Verfolgungen der Kunst geflüchtet." It was the custom to set up stones bearing inscriptions of a philosophic or sentimental character at appropriate places in eighteenth-century English gardens, and some of these "monuments" were dedicated to Werther. Even the Alxinger who praised inconstancy could also write Auf Werthers Grab, in einem englischen Garten gesetzt: O laszt es Werthers Grab, ihr weichgeschaffnen Seelen, An keinen Blumen nie, und nie an Tränen fehlen, Du aber, kalter Christ, vergönn ihm diese Ruh, Gott, (beug das Knie und schweig,) Gott richtet nicht wie du.

The exhortation to sensitive souls was superfluous; that to the Christian was, in its own special application, as valid as the lines of over a hundred years before which it echoes, Angelus Silesius's "Blüh auf, gefrorner Christ . . ." Werther was offensive to many readers, especially orthodox Christians, because of the sympathetic portrayal of a suicide, but there was probably a source of unconscious irritation in the defiant attitude toward formalism expressed in it and other of Goethe's writings. The morality of Storm-and-Stress writers was almost systematically unconventional, and was certainly not pharisaical. In Die Soldaten Lenz makes the extreme,

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but not atypical, proposal that young women of good family sacrifice themselves in state brothels for the welfare of the army, while the last act of Stella shows no consideration on Goethe's part for the sensibilities of a monogamous public. Johann Friedrich Schink, whose first play, Gianetta Montaldi, won him the Hamburg theater prize that had been awarded Klinger's Die Zwillinge a year earlier, was for a time a Storm-andStress writer.34 A year after the appearance of his duodrama, Werther und Lotte (1777), Schink published his satirical Marionettentheater, which is directed against the Storm-and-Stress movement. Its heroine, born with innate knowledge of Werthers Leiden, expresses a frank desire to become some sultan's concubine. Hanswurst, her father, then proclaims: Genies, was macht Ihr für Unheil auf Erden, Zeug't Töchter und laszt sie Huren werden Und werdt nicht mal darüber roth.35 Goethe was the leading "Genie" of German letters, so that the orthodox and the conservatives naturally subjected his writings to careful scrutiny. His objective treatment of the theme of suicide was eagerly interpreted to mean that Goethe, like all his wild young contemporaries, was completely indifferent to morality. Actual cases of suicide in which Werther apparently exerted a deciding influence on the victim confirmed the belief that it was a book to condemn. After the death of Fanni von Ickstatt, who jumped off a tower of the Munich Frauenkirche, Johann Georg Prändel, a lecturer at the Lyceum, wrote stanzas lamenting her death and bitterly blaming Goethe: Hin mit Furienwuth stürmt, Maledeyungen, Ueber Göthes Genick . .

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Stürmet hin, dasz ihm jüngst der schwärzesten Thaten eine gedieh, welche sein schwärmender Werther unter die Helden Der Romanen verpflanzt hat; Dasz vom Engelgeschlecht eine dem Knochenmann Von der schwindelnden Höh' froh in die Arme sich warf, Als ihr paphisches Fieber Bis zum Grade des Rasens stieg.38

Asclepiadean indignation could hardly be more rhetorical. Albrecht Wittenberg, editor of the ReichsPostreuter, consistently welcomed attacks on Goethe and Werther to the pages of his journal;37 as a follower of Goeze he condemns Werther in lines printed at Altona: Des Weisen Lehr', am innern Werthe reich, Ist, goldnen Äpfeln gleich In Silberschalen, Nicht zu bezahlen: Doch deine Lehr', o sträflicher Verbrecher! O Werther! ist in einem goldnen Becher Wie Sodomsäpfel; nimmt man sie heraus, So findet man nur Gift und Graus.

At the other end of Germany, in Vienna, Baron Senckenberg wrote a poem warning against all sentimental literature, but especially against the demoralizing novel of Goethe, whose "süsze Werthers-Gift" had even inspired a nun to attempt suicide.38 Although the sentiments of a novel's characters were then, as now, frequently considered those of its author, a few writers do not address their reproaches to Goethe, thus avoiding direct condemnation of a work which so well suited the tastes of the time and which had perhaps brought tears to their own eyes. Voss's Musenalmanach auf das Jahr ιηηβ contains a restrained criticism of

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Wertherism in four lines entitled "Unter einem Kupfer Leiden des jungen Werthers": Die Leidenschaft bezwingen, bringt Gewinn; Ihr folgen, reiszet alles hin, Das Leben gab dir Gott, nicht du; Dir's nehmen bringt dich nicht zur Ruh.

Another epigram, which appeared in an anonymous volume of 1779, shows that utilitarian aesthetics, which demanded the union of good doctrine with good form, or the Horatian utile dulci, failed to afford proper standards for evaluating Goethe's novel: Leid war es mir, wenn jemand mehr als ich Das Schöne dieser Schrift empfände; Lieb war es mir, wenn bessrer Inhalt sich In ihr mit Geist und W i t z verbände.

The author of these verses had enjoyed Werther, but he was unable to justify his appreciation except on the intellectual plane of spirit and wit. His two criteria hardly explain how he could feel the novel's beauty. Occasionally a tone of irony relieves the atmosphere of earnestness which for the most part hangs heavy over Werther criticism in poetical form. In 1779 there was printed in Voss's Musenalmanach a burlesque in which Werther speaks from the realm of the dead: Höre, Jüngling! lasz dich nicht betören V o n den Weibsen, wär's gleich Lotten A r t ; Denn die Müh, Rotznäschen in der W e l t zu mehren, Hat dein ältrer Bruder dir erspart. Deine Freud' sei schöne Landschaft, Frühlingshimmel, Buch und Tonkunst, auch ein hübsch Gesicht; N u r bleib immer Herr in dem Getümmel Deiner Leidenschaften, schiesz und heirat nicht!

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Darfst bald hie, bald dorten Grazie finden, N u r nicht Ketten; auch von Rosen sind sie schwer! Sieh, der Hügel unter meinen Linden Zeugt von Echtheit dieser Sittenlehr'.

This bit of Grazienlehre by Gleim's friend, Freiherr von Spiegel von Pickelsheim, is neither very subtle nor very urbane, but this would hardly have been sufficient reason for the author of Luise to reject it as a contribution to his almanac. Nicolai's Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek and Wittenberg's Reichs-Postreuter published favorable reviews of far coarser burlesques. One of these was Die Leiden des jungen Franken, eines Genies (1777) by the Lutheran pastor Johann Moritz Schwager.39 This story of a young rake comes closest to clumsy wit in its parody of a scene in the second part of Werther:40 "[Franke] athmete hinab! hinab! — zu sehen, wie das Ding liesze? Dann sah er auf seine Uhr, fand sie noch nicht abgelaufen — und gieng seiner Wege." 41 More characteristic of the good pastor's humor is the incident of how Franke preserves a handkerchief which Lotte has used.42 The purpose of the novel, and its tone, are indicated by the motto on its title page, an imitation of the introductory poem to the second edition of Werther: Jeder Narre sehnt sich so zu lieben, Jede Närrin, so geliebt zu seyn. Aber wird das Faseln übertrieben; Ach! so quillt aus ihm die grimme Pein.

Similarly, it concludes with four lines modeled after those with which Goethe prefaced the second volume of the second edition: Du beweinst ihn noch, o dumme Seele? Rettest sein Gedächtnis von der Schmach? Allen Narren winkt er aus der Höhle Bist du einer? o! so folg ihm nach.

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This is not the spirit of Voltaire, but where the cause was moral, the artistic worth of the means used to further it could be disregarded. The spate of Werther imitations which started in 1774 was in great measure a manifestation of dilettantism and artistic impotence. Hymmen's Der Satz des hinreichenden Grundes (1775) is an early protest against the misuse of the Werther theme: Dasz Werther, unbeglückt mit Lottens ewiger Gunst Sich tödtete, davon läszt sich der Grund entdecken: Doch ihn vom Tode aufzuwecken, Das ist geheimnisvolle Kunst.

This art ceases to be mysterious when the power of fashion is remembered; Wertherism was the logical quintessence of sentimentality, and sentimentality was the fashion of the age. Less impartial than Hymmen, Bürger's friend Göckingk, whose poetry is partially anacreontic but who also favored the more realistic theories of the newer literary generation, wrote an epistle on the art of poetry (1777) in which he incidentally advises a young poet not to burn incense to such a fool as Werther. Authors should preserve their independence and write from their own experience, he proclaims. The point of a fable in verse by the unimportant novelist Meissner is the futility of pretending to be able to do more than one can, and it ends with the question, "Nachahmer Werthers, seid ihr Goethe?" 43 Like some of his contemporaries, the author of Auf Werthers Leiden, und Werthers Leiden und Freuden, zwei sehr beliebte Modeschriften (1777), feigns indifference to the Werther controversy, seemingly unaware of the contradiction inherent in his gesture: Werthers Leiden, Werthers Freuden, Welches rührt dich? — Keins von beiden!

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Doch bewegt mich zum Mitleiden, Der von beiden Der Verfasser selber ist, Und der Leser, der es liest. More common is the attitude, favorable to Goethe, expressed in an epigram on three "erbärmliche" Werther poems: O Göthe, hättest du doch Werthern nie geschrieben; Von wieviel Übeln war die Welt verschont geblieben! So mancher hätte sich ein Werther nicht geglaubt, Wenn er, bey kaltem Blut, von Mord und Liebe träumt; Und diese Narren da — die hätten nicht gereimt. Here the objection is to the imitators, of whom an anonymous Viennese wit declared, not without a large element of truth: Wohl empfindein, werthern, schwärmen manche Herrn ihm [i.e. Werther] nach, Doch die Herren gehör'n meistens unters runde Dach.44 It was a sign of health that there existed in Germany such strong resistance to imitative literature. N e w forces were at work which no longer allowed passive toleration of the literary practices that had prevailed before the literary revolution of the 1770's. CRITICISM OF THE WERTHER CRITICS

The anti-Werther writings of clericals like Goeze did not fail to produce results. A t the suggestion of the theological faculty of the university, the Leipzig book commission forbade the printing and sale of Die Leiden des jungen Werthers. Permission to print a Danish translation of the novel was refused because the theological faculty at Copenhagen objected to its supposedly per-

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suasive arguments in favor of suicide. In Denmark the novel was read in German for the time being, and in Leipzig it continued to be sold.45 The partisans of Goethe attempted to further better appreciation of Werther by insisting on its merits and, more often, by ridiculing those who had not acclaimed it. Prometheus Deukalion und seine Recensenten (1775), a satiric farce in Knittelverse, rebuked all the important critics for their indifference or bad judgment, lampooning Goeze, Claudius, Wittenberg, Wieland, Jacobi, Nicolai, and the rest. Sufficiently vituperative to cause Goethe to publish the explanation "Nicht ich, sondern Heinrich Leopold Wagner hat den Prometheus gemacht . . . 46 it was soon widely imitated by others who joined in the fray.47 Not so irritating, but equally negative, is the satiric ballad which Merck wrote on the occasion of the prohibition of Werther in Leipzig. His Pätus und Arria eine Künstler-Romanze, introduced by the motto "Paete, non dolet," tells how a wood-carving of the famous Roman couple, exhibited by the dealer Weygand (publisher of Die Leiden des jungen Werthers), so moves young people that they threaten to imitate the classical example of suicide. The town council discusses what is to be done, and "ein schöner Geist" (Nicolai) argues that the decree against Paetus might have been revoked and all have ended happily. His entirely hypothetical discussion has nothing to do either with the work of art in question or with the immediate problem before the Leipzig senators, so that it has all the inept banality of Nicolai's Freuden des jungen Werthers at which Merck is aiming. It is finally decided to forbid looking at the work under penalty of one hundred thalers' fine. The Romanze ends with the ironical comment:

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Den Künstlern in dem Lande sei's Doch unverwehrt indessen, Von Bildern dieser Art hinfür Auf allen ihren Messen Zu schnitzen, zu behaun, und auch Im Lande zu verfahren; Weil nie ein solches Ärgernis Von ihnen zu befahren. Pätus und Arria was well received in the critical journals. The following year an unknown writer versified Nicolai's Werther travesty in the same satiric style that Merck had used. His poem, bearing the title Eine trostreiche und wunderbare Historia, betitult: Die Leiden und Freuden Werthers des Mannes zur Erbauung der lieben Christenheit in Reime gebracht, und fast lieblich zu lesen und zu singen, is likewise written with feigned ingenuousness. It ends: Herr Werther tat sich gütlich, Und, hört's Mirakul an! Er ward so sanft und sittlich Wie'n andrer Bürgermann. Er liesz die Stürme wehen, Und tat sich nichts zuleid; Und wird in Ehren stehen, Zum Trost der Christenheit. Wie Goethe ihn verdorben, In seinem bösen Buch, War' er in Sünd gestorben, Und drückt' ihn Höllenfluch. Wie er sich müszt' bekehren, Und leben sündenfrei, Tät uns ein Weiser lehren, Sein Nam' ist Nicolai.

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Experimented with by Góngora (1561-1627) and Moncrif (1687-1770), literary imitation of the popular ballad or Bänkelgesang was attempted in Germany by Gleim, whose Marianne (1756) was apparently intended as a serious poem.48 The parodistic element seems humorous, however, and Gleim's other ballads, like those of many subsequent German writers, are clearly satirical. The genuine Bänkelgesang was recited in market places and at fairs as the singer pointed out relevant details in a crude painting illustrative of the ballad's theme, which was usually some unhappy tale of sentiment or crime. The distinction between folk song and sensational ballad was not strict, for presumably a ballad could become a folk song, and during the first revival of interest in popular literature, associated in Germany with the name of Herder, the two genres were confused. The long descriptive titles which the ballads bore on the broadsides offered for sale by their singers are parodied in the grotesque title of Nicolai's collection of folk songs meant to ridicule primitivist enthusiasm, Eyn feyner kleyner ALM AN ACH Vol schönerr echterr üblichen Volckslieder, lustigen Rey en . . . (1777). Heinrich Gottfried von Bretschneider, a friend of Nicolai's but also an admirer of Goethe, wrote to Nicolai early in 1776: Ich habe mich verführen lassen, die Leiden Werthers schlecht genug zu travestieren . . . Ganz zu Wetzlar schickte mir zum Spasz einen Bänkelsänger hierher nach Usingen, der mich um eine Mordgeschichte bitten muszte; ich setzte ihm das Ding auf, das er ganz gewisz in künftiger Messe zu Frankfurt öffentlich absingen wird, denn der Mann weisz nichts von Goethe und Werther. 49

The ballad mentioned remained a favorite for many years; although it was not so popular as the sincere but

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sentimental "Ausgelitten hast du, ausgerungen," which did become a folk song, it more closely approximates the true ballad style than do the Bänkelgesänge of Gleim.50 It begins with the traditional appeal for the audience's attention: Hört zu, ihr Junggesellen, Und ihr, Jungfräulein zart! Damit ihr nicht zur Höllen Aus lauter Liebe fahrt.

And it ends with a warning to take Werther as a horrid example. Thus the Werther story was brought to the attention of the broadest sections of the public by a friend of the man who objected most earnestly to the philosophy of life which it reflected. Although he had taken offence at Nicolai's parody, Goethe seems to have found Werther imitations and sentimental literature merely monotonous and stupid. His indifference is reflected in the poem Das Neueste von Plundersiveilern (1781), a survey of contemporary German literature in the form of commentary on a balladsinger's painting. Georg Melchior Kraus executed a canvas embodying suggestions Goethe had given him. Goethe, in the costume of the market crier of his older satire, Das Jahr-Marktsjest zu Plundersweilern, recited his poem to the Duchess Anna Amalia and her circle on Christmas Day. The caricature shows a small procession led by a man with a pistol in his hand and carrying a body slung over his shoulders. He is followed by four uniformly attired couples: each man wears the familiar blue and yellow of Werther, while the women are dressed in white with a large heart on the bodice. The men are pointing pistols at their own heads, and the women carry standards with either a heart or a moon on

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them. In the background one woman is seen refusing to let her lover, who is also pointing a pistol at his head, join the group.51 When the young leader of the procession tells the pitiful story of his friend, Da fing's entsetzlich an zu rumoren Unter Klugen, Weisen und unter Thoren; Drum wünscht er weit davon zu sein.

Goethe declines to comment on the young men — "Man kennt genug Den ganzen uniformen Zug" — but he notes of the maidens with the passionate hearts: Die Herzen lärmen und pochen so sehr, Man hört sein eigen Wort nicht mehr; Doch scheinen die Liebchen bei diesen Spielen Noch seitwärts in die Welt zu schielen.

Goethe's irony would have been wasted on his sentimental contemporaries, most of whom long continued to regard Werther solely as a story of unrequited love. Anton Reiser's preoccupation with Werther, an important motif of Karl Philipp Moritz's autobiographical novel bearing his name, was typical for his generation. As in France the name Werthérie was one of the lasting evidences of Werther's quondam popularity, so the sudden appearance of the name of Charlotte in German lyric verse indicates the profound impression made by Goethe's novel.52 One poet, describing a girl reading Klopstock, asks, War's nicht der himmlische Goethe, Der solch ein Mädchen Lotte nannte? 53

And in Schiller's early poem, Die Schlacht, one dying warrior cries to a comrade, "Grüsze mein Lottchen, Freund!" Similarly, the name of Werther became generic. Bürger refers to the worried abbot of Der Kaiser

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und der Abt (1785) as "ein bleicher hohlwangiger Werther," and the famous murderer Jonas is ironically claimed, in one parody, to have loved the serving-girl he killed almost as much as Werther loved his Lotte.54 Only the salutary passage of time, and the distance created by a continuing development of ideas, could allow Werther finally to assume its proper place in relationship to the rest of Goethe's works and to sentimental and Storm-and-Stress literature. WERTHER AND THE ROMANTICISTS

Sentimental literature, and sentimentality, were important elements in the heritage of the German romanticists, all of whom grew up in an age of popularized pathos. The "fühlendes Herz" and the protestations of friendship of Schiller's Don Karlos are elements which go back to the time of the play's first conception, and yet Schiller had become a writer whose ideal was philosophical tragedy rather than sentimental drama. Goethe, aiming for the epic clarity of a classical idyll in Hermann und Dorothea, does not eschew sentimental details. And Novalis' Hymnen an die Nacht, to choose the most important work of the German romanticist par excellence, employ with telling effect the mystic symbolism that had been used by Klopstock and in the Wertherian Siegivart and certain of the more ecstatic Werther elegies; losing its rhetorical quality, this symbolism is used to express profound human and philosophical values.55 The young Novalis knew and esteemed Goethe's Werther.™ His poem, An Werthers Grabe, probably written about 1790, at least six years before German romanticism began to achieve consciousness of its peculiar mission, echoes the ubiquitous verses of Reitzenstein:

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Armer Jüngling, hast nun ausgelitten, Hast vollendet dieses Lebens Traum, Und dort oben in den Friedenshütten Denkest du an Erdenleiden kaum. Jetzo liebst du Lotten ungestöret, Und im Himmelskusse fühlest du Freuden, die nur reine Liebe lehret, Nie ermattende, in ewger Ruh.

This short apostrophe shows how Novalis, strongly religious and raised under influences which included pietism, was attracted to a theme which had acquired a semireligious character in the verse of sentimental poets. The conventional allusion to heavenly peace becomes pregnant with meaning when placed in juxtaposition with the sixth of the Hymnen an die Nacht, that entitled "Sehnsucht nach dem Tode." Two fragments, or memoranda, one from the period just before and the other from that just after the hymns, show that Werther was still vital to him at the time he composed the sixth hymn. The first fragment is merely the notation, "Romantischer Geist der neuern Romane. Meister. Werther." 57 The second interprets Goethe's novel, although only implicitly: "Projekt zu einem Roman, beinah wie 'Werther.' Zwei Liebende, die sich aus Uberdrusz des Lebens und der Menschen selbst töten. Charakter — tiefe Wehmut." 58 Novalis has come to see more in Werther than a sentimental love story. The emphasis on melancholy suggests the morbidity of much romantic writing, while "Uberdrusz des Lebens" is prophetic for the widespread despair which seized upon writers when it was realized that the dreams of the romanticists were not to be fulfilled. It is possible to see in Novalis how Wertherism and preromantic sentimentality changed into true romanticism, how rebellion against the limits of conventional society

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and the external world became a longing for timelessness and death. Three years before he died at the age of twenty-six, August Winkelmann, a friend of Brentano, expressed in the romantic verse form of the sonnet the thought that in moments of emptiness it is possible to find peace of spirit in the appreciation of works of art. His Werther asks: Du glaubst, ich könne keinen Trost dir sagen? Du siehst in mir den Frühling, der verschwand, Und Blüten nur, die lange schon verstarben? Beruhigung tönt dir aus meinen Klagen! Die Kunst entrückt dich in ein beszres Land. Der Tränen Licht zerflieszt im Reich der Farben.

Printed in Bouterwek's Neue Vesta in 1803, Winkelmann's poem represents the attempt, romantic in no limited sense of that adjective, to find a meaning for life by an appeal to aesthetic standards. In 1803, Oehlenschläger, the young Danish poet who was so closely linked with the German romanticists, wrote Oldingen ved Werthers Grav ("An Old Man at Werther's Grave"), but the positive lesson which he draws from the story of Werther is not aesthetic, but ethical, for he asks if it be not far better to have loved and suffered than never to have loved at all. A translation of one of Charlotte Smith's Werther sonnets appeared in 181 o in the Morgenblatt für gebildete Stände, and in the following year the fifteen-year-old August von Platen addressed a poem to Werther, but the period of sentimentally serious German Werther poetry had come to an end. Occasionally some writer shows a historical interest in Werther or Wertherism. Like Platen, a few young readers of Werther doubtless

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found in it inspiration for poetic efforts not destined to reach print. Perhaps the last ingenuous Werther poem published by a German writer is that of Franz Trautmann, who later produced novels descriptive of Bavarian life. In "An Werther," contained in a volume of his poems which appeared while he was still a Gymnasium student in Munich, Trautmann sings euphoniously the eternal rest which Werther has found: Ein leises Flüstern in dem Schatten heil'ger Eichen, W o Werther oft geruht! — ein leises Flüstern, Es wünscht ihm Ruhe nach, der, Ruhe zu erreichen, Dahinging, mit dem Tod sich zu verschwistern.

This stanza and those which follow it show how German literary taste had, after half a century, reached a level at which Werther could be appreciated as more than a sentimental novel even by a young reader. As the body of great German literature constantly increased, the Werther theme gradually disappeared from German verse. Werther was, above all else, a part of Goethe's now classical confession, and did not serve either as a direct inspiration or as a general poetic symbol as it was still to do in France. Werther and Lotte, though not forgotten, belonged to a definite period in the past, representing that period in the stages of Goethe's development and of that of German culture. The report of Charlotte Buff Kestner's death in 1828 inspired a poem An Werthers Lotte which presupposes a knowledge of the biographical background of Werther, as well as of the novel itself and of the elegiac verse which it once inspired: So ist dein Geist der Erde nun entflogen So hast du ausgeduldet, ausgeweint. Dein gläubig Hoffen hat Dich nicht betrogen, Du bist mit Deiner Mutter nun vereint.

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This serious parody of Reitzenstein's unforgotten Lotte bey Werthers Grab and of the answers to it is the last echo in semipopular verse of a theme which had finally ceased to have general appeal. And in 1892 the suicide of Georg Kestner merely evoked the brief comment, "Enkel der Charlotte Buff (Werthers Lotte)"; 5 9 a hundred years before, the associations which this news item suggests could not have failed to produce several elegiac poems. The story of Werther was to remain familiar to the whole German public, as the continued popularity of stage parodies shows, but Goethe's novel, unlike the sentimental chapbook derived from it, could not appeal to naïve readers fed on complicated romantic or pseudoromantic novels of love and intrigue. As early as 1823 an admirer of Goethe observed, doubtless with chagrin, the profound dissimilarity between Werther and the types of novel then popular, and wrote the following lines to be spoken in the person of a servant girl at a pageant in honor of Goethe's seventy-fifth birthday: Der Werther hat mir wohlgethan; D'rauf holt' ich mir sein Leben, Doch ach! das ist ja kein Roman — Ich hab's zurückgegeben.60

Werther had indisputably become a classic. EVALUATIONS IN BIOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

By the middle of the 1790's Goethe's literary position had already been established. His preeminence was firmly founded on such dissimilar works as Götz von Berlichingen, Iphigenie auf Tauris, Faust, ein Fragment, and Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, not to mention some of his finest lyrics. As a contributor to Die H oren and to Schil-

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ler's Musenalmanach he was a critic of recognized importance. His and Schiller's efforts to improve German literary taste by attacking mediocrity with their Xenien only provoked inevitable antagonisms, however, and aroused far less general interest than had Werther, not intended to be controversial. Those against whom Goethe's and Schiller's fire was directed immediately returned it, seizing particularly upon Goethe's weaknesses as appropriate ammunition, while others to whom the Goethean spirit was displeasing took advantage of the opportunity to join in the fight. The Venetian epigrams, which, like the Xenien, appeared in Schiller's almanac, were particularly ill-suited to winning friends among or otherwise favorably influencing moral conservatives, and they further riled troubled waters. Fürchtegott Christian Fulda, a clergyman and teacher, produced a volume of Anti-Xenien with the dyspeptic title Trogalien zur Verdauung der Xenien (1797). Since Fulda was never personally attacked by Goethe at any time, his religious connections alone explain the inspiration to put in his place the pagan poet willing to crucify every fanatic at the age of thirty.61 In one of Fulda's distichs "Goethe" is allowed to protest against his critic's attacks: Unberühmter! du willst den berühmtesten aller Poeten, Welche Teutschland gebar, tadeln im Auge des Volks.

Fulda's answer is an attempt to revive the animosities which the orthodox had once felt toward the author of Werther: Unberühmt oder berühmt! was thuts am Ende zur Sache? Ehe sich Werther erschosz, wärest auch du nicht berühmt.

It may be noted that Goethe's apparent self-assurance was not the least of his faults in the eyes of his enemies.

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An unidentified writer fathered a volume of epigrams devoted to the foibles of Schiller and, more particularly, Goethe. The Mücken-Almanach für das Jahr ιη$η Leben, Thaten, Meinungen, Schicksale und letztes Ende der Xenien shows Lykobas (Goethe) surrounded by opponents in a logomachy which Apollo decides against him.62 Lykobas admits that his sole consolation is his Wilhelm Meister, and it is against the morality of this work that the satire is most consistently directed. His other productions are brushed aside as either worthless or, like Werther, no longer of general interest and popularity: Und mein ältester Roman ist aus dem Lande verwiesen, W o man mit Pulver und Blei selbst die Pistolen sich füllt.

This is the first allusion to Werther as a work belonging to a distinct historical past. At another point in the Mücken-Almanach the total achievements of Goethe are supposedly represented on a sarcophagus constructed by Kantians, whom the author also dislikes: Quantität.

Auf dem ersten Felde liegt ein Jüngling darnieder; Eine Inschrift sagt: Diesen drückt schwer das Gefühl.

Qualität.

Auf dem zweiten Felde greift sich einer zum Herzen; Und die Inschrift sagt: Fühlest du, liebendes Herz?

Relation.

Auf dem dritten Felde umschlinget der Jüngling das Mädchen; Und die Inschrift sagt: Seeligkeit fühlen sie beid'!

Modalität.

Auf dem vierten Felde endigt ein Jüngling das Leben; Und die Inschrift sagt: Wahrlich der fühlet nicht mehr.

The lesson seems to be that the Goethean affirmation of life is really only erotic, and hence must lead to empti-

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ness and a Wertherian suicide. In view of the consistent effort to depreciate Goethe's literary merits, the author of these ponderous epigrams is almost certainly someone attacked in the Xenien. There can be no doubt of the motives that inspired Manso and Dyck to publish their Gegengeschenke an die Sudelköche in Jena und Weimar von einigen dankbaren Gästen. In the Xenien Manso's Die Kunst TU lieben is termed completely unclassical, Dyck's translations of French plays are condemned as "herzlich geschmacklos und fad," and the Neue Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften, on which the two collaborated, is frequently mentioned unfavorably ,63 They concede the worth of Goethe's literary productions and do not attempt to find flaws in them. Their line of attack is rather that in writing personal satire Goethe has proved himself unworthy of so fine a work as, for instance, Werther: "Werther, warum so betrübt?" Ich traure, dasz Göthe zum Bruder Einen so schändlichen Balg mir in den Xenien gab. This criticism they did not make alone.64 They consider Schiller their real enemy — Schiller the First who erred in thinking himself Goethe the Second, and who had offended them by his criticisms in Die Horen. Goethe they condescend to let off lightly. Opposition to Goethe was often an attempt not to feel dwarfed or impotent in the face of his overwhelming greatness, but there was also the natural antagonism of new schools of thought to the ideas for which he stood, or was believed to have stood. The romanticists objected to the activist philosophy expressed in Wilhelm Meister and to the classical Goethe's concept of society. Novalis' Heinrich von Ofterdingen, emphasizing the inner rather

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than the external nature of man, was conceived as an Anti-Meister. Later, the Young Germans were constantly irritated by Goethe's political apathy, and mutual enemies such as Börne and Menzel agreed in their condemnation of Goethe's life and works. Goethe's unorthodox religious attitude and his open criticisms of Christianity made inevitable the existence of a large number of antagonists among church followers, and these were led for many years by the editor of the widely read Evangelische Kirchen-Zeitung.β5 Of writings with a religious bias, Pustkuchen's Wilhelm Meistens Wander jähr e (18211822) is among the most famous products of misdirected orthodox Protestant zeal. In a long poem on Goethe's death, the young religious writer Albert Knapp, editor of the series Christoterpe. Ein Taschenbuch für christliche Leser and later a hymnologist of some repute, recalls Goethe's literary triumphs, among which were his works of sentiment: Um dich einst feuchteten die Jünglingswange Mondhelle Thränen der Bewunderung . . . Although Goethe is reproached for his moral insufficiency, Knapp believes that there is always hope of salvation, which Goethe is envisioned as achieving after death. The nationalistic ideals of the Young German movement recall the somewhat more universal enthusiasm of Herder for national character. Although it is difficult, because of the Storm-and-Stress emphasis upon the individual, to find evidence of chauvinistic nationalism in the writings of the group which centered about Goethe and Herder, that sentiment did occasionally manifest itself. In Lenz's criticism of Götz von Berlichingen, for instance, the play is recommended to amateurs because

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they will supposedly acquire the virtues of the good old Germans whom they impersonate.86 The merits of Lenz's theory of imitated virtues would have been vigorously denied by a Young German like Menzel, however, who condemned Goethe for contributing nothing to German nationalism and for even having weakened the national character by encouraging sentimentality.67 And Heine, who was always a staunch admirer of Goethe as an artist, contrasted Werther to the man of action and the man with the Idee (a cause). In his poem Die Tendenz ( 1842 ) Heine, writing from Paris, addresses the average German political poet scornfully: Deutscher Sänger! sing und preise Deutsche Freiheit . . . Girre nicht mehr wie ein Werther, Welcher nur für Lotten glüht.

Heine here stands with the Young Germans, and an interpretation he made of Werther in 1828 seems not to have been changed. In a political-sociological commentary on the novel he had shown no interest in any psychological problem: Man las das Buch wegen des Totschieszens, und Nicolaiten schrieben dagegen wegen des Totschieszens. Es liegt aber noch ein Element im "Werther," welches nur die kleinere Menge angezogen hat, ich meine nämlich die Erzählung, wie der junge Werther aus der hochadeligen Gesellschaft höflichst hinausgewiesen wird. Wäre der "Werther" in unseren Tagen erschienen, so hätte diese Partie des Buches weit bedeutsamer die Gemüter aufgeregt als der ganze Pistolenknalleffekt.68

In the spirit of his time, Heine has merely placed a different emphasis on external circumstances. Allowing for Heine's willingness to exaggerate for purposes of effect, it would nevertheless seem that for him Werther was

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primarily a novel of sentiment, a relic of an age which was gone for ever. THE ACHIEVEMENT OF OBJECTIVITY

Sentimentality did not disappear so rapidly or completely as its opponents desired. The tide of sentimental literature was mounting steadily during the years when eighteenth-century common sense ridiculed and inveighed against Wertherism, and while the Young Germans were warning against the harmful influence of Goethe's sentimental works, the spiritual descendants of the romantic lyrists continued to favor melancholy strains. Werther's fatalism has an affinity with the spirit of despair which has been known since Jean Paul as Weltschmerz and which occupies a large place in the poetry of Platen, Lenau, Heine, C. F. Meyer, and many others.89 Heine, who had described the frustrated longing of a fir tree for a palm in Das Buch der Lieder, is partly satirizing himself when, in a poem of his Romanzero, he makes fun of Sehnsucht. The poem, "Der weisze Elefant," tells how Mahawasant of Siam summons his wisest astrologer to explain the strange behaviour of his white elephant and is told that its cause is love. The elephant has had a dream of the fair Bianka, the astrologer explains, with this result: Sehnsucht verzehrt ihn seit jener Stund' Und er, der vormals so froh und gesund, Er ist ein vierfüsziger Werther geworden, Und träumt von einer Lotte im Norden.

The poem is perhaps also a gentle thrust at Heine's zealous contemporaries who wanted to sacrifice sentiment to the cause of nationalism. But if any credence is to be given to the words of a schoolteacher, German

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youth in 1849 was not yet completely patriotic, for in his poem on the hundredth anniversary of Goethe's birth the Gymnasium director E. F. August can ask, " W o ist der Jüngling, der nicht sein gedächte, Sei's, dasz ihn Werther oder Tasso rührt . . . ? " With the passing of the years, Goethe and his works were treated ever more objectively. Friedrich Theodor Vischer, who, under Hegelian influence, in 1846 terms Werther the novel first to introduce the infinity of the ego as content,70 is less philosophical and more Goethean and ironic when, in 1862, he writes in Faust. Der Tragödie dritter Teil: Vielbeweinte Dichtergestalt Schreitet zum Tode. Aber der Dichter, er genest. Ihn rettet die Dichtung.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, the historical method had conquered the domain of literary criticism. Bodenstedt's epigrammatic Falsche Auffassung seems to represent complete acceptance of Goethe's account of how he wrote Werther — an account which could be considered fully confirmed, if one so wished it, by the publication in 1854 of the long awaited Kestner correspondence. Bodenstedt declared: Als Goethe Werther's Leiden geschrieben Sich zu befrein von eig'ner Liebesnoth, Da schössen sich so viele Narren todt Aus Liebe, dasz nur wenig übrig blieben . . . Doch immer thun das Gegentheil die Narren Von Allem was die Weisen predigen.

The ironic title of this poem might, however, well apply to its whole content, not merely to its last two lines or to a supposedly eighteenth-century manner of reacting

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to literary works. If this is so, Bodenstedt's was the voice of one crying out in a wilderness of historical criticism.71 In a period finally dominated by the spirit of realism the influence, good or bad, of Goethe's study in sentimentality could not be very great. Rudolf Löwenstein, a cofounder of Kladderadatsch, portrays, apparently objectively, a sixteen-year-old reader of Werther in the i88o's. The heroine of his Werther's Leiden asserts her maturity and powers of appreciation: Wer sagt noch, dasz der Liebe Sehnen und ihren Schmerz ich nicht versteh? Und doch, als ich dies Buch gelesen, hab' heimlich ich bei mir gedacht: wenn ich die Lotte war gewesen, ich hätt ihn doch zur Vernunft gebracht. This illusion of sentimentality includes no dangerous sentimental illusions. In 1893 Graf von Schack published his translation of Thackeray's humorous Werther ballad and made available to the German reader another document illustrating the history of Werther. A century ended with tributes to the memory of Goethe's birth which included Heinrich Teweles' poem to the eighteenth-century English engraving of "Charlotte at the Tomb of Werter." The new century saw in Germany a temporary revival of the romantic spirit. Ricarda Huch, whose studies in German romanticism had contributed much to the appreciation and understanding of a period that had long been neglected, wrote the text of a Requiem für Werther with music by Rudolph Bergh. Eighty years had passed since the last attempt to treat in German verse the Werther theme for its intrinsic interest. Once again there is a prayer for Werther's eternal peace:

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Erde, nimm den Leib auf, den das Schwert der Liebe traf, Trink' des gottberauschten Frühlingsopfers Blut wie Tau! Lösen lasz des Jünglings Seele sich in deinem Schosz, Ew'ge Mutter, deinem ruhelosen Kind gib Ruh'!

Not God, however, but Mother Earth, Nature, is now invoked. Peace is to be found in the disintegration of the personality, a concept of death possessing all the indistinctness associated with impressionism. The text of the requiem develops the theme that the universe, apparently so glorious, sets for the individual a task which he cannot fulfill, or a problem which he cannot successfully grapple with, so that he is doomed to revulsion and despair. Even in a paradise man would be unable to find rest or to escape from longing — Sehnsucht. To one who envisions life under this image the world with all its beauty can be but an arid desert: "Zum Kampf sich rüsten heiszt hier Gewinn . . . " Thus the second part of the requiem emphasizes the genuinely Wertherian concept that life as it is will inevitably fail to satisfy the uncompromising idealist who can set no limit to his desires: Hier herrscht der Spötter kluges Geschlecht Und toter Götter eisernes Recht.

Nothing angered Werther more than the power of dead tradition and the arrogance of intelligence. Neoromanticism, like romanticism itself, was a reaction against a dominant philosophy of realism and activism. It sought to find more satisfying values than positivistic materialism had offered mankind. Its longings were directed away from the world of reality toward things remote, even toward death. Its very techniques, in great measure impressionistic, emphasize indefinable qualities such as light,

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IOÇ

warmth, and motion; the imagery of the following passage is predominantly concerned with these elements:

Altsolo: Schön ist er verlodert, Fackel, die der Blitz entfacht, Irdisches Gewöhnen dämpfte nie des Äthers Glut. Nicht in seligste Sphären flügelstark entschwang er sich, Nicht der strebenden Geister Leuchte wird sein Geist nun sein, Nicht verklärt im Triumph des Überwinders leuchtet er, Der am Busen der Liebe ruhend Tod statt Leben trank; Chor: Aber liebend gedenken werden seiner Liebende Und sein Wesen verspüren, das am Saum des Daseins schwankt, Die Verstosz'nen, die Heimweh hin zum Paradiese zieht, Nie Begnügte, die Sehnsucht neuer, fremder Sterne lockt, Die empfindlichen Herzen, die vom lauen West berührt, Wie in Stürmen erbeben, denen Sturm zu Festen spielt, Rufen ihm, Altsolo: Rufen ihm, der ihr Leiden litt und mehr als sie geliebt. Werther's death symbolizes the fate of those who are unable to impress their stamp upon the world about them; dead, he remains a symbol of the never-satisfied longings of the sensitive and the suffering. In 1 9 1 1 , Ricarda Huch was nearer the spirit of Werther and of its too-demanding hero than was Goethe in 1824 when he wrote the moving but objective lines which form the first part of the Trilogie der Leidenschaft. The last lines of Goethe's confession most clearly bring out the contrast:

Du lächelst, Freund, gefühlvoll, wie sich ziemt: Ein gräszlich Scheiden machte dich berühmt; W i r feierten dein kläglich Miszgeschick, Du lieszest uns zu Wohl und W e h zurück.

no

THE TESTAMENT OF WERTHER

Dann zog uns wieder ungewisse Bahn Der Leidenschaften labyrinthisch an; Und wir, verschlungen wiederholter Not, Dem Scheiden endlich — Scheiden ist der Tod! W i e klingt es rührend, wenn der Dichter singt, Den T o d zu meiden, den das Scheiden bringt! Verstrickt in solche Qualen, halbverschuldet, Geb ihm ein Gott zu sagen, was er duldet. Ricarda H u c h , recreating the past, was able to write of W e r t h e r . Goethe, separated f r o m the novel of his y o u t h b y fifty years filled with experiences each of w h i c h had its o w n lasting importance, w r o t e rather of W e r t h e r ' s creator. NOTES 1. The hero of Die Versuche und Hindernisse Karls (1808; by Varnhagen, Neumann, Fouqué and Bernhardt) says to Wilhelm Meister: ". . . Können Sie eine gröszere Belohnung ausdenken, die Göthen von den Deutschen geschehen sollte, als die ist, dasz Werther ein ordentliches Volksbuch geworden, auf schlechtem Papier, mit Holzschnitten verziert, gleich jenen Büchern von Oktavianus und Genovefa?" (Varnhagen); cf. H. Rogge, Der Doppelroman der Berliner Romantik (Berlin, 1926), 1:337. The non-romanticist finds in the Werther chapbooks little of Goethe, but much to demonstrate the futility of literary vulgarization. For editions of the chapbook, one Werther poem of which was circulated as a Bohemian popular ballad, see "Schatten sei zufrieden, dasz ich weine." 2. Schubart wrote in his review (.Deutsche Chronik, 2. Juli 1774) : "Gefahr ist's für unsere Litteratur, wenn sich die besten Köpfe entzweyen, und ihr Feuer, das sie zu unsterblichen Werken verschwenden sollten, in Zank- und Schmähschriften weglodern lassen." 3. Voss was alone in saying of Werther: "[Goethes] Roman ist auch weit korrekter, als was er sonst geschrieben." H. Blumenthal, Zeitgenössische Rezensionen und Urteile über Goethes Götz und Werther (Literarhistorische Bibliothek 14; Berlin, 1935), p. 106. 4. See "Herrlich feierlich ist es umher und stille," and s., G. A. 5. Contemporary Werther criticism is collected in J. W . Braun, Goethe im Urtheile seiner Zeitgenossen (3 vols.; Berlin, 1883188S), and H. Blumenthal, Goethes Götz und Werther. The earliest reactions to Werther are analyzed by A. Nollau, Das literarische Publikum des jungen Goethe von 1770 bis zur Übersied-

GERMAN WERTHER POETRY

III

lung nach Weimar; Mit einem Anhang Neudrucke zeitgenössischer Götz-und Werther-Kritiken (Literatur und Leben 5; Weimar, 1935). Blumenthal has amassed evidence to show that early Werther criticism was not so unfavorable as is implied by Appell in the third part of Werther und seine Zeit. 6. December 1774. "Ausser der Kunst des Verfassers, die Nüancen aller Leidenschaften zu treffen, verdient die populäre Philosophie Lob, womit er sein ganzes Werk durchwürzt hat. Ich will das Gegenwärtige genieszen und das Vergangene soll mir Vergangen seyn, und hundert solche Maximen, die aus Werthers nicht misanthropischen, sondern bewegten Herzen flieszen, machen mehr Eingang, als die strotzenden Predigten unsrer täglichen Romane." Der Ternsche Merkur, 8:242-243. 7. Der Philosoph für die Welt, J. J. Engel (Leipzig, 1775), 1:21-23, esp. p. 23. 8. Wandsbecker Bothe, 22. Oct. 1774. ( = Braun, Goethe im Urtheile, 1:49.) 9. First printed in 1918 at Münster i.W., edited by L. SchmitzKallenberg. Cf. M. Sommerfeld, "Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz und Goethes Werther. Auf Grund der neu aufgefundenen Lenzschen 'Briefe über die Moralität der Leiden des jungen Werther,'" Euphorien, 24:68-107 (1924). 10. Schmitz-Kallenberg, p. 18. 11. See 4., 7. April 1775; then as pamphlet with title Kurze aber nothwendige Erinnerungen über die Leiden des jungen Werthers, über eine Recension derselben, und über verschiedene nachher erfolgte dazu gehörige Aufsätze (Hamburg, 1775). 12. Freywillige Beyträge, 4. April 1775. ( = Braun, Goethe im Urtheile, 1:95.) 13. Deutsche National-Litteratur (Kürschner), 141:162. 14. See J. Kühn, Der junge Goethe im Spiegel der Dichtung seiner Zeit (Beiträge zur neueren Literaturgeschichte 1; Heidelberg, 1912), p. 69. Kühn believes that the playlet describes the reception of November 7, 1775. 15. Lotte auf Werthers Tod von Fr. v. St.**. A slightly longer version, bearing no title, was found among Lenz's paper; cf. Lenz, GesaTtrmelte Schriften, edited by F. Blei (München, Leipzig, 1909), 1:515. There seems to be no reason to believe that the Lenz copy is the original. Although an Fr. v. St., not yet identified, was a contributor to various literary publications of the period, the fact that this poem is not known in a contemporary printed version leaves the possibility that it may have been composed by Frau von Stein and labeled, for reasons of anonymity, with the conveniently ambiguous author's initials. If it is by her, Lenz's circulation of a copy of it would have been an Eselei. The versification of Frau von Stein's version is no more skillful than

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that of Rino; Lenz could have made his at Kochberg in 1776. — In a letter to Knebel (April 24, 1783), Frau von Stein quotes four lines found on an engraving of Bunbury's "First Interview of Werter and Charlotte" (1782) ; see "Charms that the bliss of Eden might restore." 16. Version of Fr. v. St. 17. Version of Lenz. 18. Cf. P. Kluckhohn, Die Auffassung der Liebe in der Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts und in der deutschen Romantik (Halle, 1922), 4. Kapitel, "Deutsche Empfindsamkeit und Sturm und Drang." 19. J. F. F. Schlez, Gedichte (Anspach Haueisen, 1784), p. 264. 20. J. A. Stefïan, Sammlung Deutscher Lieder (Wien, 1778). (The Goethe text, "Ein Veilchen auf der Wiese stand," is attributed to Gleim.) 21. Carl Friedrich Reinhard (1761-1837; title comte 1808) went to France at the beginning of the French Revolution and later made a career in the French diplomatic service; he had various contacts with Schiller and Goethe. 22. Georg Ernst von Rüling, Werther an Lotten. According to Goedeke's Grundrisz, Rüling belonged to the "Wielandsche Schule im Reflektieren und in der poetischen Erzählung." 23. Cf. Κ. Burdach, "Aus der Sprachwerkstatt des jungen Goethe," Zeitwende, 2:123-146, 253-273; and A. D. Weinberger, "A Study of the Language of Goethe's Werther, with Special Reference to the Language of the Sentimental Novel" (Unpublished Dissertation; Ohio State University, 1935-1936). 24. Cf. Kluckhohn, Auffassung der Liebe, 4. Kapitel, who notes how finally in Miller's Siegwart, eine Klostergeschichte (1776), the heroine of which is a nun, the beloved is actually deified. 25. See J-s ("So ruhe denn, o gute Seele") ; Elise von N. ("Könnt' ich doch auf deinem Grabe weinen! Ruhe würd' im Kummer mir erscheinen, Auf dem Denkmal deiner Gruft"); M. L. ("Einsame Linden, wo Werther ruht"); Alxinger, Auf Werthers Grab ("kalter Christ, vergönn' ihm diese Ruh"); and Schnee's imitation of the Reitzenstein elegy ("Nun hast du ausgelitten . . . Wirst . . . sanfter ruhn"). 26. See M. L. — Lines 1, 2, 5 correspond to the last line of a Sapphic strophe. 27. See Elise von N. 28. A further instance of classical meters modified à la Klopstock is the poem beginning, "Wenn ich nun tot bin, Freunde, begrabet mich dann/Nur in des Kirchhofs Ecke den kalten Leib:/Dort, wo zwo Linden, Arm' in Arme /Liebend verschlungen, ins Feld hin düften." (Alcaic.) 29. Commenting on the Xenien, Alxinger wrote to Böttiger that Goethe would have to write another Werther, Götz, or Clavigo

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II3

if he wanted not to seem a braggart. See G. Wilhelm, "Briefe des Dichters Johann Baptist von Alxinger," Sitzungsberichte der philosophisch-historischen Classe der k. Akademie der Wissenschaften (Wien, 1899), 140(2) :93. 30. "Mighty Goethe! exalted, Rousseauist, Shakespearean! Master of the soul! powerful, dulcet! wonderful, Ossianici" Samlade Skrifter (Stockholm [1933]), 1:46, i.e. Femte Singen, 11. 315-316, of Passionema. Skaldstycke (1781), with mottoes "Sapere Aude" and "Born Originals, how comes it to pass that we die Copies? YOUNG." Thorüd's letters of 1781 contain frequent Werther allusions. Two years later a writer of the older school referred to Thorild's interest in "Shakespeare's delirium," Klopstock's "rimelessness," "Goethe's convulsions," and Ossian's "eternal sameness"; see Swedish Poetry, KELLGREN. 31. Skrifter (Stockholm [1878]), pp. 81-118. A separate dedication of this poem contains not only Shakespearean allusions, but also an interesting parallel to the final lines of Goethe's "gesteigerter Werther," Tasso: "Lik tllamod vid en graf Jag prisât himlen i min smärta: Dá han ej guld och anor gaf, Gaf han mig lyran och ett hjerta." ("Like patience at a funeral monument I praised heaven in my pain: when it gave me neither gold nor ancestors, it gave me my lyre and my heart.") For Lidner's Bref i Werthers stíl, see Swedish Poetry. 32. Part I, "am 26. May." 33. Part I, "am 22. May." 34. Schink was a friend of C. A. F. Bertram, W . Chr. Mylius, J. J. Engel, and Lessing's brother. His Lina von Waller (1778) begins in the Storm-and-Stress style, but ends with an attack on that movement. 35. Marionettentheater (Stachelschriften herausgegeben von G. Α. E. Bogeng: Neuere Reihe 2; Heidelberg, 1925), p. 64. 36. See H. Daffner, "Eine Münchner Wertheriade," Jb.S.Kipp., 7:217-276, esp. pp. 266-267. 37. Unfavorable reviews of Goethe's work printed in the ReichsPostreuter are collected in Braun, Goethe im Ortheile, 1:106109; 228-229; 234-235; 285-287; etc. Favorable reviews of attacks on Goethe and unfavorable ones of works sympathetic to him, 1:123; 123-124; 124-126; 223-226; 254-258; 288-289; etc. 38. Cf. H. Haupt, "Zu Werther," Goethe-Jahrbuch, 22:266-269 (1901). 39. Cf. Appell, Werther und seine Zeit, pp. 217-225, for analysis of this novel; and C. Schiiddekopf's Nachwort to Die Leiden des jungen Franken (Nachdruck; Leipzig, 1912), for an account of its author. 40. "Am 8. Dez." 41. (Nachdruck), p. 95. 42. (Nachdruck), p. 112.

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43. 44. 4i. 46. 47.

August Gottlieb Meissner, Die Nachtigall. See "Lotte! Lotte! welch* ein Engel bist du nicht in Weibsgestalt." See Appell, Werther und seine Zeit, p. 119. Frankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigen, 21. April 1775. See CONTIUS; HOTTINGER; Kukuk an meinen lieben Müller in Mannheim. — Lenz's Pandaemomum germanicum belongs with this group of plays, but was not published until after his death. 48. Cf. H . Naumann, "Studien über den Bänkelgesang," Primitive Gemeinschaftskultur (Jena, 1921), pp. 168-190. 49. 18. Januar 1776. Quoted by Κ. F. Linger, Denkwürdigkeiten aus dem Leben des k.k. Hofrathes Heinrich Gottfried von Bretschneider (Wien, Leipzig, 1892), p. 206. 50. This is pointed out by Naumann, "Studien," p. 180, η. 1. 51. A reproduction of the picture is inserted between p. 44 and p. 45 of volume 16 of the Weimar edition ( W . A . ) of Goethe's works. 52. A cantata having nothing to do with Werther was entitled Lottern Leiden; see German Poetry: ZIBULKA. 53. See German Poetry: Frage. 54. Jonas was executed in 1790 for robbing and killing one of his mistresses. A sentimental public brought flowers and mottoes to put beside the exposed body of the murdered. — See BLUMAUER. 55. See Kluckhohn, Auffassung der Liebe, esp. pp. 492ff., where the many influences synthesized in Novalis' hymns are subtly analyzed.—The ecstatic intensity of sentimental Werther poetry reveals the emotional void which Novalis and other romanticists were to try to fill with meaningful content. These lines to the author of a forgotten novel show a romantic longing to escape from emotional isolation: . . . Dir flieszen hier die Zähren des reinsten Dankes — könnt' ich sie auf Deine Zauberhand herunter weinen! — W o weilst Du? Theurer! dasz ich, nie von Dir getrennt, mit Dir vereinen mich könnte! — Denn, seit Werthers Fall, seit Siegwarts nächtlichem Erblassen, vermochte keiner Deiner Brüder all' mit solcher Macht mein Innres zu umfassen . . . (see [ B R ] ) . T h e external resemblance of certain poems in the Werther chapbook to the lyrics of the young Schiller has been pointed out by A. Ludwig, "Werthers Leiden als Volksbuch," Beilage der Allgemeinen Zeitung, no. 207, but, as the appended bibliography shows, some, at least, antedate Schiller's earliest published poetry. 56. Novalis was still close to Storm-and-Stress ideas when, writing to Schiller in October, 1791, he claims that he finds more of Homer

GERMAN WERTHER POETRY

57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67.

68. 69. 70.

" 5

in Ariosto, Ossian, Werther, and Don Karlos, than in many of Homer's deliberate imitators. Cf. Schriften (Kluckhohn), 4:29. Schriften (Kluckhohn), 3:97. Schriften (Kluckhohn), 3:298. Clipping, source unidentified, Speck Collection of Goetheana, Yale University Library (Pamphlet Jc7). See German Poetry: Am 28. August 1823. See Epigramme, Venedig, no. 52 (W.A. 1:320); and also, W.A. 1:323. Published before March 21, 1797, when it is mentioned in a contemporary letter; cf. E. Arnold, Goethes Berliner Beziehungen (Gotha, 1925), p. 49. See Xenien nos. 45, 46, 69, 83, 88, 292, 339. See Alxinger's letter to Böttiger, mentioned in note 29 of this chapter. Cf. I. Bickelmann, Goethes "Werther" im Urteil des 19. Jahrhunderts (Romantik bis Naturalismus 1830-1880) (Gelnhausen, 1937), pp. 18f. Cf. Blumenthal, Zeitgenössische Rezensionen, pp. 37fï. W . Menzel, Deutsche Litteratur (Stuttgart, 1836) ; cf. Bickelmann, Goethes "Werther" II. Kapitel, for a full résumé of MenzePs Werther criticisms and of the similar judgments of Börne and Gervinus. Wienbarg and Gutzkow defended Goethe and Werther; cf. Bickelmann, Goethes "Werther," III. Kapitel. Sämtliche Werke (Elster), 7:266. The quotation is from a review of Michael Beer's Struensee. Cf. C. Kahn, Die Melancholie in der deutschen Lyrik des 18. Jahrhunderts (Beiträge zur neueren Literaturgeschichte 21; Heidelberg, 1932), p. 94. Ästhetik, oder Wissenschaft des Schönen (München, 1922), 2:611-612, §477 (Das Schöne in einseitiger Existenz). "Ihnen [the Germans] geht zuerst das geistige Bewusztsein der Unendlichkeit des Ichs auf." This first assumes "die krankhafte und gestaltlose Form der Sentimentalität." "Die freie Subjektivität ist errungen, der absolute Adel des Subjekts wird gewuszt und ausgesprochen, aber er schämt sich der Welt, des Staates, der Geschichte, scheut sich, sich einzulassen, als beschmutze er sich." "In Werthers Leiden wird sie [this mood] Stoff, da ist das Verhältnis schon verändert."

71. In his epigram, Göthe und Kästners Briefwechsel, Grillparzer likewise sneers at the realistically and positivistically minded reader or critic who desires to stand "auf dem Boden des wirklich Wahren."

IV

French Werther Poetry T H E FIRST INTEREST IN W E R T H E R

translation of Die Leiden des jungen Werthers was published in 1776, and the novel soon enjoyed great popularity. Passages in memoirs, Werther imitations, critical discussions of the novel, and references to it in other writings, all show that there existed in France the same lively interest in Werther as there did in England and Germany. 1 It is significant, however, that among French poets the Werther theme was not at first sympathetically received, for in other literatures it is in contemporary verse that the great response which it evoked can best be evaluated. There were sentimentalists in France at this time, and some of them were poets after a fashion, but French verse had not yet developed into a medium appropriate to the expression of Wertherian feelings. In the course of the eighteenth century the French novel had finally broken with the old tradition of long and complicated pastoral romances, which were replaced by psychological, philosophical, and sentimental narrative. The development of the novel parallels that in England and Germany, and the increasing emphasis on middle-class interests is similar. From the seventeenthcentury comedy of manners and character types there had gradually evolved a comedy of sentiment, la comédie FRENCH

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II7

larmoyante, which could become, under the influence of English middle-class tragedy, the bourgeois drama of Diderot and his imitators. The tradition of French verse, strictly codified during the age of Louis XIV, had, however, remained dominantly aristocratic. Techniques and standards which a hundred years before had served to create a harmonious whole of poetic literature conceived in the spirit of a common classicism now imposed a uniformity which no longer had any vital significance. Verse was cultivated by writers who were technically correct and even technically brilliant, but who did not venture off the paths that had been prescribed for poets of a very different society. At a moment of philosophical revolution and of moral-emotional revaluations French poetry was bound by a tradition of greatness which permitted no expression of profound personal experience except in generalized terms. A person with very little to say could write verse, and a writer fertile in ideas could, when he wrote verse, say but little. Poetry was a form of amusement or a social grace, and if any philosophy underlies the occasional verse and light lyrics of the period, it is one of pleasure: Jouis, — mais sans excès, pour jouir d'avantage, Le Plaisir sans remords est le secret du sage.

Poets were masters of technique, but their productions were conventional in language and feeling to such a degree that even contemporaries found it impossible to distinguish between the works of different authors, so uniform was their artificiality.2 Werther inevitably failed to strike a sympathetic chord in those writers who most assiduously cultivated French verse forms. It could not appeal to conservatives whose theory of art and whose philosophy of life, both

Il8

T H E T E S T A M E N T OF WERTHER

static and even moribund, differed so fundamentally from those of Goethe and Werther. La Harpe, who had begun his literary career as a poet, was the last great critic of the ancien régime. His discussion of Werther represents the typical unfavorable judgment passed on it by adherents to classicistic theory. He generalizes thus about the literature of the Germans: "Ils ont l'air de croire que, pour attacher l'attention, il suffit de peindre tout ce qu'on rencontre. Non, il faut choisir un sujet, et faire un tableau. Le roman de M. Goethe a les défauts et les beautés des écrivains de sa nation."8 La Harpe condemned Werther as disorganized, prolix, vague, and lacking in action, and concluded that its defects far outweighed its merits. The conservative citadel of criticism was not entirely impregnable to the forces of sympathy, however, for only a year after La Harpe's caustic observations a reviewer in the Almanach Littéraire cautiously conceded, "Il y a de touchans passages dans ce roman."4 There were even a few practitioners of the art of poetry who did not shy away from sentimentality. They had been active less than twenty years when Werther first appeared in French, and their influence had not been great, although it prepared the way for André Chénier and an ultimate reinterpretation of the concept of poetry. A glimpse of new possibilities had been revealed by translations from Young, Thomson, Gray, Macpherson, and Gessner, but there was no sudden rush to imitate their styles. Gessner's idylls served as the model for Nicolas Germain Léonard's Idylles morales (1766); in the introduction to his Poésies pastorales (1771), bearing the significant imprint "À Genève et à Paris," the twentyseven-year-old French poet pays tribute to his Swiss contemporary as the greatest of idyllists (p. ix); and

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under the influence of Werther, Léonard later wrote the epistolary novel, Lettres de deux amants de Lyon (1783). Charles Pierre Colardeau, the first French writer to tell the story of lovers of nonheroic stature in the long neglected form of the heroic epistle (Armide à Renaud, 1758), published his Nuits, a translation of Young's Night-Thoughts, in 1770. At about this time Campion translated Goldsmith's The Deserted Village,5 Although new and ultimately fruitful concepts of poetry were becoming known through examples inspired by these works, no school of sentimental poetry came into existence in France. While French poetry remained the literary stronghold of a social conservatism on which new ideas had little influence, Rousseau and his disciples were making direct assaults on the traditional standards of value. Rousseau's condemnation of the society in which he lived, together with his primitivist theory that natural man was uncorrupted, constituted the first great attack on the supremacy of reason and tradition in eighteenth-century France. Those who wanted to escape from the artificiality of civilization with its corrupting influences and its stifling of feeling could take refuge in the unspoiled world of Gessner's idylls, which enjoyed wide popularity with French readers;β Gessner's highly idealized pastoral scenes were long believed to be typically German, and it was an article of faith that the world of Gottsched and Wieland was somehow a happier one than that of Voltaire and Diderot. Those who desired to get back to incorruption and nature by the path of sentiment unfettered by convention thought that German literature pointed the way: Les bons Germains aujourd'hui sont nos maîtres Pour le naïf, le simple, le touchant.

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THE TESTAMENT OF WERTHER

Cournand, the author of these verses, wrote a footnote to them: "Il y a peu de personnes qui ne soient touchées de la simplicité des Poésies allemandes. C'est qu'on y reconnoit le vrai ton de la nature." 7 There thus existed a French reading public favorably predisposed toward things German and ready to welcome a translation of Werther. The indifference or hostility of literary pundits of the old school could hardly influence the amateur of natural simplicity, who might even consider their unfavorable judgments a recommendation for Goethe's novel. One result of the sterility of the French poetic imagination during the eighteenth century was a searching for novelty. If exoticism was one important form of the search, the longing for simplicity was another. "Le moment où, à force de s'en écarter, ce qu'il y a de plus nouveau pour [les hommes], C'EST LA NATURE, est le moment de les y ramener," wrote a friend of Rousseau.8 The artlessness which La Harpe thought he saw in Werther and which he condemned as a defect only guaranteed the novel's genuine naturalness to the enthusiast for German literature. In addition, Werther's enthusiasm for nature, his Storm-and-Stress repudiation of artificiality and convention, make him a true representative of the back-to-nature movement. Werther's Lieblingspläzgen amidst all the beauty of a countryside in spring is a ruined Cabinetgen in a simply landscaped park: Die Stadt ist selbst unangenehm, dagegen rings umher eine unaussprechliche Schönheit der Natur. Das bewog den verstorbenen Grafen von M. einen Garten auf einem der Hügel anzulegen, die mit der schönsten Mannigfaltigkeit der Natur sich kreuzen, und die lieblichsten Thäler bilden. Der Garten ist einfach, und man fühlt gleich bey dem Eintritte,

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dasz nicht ein wissenschaftlicher Gärtner, sondern ein fühlendes Herz den Plan bezeichnet, das sein selbst hier genieszen wollte. In France there was a growing enthusiasm for landscaping in the English free style as the doctrine of the return to nature continued to win adherents. Among those who repudiated the traditional formal park, of which French architects had produced the most notable examples, was the Marquis de Girardin, Vicomte d'Ermenonville, who has been remembered as Rousseau's patron and friend. It is Girardin's estate which is described as the type of the English garden in the famous descriptive poem Les Jardins (1782) of the Abbé Delille. In Girardin's De la Composition des paysages, ou Des moyens d'embellir la Nature autour des Habitations, en joignant l'agréable à l'utile, written in 1774 and published three years later, there are descriptions very like those of Werther.10 Girardin insists that his book treats not of gardens, but of landscapes, and that the purpose of landscaping should not be to create something artificial, but to embellish or enrich nature without confining and distorting it. He justifies his interest in gardens with an allusion to Voltaire's Candide — "Il est devenu si difficile dans l'âge de raison, de trouver quelque chose de mieux à faire, que de cultiver son jardin" — but the spirit of the allusion is clearly that of Rousseau and those who denied the sufficiency of civilization and reason. Rousseau's tomb was on the "île des Peupliers" of Girardin's estate. Such an island is described in De la Composition des paysages as "romantique," that is, suited for quiet solitude and serious or melancholy contemplation. The suicide in 1791 of one of the many pilgrims to Rousseau's resting place on the "île des Peupliers" was the occasion of an epitaph by Girardin:

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Hélas, pauvre inconnu, si tu tiens de l'amour Une obscure naissance et ta noble figure, Devais-tu dans ces lieux outrager la nature, Comme un autre Werther, en t'y privant du jour? In these lines there is pity for both the unknown suicide and for the hero of a novel which reflects much the same attitudes toward nature as Girardin's charming book. And it is surely no coincidence that the first English translator of Werther, Daniel Malthus, later translated De la Composition des paysages. Four years after her translation of Delille's Les Jardins, an English admirer of Klopstock published a Charlotte at the Tomb of Werter (1802). 1 1 The return to nature was only one element in the complex movement which flowered as romanticism. EARLY WERTHER POEMS IN FRENCH

For some years after its appearance, French interest in Werther was limited, as far as literary figures are concerned, to provincials, or at least to writers who had separated themselves from the conservative influences and standards of the traditional literary capital, Paris. Girardin lived at Ermenonville, was a patron of the primitivist critic of society, Rousseau, and published his volume on landscape composition at Geneva. The first French translation of Werther was made by Gibbon's friend, Georges Deyverdun of Lausanne, who later edited Isabelle de Montolieu's Wertheriad, Caroline de Licht field (1781). The earliest French Werther imitation and the first Werther play in any language was Les Malheurs de Vamour, printed at Bern in 1775. Modern Franco-Swiss literature begins with Philippe Syriaque Bridel, who founded the series Êtrennes helvétiennes, to which Deyverdun and Bridel's brother, Samuel Élisée, also contributed. Well acquainted with

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German literature and a particular admirer of Haller, Samuel Élisée Bridel was in later years pastor at Basel. In his youth, however, his pastimes included the cultivation of poetry, and in the "Avant-propos" of an anonymous volume of his poems published at Lausanne in 1788 Bridel explains that he had written most of Les Délassemens poétiques, as he entitled his efforts, before the age of twenty: Enfans de la nature, de la rêverie & de l'amour, c'est sur le bord des ruisseaux, à l'ombre des forêts, ou dans le fond des prairies que je les ai soupirés. . . . Quelquefois cependant j'osais prendre un vol plus hardi. Mon ame s'échauffait avec Ossian & je chantais les combats. Mon cœur s'attendrissait sur les infortunes de Verther, & ma Muse, prenant le voile de l'élégie, allait gémir sous les cyprès. 12 Although Bridel's heart was tender, his poetic style remained cold, and he failed to achieve an elegiac tone in his Lettre de Verther à Charlotte. T h e detailed review of Verther's life which forms the main body of this undistinguished heroic epistle is introduced by a brief description of the state of the paper upon which it is written and of the occasion of its composition: Je t'écris; ce papier est baigné de mes larmes. Souffre qu'un malheureux, victime de tes charmes, Verse encor dans ton cœur ses secrets sentiments, Avant que le trépas termine ses tourments.13 Verther's letter is the story of his unhappy love for Charlotte; his suicide is the consequence of hopeless passion. His final words express a confidence that G o d will grant him pardon and peace: Un pere dont l'amour égale la sagesse, Punirait-il son fils, s'il osait abréger, De quelques jours fâcheux, un exil passager? A ta bonté suprême enfin je m'abandonne:

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Dieu! qui lis dans mon cœur, juge en pere, & pardonne. Ciel! qu'entends-je? quel son rétentit dans ce lieu? Minuit frappe . . . il est temps . . . adieu, Charlotte, adieu. (Le coup part.) 14 T h e alexandrines of Bridel's Lettre de Verther à Charlotte are monotonously regular; he uses the stilted vocabulary of seventeenth-century verse, and, despite faithfulness in detail to corresponding passages in Goethe's novel, captures none of their poetic spirit. Bridel did well to abandon poetry f o r what he termed the serious business of life, for his concept of literature as a mere pastime, which he formulates in the preface to Les Dêlassemens poétiques, was not a fruitful one. There also exists a French heroic epistle from Werther to Charlotte written by a German sentimentalist, Graf von Hartig, who had enjoyed all the advantages of a French education, but whose work, Lettres sur la France, Γ Angleterre, et Vltalie, published at Geneva in 1785, reveals a severe critic of culture and civilization in France. Hartig had come under the influence of Rousseau, to whose La Nouvelle Héloïse he pays tribute in " V e r s faits en voyant le Tombeau de J.-J. Rousseau à Ermenonville," a poem included in the same volume as the epistle of Werther to Charlotte. It may be adduced as evidence of the easy mastery with which Hartig wrote French that his Melange de vers et de prose, in which his Werther poem appeared, was crowned by the French Academy. Hartig does not attempt, in his "Lettre de Werther à Charlotte," to reproduce in French verse any given passage of Goethe's novel, perhaps because, knowing G e r man, he realized that correct alexandrines could not express the significant nuances of its language and thought. H e explains his method in an introductory note to the "Lettre de Werther à Charlotte":

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Les souffrances de Werther . . . sont traduites en françois, & seront connues de la plupart de mes lecteurs. Ceux dont le cœur est sensible, les auront lues, sans doute, avec attendrissement & plaisir. Je ne me suis nullement attaché à transmettre en vers la fin de ces souffrances selon le sens littéral de l'ouvrage allemand, mais, en y plaçant nombre d'idées qui ne se trouvent point dans l'original & qui changent totalement cette lettre; j'ai cependant observé de ne point altérer le caractère de Werther, ainsi qu'il nous est dépeint dans tout le cours de l'ouvrage.16 Hartig's Werther is a sentimental lover with all the insight of a man of reason, a figure closer to the heroes of Rousseau, who reason about the value of simplicity and feeling, than to those of the young Goethe, for whom instinct is everything. This Werther writes to Charlotte: Je plains le froid mortel, dont le cœur inflexible Oppose à la tendresse une digue invincible . . . Mais je plains plus encore l'homme sensible & tendre Du joug des passions trop lent à se défendre!16 Hartig's style is anything but Wertherian. When his Werther reproaches Charlotte with having married a man she is supposed not to love, Hartig lets him observe, "Long-temps après l'amour, l'hymen a pris naissance," while Werther forms his resolution to commit suicide, "Méprisant l'Achéron, le Styx & le Tartare." Like the heroic epistle of Bridel, Hartig's poem shows that French was not yet able to express the situations and the sentiments of Werther. No versification of passages from Goethe's novel could have the merit of fitting the style to the sense at this time. The moment when a new concept of poetic values was to be generally accepted in France was still far off."

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SENTIMENTAL TREATMENT OF THE WERTHER THEME

Werther poetry in France proper begins with Arnault's dramatic lyric, Charlotte au Tombeau de Werther, written when its author was eighteen. Arnault describes in his memoirs the profound impression which the reading of Werther had had upon him: Livre fatal! Dans un état tranquille, si le hasard l'eût fait tomber entre mes mains, je ne l'aurais pas lu sans émotion! Quelle impression ne produisit-il pas sur un cœur agité d'un premier amour, ce livre qui m'était donné par l'objet même de cet amour. Je ne vis que ma propre histoire dans ce roman rempli de mes propres sentimens. Ma tête s'exalta par cette lecture que je ne me lassais pas de recommencer.18 Charlotte's invocation of the shade of Werther begins: Ombre sensible, ombre plaintive, Errante autour de ces cyprès, Fixe ta course fugitive, Et viens jouir de mes regrets. Werther, vois Charlotte mourante, Dans un tourment toujours nouveau; Recueille son âme expirante Prête à passer dans ce tombeau. Arnault treats his theme no differently than did contemporary English and German Werther poets who chose to describe Charlotte at Werther's grave. In subsequent stanzas Charlotte condemns herself for having given the fatal pistols to Werther's servant and for now coming to Werther's tomb when she is duty-bound to Albert. When Werther's ghost seems to appear, she cries: Qu'ai-je vu? . . . Werther! . . . je succombe! L'amour remplirait mon désir! Charlotte expire sur ta tombe Moins de frayeur que de plaisir.

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The apparition is a hallucination, however, and a calmer Charlotte realizes that she is left only with her despair. The poem ends with a conceit worthy of the best of Arnault's older contemporaries: . . . Ce n'est qu'en cessant de vivre Que je cesserai de mourir. It is evident how the talents of the young Arnault could, despite his interest in sentimentality, easily merit the praise of an ultraconservative like La Harpe, who quoted one of Arnault's early poems approvingly in his Correspondance littéraire.1β Although Arnault later wrote, among many other works, a five-act tragedy, Oscar, fils d'Ossian, his occasional use of romantic themes does not justify considering him a forerunner of French romanticism, for his own temperament was essentially conservative. In his already quoted memoirs he refers to Werther as "livre beau, mais pernicieux." Since he answers the title question of his essay "Faut-il une loi contre le suicide?" in the negative, Arnault's moral judgment of the novel can only allude to Goethe's objective portrayal of a fatalist or to the unclassical violence of Werther's passion, not to the novel's denouement.20 His aesthetic judgment of it was entirely favorable, and he could write modestly of his Charlotte au Tombeau de Werther, "[Cette romance] n'a guère . . . d'autre mérite que celui de rappeler le bel ouvrage qui en a fourni le sujet, ouvrage où la plus terrible des passions est peinte avec tant d'énergie, de profondeur et de génie." 21 Arnault's elegy was one of the half-dozen Werther poems ever to be translated from the original into another language: one Russian translation appeared in 1789, and a second was published in 1795 in the sentimentalist Karamzin's

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Moskovskot zhurnal.22 It had the merit of combining sentimental sincerity with an interesting series of linguistic antitheses. Like the heroic epistles of Bridel and Hartig, or the epitaph of Girardin, Arnault's Werther poem was the production of an amateur or beginner. T h e Werther theme did not attract any already successful French poet before the 1790's. B y that time the story of Werther had become well known to readers of all classes, as well as to the theatergoer. There had appeared several French Werther novels, including a French translation of The Letters of Charlotte. T h e one-act opera by Dejaure and Kreutzer, Werther et Charlotte, given in February 1792 at the Théâtre Italien, seems to have been the first Werther play actually performed in France, and its successful representation on a Paris stage indicates how general a popularity Werther enjoyed. In 1795, François Andrieux, still remembered as the author of the fable Le Meunier de Sans-Souci, wrote a sentimental romance inspired b y a popular engraving showing Charlotte at Werther's tomb with a copy of Ossian in her hand.23 His "Charlotte au Tombeau de Werther" was printed in La Décade philosophique, a leading literary journal; the fact that it was accompanied by a page of music indicates that Andrieux expected more than mere literary success. His Charlotte apostrophizes Werther in a highly sentimental style and expresses her regret at having failed to appreciate his real feelings for her. A f t e r embracing his funeral urn, her copy of Ossian damp with tears, she cries in despair: O mort! viens me secourir! Mais non, non; Charlotte est mère, Elle doit vivre et souffrir.

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The moralizing twist at the end is a heavy touch of pathos which destroys the slight illusion of passionate sincerity that Andrieux had managed to create in the preceding lines. In the same year as it published Andrieux's romance, La Décade philosophique paid further tribute to the popularity of Werther by publishing a versification of Ossian's Song of Armin by André François de Coupigny. Coupigny, who made his living as a professional writer and especially as the author of occasional verse, bases his version on the text of Werther. His so-called "Traduction d'un fragment des poésies galliques (d'Ossian)" is introduced with the scene from Goethe's novel in which Charlotte asks Werther to read from his Ossian translation, and the editors of La Décade comment: "Nos tendres lectrices nous sauront gré sans doute de leur rappeler le sensible Werther qu'elles ont tant pleuré." 2i Coupigny later wrote a short romance, "Werther à Charlotte, une heure avant de mourir," which appeared in the Almanack des Muses in 1801. An elegy of considerable lyric beauty in a naively sentimental style, it was translated into Russian in 1819 by Pushkin's friend Tumanskiï and is the "Verter k Sharlotte" recited by the drunken Chichikov in a scene of Gogol's famous novel, Dead Souls (1842). In the years preceding the First Empire numerous semipublic literary societies flourished in Paris as part of institutions corresponding to the British or American athenaeums.25 Calling themselves lycées, these organizations continued on a democratic and commercial basis the tradition of social intellectualism which went back to the famous salons in which artistic, philosophic, and scientific interests were simultaneously cultivated. They offered their members library facilities and the privilege

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of attending regularly held readings, recitals, and lectures, so that the bourgeoisie might easily follow the progress of the arts and sciences. One of the most influential lycées in the literary life of Paris at the turn of the century was the Lycée des Étrangers, founded in January 1797, which not only held courses of lectures in various fields of knowledge, but which also had a staff of instructors for the modern languages. Beginning in 1798, the literary committee of this group, which at the time counted among its officials at least eight members of the various French academies, published a journal entitled Les Veillées des Muses, Ou Recueil périodique des Ouvrages en vers et en prose, lus dans les Séances du Lycée des Étrangers. It appeared for three years, and its pages contain a goodly proportion of literary efforts admittedly inspired by English and German models — imitations and translations of Gray, Pope, Ossian, Goldsmith, Gessner, and Goethe. Since the editors of Les Veillées des Muses represented the old school of French literature and cultivated classicistic tragedy, the ode, the fable, and comedy, the significant number of sentimental works read at meetings of the lycée must reflect the taste of the less critical general public and of aspiring younger writers. One of these, Randon du Thil, submitted an acceptable heroic epistle in which Werther reviews for Charlotte the whole story of his passion and describes to her his future resting place. Before the stroke of midnight halts his pen, Werther makes a final exhortation of Charlotte: Si par hasard Charlotte, errante et solitaire, Portais ses pas tremblans dans ce triste séjour, Qu'émue au souvenir de mon fidèle amour, Son œil fixe la tombe où Werther va descendre Et d'une larme au moins daigne honorer ma cendre.26

FRENCH WERTHER POETRY

Although the journal of the lycée lasted only three years, the lycée continued to function, and at one of its meetings in 1802 Pierre de Lamontagne's Werther à Charlotte was read to an audience which seems not to have lost its love of the sentimental. It was to the Lycée des Étrangers that Gabriel Legouvé, author of the successful tragedy, La Mort d'Abel (1792), and of the enormously popular Le Mérite des femmes, submitted in 1798 his poem "La Mélancolie." Published first in Les Veillées des Muses, it was frequently reprinted and remains as a monument to Legouvé's remarkable and well-known feeling for the taste of the public at any given time. "La Mélancolie" was meant for the reader of sentimental novels and for the sentimental reader, and of literary works alluded to in it Werther alone is honored by double mention. A t one point Legouvé asks: Quel est, en le lisant, l'ouvrage qu'on admire? L'ouvrage où l'écrivain s'attendrit et soupire; l'Iliade, d'Hector peignant le dernier jour . . . Héloïse, Verther, Paul et sa Virginie; Ces tableaux douloureux, ces récits enchanteurs Que l'on croirait tracés par les Graces en pleurs. And when he concludes, the poet declares that if art is to portray Melancholy, Il doit peindre une Vierge, assise sous l'ombrage, Qui, rêveuse, et livrée à de vagues regrets, Nourrit, au bruit des flots, un chagrin plein d'attraits . . . Un cyprès devant elle, et Verther à la main. Legouvé represented fashionable sentimentality, a fact to which contemporary criticism was not blind, for the author of the review of "La Mélancolie" which appeared in the emigrant journal Le Spectateur du Nord

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points out the difference between the languorous qualities of this poem and the genuine intensity of feeling of such works as Werther or La Nouvelle Héloïse. Legouvé's tributes to the monuments of sentimental literature guaranteed the success of "La Mélancolie," and it is not without significance that the Italian translator of his poems was himself the author of an epistle from W e r ther to Charlotte.27 Although Legouvé was not the last French writer to mention Werther as the typical unhappy lover, he was the last writer of any importance to his contemporaries who thought of Goethe's hero simply in terms of sentimentality. T h e time was ripe for a less one-sided interpretation of Werther. WERTHER AND FRENCH PREROMANTICISM

Jacques Lablée's Werther à Charlotte, héroïde, which appeared in 1798, was the first literary work in French to reflect the fact that Werther was a product not only of sentimentality, but of a spirit of revolt, of the movement known in the history of German literature as Storm and Stress. Labiée, a successful author of sentimental novels, later claimed: "Je me suis félicité, comme d'une glorieuse conquête, de ce que, par l'accent d'une vraie sensibilité, je pouvais exciter l'émotion ou l'attendrissement dans l'âme de mes lecteurs." 28 It was a tour de force to capture in French verse for the first time some part of the intensity of Goethe's novel. Lablée's heroic epistle is far superior to any of those already mentioned, and it alone received notices in the critical journals.29 Opinion was divided as to whether or not the story of Werther was proper subject matter for an héroïde. A middle stand was taken by the reviewer of Le Spectateur du Nord, who considers the treatment of Werther as a "hero" justified; he remarks on the beauties of Lablée's better

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passages, which include some very fine descriptions, and terms them "scènes riantes mises en opposition avec des tableaux sombres et mélancoliques." Werther à Charlotte, despite its immediate success and long popularity, did not win the prize offered by the Lycée des Étrangers for a suitable semidescriptive poem, although it had been composed with the prescribed conditions in mind. Labiée attributed his failure to win the competition to the mistakes of his copyist.30 In view of the composition of the jury (Legouvé, Arnault, Vigée, Laya), it seems natural that a less radical work received the award, which went to Alissan de Chazet for his graceful Rêve d'un Amant?1 Lablée's Werther is not only an intense lover of nature whose world consists of a series of romantic landscapes; he is also a rebel against society. He begins his long indictment of civilization with a vigor that does not lag: J'égarais mes pas dans un monde pervers, Où le vil intérêt, plus fort que la nature, Est seul des actions la règle et la mesure.82 The comparatively great interest aroused by Lablée's poem can best be explained by his presentation of a Werther closer both to the hero of Goethe's novel and to the ideals and interests of a new generation. The permanent assimilation of Werther into the French literary consciousness begins as it is appreciated as more than a sentimental novel. It becomes an expression of the social, political, and emotional ferment which had found an outlet with the French Revolution only to be crushed again almost immediately by forces of despotism and reaction. Madame de Staël's exposition of Werther in De la Littérature (1801) is an attempt to justify interpretation of the novel as a tragedy whose source is not merely an unhappy love. The complexity of events and circum-

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stances which drive Werther to suicide is emphasized, particular emphasis being placed on social forces: Le caractère de Werther ne peut être celui du grand nombre des hommes. Il représente dans toute sa force le mal que peut faire un mauvais ordre social à un esprit énergique . . . On a voulu blâmer l'auteur de Werther de supposer au héros de son roman une autre peine que celle de l'amour, de laisser voir dans son âme la vive douleur d'une humiliation, et le ressentiment profond contre l'orgueil des rangs, qui a causé cette humiliation . . . Goethe vouloit peindre un être souffrant par toutes les affections d'une âme tendre et fière; il vouloit peindre ce mélange de maux, qui seul peut conduire un homme au dernier degré du désespoir.33 Although Madame de Staël's Rousseauist interpretation overstresses one aspect of Goethe's novel, she was surely right in seeing in it a study in general maladjustment. Her praise of the novel came at a critical moment in the development of French literature, moreover, for it is possible that without it those who thought themselves discriminating would have discarded Werther as a relic of an ended age of sentimentality, as the English romantic generation did. When Madame de Staël's Delphine appeared in 1803, Charles de Villers wrote to its author: L'Idée fondamentale et créatrice de tout votre ouvrage a été: de montrer la nature primitive, inaltérable, naïve, passionée, aux prises dans ses élans avec les barrières et les entraves du monde conventionnel . . . Remarquez que c'est la même idée-mère qui a guidé l'auteur de Werther.84 Delphine was written and interpreted in the spirit of Madame de Staël's critical appreciation of Werther. She had given new life to the Werther theme in France. The success of Lablée's Werther à Charlotte and of the many novels, including those by Madame de Staël, which treated the theme of social maladjustment is evi-

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dence of widespread discontent with the spirit of reorganization and counterrevolution which characterized Napoleonic France. Several new translations or editions of Werther were published, while the Italian patriot Foscolo's Ultime Lettere de Jacopo Ortis appeared in French under the politico-socially significant title Le Werther de Venise in 1802.85 As it became realized that Werther contained revolutionary overtones, a twentyfive year indifference to the morality of the novel suddenly ended, and articles vigorously condemning it began to appear. Even as earlier in England, anything smacking of Jacobinism was distrusted, feared, and condemned. The reëstablishment of the church was one phase of the restoration of the old order; a new and hence self-conscious moral consciousness could not passively tolerate admiration of a heretical rebel like Werther. The indifference of the conservatives of the old régime to Werther was thus, after a brief interlude, succeeded by the moralizing and satiric attacks against it by those of the new. The large group of intellectuals who felt themselves frustrated by the quasi-official reactions which marked the Empire and the Restoration in France constituted a French preromantic generation. Writers were especially interested in characters whose extraordinary sensibility prevented them from adjusting themselves to real conditions, but they had not yet found any tentative answers to the problems which they saw, and they lacked the constructive idealism that was to vitalize French literature in its romantic period. The most important genre was the novel: Madame de Staël, Madame de Krüdener, Benjamin Constant, Louis Bonaparte, Senancour, and others whose names now evoke no response, produced works in which echoes of Wertherian despair can be

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heard, although they did so without deliberately exploiting the notoriety of Werther as had the authors of eighteenth-century French Wertheriads. A novel such as Delphine does not take its source in the boredom of a sentimentalist like Legouvé, but in a feeling of frustration very close, if diiferently motivated, to that of the unhappy Werther. It is as though the career of Napoleon, the manifestation of a stronger personality than had been seen for generations, had produced a general inferiority complex characterized by that pessimistic introspection which was called "la maladie du siècle." Chateaubriand's René (1802), which is often considered to mark the beginning of literary preromanticism in France, exhibits all the symptoms of mal du siècle. The novel was heralded in Le Mercure de France as an antidote to Werther, but the reading public disregarded the utterances of the antihero, who expresses the reasoned morality of its Catholic reactionary author, and enjoyed the melancholy of René, who in Wertherian fashion cries, "La société et la nature m'ont lassé." se It was difficult to write with feeling without falling into the pattern of the age. Although almost every French preromantic novel contains a character who has been influenced by Werther and sentimental literature or who takes refuge from harsh reality in the world of Werther, Saint-Preux, and company, French poetry of the preromantic period contains no significant expressions of mal du siècle. It was a time of transition and formlessness in French literature, somewhat like the years of late Enlightenment and Storm and Stress in Germany, and the characteristic novels of Madame de Staël, although they are studies of emotional maladjustment, are more thought out than felt.37 Mastery of an appropriate lyrical

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form that could mirror the spirit of the age was not to be achieved until later. Charles Nodier, who played an important role in the creation of a French Romantic School and who in 1829 republished Ramond de Carbonnière's Wertherian drama, Les dernières Aventures du jeune d'Olban (1777), had been a typical representative of preromanticism in France. In his early novels, Les Proscrits ( 1802 ) and Le Peintre de Salzbourg (1803), Werther is one of the heroes' favorite books, a trait which recalls the German autobiographical novel of Karl Philipp Moritz, Anton Reiser. Nodier's Essais d'un jeune Barde ( 1804) is a miscellany which includes Ossian motifs, a translation of Goethe's Das Veilchen and "Le Suicide et les pélérins, Imitation de l'allemand," while another collection, Les Tristes, ou Mélanges tirés des tablettes d'un suicide (1806), contains, appropriately, frequent allusions to Werther: "La nouvelle Werthérie" is the story of a Suzanne who dies the day her Frédéric marries her rival; a character in "Les Jardins d'Oberheim" consecrates monuments to Werther and Ossian; and in the pockets of the suicide himself are found two letters from Werther. Although Nodier is important chiefly as a prose writer, he also produced poems in the tradition of eighteenthcentury descriptive verse which capture the moods of nature in a Wertherian vein. In lines written a few years after he had recovered from the pessimism of his earliest period, he recalls the intense sympathy he had once felt with Goethe's hero: Le hasard a-t-il respecté Ce bocage si frais que mes mains ont planté, Mon tapis de pervenche et la sombre avenue Où je plaignais Werther que j'aurais imité?

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There were few poets in France during the preromantic period of whose writings, as of Nodier's, it can be observed that in them "il y a . . . mieux qu'un reflet, il y a un rayon avant-coureur de la grande aurore." 38 WERTHERIAN PREROMANTICISM IN POLAND

The despair of frustration, to which French authors, especially novelists, had given literary expression during the Napoleonic and post-Napoleonic eras, was a general European phenomenon, and it left its mark of pessimism and cynicism on many literatures in the first half of the nineteenth century. French preromantic literature constituted in itself an international influence, reaching as it did the widest of educated reading publics, and so it helped to keep alive the appreciation of the sentimental tradition, and of the Werther, wherever the civilization of France had admirers. An early work of the Polish national poet, Adam Mickiewicz, will serve to illustrate the European character of preromanticism — and of the larger literature of sentimentality in whose decadent period the preromantic novel had such a significant role. In 1823 Mickiewicz published two parts of his verse drama Dziady, fragments as much epic as dramatic, for they contain, chiefly in narrative form, the life story of a hero related to those of Nodier and his fellow novelists, and thus to some extent one ultimately descended from Werther.39 In telling the story of a sentimentalist who has assimilated La Nouvelle Héloïse and Werther, and who knows the French preromantic novel, Mickiewicz more successfully evaded the pitfalls which beset an author dealing with literary themes of too great familiarity than had his immediate continental predecessors: he not only chose a form that they had neglected — although, to be sure, one that Byron had essayed — but, in adding fresh

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literary motifs taken from Polish-Lithuanian mythology and folk song, he also threw new lights on the European preromantic type through the contrast with background figures who symbolize the vital forces in popular superstition and in unsophisticated religious faith.40 The action of these Dziady fragments takes place on Forefather's Eve. The powerful opening scene represents a grandiose choral interrogation of the dead whose spirits have been evoked by the guslarz, or Lithuanian sorcerer. The ceremony, half pagan, half Christian, is both to placate the spirits and to help them attain eternal rest. After the good have been consoled and the wicked cursed, there emerges a form that neither responds to questions nor leaves when exorcised. This is the hero Gustaw, a man as marked in death as in life.41 In a subsequent scene he appears at the home of a former teacher of his who is a priest.42 The priest both fails to recognize his visitor's identity, and does not realize that Gustaw is a revenant. In three large sections, each supposedly lasting an hour,43 Gustaw relates the story of his life and passion (Leiden!). In the first of these hours Gustaw reëxperiences the vexations and joys of loving and being loved. When the priest interrupts him to offer the wisdom of moderation, Gustaw insists on the irrationality of love, which he illustrates with a folk song. "S'éloigner d'elle est si pénible, se rapprocher d'elle est difficile," he sings, and adds these observations: Simple chanson . . . oh! dans les romans vous trouverez

mieux. (Avec un sourire, en prenant un volume dans la bibliothèque.)

Prêtre, connais-tu la flamme et les larmes de

Werther? (Il chante) :

Je me suis tant acharné, j'ai tant enduré, que la mort seule pourra calmer mes souffrances. [Mickiewicz's note: "De Goethe."] 44

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As the hour ends Gustaw draws a dagger. In the second hour he gives an account of his youth. The climax is reached as Gustaw tells how his great love ended in tormenting disillusionment. He now reveals his identity, and reproaches his teacher with having educated him to an impractical and sentimental idealism: Vieillard, et si je commence à me faire accusateur, moi aussi, à maudire tes leçons, à grincer les dents à ta vue? Tu m'as tué, tu m'a appris à lire dans de beaux livres et dans la belle nature; tu m'as fait de la terre un enfer (avec un soupir amer) et un paradis. (Plus haut et avec mépris.) Et ce n'est que la terre.45 Gustaw stabs himself and the last hour begins. As he relives his final experience, his dying, he describes visions of a happiness hereafter which will compensate for earthly sufferings. Although both the case for sentimental literature and the charges which can be brought against it are presented fairly enough in Dziady, Gustaw's story is, in the last analysis, an illustration of the pernicious effects of book-fed sentimentality. In the literarily derivative tradition of French preromanticism Mickiewicz portrayed a Byronic hero whose literary antecedents force their attention upon the reader. For instance, Gustaw's name is borrowed from Gustave de Linar, the young ministerial secretary secretly in love with the heroine of Valérie ( 1803 ), and Gustaw has been jilted, by a girl once moved to tears at Madame de Kriidener's novel, for a suitor with whom marriage would be more advantageous. On the other hand, Gustaw represents Byronism and the whole mal du siècle: Ah, je ne cours pas après le plaisir, je fuis l'ennui. J'aime non le plaisir, mais la fatigue de la chasse qui permet de

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penser ou au moins de changer de place: personne n'y observe mes rêveries, les larmes vaines qui viennent je ne sais d'où humecter mes paupières, des soupirs sans but qui s'envolent je ne sais où.48 This passage from a fragment of Dziady published after Mickiewicz's death indicates that Gustaw was originally conceived as a typical preromantic hero whose despair springs from disillusionment and boredom; but he became a character of greater integrity than his immediate forebears. He is not without moments of theatricality, but he is also capable of Wertherian intensity of passion, and so he gains in stature. By having Gustaw mention Werther in almost the same breath with so simple and primitive, and therefore genuine, an expression of feeling as a folk song on the theme of love, Mickiewicz paid tribute to the sincere intensity and enduring freshness of Goethe's novel, which, as he was writing the Dziady fragments, he thought he might translate into Polish with greater justice to its poetic qualities than had earlier Polish translators.47 As his own work showed, Mickiewicz understood the genuine appreciation of nature and the common people which Werther possessed, but he was above all acknowledging the historical significance and the artistic preeminence of Werther, for in the literature of sentimentality it outranked all works which at various times seemed to equal it in merit or to surpass it in popularity. Preromantic novels and their heroes were soon enough to be generally recognized as minor manifestations of a transitional phase of highly derivative literature. Werther, a work of intrinsic originality, had the vitality needed to survive revolutions in literary taste; again reinterpreted, it could enjoy continued prestige with the next French school of writers.

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THE TESTAMENT OF WERTHER WERTHER AND FRENCH ROMANTICISM

Under the Empire and during the first years of the Restoration certain forces conspired to prevent the development of the romantic lyric in France. A conscious conservatism influenced art as well as political and social life, so that official approval was rarely given by the critics and academies except to literary works rooted in the classical tradition. The ambitious middle class, aware of its manifest destiny, looked with disfavor upon the passive heroes of the preromantic novel and welcomed parodies that attacked sentimentality. The familiar story of Werther, well known both from Goethe's novel and from constant literary allusions, as well as from engravings, poems, and opera, was the subject of several popular burlesques beginning with Georges Duval's Werther, ou Les Êgaremens d'un cœur sensible (1817). 48 Theater audiences were long to know Werther either as a romantic fool or as a deliberate charlatan of the caliber of W . S. Gilbert's Bunthorne, and so successful were the stage parodies that some spectators actually believed that the comic figure they had seen was the creation of Goethe.49 Werther was not to sink into ignominious oblivion, however, as he did in England, for the French romanticists, successful in their struggle against a moribund pseudoclassicism, realized that Werther was as much a source of their inspiration as La Nouvelle Héloïse, René, Delphine, or Valérie. Lamartine, whose poetry marks the beginning of romanticism proper in France, looked back in 1834 to the period of his Méditations poétiques (1820): Tant que je vivrai, je me souviendrai de certaines heures de l'été que je passais couché sur l'herbe dans une clairière des bois, à l'ombre d'un vieux tronc de pommier sauvage,

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HB en lisant la Jérusalem délivrée, et de tant de soirées d'automne ou d'hiver passées à errer sur les collines, déjà couvertes de brouillards et de givre, avec Ossian et Werther pour compagnon.50 The author of Werther was to Lamartine, as this quotation suggests, a poet of nature, and in the Méditations poétiques Lamartine is preoccupied with the mysteries of nature, of man, and of God. When Lamartine represents man as insignificant in the face of nature and God he comes very close to the mood of the despairing Werther. In Le Vallon the poet, like Werther, returns to a scene that has once meant happiness: Mon cœur, lassé de tout, même de l'espérance, N'ira plus de ses vœux importuner le sort; Prêtez-moi seulement, vallon de mon enfance, Un asile d'un jour pour attendre la mort . . . J'ai trop vu, trop senti, trop aimé dans ma vie; Je viens chercher vivant le calme du Léthé. Beaux lieux, soyez pour moi les bords où l'on oublie: L'oubli seul désormais est ma félicité.51 Werther found oblivion in death, which he conceived as a return to oneness with God and nature; Lamartine's religious spirit finds consolation in the contemplation of God's creation. Lamartine mentioned Werther as a source of his inspiration not because it was a sentimental novel, then, but because its hero grappled with the same problem of man's significance — "Was ist der Mensch? der gepriesene Halbgott! " 52 — as did he and the other French romanticists. For the poet of Le Vallon, Wertherism represents an important phase in his development, but this development leads to a more positive world outlook. In a sense, the achievement of the romantic lyric symbolizes the end of a long period of literary impotence lacking in clear artistic purpose. In one of his first letters

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Werther had written: "Ich bin so glücklich, mein Bester, so ganz in dem Gefühl von ruhigem Daseyn versunken, dasz meine Kunst darunter leidet. Ich könnte jetzo nicht zeichnen, nicht einen Strich, und bin niemalen ein grösserer Mahler gewesen als in diesen Augenblicken." 53 Like Werther under the most favorable conditions, the writer of the preromantic period was incapable of conscious mastery of form without a sacrifice of content. However great the artistry of Werther, Goethe chose for it the loosely governed form of epistolary novel and wrote in a lyric prose that allowed the greatest freedom of expression; in his Tasso, which he called "ein gesteigerter Werther," he submits to the limitations of drama and blank verse. The French romanticists, understanding and appreciating Werther, have advanced beyond it. Sainte-Beuve, remembered chiefly as a critic, began his literary career as a poet and novelist of the French romantic school, to which he adhered almost as soon as it became aware of its existence. His Vie poésies et pensées de Joseph Delorme (1829) purports to contain an account of the life of the poet Delorme and writings attributed to him. Joseph Delorme, the young Sainte-Beuve, is a product of sentimentality whose melancholy sensitiveness made life a torment for him. Only an early death, his biographer claims, prevented Delorme, whose reading was "of the family of Werther and Delphine," from carrying out "some sinister thought" (suicide). In another volume of verse, Les Consolations (1830), SainteBeuve passes from the crisis of disbelief which inspired Joseph Delorme to a less Wertherian attitude. It is the same transition to hope and faith which Lamartine had symbolically expressed in Le Vallon. " A deux Absents," one of Sainte-Beuve's new poems, bears this motto from Werther:

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Vois ce que tu es dans cette maison! tout pour tout. Tes amis te considèrent; tu fais souvent leur joie, et il semble à ton cœur qu'il ne pourrait exister sans eux. Cependant si tu partais, si tu t'éloignais de ce cercle, sentiraient-ils le vide que ta perte causerait dans leur destinée? en combien de temps? 64 Sainte-Beuve finds an answer to Werther's doubts: Oh! dussiez-vous de loin, si mon destin m'entraîne, M'oublier, ou de près m'apercevoir à peine, Ailleurs, ici, toujours, vous serez tout pour moi; — Couple heureux et brillant, je ne vis plus qu'en toi.®5 Sainte-Beuve was no longer a Wertherian Delorme, but Werther still belonged to his literary heritage and he could still use the novel to help define stages of his own development. The sincere tributes to Werther contained in SainteBeuve's Joseph Delorme and Les Consolations were aped by Évariste Boulay-Paty in his Èlle Mariaker. Although there is no reason to question the literary integrity of Boulay-Paty's purpose in Êlie Mariaker, the fact that this sizable volume of poetry is introduced with a biography of the purported author five times as long as that with which Sainte-Beuve had provided Joseph Delorme five years before indicates its more derivative character.56 Boulay-Paty, several of whose poems were given awards offered by the French Academy, had an extensive knowledge of modern European literature, reading German, Polish, Italian, English, and other languages, and his Élie Mariaker is imbued with the whole range of sentimental literature from Rousseau and Goethe to Byron, Mickiewicz, Sainte-Beuve, and Hugo. Boulay-Paty's use of Werther in telling the life of Mariaker shows not only his own familiarity with Goethe's novel but that he also could assume an equal familiarity on the part of any

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educated reader. When Mariaker arrives in Paris and is kindly welcomed, he discovers that the men he meets are "des mains de bois, comme celles des Audrans de Werther." 5 7 Like Werther, he seeks solace in uncorrupted nature, and wanders about the countryside reading Chateaubriand, Schiller, Ossian, and other romantic writers. His disillusionment leads to cynicism, for, as Théophile Gautier — another admirer of Joseph Delorme — had already observed, "Comme un citron pressé le cœur devient aride. — Don Juan arrive après Werther." 58 Although Mariaker is now Byronic rather than Wertherian, Boulay-Paty, determined not to sacrifice the Werther-Goethe parallelism, has his hero justify the wildness of his life with the example of Goethe keeping late hours when a youth in Frankfurt and of Werther admitting a willingness to empty an opened bottle. Mariaker's erotic desires equal in intensity those of the tormented Werther or of Joseph Delorme, but are expressed in more extreme images: Je voudrais, sur le sein d'une infidèle épouse Qui m'aurait pris pour âme et pour Werther chéri, Suçant son premier lait, de ma bouche jalouse Disputer sa mamelle au fils de son mari.59 His excesses end when he falls in love with a young married woman whose husband, much older than herself, is abroad: "Il devint pur en trouvant l'amour d'une femme mariée." 60 This idyll lasts two years, at which time the return of the husband forces a separation of the lovers. Mariaker now tries to interest himself in political life, but, again like Werther, he finds a subordinate position intolerable. Tormented and restless, "son roman, c'était Werther." 61 For a moment he is again happy as

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it becomes possible to see his mistress again. Her death soon unsettles his mind and he is placed in an asylum. After his recovery he vanishes, and it is thought that he may have gone to Norway or to America. The Mariaker sonnets of Boulay-Paty show that an increased knowledge in France of German literature and thought had caused the late eighteenth-century picture of the naïve and simple German to be replaced by one of a gloomy and introspective people. Mariaker can dream that ". . . près d'une Allemande au cœur mélancolique, Je porte le nom de Werther." 62 Several of his sonnets have mottoes from Werther, and in others motifs from it are freely elaborated. Thus Mariaker's blue coat is a fetish: J'étais comme Werther, et j'avais un frac bleu Qui m'était resté cher par-dessus toute chose, Et j'aimais à le voir, et mon esprit morose Changeait, et mon cœur froid brûlait comme du feu. Ce frac était celui qu'à son premier aveu Je portais, lors d'un soir d'avril, dans une prose Plus douce que des vers, elle me dit la cause De son trouble avec moi.63

When his "Charlotte" dances with one of his friends, he protests, in a somewhat lighter vein: Eh! quoi! vous l'avez vue, et vous avez dansé Avec elle, Hippolyte! A vez-vous bien pensé A moi, pauvre exilé souffrant et toujours triste, Qui des Werthers peut-être augmenterai la liste.64

Although Boulay-Paty constantly names Werther among typical and even symbolic romantic figures such as Byron or René, he also knew that Goethe was the author of Wilhelm Meister and a lyric poet. Mariaker writes:

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Et déjà nous causions des lettres de Werther, De Valérie aussi (Madame Kriidener, Cette femme inspirée), et puis du vieux Goethe Dont la prose est encore une œuvre de poète.65 French romanticism was not inspired solely by sentimental literature, yet even with interests so wide as to embrace world literature it still had a place for Werther. T o be sure, the romanticists thought of Goethe chiefly as the author of Werther and of the "romantic" dramas Götz, Egmont, and Faust,66 so that Boulay-Paty possessed an appreciation of Goethe's significance as yet not general in France. In Êlie Mariaker, however, the theme does not permit any insight into the author's reactions to Goethe's later works, but the following lines, perhaps more than any others, show how completely he had assimilated Werther: Bientôt j'étais Werther, je tenais ma Lolotte Dans mes bras, nous volions; tout bas je me jurais De ne jamais laisser celle que j'aimerais, Qui m'aimerait aussi, danser avec un autre Cette danse où vraiment toute femme est la vôtre; Puis je recréais tout: l'orage se formait, Il pleuvait dans les champs, et l'air frais embaumait, Nous étions tous les deux debout à la croisée; L'oeil au ciel, et sa main sur la mienne posée, Elle disait: "Klopstock!" 67 With the French romande poets Werther achieved its place in the canon of sentimental literature. Even though there were to be periods when romanticism and sentimentality would be completely repudiated, Werther would remain a symbol of tragic intensity of feeling. In the preface to his drama Chatterton (1834), Alfred de Vigny, protesting against society's indifference to the material sufferings of genius, cites Werther and SaintPreux as representatives of "les peines du cœur et les

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infortunes idéales." 68 It was Sainte-Beuve, however, who formulated an interpretation of Werther which placed it apart from and above all novels of sentiment from Richardson and Rousseau through the pre-romantic spate of sentimental literature. He observes in his introduction to an edition of Madame de Kriidener's Valérie: "Werther se tuerait quand même il n'aimerait pas Charlotte; il se tuerait pour l'infini, pour l'absolu, pour la nature; Gustave ne meurt en effet que d'aimer Valérie." 69 Generations of readers had felt the peculiar intensity of Werther, so that even as one of many sentimental novels it had gained a special place in the history of literature. It was the great idealism of the very human young Werther that made him so sympathetic, and it was this idealism, as Sainte-Beuve realized, which made it impossible for Werther to accept the world as it was. It is one achievement of French romanticism to have seen that Werther stands alone in its genre as a representation of the eternal conflict of the real with the ideal, of the individual with his environment, and even of being with non-being. WERTHER POETRY AFTER ROMANTICISM

Literary romanticism in France was at its height in the late 1820's and early 1830's. Its achievements were great, for it had provided a generation of frustrated intellectuals with values which could be enthusiastically cultivated, but its death knell was sounded by the July Revolution of 1830, which, although it inaugurated no radical political and social institutions, opened up visions of hope and paths of activity for those who believed in economic and political progress. As it became possible to take a constructive interest in contemporary France, preoccupation with the romantic past and with exotic

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romanticisms ended. The heroes of the realistic and social novels which soon appeared are very different from Werther. The ambitious Rastignac of Balzac's La Peau de Chagrin (1831) makes fun of "la sensiblerie allemande," while the theme of La Comédie humaine seems to be the struggle for economic, social, and political power. There was no place for romanticism in everyday life, and the once Wertherian Flaubert has left a cruel picture of Madame Bovary and of Frédéric Moreau, the hero of L'Education sentimentale.70 With the post-romantic generation in mind, a poet could invoke the René whom Gautier in 1832 had called Werther's "frère d'alliance": Où donc es-tu, rêveur que j'ai vu disparaître? Tu serais bien changé, si tu pouvais renaître: D'autres soins désormais t'agiteraient le sang. Dans ton vieil agenda, poétique jeune homme, Pour inscrire aujourd'hui le cours du trois pour cent, Sur un rêve effacé tu passerais la gomme! 71 Although Werther was not forgotten, its hero could no longer represent a living type. The renunciation of the romantic ideal by one of the greatest masters of the romantic lyric and drama, Alfred de Musset, shows how strong the tide of realism was. Musset, too young to have known the Napoleonic era, began his literary career when romanticism was the order of the day. By 1834, matured by his relationship with George Sand, he could write: "Je lis Werther et la Nouvelle Héloïse. Je dévore toutes ces folies sublimes dont je me suis tant moqué." 72 After the tragic disillusionment which is reflected in La Confession d'un enfant du siècle (1836), he repudiated romantic sentimentality: J'aimais les romans à vingt ans. Aujourd'hui je n'ai plus le temps;

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Le bien perdu rend l'homme avare. J ' y veux voir moins loin, mais plus clair; Je me console de Werther Avec la reine de Navarre. Et pourquoi pas? Cr oyez-vous donc, Quand on n'a qu'une page en tête Qu'il en faille chercher si long, Et que tant parler soit honnête? Qui des deux est stérilité, Ou l'antique sobriété Qui n'écrit que ce qu'elle pense, Ou la moderne intempérance Qui croit penser dès qu'elle écrit?

Musset's condemnation of romanticism, symbolized by Werther, represents a return to a long French tradition of clarity and mesure. What Musset is protesting against is what La Harpe, writing of Werther over sixty years earlier, had termed "les défauts et les beautés" of German authors, a richness of feeling and imagination that left formal and logical patterns obscure. It is also significant that Musset deliberately expresses a preference for a writer of the French renaissance; he is not demanding a modern realism, but he does want a French ideal.™ In the age of nationalism the author of Werther could also be rejected as an alien influence. The prestige of Goethe in France never suffered a permanent setback after the romanticists had once created an almost popular impression of his greatness, but he gradually ceased to represent only romanticism. The judgments of the Young Germans, whose condemnation of political indifference was not a peculiarly German manifestation, were known in France, and a new picture of Goethe was formed. Heine's interpretation of Goethe as a sensualist, which was formulated in the phrase "der grosze Heide," and which was offered French readers

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of the journal L'Europe littéraire in 1833 and of Heine's De Γ Allemagne in 1835, neither emphasized the author of Werther nor the poet who could be profoundly moved by feeling. For the critic of Enault's Werther translation (1856) Goethe is a realist and the objective author of Dichtung und Wahrheit: M. Enault croit à la vérité, à la profoundeur de la passion que Gœthe a ressentie pour Charlotte. Nous sommes loin de partager cet avis, et l'on peut supposer, sans crainte de se tromper, que Gœthe a voulu par lui-même étudier l'amour . . . L'homme qui se félicite d'avoir pu étouffer son amour pour Frédérike . . . et n'a jamais su répondre à tant de passions jeunes et sincères, cet homme n'a jamais dû sortir de cette sérénité olympienne pour laquelle les Allemands

ont créé un mot: Goettísche

Ruhe, le calme de Gœthe.74

Those who thought of Goethe as the Olympian found it hard to realize that he had once been Wertherian, and doubted the sincerity of a youthful work like Werther. Those who remembered Goethe's early passionate outpourings found it difficult to accept as genuine his later classicism. Joseph Autran, author of the already quoted lines to René, denied Goethe's profundity and condemned his egotism, seeing in the latter a unifying element of his whole career: Ayant lu ton Werther,

on se tuait; ma foi,

Tant pis! c'était toujours de la gloire pour toi. Chaque mort par la corde ou l'eau, chaque cervelle Qui sautait, te servait de réclame nouvelle.

These lines, written in the anti-German atmosphere which existed in France after the war with Prussia, are put in Goethe's own mouth.75 One of Autran's Sonnets Capricieux (1873) is entitled " À Werther," and it shows how remote the time of romantic enthusiasm for things German had become:

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Quand j'étais jouvenceau, c'est-à-dire imbécile, Je me suis enivré longtemps de tes douleurs. C'était la mode alors, on pleurait de tes pleurs; On portait un habit étroit et difficile. T o n livre sous le bras, je sortais de la ville, J'allais furtivement me blottir dans les fleurs; Et j'aurais fit sauter ma cervelle inutile, Si j'avais eu sur moi des pistolets meilleurs. Je regrette aujourd'hui ces larmes idiotes; Je n'ai plus désormais, guéri de mes travers, D'autre poudre aux cheveux que celle des hivers; Et je ris en songeant que, pour plaire aux Charlottes, Vers l'aube de ce siècle, on portait des culottes, Avec des bottes à revers!

Werther, however, still remained an unforgotten and unforgettable symbol of romanticism. In France the name of Werther remains popularly known because Massenet's lyric drama has won a permanent place in the operatic repertory. For the educated reader Werther is significant not only because of its association with the name of Goethe, but also because it is part and parcel of the background and heritage of French romanticism. Roger Allard's use of an allusion to Werther in the following lines demands of the reader more than familiarity with Massenet's hero or with a rejected lover whose Charlotte "went on cutting bread and butter": (octobre:)

Je vois la campagne cauchoise Se fleurir d'un coup de fusil, Bouquet pâle auquel cherche noise Un zéphir à demi transi: Est-ce un braconnier dans la plaine Ou le pistolet de Werther? Mon cœur est ivre de sa peine, Ma bouche a le goût de l'hiver.

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The valleys and cliffs of Caux, seen in October, arouse forebodings of their dreariness in winter and recall the landscapes of the latter part of Werther; the fall of the year carries in it the same germ of death as was in Werther: these impressions are certainly more intended than any of thoughts of suicide, and it is even possible that Allard wishes his reader to sense a suffering from isolation, here physical as well as spiritual, comparable to Werther's. With Allard the story of the use of the Werther theme in French poetry has been carried well into the twentieth century. It is evident that, regardless of the prestige of Goethe, Werther not only remains important because of its historical significance in the history of French literature, but that in France it also belongs to that select number of books which can properly be called living classics. T o the English reader Werther is at best a fact of literary history; to the German reader it is one part of the works of Goethe; to the French reader it is these things and even more, for to him it has also countless literary associations. NOTES 1. See F. Baldensperger, Goethe en France (Paris, 1904), première partie. 2. See P. Van Tieghem, Ossian en France (Paris, 1917), chapitre iv, "Ossian et le milieu poétique français (1760-1775)." 3. J. F. de La Harpe, Lycée, ou Cours de littérature ancienne et moderne (Paris, XII), 14:384. Printed originally in Journal de politique et de littérature, 5 janvier 1778, p. 41. 4. AlmanachLittéraire

(Paris, 1779), p. 178.

î. See E. D. Seeber and H . H. H. Remak, "The First French Translation of 'The Deserted Village,' " Modem Language Review, 41:62-67 (1946). 6. La Harpe, Lycée, 14:383, declares: "Ce sont les Français qui ont fait la fortune du poème d'Abel et des Idylles de Gessner. Notre langue étant beaucoup plus connue que la langue allemande, ces

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ouvrages ont été plus généralement lus dans la traduction que dans l'original." 7. [Antoine de Courmand,] Les Styles Poëme en quatre chants (Paris, 1781), p. 22. (Chant premier. Le Simple.) 8. René Louis Girardin in his De la Composition des paysages (Génève, 1777), p. v). 9. Erster Theil, "am 4. May 1774." 10. Cf. Werther passage quoted with Girardin, Composition, p. SOf. — Among the monuments in the park at Ermenonville, which was completed towards 1776, are those to Shenstone (Girardin had been in Scotland), Vergil, Theocritus, Thomson, and Gessner; cf. A Martin-Decaen, Le dernier Arm de J.-J. Rousseau Le Marquis de Girardin (Paris, 1912), p. 21. 11. Mrs. Montolieu, a friend of the poet laureate H . J. Pye and not, as indicated in the catalogue of the Library of Congress, Isabelle M. Montolieu, a French novelist whose Wertherian Caroline de Lichtfield was itself translated into English. 12. Les Délassemens poétiques par M** (Lausanne, 1788), pp. iii-iv. 13. Ibid., p. 117. 14. Ibid., p. 129. 15. Hartig, p. 35. 16. Ibid., p. 42. 17. A third Bridel, Jean-Louis (1759-1821), paraphrased passages from Werther in his novel, Les Infortunes du jeune Chevalier de la Lande, mort à Lausanne [n.b.] le 1 Février 1Π8 (Paris, 1781), which also contains references to Werther. It is perhaps significant that in some of his paraphrases he shifts into verse; cf. passages quoted by A. Steiner, "Ein vergessener Epigone Werthers in Frankreich," Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen, 165:224-228 (1934). 18. Α. V. Arnault, Souvenirs d'un Sexagénaire (Paris, 1833), 1:140141. 19. See Arnault, Souvenirs, 1:139. 20. Discussing the condemnation of suicide as a form of desertion, Arnault asks: ". . . Es-tu son général? Son général est Dieu, notre général à tous. Laisse-lui le soin de juger ce fuyard cjui va paraître devant lui, mais dans lequel, ainsi que l'a très sensement dit M. Gœthe, le conseiller aulique [Arnault's note: Passions de Werther], il pourrait bien ne voir qu'un fils impatient qui a pris le plus court chemin pour revenir chez son père." (Œuvres [Paris, 1827], 6:302.) 21. Œuvres complètes (Paris [i.e. La Haye], 1819), 4:336. 22. Karamzin's Poslanie k zhenshchinam ("Letter to the Ladies" — 1795) contains the observation that the unhappy Werther is not a general rule; see Russian Poetry.

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23. See Andrieux, Œuvres (Paris, 1818), 3:316. 24. La Décade philosophique (An III), 4:162 [i.e., 1(4): 162]. 25. This account of the organization of literary life in Paris at the end of the eighteenth century is based on widely scattered contemporary allusions in satiric verse and memoirs, and on reports of meetings of various lycées as found in La Décade philosophique. In addition to Les Veillées des Muses of the Lycée des Étrangers, the series Mémoires secrets de la République des lettres (first volume, Paris, An VIII) gives much information about the Lycée des Étrangers, also known as the Lycée Thellusson or the Lycée Marbeuf because it long occupied the Thellusson house in the Rue Marbeuf. The Lycée républicain continued without interruption through the French Revolution the traditions of an athenaeum founded in 1785. 26. Les Veillées des Muses (Seconde Année), p. 132. 27. See Italian Poetry: BALOCHI. Werther Cantata Fer Musica heads the collection of Balochi's Poesie, which includes a sonnet "All' ombra di Rousseau" and, in penultimate position, a four-line condemnation of suicide ("Quando la vita è grave II vil si da la morte; Vive lottando il forte, Ε Ί rio destín non pave"). Balochi, poet and stage director at the Opéra and the Teatro Italiano (Opéra Comique) in Paris, wrote several librettos for Rossini and both the text and much of the music of Robert le Diable. 28. J. Labiée, Mémoires d'un homme de lettres (Paris, 1825), p. 333. 29. Even the review of Bridel's Délassemens poétiques in the Neue Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften (1792), 47:147-148, contains no mention of his Werther poem. 30. Labiée, Mémoires, pp. 245-246. 31. R. A. P. Alissan de Chazet, Mémoires souvenirs œuvres et portraits (Paris, 1837), 3:237. 32. Petite Encyclopédie poétique [t.ll], Héroïdes, Elégies, Idylles (Paris, 1805), p. 70. 33. Œuvres complètes de Mme la baronne de Staël (Paris, 1820), 4:345-346. 34. Quoted, Baldensperger, Goethe en France, p. 28. 35. Jacopo Ortis appeared in Italian in 1798, the first edition authorized by Foscolo in 1802. The new translation of 1814, by de Senones, was entitled variously Le Werther de Venise, Le Proscrit, and Lettres de Jacopo Ortis; the second of these titles recalls that of Nodier's Wertherian novel Les Proscrits (1802). 36. See Baldensperger, Goethe en France, p. 38, for the review in Le Mercure de France. 37. One is reminded of the treatment of sentiment in plays of Lessing, who was also an important critic. 38. Henri Potez, L'Elégie en France avant le Romantisme (Paris, 1897), p. 357.

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39. Parts ii and iv appeared in 1823. Part i, published posthumously, is an incomplete version of an original introductory section of the work. Part iii, which appeared in 1833, is a nationalistic drama loosely integrated with the other parts of Dziady. ("Dziady" means "forefathers"; the usual English translation of the title of Mickiewicz's work is Forefathers' Eve.) 40. The motto of part ii, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy," had been used by Byron for his Manfred. 41. The scene with the dead comprises part ii. 42. The story of Gustaw as told to the priest constitutes part iv. 43. The passage of time is indicated by an accelerated striking of the hours; each hour is commented on by one of the characters. Hugo later used the same device in Marion Delorme (1831). 44. A. Mickiewicz, Chefs-d'œuvre poétiques (Paris, 1924), p. 253. (The translation is that of Mickiewicz and his son.) 45. Ibid., p. 256. 46. Ibid., pp. 227-228. 47. See K. Wojciechowski, Werter u Polsce (Lwów [etc.], 1925), pp. 106-107 (chapter ν of this study treats Mickiewicz's Dziady). 48. Duval's Werther sings his love of Lolotte in tailor-language: Mon attachement commença En lui voyant, d'une main leste, Broder une petite veste, Pour donner à son grand-papa.

Elle était si gentille, Moi, pas du tout subtil, Je vis peu le péril . . . Et l'amour vint de fil En aiguille.

(Werther (Paris, 1825), p. 11 — see French Drama: GEORGES DUVAL.) 49. Metternich tells in his Mémoires how Valabrègue felicitated Goethe on the success of Werther as interpreted by the comedian Potier. 50. "Méditations poétiques, Seconde Préface: Des Destinées de la poésie," Œuvres complètes de Lamartine (Paris, 1862), 1:31. 51. "Sixième Méditation," Œuvres complètes, pp. 101-102. 52. Werther, Zweyter Theil, "am 6. Dez." 53. Werther, Erster Theil, "am 10. May." 54. A. Sainte-Beuve, Poésies (Paris, 1863), 2:48. (The quotation is a translation of Werther, Zweyter Theil, "am 26. October.") 55. Poésies, p. 50. 56. Born the same year as Sainte-Beuve, Boulay-Paty was also five years older when he published his equivalent to Joseph Delorme. 57. E. Boulay-Paty, Elie Mariaker (Paris, 1834), p. xiii. (The allusion is to Werther, Zweyter Theil, "am 20. Jan.") 58. For Wertherian echoes in Gautier's early poems, see R. Jasinski, Les Années romantiques de Th. Gautier (Paris, 1929), pp. 50ff.

i58 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

67. 68. 69. 70.

71. 72. 73.

74. 75.

THE TESTAMENT OF WERTHER

Elie Mariaker, p. xxvii. Page xiv. Page Ixv. "Rêves," p. 6. "[Sonnet] XXII," p. 94. Page 97. "[Elégie] II," p. 109. These are the works mentioned in a poem to Goethe by Hugo's brother-in-law which appeared in Les Annales romantiques, 1830, a collection to which Nodier, "Joseph Delorme," Lamartine, Dumas, Delavigne, and other romanticists contributed; see French Poetry: FOUCHER. See also Baldensperger, Goethe en France, "Deuxième partie, chap. II, La Réforme dramatique." Elie Mariaker, p. 114. Alfred de Vigny, Œuvres complètes, Théâtre (Paris, 1927), 2:238. "Notice sur Madame de Kriidener." In: B. J . von Kriidener, Valérie (Paris, 1840), p. xvii. Flaubert lets Moreau reveal the conventionalism of which his romanticism is but one component by having him observe that in his love there has been all that is condemned as literary exaggeration and by letting him declare: "Je comprends les, Werther que ne dégoûtent pas les tartines de Charlotte." (L'Education sentimentale [Paris, Société Les Belles Lettres, 1942], 2:280.) — Striking parallels to Werther in Flaubert's early works have been noted by L. Degoumois, Flaubert à l'Ecole de Goethe (Beilage zum Jahresbericht über das Städtische Gymnasium Bern 1924; Genève, 1924), pp. 38ff. Joseph Autran, "Sonnets Capricieux. A René," Œuvres complètes (Paris, 1875), 4:126. Letter to George Sand, 10 mai 1834. (.Revue de Paris, 3:328 [4ème année, 1897]). It is ironie that Marguerite de Navarre's "diffusion languissante" is considered a marked characteristic of her writing by G. Lanson, Histoire de la littérature française (23ème édition, Paris [1931]), p. 239. Athenaeum français, 5:123 (16 février 1856). Autran's antipathy to Goethe antedated the Franco-Prussian W a r ; see Ancey & Eustache, Joseph Autran (Paris [ 1906] ), pp. 149, 160, who explain his attitude as an attempt to compensate for his lack of imaginative power.

ν

Werther in the Drama THE DRAMATIC VALUE OF WERTHER

ΓΊ ν the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the stage J made demands upon dramatists similar to those made upon scenario writers today. It was necessary that the programs of theaters be constantly varied, for most cities were small and it was impossible to show a play to a full house more than a few times at most. Willing authors naturally supplied the demand for quantity rather than for quality of dramatic productions. Many theater directors accordingly retained writers whose duty it was to revise and adapt plays or to write new ones suited to the taste of the local public and to the talents of the theatrical troupe for which they worked. As a result of the constant pressure upon dramatic writers, it was almost inevitable that when novels fell they rose again in plays. This was especially true in Germany.1 Because of the shortage of original plays, as much as because of the great popular appeal of the Werther theme in an age of sentimentality, many more serious Werther plays were performed on German stages than on those of all other countries combined. The English Werter of Reynolds and the Italian Verter of Sografi were both successful during the period that Goethe's novel was enjoying its greatest popularity with English and Italian readers, but these plays were the productions of in-

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THE T E S T A M E N T OF WERTHER

experienced writers who had chosen a seasonable theme and to all intents and purposes exhausted it. None of the various Werther plays by French authors held the stage for long,2 although the twentieth century has seen at least two, the more ambitious of which, even with Sarah Bernhardt in the title role, was heaped with ridicule by the critics.3 On the other hand, there were six serious German dramatizations of Werther, not to mention a tragical ballet and two solemn fireworks versions.4 For want of better entertainment, the public was forced to content itself with adaptations of the current best-seller. The critics, however, realized that so-called Werther plays were only dramatic performances. As a reviewer noted of Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, ein Trauerspiel in drey Auszügen, "[Es] läszt sich spielen, aber nicht — bewundern." 5 Furthermore, it was fully appreciated that a dialogued novel is not necessarily a drama. A German critic of Goué's Masuren stated: Es ist seit kurzem von einigen Kunstrichtern unsern Dichtern sehr weislich gerathen worden, Romane aus Schauspielen zu verfertigen, und nicht mehr, wie sie bisher gethan, aus einem Roman Stoff zu einem Schauspiele zu nehmen. Denn dieser Gedanke verunglückt fast immer; selten ist ein solches Stück mehr als ein kaltes, schales Geschwätz, aus dem Roman wohl gar wörtlich abgeschrieben, und nur in Dialog abgetheilt . . . [Verfasser obigen Stücks] hat wörtlich ganze Seiten aus Werthers Leiden abgeschrieben. Ueberdem hätte Göthe nicht gewuszt, dasz sich sein Stoff besser zu einem Roman, als zu einem Drama schickte, er hätte uns diese Geschichte sicherlich in einem Trauerspiel vorgelegt.®

The same objection was later directed against the French lyric drama of Dej aure and Kreutzer, given at the Théâtre Italien in 1792: "Si nos auteurs dramatiques ne peuvent plus rien inventer, au moins qu'ils choisissent

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l6l

bien leurs sujets, et qu'ils laissent dans les bibliothèques ceux qu'il est impossible de transporter sur la scène." 7 Many writers were tempted to use Werther as the substance of a drama, but then found that the novel for which they had cherished such enthusiasm was not adaptable to the stage. Alexandre Duval, a successful French playwright of the early nineteenth century, was one of those who did not succumb to the temptation of finishing a work that would have done justice neither to himself nor to his inspiration. His account of a youthful attempt to dramatize Werther is a pragmatic statement of the principle that there must be some balance between subject matter and literary form: Dans son Werther, [Goethe] m'avait tellement ému, que plus d'une fois, avant de songer à suivre la carrière du théâtre, j'essayai de porter sur la scène ce sujet terrible; mais à peine avais-je fait quelques scènes, que je me sentais découragé par la froideur du dialogue, et l'horreur de mon dénouement. Il en est de ce sujet comme de tant d'autres qui nous sont donnés par les romans. Ils nous paraissent très-dramatiques lorsque nous les lisons, et ils cessent de l'être du moment où nous voulons les porter sur la scène.8 There were enough writers less scrupulous, or with less insight, however, to supply the unimaginative and uncritical public with the three-dimensional Werther imitations that it desired.9 In Wilhelm Meister Goethe expresses ideas on the distinction between the epic and dramatic forms very similar to those held by the writers already quoted. One of the conclusions reached by Wilhelm and Serio in a discussion of the problem is: "Im Roman sollen vorzüglich Gesinnungen und Begebenheiten vorgestellt werden; im Drama Charaktere und Thaten." 10 Examined in the light of this axiom, Werther fits exactly the definition of

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a novel and of non-drama. It is a study of states of mind {Gesinnungen). Its protagonist, unproductive as an artist and incapable of coping with the forces of society, constantly shrinks from activity (Thaten). An aphorism in the Schlegels' Athenaeum was perhaps written with Werther in mind: "Der Selbstmord ist nur eine Begebenheit, selten eine Handlung." u Werther's suicide is an effect, an incident (Begebenheit), the perfect expression of the final subjectivization of his world outlook. There are characters in the novel, but they are not dramatic. They are not Charaktere in Goethe's special sense, for they are either passive or move on separated planes of existence. Lotte, with all her apparent strength of character, follows a course of relatively slight resistance in all her relationships with Werther, while Albert almost completely fails to understand him. Werther, then, not only does little in an external sense, but does that little unresisted. Considered from other points of view as well, Werther still fails to offer material for a drama. The only unity which it possesses is that of Werther's own character as portrayed over a period of a year and three-quarters. His tragic guilt, an inability to compromise between the real and the ideal, takes the form of imperious but impossible demands on the individual and on society, and this hubris is self-punished. The tragic action is the inner change which takes place in Werther, and this change appears outwardly only during the last months of his life as his inability to control his feelings when Lotte is present.12 Werther's tragic fate, the inevitability of which is dramatically emphasized by an early introduction of the suicide motif, is plausible only because its gradual development into a destructive force is traced from stage to stage.13 A series of separate scenes must seem jerky and

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unconvincing: it is only since the advent of the talking film that a successful dramatization of Werther has been achieved." It is impossible to provide transitional expositions in a Werther play without introducing numerous incidental figures whose connection with Werther and the other main characters is inevitably remote and superfluous, unless the even worse alternative of self-characterization and self-exposition is chosen. The following analyses of Werther plays, each typical of a different form of drama, will show that only when playwrights disregarded the character of Werther as given them in Goethe's novel did they to any degree achieve dramatic movement or create dramatic suspense. A DUTCH NEOCLASSICAL

TRAGEDY

Almost completely dominated by the rules of French classical tragedy is a Dutch drama in Alexandrines by J . A . Backer, Alar dus, of De Xelfmoord door Lief de ( 1786) ,15 The only traditional unity which is disregarded is that of place; in two acts the scene is Alardus' chamber and in the other three the house of Charlotte and her husband Ernestus. The action lasts approximately twenty-four hours and is limited to the account of Alardus' relationship to Charlotte and his ultimate suicide because of her refusal to grant him her love. Backer explains in his preface that the well-known and effective story of the young Werther has inspired his play. 16 Since he accepts Voltaire's theory of the value of local color, the action has been located in Holland, necessitating corresponding changes in detail. Backer justifies Alardus' (Werther's) stage suicide with arguments from eighteenth-century dramatic theory. Too close adherence to rules results in a stiffness aesthetically displeasing; "I cannot neglect pointing out," he writes, "that the true

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rules of art must be derived from nature." 17 The older dramaturgy would have condemned "an action so violent that I should have preferred to omit it except that I would have weakened my play too much." 1 8 It would be a grave fault to have Alardus die off-stage, Backer concludes, since there is nothing so unnatural as to have characters remain before the audience when they would naturally rush to the dying man; he has therefore sacrificed convention to realism and avoided an absurd fifth act like that of Addison's Cato. The important dramatic persons in Backer's play are Alardus, Charlotte's secret lover; Ernestus, her husband; Charlotte herself; and their respective confidants Karel, Willem, and Sofia. The first act gives a full exposition of the situation. From an opening monologue and the following exchange of words she has with her husband it is clear that Charlotte married Ernestus despite a preference for the absent Alardus. Since Alardus' return she has seen him often, thus arousing the jealousy of Ernestus, who loves her passionately. She determines to restore domestic tranquillity by saying a definitive farewell to Alardus. Her friend Sofia arrives and Ernestus soon leaves to learn the latest news of the day. Sofia has brought a letter from Alardus, who wishes to pay a farewell visit before he commits suicide. He is admitted. In the scene that follows he insists that he can no longer live. The exposition and the conversation between Alardus and Charlotte end as the doorbell rings, announcing Ernestus' return. The second act opens as Alardus writes his last letters in anticipation of death. It is morning. He sends for his friend Karel: "Zoo hij geen middel weet is dit de laatste morgen." 1 3 Alardus insists he must see and embrace

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Charlotte once more and Karel, who at first refuses to arrange the interview, is persuaded to carry the message when Alardus goes to the length of pointing a pistol at himself. Karel has interpreted the allusions to a farewell to mean that his friend intends to travel in order to forget Charlotte. As he is about to go off on his mission, Ernestus' confidant Willem arrives. He reports that Charlotte has no longer any feeling for Alardus except compassion (meêdoogen). Karel therefore urges Alardus to start on his trip at once and so avoid the pain of saying good-by. Alardus agrees that parting from Charlotte would indeed be too agonizing; he will just send her a letter and shoot himself. A frightened Karel promises to obtain Charlotte's consent to a final meeting, adding that he anticipates accompanying Alardus on his imminent journey. At the beginning of the third act Charlotte declines to go out with Ernestus and Willem for the afternoon. No sooner is she alone than Sofia joins her. Charlotte reports that Willem has found a passionate letter to her from Alardus and, as her husband's friend, has warned her to behave more carefully. Karel then brings Alardus' new request. Although she realizes that it can do no good to see him, she accedes to the wish. (Willem sends a note saying that he and Ernestus are dining out.) After dinner (three o'clock — Act I V ) Sofia leaves and Alardus arrives. Charlotte struggles free from his impetuous embrace, listens to his protestations of love and his threats of suicide, but refuses to acknowledge that her feelings for him are more than friendly. After she has prevailed upon him to go, she weeps. T o the returning Sofia she explains that her love for Alardus has really been as platonic as that which she feels for Sofia.

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T h e last act is the dramatization of Werther's suicide. Alardus has again written a last last-farewell (allarlaatst vaarwel) and sent his servant with a year's allowance to the poor for whom he will no longer be able to provide. Karel pays a short visit, then says good-night. A servant brings the pistols Alardus had asked Ernestus to lend him. T h e y were handed him by Charlotte with the words, "Groet ook uwen heer van mig." 20 Alone at last, Alardus looks out and apostrophizes the constellation of the Dipper, kisses Charlotte's silhouette, and shoots himself. Karel and the servant rush in. A repentant Alardus fears it is now too late to hope for divine forgiveness. Karel has greater faith in God's mercy. Charlotte pardons Alardus unconditionally. As the latter dies, he assures Ernestus of the virtue of his wife. Backer claims in his preface that he has achieved consistent characterization and natural motivation. Actually it is impossible to know exactly what Charlotte's relation to Alardus has been until she tells him point-blank in the fourth act that she can never be more than a friend, for in her monologues and in conversations with Sofia it is apparent that she is stifling her love for him. T h e great conflict — "o strid van liefde en pligt! " 21 — is entirely within Charlotte. It is she who must sacrifice her honor, or her love and the life of the man she loves. If her attitude from the beginning has really been one of elegiac submissiveness precluding any lapse from virtue on her part, there can be, given Alardus' character, no change in the situation and no dramatic suspense.22 Apart from these weaknesses, which arise from Backer's characterization, it is difficult to understand how Charlotte, knowing Alardus' suicidal intent, can hand the pistols to his servant with a friendly greeting. In fact, it is not explained w h y he should borrow pistols in the

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fifth act after having threatened to shoot himself with his own pistol in the second. The motif of suicide is repeated until it is ridiculous. In the scene in which he reproves his wife for disregarding appearances in her relations with Alardus, Ernestus declares that his jealousy had driven him to desperation at times: "Wat misdaad zelfmoord is, niets hieldt mij in het leven." 23 A f e w minutes later Charlotte reads the letter in which Alardus announces his intended suicide (I, 5). He enters almost immediately; when asked by Charlotte never to address her again, he draws a knife and threatens to stab himself unless she listen to him (I, 7). In the second act he forces Karel to agree to carry his message to Charlotte by threatening to shoot himself with his pistol (II, 4). Not to enumerate the instances when Alardus merely mentions suicide, one may note that he again utilizes his pistol in the same way when Karel withdraws his offer to take a message to Charlotte (II, 7). Karel is likewise willing to die (by dagger) if Alardus will only renounce plans of suicide (II, 7). In his fourth-act scene with Charlotte, Alardus again draws his dagger — a pistol cannot be worn as an article of dress — but only in the final act is the deed done. Like the frequent last farewells, or the frequent mention Karel makes of attractive places Alardus never intends to travel to,24 these threats must seem childish and ultimately become ridiculously ineffectual. Backer believed that he had chosen a subject suited to dramatization: "In my opinion it is fitting for a person of feeling, touching to a true heart, and, however lamentable in its conclusion, doubly worthy of being brought to the stage." 25 His own attempt, at least, was a failure. It is neither a plausible psychological drama nor an interestingly constructed tragedy of intrigue.26

THE T E S T A M E N T OF WERTHER

A FRENCH MIDDLE-CLASS TRAGEDY

The earliest Werther play is a French prose tragedy in the English-influenced tradition that had taken hold in France since the middle of the eighteenth century. Entitled Les Malheurs de Vamour (1775), its author was a Swiss, probably either Johann Rudolf Sinner or Vinzenz Bernhard Tscharner.27 It is noteworthy as the most widely imitated and most frequently acted serious Werther drama. Since it antedated any French translation of Werther, the author prefaced it with a brief avertissement which summarizes the novel, dwelling particularly upon Werther's last interview with Charlotte, and which notes the elements of truth incorporated in its plot. The exposition of Les Malheurs de Γ amour introduces Manstein (Werther) as he arrives to visit a curé who is his friend. Since he is on his way to Italy, he declines to stay more than a day. "Un destin ennemi me condamne à vivre errant sur la terre," he observes in a fatalistic discourse on man's helplessness before universal forces.28 His friend urges him to learn higher wisdom from the good Baron Waldeck, a neighbor who lives simply and happily with his daughter Charlotte and her worthy husband Meiling. Manstein now explains that he hesitates to stay near these people because at a ball he has fallen in love with Charlotte and because Meiling showed signs of jealousy when he was informed of Manstein's former attentions to his wife. He certainly does not wish to call during Melling's absence. The curé warns Manstein that failure to pay a visit would itself arouse suspicions, and assures him that Meiling has often spoken kindly of him. At this moment the Baron and his daughter pass by and learn of Manstein's presence. He is persuaded to come to the chateau. There is a hunt scheduled; Manstein's only

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regret is that Charlotte will not be one of the party. The second act opens with Charlotte alone at the piano. She muses on a confused dream she has had. In it her husband flew into a rage, a shot was fired, Manstein's funeral procession passed by. She thinks it may signify a hunting accident. Manstein, who has lost his way during the hunt but has managed to get back to the château, suddenly enters. Conscious of the proprieties, Charlotte sends for her friend the Baronne de Graz and suggests that to pass the time Manstein read something with her. They decide on Le Comte de Comminges,29 one of Charlotte's favorite stories. After a discussion of whether the count or Adélaïde, the two lovers of the novel, is the more to be pitied, Manstein begins to read the romantic tale. Adélaïde, long imprisoned by a jealous husband, is liberated at his death. Her former lover has become a member of a monastic order. She enters a nearby convent without letting him know of her presence. When she discovers that he still carries her picture, she prays to God that he may be pardoned, and thus, thinking of his salvation, she is herself purified. On her deathbed she reveals her identity to Comminges and his fellow monks. He bathes her hands in tears as she tells her story — and so does Manstein those of Charlotte. Charlotte withdraws. Manstein falls prostrate. At this crisis Meiling returns home and greets Manstein coldly. Subsequently he behaves strangely toward his wife. Fears for Manstein and her husband keep Charlotte from sleeping that night. A distant noise makes her believe a duel is being fought. The curé suddenly arrives with the news of Manstein's suicide. He recounts a discussion of suicide they have held, and brings two letters from Manstein. In the one to the curé is a request for burial beneath his favorite lime trees; the other assures

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Meiling of his wife's virtue. Meiling reproaches himself for his unjustified suspicions, and the curé utters the final words of the play: "Allons Messieurs, cachons à l'univers ce triste événement, & adorons les voies de la Providence." 30 The reviewer for the Frankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigen wrote of Les Malheurs de Γ amour, "Wir halten es für das beste dramatische Stück von denen, die durch die Leiden Werthers entstanden sind." Manstein more closely approximates the hero of Goethe's novel than does either Sografi's Verter, who plays a subordinate role, or Backer's Alardus, who is the too-familiar type of passionate lover ready for any intrigue. Manstein is not unhappy merely because he secretly loves Charlotte, but because he finds in the external world no escape from self. On the other hand, he lacks Werther's idealism, Werther's enthusiasms, Werther's love of nature, all of which defy succinct dramatization. As a play, Les Malheurs de Γamour is technically remarkable for clear expositions achieved with use of only one confidant. The author has avoided merely theatrical plot complications successfully, but his work is more narrative than dramatic. Realizing that the Ossian scene made sense only if a reader or spectator had a full picture of both Werther's and Charlotte's states of mind, he substituted the story of the Count of Comminges, which is equivalent to a definite statement that Charlotte loves Manstein secretly but will never make any admission of her love. Her fondness for the novel prepares for an unreciprocated gesture of love on the part of the tormented Manstein. Unfortunately, the selection from Le Comte de Comminges is ten pages long; read without interruption on the stage, it must destroy the illusion of drama. Early in the play there is a comparably undramatic passage when Manstein

WERTHER IN THE DRAMA

takes six pages to describe his first meeting with Charlotte and the excitement of the ball they attended. The conclusion of Les Malheurs de Γ amour is tragic, whereas that of the accepted French form for the representation of bourgeois life, the drame, was not. It is therefore noteworthy that the only titled character to appear on the stage is the minor figure, Baron Waldeck. The didactic element which has such an important function in Diderot's middle-class drama is represented by the baron's wisdom, with which the curé contrasts unfavorably the pessimism of Cicero, Lucretius, Locke, and Leibnitz. 31 Manstein is warned by Waldeck against the error of following a rigid itinerary when traveling for pleasure: "L'entretien d'un sage pendant une heure vaut mieux que dix jours passés à voir des bibliothèques ou des églises." 32 Such a dictum is an expression of the sentimentalism which had prepared the ground for the use of Werther as a tragic hero. The author of Les Malheurs de Γamour is sufficiently conservative not to introduce the suicide as a stage effect; his emphasis is on the sufferings of Manstein. And only a sentimentalist could have seriously portrayed characters who say, " J e sens d'avance que cette lecture [Le Comte de Co7frminges}vz me coûter des larmes . . ." and "Vous n'en verserez pas seul." 38 Les Malheurs de Γamour was performed in Germany in translations and in adaptations; and it also inspired dramatizations purporting to reproduce more faithfully than it had the content of Goethe's novel. One of these, Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, ein Trauerspiel . . . ganz aus dem Original gezogen (1776), is a Storm-andStress production whose author completely disregards all theatrical convention.34 The concluding sentence of its preface reflects the Genie spirit in which it is written. "Möchte dies Trauerspiel, das nicht zum räsonniren,

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sondern zum genieszen bestimmt ist, die letzte Schrift von und über Werthers Leiden seyn! " 3 5 It does nothing with the material of the novel except to put scenes from it into dialogue form; it is incomprehensible, or at best only partly comprehensible, without some knowledge of its source. T h e encounter of Werther with the unfortunate secretary who had in his time fallen in love with Lotte is one purely epic detail introduced into the dramatization. T h e broad outline of the play is remarkably simple: the first act contains Werther's explanation of the status quo to his friend Wilhelm; in the second Werther has his last interview with Charlotte, which arouses A l bert's jealousy; in the last Werther commits suicide exactly as in Goethe's novel, except that Wilhelm arrives immediately after he has shot himself, permitting a scene which suggests that Werther will not receive Christian burial.36 T h e reviewer of the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek damned the tragedy thoroughly in one sentence: "Ohne das Original zu vergleichen, merkt man das gar bald, was nicht ganz aus dem Original gezogen ist." T h e same thing could be said of the other serious German Werther plays, for the comparison between Werther and any dramatization of it was inevitably prejudicial to the latter.3 AN ITALIAN TRAGICOMEDY

T h e Werther comedy of the Italian playwright Sografi and the play which established his reputation as a dramatist is written in a style the very antithesis of that of Backer's Alardus — but one equally traditional.38 His Verter ( 1794) is an immature work which shows that the introduction of French comedy into Italy by Goldoni had borne fruit, although Molière's comedy of manners and its offshoot the comédie larmoyante had not entirely

I73 displaced the burlesque humor of the commedia dell' arte. The comic roles are the only ones in Sografi's play with any life. Verter's servant Ambrogio accordingly has some of the best lines: he can grumble that his master's moans keep him from enjoying a good night's sleep, or make an observation such as, "He couldn't have delivered that speech better if he had known it by heart!" when Verter is reproached in forty-eight lines of prose by his cameriere Federico for his ill-fated passion.39 Sografi's five acts treat not only Verter's proposed departure and his attempt at suicide, but also the machinations of an Iago-like villain, Giorgio, who arouses Alberto's jealousy so that he may avenge himself on Carlotta for her constant and virtuous resistance of his improper advances. The scene of the action is a German village, but there is no local color. The stage-set is the conventional single scene of classical comedy, a room corresponding to various apartments in Alberto's house. The play opens with Alberto away in Vienna and Verter about to take his departure because, loving Carlotta secretly, he is ill at ease in his friend Alberto's home. Giorgio, who is the tutor of Giulietto and Valerio, the children of Alberto and Carlotta, believes that Verter has already left, and so he ventures a declaration of love to the unprotected mistress of the house. She orders him to pack up and leave, but he boldly asserts that he will take orders only from Alberto. The scene between Giorgio and Carlotta is interrupted as a servant announces that Verter is just getting into his carriage. Carlotta has him stopped. Giorgio sees his foulest suspicions confirmed by the fact that Carlotta thinks instinctively of Verter at a critical moment. When Alberto returns, Giorgio warns him to beware of jealousy, and, as luck would have it, Alberto enters Carlotta's room at the WERTHER IN THE DRAMA

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very moment when Verter, kneeling at her feet, is declaring his passion. Although Carlotta has in no way responded to Verter's advances, Alberto, who believes he now knows the worst, bids her return at once to her parents. Giorgio is to conduct her, and Alberto expresses complete unconcern with anything that may happen to her in the course of this trip. Carlotta is now openly threatened with violence by Giorgio, who nonetheless shrinks from her when, a few moments later, she refuses to let him take her children from her so that they can be conducted to their father. Alberto remains unpersuaded of Carlotta's innocence, although all the dramatis personae except Giorgio dare to plead her cause. Verter begins to speak in veiled terms of his readiness to die. At this point in the action one of the two boys tells his father how, hiding behind a curtain, he has once heard his tutor say some strange things to Carlotta. Alberto immediately faces about, orders Giorgio to remain in his room, and hastens off to apologize to Carlotta's family for having insulted her and their honor. The last act treats Verter's attempt to commit suicide, which must, in a comedy, be frustrated. Having written farewell letters to his mother and to Guglielmo (Wilhelm), he prepares himself a bottle of poisoned wine. Then he decides that before he dies he should force a complete confession from the villainous Giorgio. The faithful Ambrogio has suspected Verter's design, and accordingly substitutes an innocent bottle.40 Verter drags in the cowardly Giorgio, who has agreed to write a confession. While Verter goes to find some ink, Giorgio, left alone, sustains his courage by drinking of the wine. After the business of the confession has been settled, Verter explains to Giorgio that he would offer him a drink if the wine were not poisoned. Giorgio goes into

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convulsions of imaginary cramps. Others come on stage, among them Alberto, to whom Giorgio admits that he calumniated Carlotta. Ambrogio laughs, and reveals the true situation. The infuriated Giorgio is considered sufficiently punished and is merely dismissed. Verter gives a speech on the nature of love, concluding that, although passion cannot be conquered, it must be restrained. He will now wander over the earth as he follows the inner call. Carlotta and Alberto turn to embrace one another. They think for a moment of Verter. "He is honest," says Carlotta, "Heaven does not abandon those sensitive hearts that are guided by Virtue — it will aid him." 41 And so the play ends. Sografì's Verter is one of the few Werther plays with a theatrical plot; but it is not the plot of Goethe's novel. The interest centers in Giorgio, even in the final act, where he becomes a comic figure after having been a cowardly villain through the first four. The jealousy of Alberto is motivated only by the scene in which Verter makes his vain plea to Carlotta. The trick of having a child overhear Giorgio's advances to Carlotta is not the subtlest device for resolving a dramatic complication.42 And it is extremely illogical for Verter to want to force a confession from a scoundrel who has already been unmasked. Yet Verter enjoyed great popularity and was even translated into Spanish. Familiarity with the emotional values of the model from which the play was derived made it more affecting to the theater-going public than to a critical reader such as Ugo Foscolo. Stegmann attended a performance of Verter when he visited Italy in the 1790's, and both Kotzebue and Tieck mention performances in the first years of the nineteenth century. Tieck has described how an Italian audience reacted to an open-air presentation of the play:

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Alles ist aufmerksam, Und wie das Leiden der Dichtung steigt, Erröten die staunenden Hörer gerührt. Carlotta piange! ruft Werther Im süszesten Schmerze melodischen Lauts, Und alle Hände, Fächer, Tücher, Beine, Stöcke Erregen das lauteste Getümmel freudigen Beifalls, Und tausend Tränen flieszen.

Even allowing for poetic exaggeration, the sufferings of Werther and Charlotte could be very moving in the most grotesque of imitations. This tragicomedy was parodied in a puppet play which Stegmann reported having seen in Naples. It was also exploited with little reverence by the librettist of Coccia's opera, Carlotta e Werter (1814), who followed the plot of Sografi's play but augmented the comic elements.43 Although this opéra bouffe neither deserved nor enjoyed general popularity, one of its comic duets apparently found favor for a while in England.44 A FRENCH MIDDLE-CLASS DRAMA

The next development in the history of European drama after the sentimental comedy was the establishment of the drame as a special genre. Under the influence of the middle-class tragedy of Lillo, which had been so successfully imported into France from England, the verse of Nivelle de la Chaussée (Le Préjugé à la mode) was replaced by the prose of Diderot and Sedarne. La Rivière's Werther, ou Le Délire de Vamour (1778) is a typical domestic drama. The scene of this play is the home of M. Bilfeld, in a small German city. Le Délire de Γ amour opens with a monologue-exposition by Werther, who explains how a desperate passion for Julie Bilfeld has caused him to abandon Vergil for Rousseau. Bound by a promise to

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her dying mother, Julie is engaged to the cold Albert. Werther's servant François brings a letter which informs him that he has received an appointment in diplomatic service. This means he must leave the Bilfelds, and so perturbs him. Upon François' solicitous inquiry about the cause of his unrest, Werther tells the long story of his first meeting with Julie and the ball they attended. Albert and M. Bilfeld discuss Werther in the following scenes; Albert's conclusion is that "Werther a de l'Esprit, il réussira dans tout ce qu'il entreprendra; la seule chose qui puisse lui nuire, c'est sa trop grande sensibilité."45 As for his own prospective marriage, Albert begs M. Bilfeld to give Julie complete freedom to accept or refuse his suit. He knows that he will be happy with Julie; there can be no cooling of his passion since he does not love but only respects his fiancée. Julie, however, is aware of her father's preference for Albert, and so, when given her choice, she consents to a marriage with Albert. Left alone, she admits that she loves Werther, but vows that she will never reveal her passion. The second act takes place after dinner. Werther, returning from a walk, announces his imminent departure. Although Julie is deeply affected by this news, she affects coldness as she wishes him luck. "Werther lève les yeux au Ciel & soupire." 48 Left alone with Julie, he protests the intensity of his love, and she finally admits that she would gladly have had her father suggest him as her future husband. Convinced that it is now too late, she refuses him permission to speak of the matter with her father. Werther takes his farewell: "Adieu, Julie, adieu, pour toujours." 47 She fears for his life, but cannot regret that she has sacrificed her love to her sense of honor. When Albert again offers her the chance to break their engagement, she dissembles willingness to become his

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wife. As they are talking, François brings his master's note asking for pistols to be used on his journey. Albert loads them despite Julie's pleas. She leaves the room. François voices his own fears, but Albert assures him that he will be on his guard to prevent any calamity. As the curtain falls, Albert asks, "Où en serais-je, si j'étois amoureux?" 48 The last act begins as Werther gets rid of François, with whom he pretends to be displeased. In a four-page soliloquy Werther contemplates death, incidentally threatening Albert with an imaginary dagger and apostrophizing in turn his mother, Julie, and M. Bilfeld. As Werther puts one of the pistols to his temple, Albert darts from a hiding-place and knocks it out of his hand. About to shoot Albert with the other pistol, Werther recovers his senses as François screams. Werther is bitter that Albert has saved his life, and condemns magnanimity which is both false and cruel. M. Bilfeld arrives to read the letter Werther had written him in anticipation of death, then lectures Werther on the criminality of suicide. Werther retires and Julie enters. She is forced to read aloud Werther's letter to her. Thinking Werther dead, she bursts out in recriminations against her father and Albert. She faints as Werther returns. After she has been revived, Albert renounces her unconditionally. Werther begs Albert's forgiveness for having misjudged him. M. Bilfeld assents to the marriage of Julie and Werther. The drama ends with his sententious observation, "Il suffit d'être Père, pour avoir un fond inépuisable d'indulgence. Ma chère Julie, puissent ces évènemens vous servir de leçon, lorsqu'à votre tour vous serez Mère de famille!" 49 Certain features of this play are very weak. It is unlikely that Julie should twice refuse an opportunity to

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avoid marriage with Albert, especially when there is no parental constraint the second time. Even less plausible is her refusal to allow Werther to speak to her father after she has been carried away by his declaration of love, for she knows Albert's reasonableness and is herself supposedly in no mood for petty quibbling. The character of M. Bilfeld, who is so friendly and enlightened, must seem cruel and cold in so far as he disregards his daughter's obvious reluctance to marry Albert. As a domestic drama, Le Délire de Γ amour compares favorably with the dull plays of Diderot, and fulfills all the main requirements Diderot had outlined for a drame. It is regularly didactic and moral: M. Bilfeld points out that his daughter is expected to nurse her own babies, the best assurance that they will be properly treated; Werther's statement that he has dined with some peasants inspires M. Bilfeld to expatiate on the happiness of the simple; he has good advice for Werther on how to keep the favor of the people of rank under whom he will serve in diplomatic posts; and he points the moral of the play — the evil of suicide. La Rivière's play is written in prose and is provided with full stage directions, including pantomimic details. The third important principle of Diderot's dramaturgy was that the playwright should use social types such as banker or merchant, and show people in typical family relationships. It is evident that the immoderate filial obedience of Julie is the source of all the dramatic complications of Le Délire de l'amour; the course of events is to be a lesson for Julie as mère de famille,50 The constant emphasis on the values of family and social relationships is completely alien to the spirit of La Rivière's source, in which the tragedy springs from the character of Werther alone.61 Didacticism is not the only mark of the eighteenth cen-

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tury on Le Délire de Γ amour. La Rivière's Werther is as historically self-conscious as any tragic hero of his age, and cries in his suicide monologue: Werther, quelle furie voulait s'emparer de ton âme? Renonce à ces projets destructeurs, appelle la raison à ton secours. . . . Mourons vertueux, les cœurs honnêtes s'attendriront au récit de mes malheurs, il me plaindront, ils verseront des larmes sur ma tombe, on me citera comme le modèle des véritables amans.62 It has already appeared from the examination of Werther poetry that this prophecy came true, but it is grotesque that a Werther who is to live should foresee the fame of one who was to die. Yet even more significant than this delirious Werther's resolution to die virtuous is the implicit acknowledgment of a moral factor which enlightened philosophy had failed to recognize: that reason alone cannot bring salvation to the isolated human monad.53 Other authors of domestic dramas thought that Werther offered a suitable dramatic theme. The most important of these was Sébastien Mercier, whose unpublished Romainval, ou Le Poète vertueux tells Werther's story up to the moment of suicide, when the catastrophe is prevented.54 The dullness and sermon-like quality of Mercier's dramatic work makes it perhaps as well that his Werther play was not given to the world. None of those who attempted to treat the Werther theme in a middleclass drama was a writer with any instinct for the necessities of the stage, and none of their productions was successful either as a play or as a faithful representation of more than some small fragment of Werther. AN ENGLISH TRAGEDY IN BLANK VERSE

Frederick Reynolds, the most successful popular dramatic writer in the history of the English stage up to the

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time of his retirement, relates in his autobiography that when he read the manuscript of his Werter; a Tragedy (1785) to a circle of friends a certain young woman was moved to tears, whereupon her brother stopped him with the words, "Though you, and your cursed tragedy, cannot corrupt either me or my wife, you may-corrupt my young sister. . . ." 5 5 Reynolds' typically sentimental play, which was probably written while he was still a pupil at Westminster School, is an immature work, but it is significant as the only serious dramatic treatment of the Werther theme in English and as an early attempt to combine middle-class tragedy with the heroic language of blank-verse drama. Although Werter was first refused by the directors of London theaters, it was given at Bath with great success and then made its way to other stages, including that of Covent Garden.56 Reynolds later reduced his play from five to three acts, but the new version of 1795 won little favor with the English public, whose enthusiasm for Werther and for verse treatment of its themes was by that time rapidly diminishing. In America, on the other hand, the three-act tragedy remained in the repertory until 1809, a fact best explained by the less immediate influence of critical ideas already effective in England. An analysis of the earlier version of Reynolds' Werter shows how Goethe's novel appealed to a young English sentimentalist of the 1780's, and at the same time reveals to what an instinctive playwright had to turn in order to give a stage version of the familiar story dramatic qualities.67 The scene is Walheim, the time "a Night and Day." The characters are Albert, Sebastian (Wilhelm), Werter, his trusted servant Leuthrop, Charlotte, and her confidante Laura. Werter has met Charlotte at a ball, where he learned that she is engaged to his friend Al-

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bert (I, 1). Werter and Charlotte have fallen in love, but Charlotte feels that she must keep her troth to Albert (I, 2). The play opens as Sebastian, who has noticed and correctly interpreted the tone of agitation in Werter's letters to him, comes to take his friend away from Walheim (I, 1 ). It is expected that Albert will return at any moment from a trip. Werter calls on Charlotte, and each wishes to bear all the blame for a situation discreditable to both fiancée and friend. Werter decides that he must leave Walheim (monologue, end of Act I). The returned Albert has heard of Werter's interest in Charlotte, but it does not disquiet him. He expresses the hope that Werter will be Charlotte's and his guest after their marriage. Sebastian, however, urges him to send Werter away, not in his own interests, but in Werter's, and to this Albert consents. Sebastian arranges for Werter to leave with him at eleven o'clock that night (II, 1 ). A new scene shows Albert, Charlotte, and Werter in a moonlit garden. They do not tell him that they are to be married on the morrow, nor does Charlotte know of Werter's imminent departure. The conversation turns to thoughts of immortality and separation. Charlotte exclaims, "Alas! how hard to part with those we love! Werter — 'tis sharper than the stings of death." Werter begins to lose control of his feelings and a farewell is said. Sebastian comes with Leuthrop to collect Werter, whom they support off the stage (II, 2). After her marriage to Albert the next day, Charlotte is informed that Werter has gone away (III, 1). During the past night she dreamt that Werter stood on a high rock in a violent storm and almost threw himself off it (IV, 1). Actually Werter is still in Walheim. He writes letters to his mother and to Sebastian, which he entrusts to Leuthrop. He declines, however, to confide to his old

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and faithful servant the causes of his evident unrest. Solus, he determines that he must die.58 Then he calls on Charlotte, surprising her alone, since Albert has been called to Frankfurt and is only expected back at noon of the next day. She begs him to leave and to give his love to another. Werter merely answers with thinly veiled allusions to his intended suicide. The high point of the dramatic action has been reached. N o w Werter and Charlotte read in Ossian: ". . . To-morrow — shall the traveller come — He that saw me in my beauty — shall come — His eyes shall search the field — But — they will not —find me!" (These words fall like a stroke of thunder on the heart of the unfortunate Werter! in despair he throws himself at her feet, seizes her hand, and puts it to his forehead. An apprehension of his fatal project, for the first time, struck Charlotte — she is distracted.) Charlotte (starting from the couch). Heavens! Suicide — am I to be so curst? Is there no mercy to be found in heaven? O Werter! O Werter! (Falling on him.) Werter. I will not lose thee — Thus let me ever clasp thee to my heart. (Here they lose sight of every thing, and the whole world disappears before them — He clasps her in his arms, and strains her to his bosom.) Charlotte. Werter! (with a faint voice) Werter! (gently pushing him away) Werter! (with a firm voice of virtue) This is the last time — we never — never — meet again! Because he has encountered bad weather and has been troubled with premonitions, Albert arrives home unexpectedly. Filled with secret doubts, he raises the prostrate Werter and helps him off the stage (IV).

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Sebastian, who has been in Manheim, brings Charlotte a request from Werter that he may have a farewell meeting with her. Charlotte explains to Sebastian that he has been tricked, for Werter has already said goodby. She fears that he intends to kill himself during Sebastian's absence on a fool's errand. Instead of hastening to Werter, Sebastian discourses on suicide — "When virtue's dead, he is not fit to live" — , and even expresses the thought that Werter may deserve "the agonies that wait On guilt so great as his!" Charlotte finally persuades Sebastian of his duty to his friend, and he goes to look for Werter. Charlotte then has a scene with Albert, who, in a burst of jealous passion, accuses her of infidelity. Werter, who has taken poison, is supported on stage by Leuthrop and dies at Charlotte's feet. Albert repents his suspicions, Sebastian realizes his culpable negligence. Charlotte, overwhelmed by the catastrophe, goes mad and falls on Werter's body. "Werter, I come! I come — And now let honour part us if it can." (V) Reynolds had an instinct for good theater. In this play he profited from his public's familiarity with the Werther story and wrote the details of a catastrophe the causes of which had to be taken on faith. The blank verse is that of the traditional English poetic tragedy, but here it is used for figures taken from the middle class. Reynolds' contemporaries were not unaware of the fact that he had boldly broken away from the "beengende Atmosphäre der bürgerlichen Criminaltragödie à la Lillo." 59 The Bath poet William Meyler wrote in his prologue to the tragedy: The tragic muse, attach'd to regal shew, Too long has shunn'd the scenes of private woe, In splendid diction she enrols the great, And scorns the sorrows of an humbler state,

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Where hopeless love's to desperation driven, Or anguish lifts its plaintive voice to heaven.

Reynolds' characterizations are inept. It is inconceivable that the "generous Albert," who at first trusts Charlotte so completely, should suddenly be aroused to suspicion and wild jealousy because he returns to find Werter in his house. Nor is there reason to think that Sebastian is so little Werter's friend as not to want to forestall his suicide. Charlotte is portrayed in what must have seemed to the author the most favorable light. When Werter calls during Albert's absence, Charlotte, deeply in love with her visitor, manages to state the dramatic problem: We must not be alone — The scene is alter'd since we parted last — Laura [her friend and confidante], I say —yet hold —a moment hold — Am I so lost that I distrust myself? So mean, so cowardly! must I be watch'd Lest I prove false? — Hence, idle visions, hence! I am alone protectress of myself, And dare defy all love's seducing arts, T o shake one atom of my virtue! (Act I V )

The tragedy of Werther, a tragedy of character, is thus reduced to Charlotte's conflict between love and virtue, yet even this struggle does not achieve dramatic expression as in Backer's Alardus. On the other hand, Reynolds shows skill in avoiding some of the common faults of Werther plays. Werter is given relatively few monologues, which are neither of great length nor serve purposes of dramatic exposition. What exposition there is comes in dialogue with Sebastian or Leuthrop. Some of the descriptive beauty of Werther is effectively introduced in the account of Charlotte's dream, which she

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tells to her friend Laura. Still, it is doubtful if the best writer could have re-created Werther as a dramatic figure, so profound an impression had the novel itself already made upon the English public. As was asked on the occasion of the first performance of Werter: Who has not read of Werter? Hapless youth! The slave of passion, honour, love, and truth. Who has not sigh'd, when, o'er the canvas warm, The artist brings poor Charlotte's beauteous form? Who but with her has hung o'er Werter's bier, And shed with her the sympathetic tear?60

The sentimental English public, the public of the sorrowful Werther, was above all a feminine one: Whoe'er this Werter was, his life, his end, Our British fair must ever call him friend; His tale still pleas'd, yet still bedew'd the eye, Nay, made the tedious moments glibly fly, When only your dear lords perhaps were by. His tale, by Bunery's magic touch pourtray'd, Your brightest chambers still has brighter made; E'en on the sattin which preserves your hands, The hapless Werter's pensive Charlotte stands.61

Perhaps masculine common sense was not averse to catering, not too self-consciously, to so measurable a factor as the Werther cult. Suspense in the first two acts of Reynolds' tragedy is centered in Werter's departure: if he stays, he is certain to be so hurt on learning of Charlotte's marriage that he will commit suicide.62 The third act reveals that Werter has not left as expected. He accordingly determines to kill himself. The spectator now wonders if Werter is going to see Charlotte once more before he dies, and whether some circumstance may not save his life. There can be no doubts of Charlotte's virtue, however:

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Laura. Think not of Werter — 'Twas thy solemn vow T o wed with Albert. Charlotte. And I'll maintain that vow; Think'st thou that honour will descend to kneel A t love's fantastick throne? (1,2) T h e love scene of the fourth act is exciting because there is the danger of detection and the suspense of seeing just how far W e r t e r will get. T h e last act consists of incidents which frustrate Charlotte's effort to have W e r t e r saved. In such externals lies the dramatic interest of Werter. T h e language of the English Werther translation, The Sorrows of Werter, which so many contemporary E n g lish authors had found vivid, weak though it is compared to the freshness of Goethe's prose, becomes pseudoShakespearean in Reynolds' blank verse. There is none of Mrs. Smith's gentleness in the description of the flooded vale assigned to Charlotte: Methought! alone and in the dead of night, Whilst light'ning fill'd each pause the thunder made, And the pale moon in blackest clouds was lost, I wildly wander'd to that dreary vale — That vale! where Werter first confess'd his love, And oft in secret sigh'd! — But to my tale — The lightning's fire, and moon's few scatter'd rays, Just shew'd the awful horror of the scene; Loud roaring waves rush'd o'er the fertile fields, And the whole valley seem'd a tossing sea. Sad echo doubl'd every hollow sound, And nature with complete disorder groan'd! "Countless centuries," she concludes, "Can never wear the image from my mind." In addition to this bit of L a d y Macbeth, there is much of Othello, Desdemona, Hamlet,

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and the rest,63 as well as the pseudo-Shakespearean commonplace (here with a reminiscence of Bottom) : Fools may be patient — my controuling woes Shall ne'er be silent; they must roar aloud . . . (11,2)

At this point in the eighteenth century it was the language of poetry which inspired English poetry more than anything else, and it may well have been the lyric quality of The Sorrows of Werter which induced Reynolds to disregard stale custom and to write in verse. Werter is an English hero, not Goethe's Werther. He is a disappointed lover with no spirit of revolt or social criticism. The fact that Charlotte reciprocates his love makes the persons of the tragedy pitiable, and the feeling of pity is all that a sentimental public demanded — or demands — of a serious play. The scene between Charlotte and Werter goes as far as decency can permit, yet suicide must still be properly condemned: Conscious how many obstacles were near, Ere Werter's tale could meet the public ear; W i t h cautious hand — fair Virtue's humble friend — He strives to draw some chaste, some moral end; To shew pale Suicide in horror bleed, And warn impiety to shun the deed.64

Nothing reveals better than the closing lines of Werter, spoken by Sebastian, how completely Reynolds was the conventionalist, nor how remote was the taste of his public from the spirit of Goethe's Werther: From these disasters, we are taught to shun The sad temptations of unlawful love. For oh! shou'd passion conquer reason's power, (And reason oft is weak) the desperate mind May turn to death for peace — Destructive hope! For if one crime is blacker than the rest,

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Below more punished, more abhorr'd above; 'Tis self destruction; 'tis by heaven decreed, So high an outrage! that at mercy's throne, The suicide alone is shut from Grace. Not even the excellent technique of English staging and acting in the eighteenth century can explain the success of Reynolds' play. The later three-act version is even less self-contained than the original one. The novel, well known through the writing of popular poets and from translations, gave the play its meaning. But Reynolds wrote his tragedy as a young man, and there is a spark of fire in its attempts at poetry which no other Werther play reveals.65 WERTHER CRITICISM AND PARODY

Not all Werther plays were written in a spirit friendly to Goethe's novel. There were numerous dramas intended to counteract its pernicious effect. Some show only the bad influence that Werther has on foolish young people,66 while others make their point by travesty. The former are sermons against sentimentality which have, as it were, chosen Werther as their text; they are always poor sermons, and reveal little more than that Werther was widely read as a sentimental novel. A few of the latter, which are even occasionally amusing, afford some insight into the literary and ideological background against which Goethe's novel was read and interpreted.87 Man denkt verschieden bey Werthers Leiden (1779) is a Werther criticism in drama form which parodies Storm-and-Stress dramatic practice and theory even to the naturalistic use of dialect. The full-length play contains frequent directions to the actors to weep in their handkerchiefs, while the stage directions in general parody the detailed pantomime beloved in domestic

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drama. Often the scene changes and time passes without any specific indication. At one point Werther starts to tell Wilhelm the story of his love for Charlotte, but his friend stops him almost immediately. The anonymous author explains why he has eliminated the exposition of Werther's situation: "Die Erzählung ist aus der Leidensgeschichte Werthers, aus dem Brief vom 16. Juni." 88 The second act contains a fifteen-page discussion of fools and folly by Heinrich and a servant, plainly directed against Shakespearean drama. Perhaps the most amusing part of the whole burlesque is a scene between Lotte and Werther in which she sings for him an aria by Hasse.89 Sophie, Lotte's younger sister, sits on Werther's lap with her doll, and he protests that he does not mind, although in an aside he admits that he dislikes children. The following dialogue is introduced: Sophie zu Werthern. Die schöne Haube! sehn Sie einmal. (Sie deckt der Puppe den Rock auf) und schöne Strumpfbänder. [Lotte reprimands Sophie.] Kleine Drulle. Werther. Ich bitte für Sophiegen, lassen Sie doch ihren Willen. Lotte. Nun so sey hübsch artig. Sophie. Ja liebe Lotte, ich will fromm seyn.70 There follow Goethe's exact words as Werther cries out to Lotte to stop, that he can bear no more. T o this she answers in words he had himself used earlier, "Werther, Sie sind sehr krank, Ihre Lieblingsgerichte widerstehen Ihnen." Worthless as dramas, these travesties are at best the old farce and comedy of manners of Les Précieuses ridicules on a much inferior plane, at worst a series of family scenes in which the didactic element predominates as much as in the avowedly serious anti-Werther plays.

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When there is a romantic lover, whether called Werther or by any other name, he regularly turns out to be less worthy than the sober young man to whom the heroine objects. The satire is interesting because it shows how many aspects of Wertherism there were to satirize. The title of one parody, the anonymous Werther und Lotte im Komödiengaszl, oder Die Zusammenkunft bei den sieben Schwaben ( 1 8 0 1 ) , is an allusion to one of the most extraordinary vulgarizations of Goethe's novel, Mellina's fireworks display, Werthers Zusammenkunft mit Lottchen im Elysium, a whole series of sentimental tableaus that had been set off in the Prater to entertain the good Viennese. In both England and Austria Werther and the Werther spirit were repudiated along with French radicalism at the time of the anti-Jacobin reaction. If The Rovers attacked all that was not English, Giesecke's Hamlet, Prinz von Liliput (1798) took thrusts at the French, satirizing the Jacobins along with Werther, Siegwart, and the Kraftgenies. 71 Kotzebue, who had no reason to love the author of certain Xenien, managed to insert a sneer at Werther in his Cleopatra (1803), an antiromantic farce. The humorous use of the Werther theme once begun, it continued well beyond the middle of the nineteenth century. It was not so significant in England, where Werther had been forgotten along with the literature of the end of the eighteenth century, as in continental countries such as Austria, France, Germany, Poland, and Russia. The Austrian theater, and especially the Viennese Theater in der Leopoldstadt, was always friendly to farce. Giesecke's Hamlet was eventually followed by Kringsteiner's Werthers Leiden (1807), which is localized in the neighborhood of Leopoldstadt. The occupa-

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tions of the characters suggest the nature of the farce: "Herr Werther, Kupferschmied von Krems; Lenzl, sein Gesell; Albert, Vorsteher der Lampenanzünder; Lotte, seine Braut; Ihre Geschwister." T o these must be added figures who suggest the supernatural beings that were still to be used in Raimund's masterpieces: "Der Gott der Liebe; Ein Alter Genius." Lotte, to quote a stage direction, "scheint den 40 Jahren stark verschwistert." 72 Albert, who has become engaged to this charmer during Werther's absence, refuses to renounce her as Werther requests, giving instead gratuitous advice: "Ich, an Herrn seiner Stell, ging noch eher an'n Bader, und nahm Magnesie." 73 Cupid appears to Lotte in a dream, and shows her a vision of Werther committing suicide. The vision includes hawkers who are selling broadsides with "Die neue Beschreibung von dem unglücklichen Liebhaber, der sich z'wegen der untreuen Amantin in's Wasser gstürzt hat, eins um ein Kreuzer! " 74 Lotte is won back to Werther by the dream, but not before he has actually tried to drown himself and been rescued by a Pudel. The wet hero can take double comfort in Lotte's assurance, "Mein heisze Lieb soll dich bald trocknen." 75 Such is the first printed Werther farce of the series that so long held a place on the German stage. They are all as light and as indifferent to the serious aspects of Goethe's novel as is the Werthers Leiden of Kringsteiner.78 In France similar burlesques were popular, beginning with Georges Duval's Werther, ou Les Êgaremens d'un cœur sensible (1817). This farce, insignificant in its own right, was undoubtedly given life by the acting of Potier, whose interpretation of the role of Werther was seen on many French stages and was known by reputation not only in France but also in England and Germany.77

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Whereas in Kringsteiner's Lokale Posse Werther is ridiculed by being made an ordinary artisan, in Les Êgaremens dun cœur sensible he is contrasted with the lower-middle-class people who surround him. Duval's technique is more literary than that of the German parodists. He utilizes many familiar details of Werther, including the blue frock coat and yellow vest, Charlotte giving the children their evening meal, and Werther's praise of beauties of nature which have no interest to commoner spirits. When Werther wants to be alone with Charlotte, he kicks the children into the house with the words, "Faut toujours prendre les enfans par la douceur." 78 As the virtuous wife of the innkeeper Albert, Charlotte is completely indifferent to Werther. His suicide attempt fails because, having drunk too much wine, he cannot hold a pistol to his head properly. The Wilhelm of the vaudeville carries his friend off in a stagecoach, and the curtain falls after countless adieus. What is most significant about Les Êgaremens d'un cœur sensible is that it is meant for a public which will appreciate its many specific Werther allusions. The theatergoer in early nineteenth-century France was expected to be even better acquainted with Goethe's novel than the one who went to the Theater in der Leopoldstadt. THE WERTHER T H E M E IN POST-ROMANTIC DRAMA

By the middle of the nineteenth century it was realized in France and Italy that Goethe was more than the author of Werther. Since the time of Madame de Staël a select few had known of Goethe's other works, but even in 1825 a French translation of his poems could still appear with the words "Goethe, auteur de Werther" on the title page.79 His autobiography was translated into French in 1823 and again, more faithfully, in I844.80 It

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took some years before any impression of Goethe as more than a sentimental writer became general even among the better-read classes. The fruits of the new knowledge were not always good, as the plays which represent attempts to dramatize episodes in Goethe's life make only too apparent. Because they knew relatively few of his works and had but a confused idea of his life and its backgrounds, the authors of these plays allowed their imaginations full play and treated his best known works — particularly Faust and Werther — as the literally true fragments of a great confession. Madame Louise Colet-Révoil's La Jeunesse de Goethe was performed in Paris in 1839. Author of several works crowned by the French Academy, Louise Colet had utilized Werther in her poem on suicide, Miserere (1829), and she introduces into her one-act drama motifs from that novel, as well as some from Faust and Dichtung und Wahrheit. There is a certain naïve charm in the picture of Goethe living riotously in Frankfurt with his young friends Lavater and Schlegel, particularly when the latter is the "cold" critic of the Romantic School. Goethe carouses with his fellow Storm-and-Stress writers, but beneath a surface of gaiety he hides a bleeding heart. The plot of La Jeunesse de Goethe is built up about the familiar theme of a mistaken or unrecognized identity. The Countess Charlotte, disguised as a servant girl, introduces herself into Goethe's presence. He is struck with her resemblance to the one great but lost love of his life. Charlotte mentions that she would like to become an actress. Asked what she could do, she offers to recite from Faust. As Marguerite, she declares her love for Faust, and Goethe replies to her in the role of Faust. Profoundly affected by the feeling with which she recites her lines, he begins to talk to her of love, and says

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that she could take the place in his heart of a woman who preferred to marry for title and for fortune. Hurt by this reproach, Charlotte leaves without revealing her identity. From her faithful servant Truman, whom he does not happen to know, Goethe learns that his Charlotte has been freed by the death of her husband. Since, so far as he knows, she has not made any effort to communicate with him, he immediately assumes that she has become indifferent to him. Completely disillusioned, he resolves to marry the first woman who comes along. Truman is picked as emissary to fetch any girl he may find in the public garden. A veiled woman is introduced, Goethe offers her his hand unconditionally, she removes her veil — and it is Charlotte. La Jeunesse de Goethe would seem good evidence that the name of Goethe had come to have an associative value, at least for the broader public, with no more clear meaning than that of Werther fifty or sixty years earlier. Somewhat more significant is the drame entitled Charlotte (1846), by Souvestre and Bourgeois. Although its authors take "le type consacré de Werther pour montrer où conduisent, dans la vie réelle, ces imaginations changeantes, fiévreuses et personnelles que Gœthe a incarnées dans son héros," 81 Charlotte does not belong in the same category as the earlier, essentially uncritical, dramatic attacks on Werther, Goethe, Storm and Stress, and sentimentality; nor does the difference merely lie in the fact that its authors are attacking sentimentality in its peculiar nineteenth-century romantic form, or that they successfully avoid confusing Goethe with Werther. In the prologue to Charlotte the wish of countless naive and sentimental readers of Werther is granted: Goethe visits his friend Kestner; another guest, Werther, is deeply in love with Kestner's fiancée Charlotte; Goethe

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writes a novel on this theme; it is read by Werther, who attempts to emulate the suicide; only slightly wounded, he is able to marry Charlotte, whom Kestner renounces. The play itself, for the first time in a popular treatment of the Werther theme, points the moral that the Werther of Goethe's novel could never have been happy. The sentimentalist becomes a Byronic romanticist. As Werther is about to go off with a young girl named Hélène, Charlotte commits suicide. Regardless of the purpose for which it was written, regardless of the psychologically crass but theatrically effective formulation of Werther's incapacity for finite happiness, Charlotte demonstrates how, finally, it was realized that a serious Werther play, even if only a melodrama, could no longer be given a happy ending — in other words, that a work of art possesses an inner truth which will not brook merely facile distortion. Inability to see a work of Goethe's without thinking in terms of autobiographical elements was a universal characteristic of nineteenth-century readers to which Goethe himself had given a quasi-official stamp of approval by his method in Dichtung und Wahrheit. The Italian librettist Farnese, like the authors of La Jeunesse de Goethe and Charlotte, uses material from Dichtung und Wahrheit in his Werther (1862), but with poetic license surpassing even Louise Colet's. This operatic Werther, still in love with a Carlotta now Alberto's wife, becomes engaged to Sofia, daughter of the Baron di Sesenheim. The presence of Carlotta at his wedding so much upsets him, however, that at the final moment he refuses to sign the marriage contract. After a last scene with Carlotta, interrupted by Alberto's entrance, he borrows pistols for his journey and is soon dead. Faust also contributes its bit to this libretto: in the first act, at a

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birthday party for Sofia, Werther sings a song to Death which is based on lines spoken by Faust in his Easter monologue.82 The opera was not given more than a few times, but it may be doubted if the literary eclecticism of its libretto in any way influenced its rapid fall into oblivion. The long line of opera texts based on Werther had begun in 1792 with Dejaure's one-act Werther et Charlotte, and in the present century Massenet's Werther (1892), by no means the last Werther opera, is still regularly performed at the Opéra Comique in Paris: the theme of a tragic love is still acceptable in lyric drama. Massenet's text, by Édouard Blau and several others, shows Werther before as well as after he has lost all hope of possessing Charlotte, and it accordingly differs in a fundamental respect from previous dramatizations of Werther. Its whole first act serves to give a picture of the likable though sentimental young man whom Goethe has portrayed in the early parts of his novel; only at its very end does Werther learn that Charlotte is already engaged. Some direct impression of this happier Werther is essential to any treatment of his story if he is not to seem merely weak and selfish. Massenet's Werther is the only Werther play or opera to have survived more than a decade or two; although far from being the complicated character of Goethe's novel, its protagonist is at least a fuller personality than any other stage Werther. Massenet's opera was the first Werther music in almost thirty years; but since its première in Vienna there have appeared at least two more operas, a symphonic poem, and a cantata, on the Werther theme,83 and the use of historically appropriate music to evoke the atmosphere of the eighteenth century contributed to the effectiveness of the French Werther film of 193δ.84

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WERTHER AS A SYMBOL

There have always been readers who appreciated the lyric qualities and poetic intensity which distinguish Werther from other novels of sentiment, and who felt the drama-like inevitability of Werther's tragic fate. In modern poetry, and in the contemporary novel,85 Werther has been the symbol of self-destroying personalities and of a state of mind, but in the drama, where popular preconceptions must be accepted as what they are, he represents the suicide or the idealistic lover doomed to unhappiness. The Werther theme has been introduced into modern tragedy, not as plot, however, but as a motif to emphasize the tragic implications of entirely independent actions. Dicenta's El suicidio de Werther (1888), the first play of an author some of whose later works became internationally known, is a tale of social maladjustment recalling the themes of French preromanticism. Written in the traditional iambic tetrameter of classical Spanish tragedy, it is an effective poetic drama, although an analysis of the complicated plot reveals a strong admixture of melodramatic elements. The hero of El suicidio de Werther is Fernando, a young painter whose talent has won him social position despite the disadvantage of his illegitimate birth. His greatest work, "El suicidio de Werther," has been inspired by love for Maria, niece of his friend and patron Don Pedro. Maria visits Fernando's studio, and Fernando explains his painting by telling her the story of Charlotte and Werther — "Ella inocente y honrada, él poeta y soñador" — ; 86 he follows Goethe except in the emphasis he places on Charlotte's love for Werther. Since Maria's father, Don Julian, is not so enlightened as his brother Pedro, Fernando has little hope

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of obtaining permission to marry her (I). Chance brings to his studio his mother, a courtesan known as Carlota, but he is unaware of her real identity. Don Julian, whose son had been killed in a duel over this woman, arrives and recognizes her; he orders her out of his brother's house, in which Fernando has his studio. Realizing who Carlota is, Fernando feels he must defend her. He is now alienated from Maria, who fails to comprehend his loyalty to Carlota (II). Carlota and Fernando find a cheap room in which they may live as mother and son. Pedro still visits Fernando. Carlota realizes that her son does not love her, and she decides that it would be better for him if she were to leave him (III). The scandal of his parentage having become public, Fernando feels obliged to withdraw his painting from the exhibition. In his room it serves as an ever present memento mori, foreshadowing the impending tragedy. In a duel over his mother's honor Fernando kills his opponent and returns home only to reproach her bitterly. She announces that she will leave. Fernando suddenly feels his great isolation from other human beings — Maria has already married another. Inspired by his own masterpiece, which he destroys lest it be profaned, he kills himself. Cariota and Pedro enter as he dies, but Pedro alone supports the dying Fernando. His mother grieves at his feet (IV). Whereas Fernando is driven into himself because of external circumstances, Werther's own character isolated him from the world in which he lived. Fernando is maladjusted because society cannot accept him unconditionally, Werther because he cannot accept society. Dicenta does not attempt to equate Werther and Fernando, however, but uses the somber Werther theme to create an atmosphere of tragedy. Since it is primarily coincidence which destroys Fernando's hopes of an

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honorable marriage, the suggestion of inevitable fate serves to conceal the fact that Fernando's character bears no causal relationship to the catastrophe of the drama. El suicidio de Werther is thus a fate tragedy complete with a material symbol of destiny, the picture of the dying Werther. Although there is no supernatural element in the play, its lyric pessimism suggests the poetic melodrama of Grillparzer's Ahnfrau rather than the fate plays of Werner, Müllner, or Houwald. Dicenta's is a first play, like Die Ahnfrau and like Reynolds' Werter, and there is a spirit of youthful protest behind its tones of disillusionment. Fernando may express the sentiment of mal du siècle: Ay, el porvenir! la gloria! . . . Dos fantasmas y dos sueños! 87 But he represents a protest against social prejudice and injustice which foreshadows the themes of Dicenta's later dramas. There is a poetry in the disillusionment of the hero of El suicidio de Werther which rises above the prosaic dissatisfaction and unexplained discontent of the usual stage Werther figure. A more ambitious but less successful attempt to use the Werther theme in serious drama is Heinz Lipmann's Don Juan und Werther, ein dramatisches Gedicht.™ Its ranting and exclamatory style mark it as a characteristic production of German expressionism. Its title proclaims an indebtedness to Grabbe (Don Juan und Faust, 1829) rather than to Stendhal — the last chapter of De Ρ Amour is "Werther et Don Juan" — and its seventeenth-century Spanish milieu is clearly Baroque, so that two postwar German literary and artistic enthusiasms receive their due. The contrast between Don Juan, Prince of Gibraltar and Deputy of the King of Spain, and Werther, "ein

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Jüngling," is that between the dynamic and confident man of action, who is in the end destroyed by the violence he has set loose, and the peace-loving sentimentalist. The Werther of Lipmann's play is chiefly a foil to Don Juan; he is another figure in the long line that goes back to Brackenburg in Goethe's Egmont. Aucia, Werther's beloved, is attracted to Don Juan, who soon discards her. She returns to the patient Werther. But when Don Juan is at the mercy of an angry mob resolved to put an end to his authoritarian cruelty, she tries to protect him from the mass fury and is herself torn to pieces in its hands. Werther takes the news with philosophic calm: Senkt Eure Fackeln in den Boden ein. Es log das Licht, löscht es für immer aus, — Verlassnes Eiland ist der Mensch. Um ihn sind brückenlos die Wasser und sein Ruf geht unter in der Trennung ewgem Wind. Dies ist das Letzte, was zu wissen bleibt. Denn meine Worte reichen nicht zu Euch und Eure Stimme findet mich nicht mehr.89 The expressionists' sense of the seemingly inevitable gap which exists between the individual and every fellow human being is, to be sure, analogous with Werther's feeling of loneliness at the point when he cries out that he has been abandoned by man and God. In Don Juan und Werther, however, nothing is added to the effectiveness of the theme of man's spiritual and emotional isolation by forcing literary comparisons upon the spectator or reader. The story of Werther has remained popular with theater audiences for over a century and a half. With or without the aid of music, these Werther plays have

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kept alive the names of Werther, Charlotte, and Goethe, among broad sectors of the public which would have otherwise hardly have heard them. It may be doubted if the distorted impression which these imitations have left was worth the effort expended on them, although it may occasionally have been corrected by a simultaneously inspired impulse to read Werther and, perhaps, other of Goethe's works.80 It is certainly never indicated in these dramas that Goethe's Werther may have recorded his relationship to Charlotte not as it was, but as he wished to see it; playwrights substituted stage lovers for the living characters of Werther. So long as sentimentality remained in fashion, serious Werther plays were dramatizations of arbitrarily selected scenes from Goethe's novel. Later, they were melodramas in which the Werther elements are subordinated to theatrical devices guaranteed to maintain an audience's attention. Failure to understand the full meaning of their inspiration, unwillingness to displease their audience,81 and their own mediocrity explain the failures of these writers. The untheatrical nature of the Werther theme only meant that they had failed before they started. NOTES 1. See F. Nicolai, Beschreibung einer Reise durch Deutschland und die Schweiz, im Jahre 1181 (Berlin, Stettin, 1784), 4:575: "Deutschland hat bekanntermaszen überhaupt viel zu wenig [Originalstücke]." 2. The fact that there were three editions of Gournay's Werther over twenty-seven years would seem to indicate that it held a place in the French repertory in the first part of the nineteenth century; actually the only recorded performance was at Lille, 1818-1819 (see L. Lefebvre, Histoire du théâtre de Lille de ses origines à nos jours [Lille, 1904], 2:378, who may have been misled in his identification by a short title such as Werther drame, often used for Georges Duval's farce). 3. R. Doumic ended his strictures (Revue des deux Mondes, V 14:451, 1903): "Nous devrions dire: hélas! Nous disons: ouf! . . . On

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aura sans doute noté au passage certaines similitudes entre ce drame et un roman fameux qui a même titre." See DECOURCELLE; ROUQUETTE. 4 . See ANDRE, BONIN, CREMERI, GOUÉ, SCHINK, SEIPP, WILLER; SCHMALÖGGER; MELLINA, STUWER.

5. Almanach der deutschen Musen auf das Jahr 2777, p. 82 (a review of Andre's play). 6. Berlinisches Litterarisches Wochenblatt, 13. April 1776 (= Braun, Goethe im Urtheile, 1:273-274). 7. Esprit des Journaux (avril, 1792), p. 35î. 8. "Notice sur Le Chevalier d'industrie," Œuvres complètes (Paris, 1822), 6:402. - Alexandre-Vincent Pineux Duval (1767-1842) visited Goethe in 1803. 9. Realistic stage directions are common in these plays. In Gournay's, the actors are given detailed instructions for the separation scene in which Werther at last kisses Charlotte; then the author adds: "On ne prétend ici que donner une idée de cette scène muette. C'est aux acteurs à voir jusqu'où elle peut être poussée sans blesser les yeux; et surtout sans altérer l'idée qu'on s'est formée de la vertu des deux personnages." ( Werther, drame en cinq actes, Paris, XI, p. 61.) 10. W.A., 22:176. 11. l.Band, 2.Stück (Berlin, 1798), p. 5, "Fragmente." 12. Cf. H . Kindermann, Goethes Menschengestaltung, l.Band, Oer junge Goethe (Berlin, 1932), p. 299: "Den ersten W e g dieser tragischen Maszlosigkeit offenbart uns der "Werther"-Roman: denn seine Tragik liegt in der Maszlosigkeit der Kontemplation . . . Fausts evolutionäres Ringen wird uns in der dialektischen Kampfform der dramatischen Menschengestaltung lebendig gemacht, Werthers kontemplativer Seelenzwiespalt in der monologischen des Brief-Romans — so dasz die Frage der Menschengestaltung hier auch gattungsbestimmend in Erscheinung tritt." 13. Cf. J. Bickelmann, Goethes "Werther" im Urteil des 19. Jahrhunderts Romantik bis Naturalismus 1830-1880 (Gelnhausen, 1937), p. 15: "In der Unabwendbarkeit seines Schicksals liegt der Berührungspunkt mit dem Drama; das Thema des Selbstmordes steht von Anfang an zur Diskussion . . . die Hybris des Helden, die ebenso sehr in der Schrankenlosigkeit seiner metaphysischen Forderungen und Sehnsüchte wie in ihrer Übertragung auf das Gebiet des Moralischen besteht, musz zur Katastrophe führen." 14. See French Drama: Werther. [Film. 1938.] 15. (Alardus, or Suicide from Love.) Jan A. Backer, author of the play, was a minor writer of the end of the eighteenth century; see A. J. van der Aa, Biographisch Woordenboek der Nederlanden (Haarlem, 1855), 2:4-5. Spoelstra (see Dutch, Special Studies) describes this play as a prose tragedy.

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16. Alardus, p. i. 17. "Dit kan ik niet voorbij te zeggen, dat de waare regelen der kunst uit de natuur moeten geput worden," p. ii. 18. "Deeze actie is za geweldig, dat ik dezelve gaarne had achterwege gelaaten, in dien ik niet . . . mijn stuk te veel verzwakt," p. iii. 19. "This is the last morning, unless he has some plan" (II, 3). [Roman and Arabic numerals indicate act and scene, respectively.] 20. "Give my greetings to your master" (V, 5). 21. "O struggle of love and duty!" (IV, 3). 22. In the third act Charlotte agreed to see Alardus knowing that she could not satisfy him in any way consistent with her principles and his demands. 23. "Were suicide not a crime, nothing should have kept me alive" (I, 2). 24. At one point Karel proposes that Alardus go to America to hear Hancock in Congresfs] at Philadelphia, or . . . Nevens Washington of Sullivan, vol moed, Met lust u baaden in het Britsch en Hessisch bloed. (II, 7.) ("Enjoy a bath in British or Hessian blood along with the courageous Washington or Sullivan.") Philadelphia is also mentioned by Ernestus, one of whose exits is motivated by his desire to learn whether that city has been taken yet or not (I, 4). 25. "Bij mij is zij [de stoffe zelve] treffend voor een' gevoelig' mensch, aandoenlijk voor een welgesteld hart; en, hoe beklaaglijk in haaren afloop, dubbel waardig om op het Tooneel gebragt te worden," p. vi. 26. For other Dutch Werther plays, see Dutch Drama. — De Hemelvaart van Sebaldus, also 1786, is a comedy of intrigue whose hero, Werther, pays suit to Eugenia against the wishes of her father, Sebaldus. 27. Bodmer refers to a Werther play by a certain Herr Sinner in his letter to Schinz of August 14, 177S (see Goethe-Jahrbuch, 5:197), but the article on Sinner in the Dictionnaire historique et biographique de la Suisse (Neuchâtel, 1932), 6:99, makes no mention of such a drama. Whereas Sinner was primarily a scholar, Tscharner, who translated Die Alpen and three cantos of Der Messias into French, was a man of letters. For the evidence favoring Tscharner's authorship, see Goethe-]ahrbuch, 8:216. Both men were older than most Werther imitators (Sinner, 1730-1787; Tscharner, 1728-1778). The play was published at Bern in 177S by B. L. Walthard, who pirated Goethes Schriften, 1775-1776. 28. Les Malheurs de Γ amour (Berne, 1775), p. 10. 29. That is to say, Les Mémoires du comte de Comminges (1735), a semi-autobiographical novel by Claudine Alexandrine Guérin, marquise de Tencin. Baculard d'Arnaud's dramatization, Le Comte

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de Comminge, ou Les Amans malheureux (1764), was twice translated into German (1767; 1776) and influenced Miller's Wertherian Siegwart, eine Klostergeschichte. The Wetzlar group of Goethe, Goué (see German Drama), Gotter and Merck was familiar with his works; see L. M. Price, "The Relation of Baculard d'Arnaud to German Literature," Monatshefte (M. Blakemore Evans Number), April-May 1945, pp. 151-160. 30. Malheurs de Pamour, p. 61. 31. Page 12. 32. Page 24. 33. Manstein and Charlotte, respectively; p. 38. 34. The author, perhaps André, refers to Les Malheurs de l'amour as "das französische Ding." See Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (Bern, 1776), p. 4. 35. Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, p. 5. 36. This detail is the only clever invention in the play. When Wilhelm orders his servant to fetch a doctor and then inform Albert of what has happened, the servant says, "Erst doch zum —," but Wilhelm answers, "Gott ja! zum Wundarzt erst . . ." 37. The Werther of the regimental auditor Willer's "bürgerliches Trauerspiel" was probably conceived as a Genie, but Appell, Werther und seine Zeit, p. 72, observes that his language is that of the barracks. The action of Willer's play begins the morning after Werther is forced to withdraw from Count v. C.'s soirée (see Werther, Zweyter Theil, "den 15. März"). The author shows more sympathy with the Storm-and-Stress rebel than with the sentimental lover, for in the final scene (p. 160) Hermann (Wilhelm) is able to agree with Albert's statement, "Die Religion allein kann die Thränen der unbelohnten Liebe abtrocknen." 38. Sografi was a minor dramatic writer whose comedies Le convenienze teatrali and Le inconvenienze teatrali maintained their place in the Italian repertory for half a century. He also wrote a Tom Jones and a Camoëns. A correct analysis of the plot of Verter is found in J. L. Klein, Geschichte des Dramas (Leipzig, 1869), 6(2) :48-57. 39. "Se Federico impara a memoria questo discorso non può dirlo meglio." Verter Gommedia inedita (Vienna, 1813), p. 10. 40. This detail is apparently borrowed from Gresset's three act comedy Sidnei (1745), in which the valet de chambre, who suspects Sidnei of intending to commit suicide, substitutes a harmless liquid for the chosen poison. 41. "Egli è onesto. Il Cielo non abbandona que' cuori sensibili, che hanno per guida la virtù. Il Cielo lo assisterà." Verter, p. 78. 42. Sografi's play was highly praised for its originality by the editor of the Teatro moderno applaudito in his introduction to it. F. Zschech, "A. Sografis Komödie 'Werther' und U. Foscolos

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Roman 'Letzte Briefe des Jacopo Ortis,' " Germanisch-romanische Monatshefte, 3:597-614 (1911), takes issue with this opinion, pointing out that the action of Verter is directed by servants exactly as in traditional comedy. 43. Giorgio takes the confession to dictation, but constantly retards the procedure by asking Verter for the correct punctuation. Ambrogio behaves toward Verter as do the comic servants of earlier comedy toward their easy-going masters. — None of Coccia's works was successful or significant; see A. Julien, Goethe et la musique (Paris, 1880), p. 200. 44. See Italian Drama, COCCIA, "Mentre Francesco faceva il brodo." 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

51.

52. 53.

54.

Werther, ou Le Délire de Γamour (La Haye, 1780), p. 15. Pages 29-30. Page 37 Page 43. Page 61. The title of Diderot's most famous play was Le Père de famille; "O mère de famille, que je t'aime!" is the last line of the best nineteenth-century domestic drama in French, Émile Augier's Gabrielle (1849). In view of the way La Rivière's play meets the standards he undoubtedly had in mind as it was written, the following criticism in the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek must be considered too severe: "Die Charaktere, die Geschichte, die Situationen, alles ist so entstellt, dasz gar ein nichtsbedeutendes Stück ohne Vergnügen und ohne Zweck daraus geworden ist . . . Die Sprache des Stücks ist völlig abscheulich. — Uebrigens wird es wohl bald übersetzt werden." (The last sentence alludes to the translations of Sinner's Les Malheurs de l'amour.) Page 46. Another typica^ eighteenth-century element is the motif of Albert's limitless magnanimity, which is analogous to the young Schiller's preoccupation with Eine groszmütige Handlung aus der neuesten Geschichte. Mercier adapted Lillo's London Merchant as Jenneval, ou Le Barneveit français (1769). His important Essai sur Part dramatique, translated into German by H. L. Wagner, influenced the plays of Lenz; see M. N. Rozanov [Rosanow], Jakob M. R. Lenz der Dichter der Sturm-und-Drangperiode (Leipzig, 1909). Mercier was a friend of J. M. Fleuriot, marquis de Langle, author of the prose Wertheriad Le nouveau Werther (1786).

55. Cf. D. E. Baker, Biographia dramatica (London, 1812), 3:396. In The Life and Times of Frederick Reynolds, Written by Himself (London, 1826), 1:285-316, is given an amusing account of the reading of the play to members of the family of a girl in whom

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Reynolds was interested. His claim that it was written to win her admiration may well be fiction, since the play described does not correspond to the first version of the tragedy. An excellent raconteur, Reynolds doubtless chose to combine fact and fantasy. 56. According to Reynolds. Baker, Biographia dramatica, states the contrary. 57. A. Brandl, "Die Aufnahme von Goethes Jugendwerken in England," Goethe-Jahrbuch, 3:31-34 (1881); J. M. Carré, Goethe en Angleterre (Paris, 1920), pp. 5-7; O. W . Long, "English and American Imitations of Goethe's Werter," Modern Philology, 14:193-213 (1916); and others, all discuss the three-act version of 1796. 58. Here the chronology is confused: Werter soliloquizes at the second watch, although the preceding and following scenes are by day. 59. Brandl, Aufnahme von Goethes Jugendwerken, p. 33. 60. "Prologue." 61. "Epilogue." — Bunery is probably H. W. Bunbury, who did the picture "The First Interview of Werter and Charlotte" (1782); see English Poetry, "Charms that the bliss of Eden might restore." 62. The English public at this time would not have enjoyed Racine's Bérénice with its ultimate farewell; only the expectation of a final "catastrophe" could have held its attention throughout five acts. 63. For example, "Seek some more generous fair; And should she ask the story of thy life . . ." (I, 2); "If it be guilt to suffer keen reproach, Regret, affliction, terror, and despair, With every torture that can rack the soul! Rather than wander from my truth to thee, In action, word or thought — if this be guilt! I own, my Lord, the justice of your charge, And well deserve the phrase . . ." (V) ; Werter's suicide soliloquy (IV) ; and Albert's accusation of "frailty" (V). 64. "Prologue." 65. The most original play inspired by Werther is L. F. E. Ramond de Carbonnière's Storm-and-Stress tragedy, Les dernières Aventures du jeune d'Olban; fragment des amours alsaciennes (Yverdun, 1777), which is not a Werther drama. Dedicated to Lenz, it was read before the Salzmann circle in Strasbourg in 1775 and 1776; cf. A. Mongland, "La Jeunesse de Ramond," Chronique des lettres françaises, 4:561-702 (1926). A passage from a letter to Lenz (Briefe von und an J. M. R. Lenz [Leipzig, 1918], 1:159160) shows how capable Ramond was of the Wertherian mood: "Au milieu des orages de ma vie je n'ai que des éclairs d'espérance; bientôt viennent les peines d'esprit, les peines du coeur, la lassitude et le découragement, et adieu au monde imaginaire que l'on s'était créé." In the critical years of French romanticism, Charles Nodier republished the play with additions from Ramond's

2O8

66.

67. 68. 69.

70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76.

77.

THE TESTAMENT OF WERTHER

manuscript (1829); it was thus the only production of the first period of French Werther imitation to survive into the new age. See Dutch: De Hemelvaart van Sebaldus; French: SCRIBE, THIERRY; German: HENSELT, HENSLER, H O F F M A N N , RAHMEL, SCHMIEDER, TRÜTZSCHLER; and Polish: W I T W I C K I . See English: POOLE; French: GEORGES DUVAL, NÉZEL; German: BÄUERLE, BELLY, BRETZNER, M E I S L ; Russian: TITOV. Page 32. Page 72. Hasse had, during his best years, been court musician at Dresden and Vienna; a distinguished representative of the late Neapolitan school of opera, he is chosen as a composer least likely to have appealed to sentimentalists or Storm-and-Stress writers. Page 73. Giesecke, who collaborated on the libretto of Die Zauberflöte, later became a famous mineralogist. Werthers Leiden. Eine lokale Posse (Wien, 1807), p. 12. Page 25. Page 42. Page 45. One of the last Werther farces, Die alte Comœdie vom Arzt und Tod (1857), shows how the Werther theme has lost in interest. There is more satire on medicine in it than literary parody. A clever pseudophysician, Martinuccio, formerly Merten the shoemaker, cheats Death of Werther, who has deliberately eaten poisoned mushrooms. (See SCH—T—.) Potier played Werther in both Duval's farces and in Désaugiers's farce. For English and German allusions to Potier as Werther, see

GEORGES DUVAL.

78. Werther, ou Les Egaremens d'un cœur sensible (Paris, 1825), p. 19. 79. F. Baldensperger, Bibliographie critique de Goethe en France (Paris, 1907), no. 591. 80. Ibid., no. 1696, 1700. 81. Charlotte drame en trois actes, précédé de La Fin d'un roman prologue (Bibliothèque dramatique; Paris, 1846), p. [54]. —This play is analyzed by Appell, Werther und seine Zeit, pp. 42-43. 82. A similar borrowing from Faust is found in the opening chorus of Belly's Werther farce (see German Drama), which begins: "Frisch, froh zum Thor hinaus, Aus dem engen Haus heraus." 83. See French Poetry, VREULS; French Drama, GRELINGER; German Poetry, HUCH; Italian Drama, FRANCHI. Franchi seems to have been influenced by the Christmas chorus of children which concludes Massenet's opera; his Werther appears to Charlotte as an unembittered ghost on Christmas eve.

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84. Cf. S. Chantal, "Voici Werther (A propos d'une Millième [performance of Massenet's Werther] et d'un film inédit)," Paris-Soir, 22 octobre 1938. 85. For example, [Michael Fraenkel,] Werther's Younger Brother, The Story of an Attitude (New York, Paris [ca. 1937]). 86. "She innocent and cherished, He a poet and dreamer," page 16. — As in Farnese's opera text, Werther is a poet because Goethe was one. 87. "Alas, what are future and glory: two phantasms and two dreams!" page 16. 88. Lipmann is the author of Georg Büchner und die Romantik (München, 1923). 89. Page 65. 90. In the preface to his Werther tragedy, Gournay noted: "Cet ouvrage était depuis longtemps en portefeuille. Peut-être eût on dû l'y laisser toujours?" (Werther, Orarne En Cinq Actes [Paris, An XI], p. [iii]). The answer to the question is probably "Yes!" 91. The librettist Dejaure, for example, mentions four endings which he wrote for his Werther et Charlotte. He first had Werther die repentant, then he let a faithful servant save Werther's life by knocking the pistol aside, next he merely had a character announce that Werther had been prevented from committing suicide, and finally he considered a suggestion that the curtain fall as the shot of Werther's pistol is heard. Cf. Dejaure's Préface.

VI

The Legacy of Werther IMITATION AND INFLUENCE

critics of Werther frequently charged its author with having written an apology for suicide, and it was long generally believed that Goethe, whatever his literary intention may have been, had exerted through his novel a considerable influence on the European death rate. A passage in the work entitled, to be sure, Dichtung und Wahrheit has given credence to the second of these accusations, for Goethe states that after writing Werther he felt "froh und frei, und zu einem neuen Leben berechtigt," but that some readers of it believed "man müsse die Poesie in Wirklichkeit verwandeln." 1 Similar English and French opinions were alluded to and apparently accepted by Byron, who declares in his dedication of Marino Faltero to Goethe: ARLY

. . . I rather suspect that, by one single work of prose, you yourself have excited a greater contempt for life, than all the English volumes of poesy that ever were written. Madame de Staël says, that 'Werther has occasioned more suicides than the most beautiful woman;' and I really believe that he has put more individuals out of this world than Napoleon himself, — except in the way of his profession.2 Although there were cases of suicide committed by individuals who read Werther, they were exceptions memorable only because of the notoriety of the novel;

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more normal readers contented themselves with dressing like Werther and Charlotte and with giving their children such names as Charlotte and Werthérie — or, in some cases, with writing Werther imitations. In 1779, when Werther enthusiasm had not yet become a legend, an impartial German observer reported that "Alle in hiesiger Gegend [Berlin] bekannte und ziemlich zahlreiche Selbstmorde würden nicht ermangelt haben — wenn auch nie ein Werther auf dem Schauplatz erschienen," and his opinion is confirmed by the statements of at least some of his contemporaries.3 T h e sentimentalist read away his melancholy just as Goethe wrote away his despair, and it is perhaps evidence of the therapeutic value of vicarious literary experience that during the Werther period in England, when the pernicious influence of Werther was so frequently mentioned in connection with cases of "sudden death," the suicide rate was lower than at any other time in a century and a half.4 T h e tendency to confuse notoriety with influence is natural enough, but just as it may be doubted whether Werther literally excited contempt for life, so must all attempts of literary historians to credit the novel with having created a European fashion of pessimism in literature be considered highly suspect. T h e analysis of early Werther poems and plays has shown that among the most important reasons for enthusiastic interest in Goethe's novel was the fact that many of its preromantic features were already familiar to the eighteenth-century reader. Sentimentality flourished with the social and cultural rise of the middle class whose ideals it embodied to so great an extent; and where, as in England and in Germany, middle-class values were more securely established, Werther quickly became popular. Objections

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to suicide and to sympathy with fictitious sorrows had only a limited influence, for Werther's opinions on many subjects were identical with those of popular moral philosophers, and his language echoed the Bible and pulpit; the ambiguous concept of virtue was freely used to state what seemed the positive values of the conduct of Lotte and Werther, and few readers would have taken offense at Delia Crusca's assertion in a footnote to his Elegy Written after having read the Sorrows of Werter that suicide had prevented "any immoral gratification."5 The sentimental Werther seemed only quaint or ridiculous, however, when "the affectation or the indulgence of excessive sensibility" had gone down "to the lower orders of society" 6 — and nowhere did he lose favor so rapidly as in England, where the middle class first achieved stability. Although Werther had reached England by way of France, it was at first long ignored by the conservative French literary aristocracy;7 hence interest in the novel did not end with popular sentimentality but continued through the decades of economic revolution and social change in which the French middle class finally consolidated its position. The sentimental Werther degenerated into a comic figure of the French stage as the spirit of frustration in mal du siècle gave way to prosperous self-confidence and active humanitarianism. Werther as a sensitive individual who questioned conventional values lived on in France and elsewhere as a symbol for those aware that man was still far from having achieved an absolute.8 The story of Werther plays and poems would seem only to confirm the truism that popularity is less affected by qualities of greatness and originality than by the strong appeal of the familiar, since the real significance of Goethe's novel hardly began to be appreciated until

THE LEGACY OF WERTHER

2I3

long after the period of its most general notoriety. Yet Werther did exert certain influences more enduring and important than those represented by Werther fashions and naïve literary imitations. Its popularity helped further to establish the currency of the sentimental style, which was perhaps hastened to its end in England, but which was a strong force in ending the tyranny of classicistic tradition in such other literatures as the French and the French-dominated Swedish. In Germany the fame of Werther served the cause of the Storm-andStress literary revolution and made the name of Goethe unforgettable. Curiosity about the author of the novel led non-Germans to other of Goethe's works and inspired an interest in the literature of the nation which could produce such a genius. Despite, and because of, distorted impressions of Werther, the fame of Goethe finally outweighed the notoriety of Werther, and there were surely many everywhere who, like Sir Herbert Croft in England, may have reviled the author of Werther only to become in later years admirers of Goethe and propagandists for German literature. IMITATION AND APPRECIATION

Although few Werther imitations have any value as creative literature, they vary greatly in literary-historical significance. Even those which fall into obviously identical categories like middle-class drama, descriptive elegy, or satiric parody, differ in importance according to the purpose of the author and the state of the literature which he represents. A heroic epistle like Edward Taylor's Werter to Charlotte (1784) is so unnovel in English as to be hardly more than evidence of the popularity of Werther in England; but the Lettre de Verther à Charlotte (ca. 1780) of the Swiss Bridel,

2 14

T H E

TESTAMENT OF WERTHER

Hartig's "Lettre" in his Melange de Vers et de Fr os e (1788) crowned by the French Academy, the Swedish epistle of Adlersparre (1786) and the Italian one of di Maniago (ca. 1796) are all symptoms of imminent rupture with literary traditions no longer sufficient. Although di Maniago did not publish his Werther imitation, his Le Notti campestri (1797), a translation of Charles de Laveaux's Les Nuits champêtres, contains similar appreciative descriptions of landscape, which is acquiring new poetic values.9 In 1798 and 1799 another Italian poet, Vittore Benzone, published Werther sonnets; the concluding lines of his Alla Tomba di Werther, Qui posato ha la sua pallida faccia Werther: penosi, o voi fermate il passo, Ch'ite seguendo la medesma traccia: add nothing to the Werther theme that Goethe had not already expressed in the verses, prefixed to the second edition of his novel (1775), which end "Sey ein Mann, und folge mir nicht nach"; but within twenty more years Benzone had completed the transition from sentimentality to conscious romanticism, so that his sonnets can be said to represent the same search for a more effective style that did those of an Alexander Thomson.10 If earlier Werther imitations are literarily significant because they frequently illuminate the process of stylistic change, later poems and dramas tell a story of ever maturer appreciation of Werther and its author, for they testify both to its timeless appeal and to awareness of its historical importance. The growing reputation of Goethe as the national German poet served the fame of Werther in periods when the literary climate was otherwise hardly congenial to Wertherian sentiments; although, more often than not, sympathetic interpretations of Werther — ex-

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cept those treating its historical significance — reflect values attributed to it by French romantic poets and their predecessors. The success outside of France of various French Werther imitations shows that even the complete absence in certain languages of Werther poems and dramas, or of other literary tributes to Werther, need not mean that the novel remained unknown to any important group of European readers.11 When, as in Denmark or Italy, a translation of Werther was successfully suppressed, the original or a French version of it remained accessible. Although there were few Dutch Werther imitations, Goethe's novel and the controversy which it aroused on its appearance were no less familiar to Dutch than to German readers,12 and the notoriety of Werther can be assumed to have been as great in the Netherlands as in the non-German sections of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where the success of theatrical vulgarizations of Werther and the record of a Czech folk song indicate that an exploitable interest in Werther themes existed even below the level of written literature.18 Wide success with enthusiastic contemporaries has never been a safe criterion for judging the lasting qualities of a work of literature, and the story of the sentimental Werther in England would indicate that it may actually create a prejudice against a work and its author. Werther finally achieved a lasting significance, but the story of Werther criticism and imitation, of Werther plays and poems, reveals to how great an extent literary evaluations can represent both conscious and unconscious partial judgments. In the age of sentimentality readers were captivated by details of Werther which suited their already crystallized tastes, sometimes despite serious doubts about the morality of the novel. Moral issues, then, long remained important for the fame of Werther:

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objections to suicide were followed by sermons against sentimentality and, later, against the values for which Goethe seemed to stand; critics of narrow religious and ethical orthodoxy espoused the cause of Werther from the time of Storm and Stress well through the nineteenth century, and they included Young Germans, French Romanticists, and later writers hostile, like the Spaniard Dicenta, to oppressive middle-class conformity. Favorable and unfavorable interpretations, reflecting changes in literary fashion and sometimes deliberately unliterary judgments, have in their time rendered service and disservice to the appreciation of Werther and have left in various literatures traces which must long affect readers of the novel and their memories of it. "Le mécanisme de l'influence," according to Paul Hazard, "c'est la déformation," 14 and early attempts to capture in English and French verse some of the spirit of Werther show that this principle has a logical validity. But these attempts, like the whole body of Werther imitations — and like much German-inspired French literature of the early nineteenth century, to take one of many possible more general examples — also show that in acting as an influence a work suffers the same kinds of misinterpretation as it does in being appreciated, and that the deformed impressions thus created have no less enduring effects. Werther plays and poems invite comparison with one or more aspects of Goethe's novel even when they only contain a passing allusion to some manifestation of Werther enthusiasm, but critical readers since the first reviewers of Werther imitations have almost always found that the comparison leaves a final impression of distortion, deformation, or mediocrity. Werther has been so variously interpreted and evaluated that imitations of it, except for a few more recent poems

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and plays, particularly those in Romance languages, seem to have been produced by writers naively unaware of the novel's possible total significance. Thus the young Novalis was too imbued with eighteenth-century sentimentality to treat the Werther theme effectively in his An Werthers Grab, although not long afterwards Tieck managed to imply in his Kleines Theater in der Arena that Goethe's novel was both the story which moved the audience of a ridiculously serio-comic Italian play, and something far more. With the achievement of historical perspective the process of counteracting the damage done and still to be done by imperfect appreciation had but begun. Werther has survived incautious enthusiasm, bitter hostility, and tolerant or scornful indifference. It is not merely a document to illustrate an era of sentimentality or a period in Goethe's development, nor does its story serve only to demonstrate that notoriety, appreciation, and influence can be analyzed in terms of styles, Zeitgeist, social conflicts, relative stages of cultural development, and the charting of main channels of international literary contact. The novel's poetic intensity has been felt by many readers unable to define what it was, and what they felt is in some feeble measure recorded in the poems and plays which bear witness to the continuing fame of Werther. There is no longer a compulsion to create styles capable of expressing the emotions of a Werther, and literary parody has gone out of fashion, but as a truly poetic work Goethe's novel will long continue to affect many readers profoundly; some of these will be poets of no less stature than Oehlenschläger, Lermontov, Sainte-Beuve, Ricarda Huch or Franz Tamayo, and they too will perhaps pay their tribute to a master. Had Goethe portrayed only sentimental love and sentimental

2 18

THE TESTAMENT OF WERTHER

despair in Werther, its protagonist would have suffered the fate of joining in the limbo of literary history his sentimental predecessors like Saint-Preux or his descendants afflicted with mal du siècle like René. But like the crisis which destroys Werther, the emotional and intellectual ferment which precedes it can always recur while the hearts of men remain young. "Das Herz bleibt. Immer und überall bleibt nur das Herz. Wer ein Herz verachtet, ist verwirrt oder gemein." 16 So long as feeling and suffering are in some sense one, it may be said that Werther has properly been called a book of eternal love.16 NOTES 1. W.A. 28:225. 2. The Poetical Works of Lord Byron (London, 1866), 6:51. (The dedicatory letter was presented to Goethe in 1831; cf. ibid., p. 50.) 3. A. F. Cranz, Meine Lieblingsstunden (Berlin, 1779), quoted by F. A. Hünich, "Aus der Wertherzeit," JbS.Kipp. 4:267, who, although he makes much of "Selbstmorde . . . in deren Beweggründen bis zur Art der Ausführung das Vorbild Werthers durch Zeugen erhärtet wird," brings supporting testimony from C. H . Krögen, Tableau von Leipzig im Jahr 1783, from A. G. Meiszner, Lezter Auf saz eines Selbstmörders, and from the memoirs of F. v. Matthisson; cf. Hünich, "Aus der Wertherzeit," pp. 265-268. 4. Cf. F. Winslow, The Anatomy of Suicide (London, 1840), p. 266, who quotes Croft's poem, Lines found, after Wenter's death . . . , but who records 339 cases for the years 1770-1779 and only 224 cases in the following or Werther decade. 5. The same interpretation of virtue can be found, for instance, in La Rivière's play, Werther, ou le Délire de l'amour; Julie-Charlotte declares, "Du moins, je descendrai dans la tombe avec toute mon innocence" (II, 5). 6. Francis Jeffrey in the Edinburgh Review, 8:207 (April, 1806). 7. L. Reynaud, Vlnfluence allemande en France au XVllle et au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1922), p. 69, states that "Cette production [Werther], si purement allemande, s'introduisit d'abord difficilement en France." As appears from the introductory sections of the chapter on French Werther poetry, supra, the objection was to a style not yet generally acceptable but certainly not uniquely German.

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8. In his Philosophie de Fart (Paris, 1865), Hippolyte Taine chooses "le Faust ou le Werther insatiable et triste" as the "personnage régnant, c'est-à-dire le modèle que les contemporains entourent de leur admiration et de leur sympathie," of modem times ("de nos jours"), and claims that, "sous la froideur apparente ou l'impassibilité morne de l'esprit positif, elle [la maladie du siècle] subsiste encore aujourd'hui" (pp. 158, 150). 9. Laveaux's imitation of Young and Thomson was first published, like the earlier French Werther imitations, in Switzerland (Lausanne, 1784); among his numerous translations from the German was one of J. M. Miller's sentimental Siegwart, the novel which German readers once frequently mentioned along with Werther. 10. For Benzone's later development, see G. Crovato, Nella, le epistole e varie rime di Vittore Benzone . . . con uno studio sulla vita e sulle opere dell'autore (Ascoli Picena, 1893); the title of the third and last canto of Benzone's Nella (1820), an attempt to counteract Byron's criticisms of the Venetian aristocracy, is, significantly, "Π tentato suicido." 11. Not including Massenet's opera, French Werther plays have been performed in the original and in translation on stages in the United States, England, Germany, Poland, and Russia; French Werther poetry was not only widely read, but some poems were translated into Italian and Russian; see Bibliography. 12. Although K. Menne interpreted the uncut state of anti-Wertherian and anti-sentimental works he used in the library of Leyden as evidence that they found few readers (Goethes 'Werther' in der niederländischen Literatur [Leipzig, 1905], p. 75), it is more likely that Dutch readers were following the Werther controversy in German, for the early translation and, presumably, performance of Sinner's French Werther play indicates contemporaneous popular interest in Germany and Holland. The late date of Dutch Werther poems and plays does not mean that there was any cultural time-lag in Holland; J. E. van der Laan, Goethe in de Nederlandsche Letterkunde (Amsterdam [1933]), p. 75, emphasizes the keen interest in current German literature which existed among educated Dutch readers of the period in question. 13. See German Drama: GIESECKE, HOFFMANN, MEISL, SCHMALÖGGER, SEIPP, and cf. I. Pukánszky-Kádár, Geschichte des deutschen Theaters in Ungarn (München, 1933), 1:37, for a performance of Seipp's work at Esterháza. In the Goethe collection of the Academy of Science at Budapest, as in that of the Swedish National Library at Stockholm, the amount of minor German Wertheriana from the eighteenth century is significant because little of it is of recent acquisition and because many items once belonged to Hungarian and Swedish readers of the time of their first publication. 14. P. Hazard, "Les récents Travaux en littératures comparées, Essai

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de classification, Second article," Revue universitaire, 23 (1) :212 (Paris, 1914). 15. E. G. Kolbenheyer, Monsalvasch, ein Roman für Individualisten (München, n.d.); this is part of a short passage quoted, because it purportedly contains the essential idea of Kolbenheyer's novel, by W . Mahrholz, Die Literatur der Gegenwart (Berlin, 1931), p. 208.

16. Cf. I. Pajurä, Werther (see Rumanian Poetry), the opening words of which are, "Cítese ín cartea dragostei eterne Pe care-odatl tu ai läcrämat . . ." ("I read in the book of the eternal love for which you once wept").

Bibliography

PREFATORY NOTE In this bibliography Werther plays and Werther poems in the same language are grouped together. The languages are in alphabetical order. Poems are entered alphabetically by author, when identified, under the heading Poetry; other poems are entered under first lines, except as noted below; longer sections have first line cross-references. Plays are entered alphabetically by author under the heading Drama, with title cross-references; works by unidentified authors are entered under their titles only. Special Studies affording information about Werther plays and Werther poems in a given language are listed before the poems and plays; references to these "standard" studies in the corresponding Poetry and Drama sections are by author or author and brief title. Italic capitals indicate an author's name; first lines are enclosed in quotation marks; titles of plays or poems are printed unitalicized; pointed brackets ( < > ) enclose material not on the title page, but supplied from tables of contents, indexes, and so on. "In:" followed by an italicized title usually denotes an item printed in some larger work or collection of the author's; if an item appears in a collection or periodical publication, no " I n : " is used, and the title of the containing work follows immediately in italics. The sign " = " denotes a facsimile reprint. When the sign " = " and the following reference are enclosed in square brackets, an ordinary reprinting is indicated. An asterisk (*) before an entry signifies that the work listed contains only an incidental Werther reference; there is no first-line entry for poems marked with an asterisk, unless neither author nor title is known. The customary signs and abbreviations are used. " 2 : 1 6 " is to be read "vol. 2, p. 1 6 " — " I I 4:20" is to be read "2nd series, vol. 4, p. 20"—"6(2)¡31" is to be read "vol. 6, part 2, p. 31." An italicized date indicates the performance of a play; the city and theater are given, if known. Transliteration of Cyrillic letters follows the system of the Library of Congress except in the printing of a few lower-case digraphs.

BIBLIOGRAPHIES · CATALOGUES · GENERAL STUDIES APPELL, J. W. Werther und seine Zeit. Vierte Auflage. Oldenburg, 1896. vii, 369 pp. BRAUN, J. W. Goethe im Urtheile seiner Zeitgenossen. Berlin, 1883-1885. 3 vol. GOEDEKE, KARL. Grundrisz zur Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung. Dritte neu bearbeitete Auflage. Dresden, 19121913. < Werther. > 4(3): 163-221, (4)188-94. HERMENJAT, L. Werther et les frères de Werther. Lausanne, 1892. (Thèse.) HILLEBRAND, KARL. Die Werther-Krankheit in Europa. In: Zeiten, Völker und Menschen. Straszburg, 1885. 7:102142. HÜ ΝICH, F. A. Werther und seine Zeit. In: J. W. von Goethe, Die Leiden des jungen Werther (ed. M. Hecker). Leipzig, 1922. pp. v-xxxiv. "Mit einundsiebzig Abbildungen nach zeitgenössischen Vorlagen." Katalog der Sammlung Kippenberg. Leipzig, 1928. 3 vol. MATL, JOSEF. Goethe bei den Slaven. Jahrbuch für Kultur und Geschichte der Slaven. 1933. N.F. 8:37-57. NAQUET, FÉLIX. Werther au théâtre. Revue d'art dramatique. Paris, 1892. 25:321-338. NICOLOVIUS, A. Über Goethe. Literarische und artistische Nachrichten. Erster [only] Theil. Leipzig, 1828. xiv, 440 pp. SCHREIBER, C. F. Goethe's Works with the Exception of Faust. A Catalogue . . . New Haven, London, 1940. pp. 86-136. STRICH, FRITZ. Goethe und die Weltliteratur. Bern, 1946. 408 pp.

ABBREVIATIONS OF TITLES Appell: .Werther und seine Zeit (vide supra). Braun: Goethe im Urtheile seiner Zeitgenossen (vide supra). DNB: Dictionary of National Biography, New York, 1885-1901. Jb.S.Kipp. (Jb.S.Kipp.) : Jahrbuch der Sammlung Kippenberg, Leipzig, 1921-1930. 10 vol. JEGP: The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Bloomington, Indiana. Naquet: Werther au théâtre (vide supra). Nicolovius: Uber Goethe [etc.] (vide supra). Schreiber, Goethe's Works: Goethe's Works with the Exception of Faust [etc.] (vide supra). W.A. [i.e. Weimarer Ausgabe]: Goethes Werke; herausgegeben im Auftrage der Groszherzogin Sophie von Sachsen. Weimar, 18871919. (Unless otherwise noted, reference is to "I. Abtheilung.")

BIBLIOGRAPHY [BOHEMIAN

(CECH)]

POETRY

"Tes se stíne, mácej size lice" see German Poetry, "Schatten sei zufrieden, dasz ich weine." [chínese] DRAMA

ΤSAO, S. S. [Translated title:] The Sorrow of the Young Werther, a play in four scenes, written by S. S. Tsao. Shanghai, 1928. [147 pp.] [Cf. Schreiber, Goethe's Works, item 1260.] [danish] POETRY

OEHLENSCHLÄGER, ADAM GOTTLOB, 1779-1850. "Aftenröden" Oldingen ved Werthers Grav. In: Digte. Kiöbenhavn, 1803. pp. 163-166. [73 lines.] —[Swedish translation:] Gubben vid Werthers Graf. Klytia, 1:16-19. Strengnäs [1813]. [Signed:] L. A. E. —[German translation:] "Abendroth" Der Greis am Grabe Werthers. In: Gedichte von Oehlenschläger. Zweite vermehrte Auflage. Stuttgart, Tübingen, 1844. pp. 228-230. [dutch] SPECIAL

STUDIES

LAAN, J. E. VAN DER. Goethe in de Nederlandsche Letterkunde. Amsterdam [1933]. 220 pp. MENNE, KARL. Goethes "Werther" in der niederländischen Literatur. Ein Beitrag zur vergleichenden Literaturgeschichte. ( = Breslauer Beiträge zur Literaturgeschichte 6.) Leipzig, 1905. 94 pp. SPOELSTRA, H. A. C. De Invloed van de duitsche Letterkunde op de nederlandsche in de tweede helft van de i8e eeuw. Amsterdam, 1931. xii, 184 pp.

226

BIBLIOGRAPHY

POETRY

AGRON, PIERRE, fl. 1794-1827. Het Graf van Werther. In: Eenzaam Tijdverdrijf. Amsterdam, 1794. [Not examined.] * FEITH, RHIJNVIS, 1755-1824. Werther aan Ismene. < ΐ 7 7 9 · > In: Oden en Gedichten. Amsterdam, 1797. 2:187194. * HINLOOPEN, JAN, 1759-1822. Lierzang op Goethe. [Praise of the poet, "wiens lied/Geheel weemoedige wellust,/Louter oorspronkelijkheid,/Stroomde, als een waterval,/Van de marmeren klip,/In den afgrond der ziel." Cf. Laan, p. 32.] O., V. Charlotte bij het graf van Werther. Altnanak voor Jonge Heeren m Juffers voor heljaar 1790. Amsterdam, pp. 45-47. [Not examined.] Willem bij Lotjes Grab. Almanak voor Vrouwen door Vrouwen. Rotterdam, 1801. [Not examined.] DRAMA

BACKER, JAN AUKE{S), fl. 1780-1800. Alardus, of De Zelfmoord Door Liefde. Tooneelspel. Amsterdam, 1786. tp., viii, 108 pp. De Hemelvaart van Sebaldus. Blijspel. De Nederlandsche Dichtkundige Schouwburg. Amsterdam, 1786. 1:205-284. Reviewed: Vaderlandsche Letteroefeningen, 1787. 1:337. De jonge Werther. Treurspel. Amsterdam, 1776. 51 pp. See French Drama, SINNER. NOMSZ, JAN, 1738-1803, attributed author; see De Hemelvaart van Sebaldus. [ENGLISH] SPECIAL

STUDIES

BRANDL, ALOIS. Die Aufnahme von Goethes Jugendwerken in England. Goethe-Jahrbuch, 1881. 3:27-76. CARRÉ, J. M. Goethe en Angleterre. Paris, 1920. Bibliographie de Goethe en Angleterre. Paris, 1920. Renewed and supplemented: A. E. TURNER, Modern Language Review, 1921. 16:364-370. LONG, O. W. Goethe's Sorrows of Werther in England and America. Harvard Dissertation, 1913.

ENGLISH:

POETRY

227

The Attitude of Eminent Englishmen and Americans toward Werter. Modern Philology, 1916. 14:455-466. English and American Imitations of Goethe's Werter. Ibid., pp. 193-213. English Translations of Goethe's Werther. JEGP, 1915. 14:169-203. Werther in America. Studies in Honor of John Albrecht Walz. Lancaster, Pa., 1941. pp. 86-116. S TOC Κ LEY, V. German Literature as Known in England 1750-1830. London, 1929. STOKOE, F. W. German Influence in the English Romantic Period, 1788-1818. London, 1926. WILKENS, F. H. Early Influence of German Literature in America. Americana Germanica, 1899-1900. 3, no. 2:103205. POETRY

A. "With sorrow of heart I draw near." Charlotte at the Tomb of Werter. [Signed:] " — A . " Visitor, Richmond, Sept. 23, 1809. 1:136. [6 four-line stanzas.] Α., C. "Whence are those groans that pierce the midnight air?" Elegy on the Death of Werter. European Magazine, Sept., 1786. 10:214. [14 four-line stanzas.] " A h ! not on me she turn'd her wand'ring eyes!" see BANNERMAN. "Ah, restless mortal!—had I bid thee die" see PICKERING. "Ah, why so seldom does the stream of Song" see THOMSON. "Alas, poor Werter! to himself a prey" see MERRY. " A m I not still the same, whose ardent eye" see THOMSON. AMELIA. "Dear Bow! which did my Charlotte's bosom grace." Supposed to have been addressed by WERTER to the breast-bow CHARLOTTE had on the first time he saw her, and which she had given him on his birth-day, and he always wore in his bosom. [Signed:] "Amelia." Gentleman's Magazine, March, 1786. 56(1)¡252. [Sonnet.] "And say, did Charlotte's hand these pistols give?" see LA DD. " A s when thou wander'st through the neighbouring field" see P., R. S.

228

BIBLIOGRAPHY

" A t thy lone tomb ill fated Youth." Charlotte's Lamentation. Composed by Mr. Callcott. Author of Werter to Charlotte. London. Printed for T. Skillern. [1784?] pp. [2-3]. [2 eightline stanzas.] ATKINSON, WILLIAM, 1757-1846, attributed, author; see "With sighs let musing melancholy come." AUBINUS. "Near yonder cypress-shaded grove." Elegy. From the Sorrows of Werter. [Signed:] "Aubinus." European Magazine, November, 1786. 10:379. Í12 four-line stanzas.] BANNERMAN, ANNE, d. 1829. "When the first beams of morn illume the sky"; "Is this sad heart, so cold and vacant, mine?"; "Where is that sentiment which warm'd my breast"; "Ah! not on me she turn'd her wand'ring eyes!"; "Howls the sad wind, amid the torrents drear"; " W h y will she look, as if her soul were mine?"; "Pierced by the rugged thorn, I burst my way"; "Yes! it is well: Avenging Heav'n! 'tis well"; " I feel, I feel, that all is over now"; " ' T i s midnight now,—all silent as the tomb." Sonnets [I-X] from Werter. In: Poems. Edinburgh, 1800. pp. 97-110. London, 1800. 8vo. Reviewed: British Critic, 1800. 16:139-141. 12 mo. Reviewed: Critical Review, 1801. I I 31:435-438. [Quoted: " 'Tis midnight now,—all silent as the tomb."] A new edition. Edinburgh, 1807. pp. 45-54. "Where is that Sentiment which warm'd my breast?" C. Lofft, Laura: or An Anthology of Sonnets. London, 1814. 2: [no.] 136. BELGRA VE see

GROSVENOR.

BISHOP, Sir HENRY ROWLEY, 1786-1855, composer; see "Could I e'er that form disgrace." BUNBURY, HENRY WILLIAM, 1750-1811, illustrator; see "Charms that the bliss of Eden might restore." BURRELL, Lady SOPHIA {RAYMOND), i75o?-i8o2. "Their branches the green willows wave!" Charlotte's Lamentation. In: Poems. London, 1793. 2:134. * BYRON, GEORGE GORDON, Lord, 1788-1824. The An Apostrophic Hymn. B y Horace Hornem, Esq. In: The Works. London, 1898. Poetry 1:477-502. 147-150: "Seductive Waltz!—though on thy native

Waltz: [1813.] [Lines shore/

ENGLISH:

229

POETRY

Even Werter's self proclaimed thee half a whore;/Werter— to decent vice though much inclined,/Yet warm, not wanton; dazzled, but not blind—."] C., S. "They tell me, time's all-powerful hand will heal." Sonnet. Charlotte to the Shade of Werter. European Magazine, 1786. 10:380. CAL(L)COTT, JOHN WALL, composer; see " A t thy lone tomb ill fated Youth"; "The conflicts o'er, my Love adieu." "Can this the fruit of haughty temper be" see CANTELO,

ANNE,

THOMSON.

afterwards Mrs. HARRISON

see

SMITH.

CHARLOTTE. "Oft do I wander at approaching eve." Elegy to the Memory of Werter. Lady's Magazine, 1784. 15:718. [4 four-line stanzas.] "Charlotte, fair maid, what means that eye" see

UPTON.

"Charms that the bliss of Eden might restore." On: First Interview of Werter and Charlotte. Engraving of J. R. Smith. London, October, 1782. Artist: Henry William Bunbury. [Four lines.] Quoted: Frau von Stein to Knebel, 24. April 1783. [= W. Bode, Stunden mit Goethe. 6:164-165.] "Complain, gentle Werter, no more" see

UPTON.

"Content and Peace have rear'd their quiet cell" see ING.

PICKER-

"Could I e'er that form disgrace." Werter, A Ballad, supposed to have been written after his last Interview with Charlotte, The Music by Henry R. Bishop. London, Printed & Published for the Author [1810]. [pp. 2-3.] [3 eight-line stanzas.] "Could Lotta now her luckless Friend behold" see

THOMSON.

* CRABBE, GEORGE, 1754-1832. The Parish Register. [1807.] In: Poems. Cambridge, 1905. 1:192. [Lines 416-419: prints of Werter and Charlotte.] CROFT, Sir HERBERT, 5th hart., 1751-1816. "If chance some kindred spirit should relate." Lines found, after Werter's death, upon the ground by the pistol. In: Love and Madness. A Story too True. In a Series of Letters between Parties, whose Names would perhaps be mentioned, were they less known, or less lamented. London, 1780. pp. 283-284. [24 lines. Attributed author: James Hackman.]

230

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Reviewed: Monthly Review, April, 1780. I 42:326; London Review, 1780. 11:451. —A New Edition. London, 1780. pp. 284-286. —Third edition. London, 1780. —Fourth edition. London, 1780. —Fourth edition. Dublin, 1786. —Fifth edition. London. —[With title:] LINES found, after WERTHER'S Death, upon the Ground by the Pistol. In: ibid. A new edition, corrected. London, 1786. p. 318. [= F. Winslow, The Anatomy of Suicide. London, 1840. p. 87.] —[French translation of Love and Madness:] Les Fureurs de l'Amour, ou Histoire et Correspondence authentique de James Hackman et de Miss Martha Ray, assassinée d'un coup de pistolet par son amant à la sortie du théâtre de Covent-Garden. Traduction de l'Anglais, par Bertin. Paris, 1809. 2 vol. [Cf. Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Catalogue des Imprimés, under Bertin, i.e. Théodore Pierre Bertin, 1751-1819.] "Dear Bow! which did my Charlotte's bosom grace" see AMELIA. DELLA

CRUSCA

see MERRY.

"Each Schoolboy now (so wise our age is grown)" see THOMSON. "Ere half recover'd from my scene of madness" see MEYLER. "Escaped from scenes where noise and folly dwell" see PICKERING. * ETHELSTON, Rev. CHARLES WICKSTED. The Suicide. In: The Suicide; with other Poems. London, 1804. [Written to counteract The Sorrows of Werter, "a polished tale of artificial woe."] F., J. "When night her sable curtain drew." Werter's Ghost, Words and Music by J: F:,—Liverpool. J. B. Pye, Liverpool [ca. 1790]. [4 eight-line stanzas.] See also "When sable night had darkness spread." "Farewell, dear Charlotte!—take this last adieu." Werter to Charlotte, Supposed to be written by HIM a few hours before his Death. In: Werter and Charlotte. A German Story.

ENGLISH:

23I

POETRY

A New Translation, from the last Leipsic Edition. Illustrated with Notes. London: Printed for the TRANSLATOR, 1786. pp. 161-163. [66 lines, couplets.] —The Sorrows of Werter. A Pathetic Story. London, 1802. pp. 63-64. [22 of the original 66 lines.] FARRELL, Mrs. SARAH. "When doubtful Albert saw lost Werter laid." Charlotte, or a Sequel to the Sorrows of Werter. In: Charlotte, or a Sequel to the Sorrows of Werter; a Struggle between Religion and Love, in an Epistle from Abelard to Eloisa; a Vision, or Evening Walk; and other Poems. By Mrs. Farrell. Bath, London, 1792. pp. 1-25. Reviewed: English Review, 1792. 2:299-301; European Magazine, 1792. 22:355; Critical Review, 1792. 6:114; Neue Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften, 1793. 50:362. [ = Braun 2:147.] FRANCIS, Mrs. ANNE (GITTINS), 1738-1800. "O! Wherefore, Werter, did thy pleading eye." Charlotte to Werter. A Poetical Epistle, by Anne Francis. [Motto:] Of all the ills a virtuous Mind can prove,/The most destructive—is, misguided Love. London [1787]. 24 pp. Reviewed: English Review, 1787. 12:123; Monthly Review, 1788. 78:351; Neue Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften, 1788. 37:168: [= Braun 2:41.] The Ghost of Charlotte at the Tomb of Werter. In: Miscellaneous Poems by Anne Francis. London, 1790. p. 213. Reviewed: Neue Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften, 1791. 42:149-150. "Go! cruel tyrant of the human breast" see

SMITH.

"Go, simple verse, with Charlotte's matchless strain" see JAMES. "God knows how oft I in my bed lie down" see THOMSON. GRANT, JOHN ERAY.

B., fl. 1880-1910, composer; see

THACK-

GRAVES, RICHARD, 1715-1804. "O Charlotte! Charlotte! all-accomplish'd maid." Werter to Charlotte, (A little before his Death). In: The Sorrows of Werter, a German Story. A New Edition. London, Dodsley, 1784. 2:167-168. [34 lines.] London, 1785. 2:167-168. London, 1785. 2:187-189.

232

BIBLIOGRAPHY

—In: Lucubrations: consisting of Essays, Reveries, à°c in prose and verse. By the late Peter of Pontefract [i.e. Graves]. London, 1786. pp. 199-201. •—In: The Sorrows of Werter: A German Story. A new edition. London, 1786. 2:167-168. London, T. Osborne and S. Griffin, 1788. 2:189-192. London, 1789. pp. 220-221. Boston, Thomas & Andrews, 1798. —In: The Sorrows of Werter: a German Story. Edinburgh, 1807. pp. 179-180. — I n : The Sorrows of Werter; a Story; From the German of Goethe. Edinburgh, 1810. pp. 99-100. —In: The Sorrows of Werter; from the German of Goethe.—Letters from Yorick to Eliza.—Sterne's Sentimental Journey. London, 1826. p. 89. —In: Poems. Sorrows of Werter, Eloisa to Abelard, Rape of the Lock, Windsor Forest, &c. &c. London, Charles Daly . . . [ca. 1830.] —In: The Sorrows of Werter; from the German of Goethe.—Letters from Yorick to Eliza . . . London, 1842. p. 90. —-In: The Sorrows of Werter. By Goethe . . . London [1851]. * On Suicide. In: Lucubrations . . . London, 1786. pp. 202-205. [p. 204: "Does love, like Werter's, thy fond breast inspire?/ Let reason quench, at once, th'adult'rous fire . . ."] * — I n : The Sorrows of Werter . . . London, 1789. pp. 222-223. * Boston, Thomas & Andrews, 1798. GROSVENOR, ROBERT, ist Marquis of Westminster, 17671845. "Where rugged cliffs uprear their stormy brows." Charlotte. An Elegy. From the Sorrows of Werter. < B y the Right Hon. Lord Viscount Belgrave. > An Asylum for Fugitive Pieces in Prose and Verse, not in Any Other Collection: with several pieces never before published. A new edition. London, 1786. 2:11-14. [20 four-line elegiac stanzas.] — I n : [London, ca. 1795.] HACKMAN, JAMES, 1752-1779 see CROFT. "Hadst thou, dear WERTER, but my Mother known" see THOMSON. "Hail! Albert! hail! may blessings wait my friend!" see ERING.

PICK-

ENGLISH:

2

POETRY

33

"Having promised to call." Mynheer Werter's First Interview with Charlotte. Atheneum; or Spirit of the English Magazines, March i , 1826. II 4:446-447. [4 twelve-line stanzas.] "Here, fond, impassioned Werter lies" see LADD. HOFLAND, HOOLE.

Mrs.

BARBARA

(WREAKS)

HOOLE

see

HOOLE, BARBARA {Mrs. HOFLAND), 1770-1844. "Terrific Monster! from whose hideous form." Sonnet to Death, Supposed to be written by Werter. In: Poems, by Barbara Hoole . . . Sheffield [1805]. p. 52. HORREL, Mrs. "The red breast oft is seen at evening hours." < A n extract from the "Tomb of Charlotte," A Poem by Mrs Horrel.> The Bee, or Literary Weekly Intelligencer, Edinburgh, 1793. 14:178. [12 lines.] "How sad, alas! how cheerless is my state" see

PICKERING.

"How weak, my Friend, is oft the human heart!" see SON. "Howls the sad wind, amid the torrents drear" see MAN.

THOM-

BANNER-

HUGHES, Mrs. "Midst a sequester'd spot, for silence made." A Description of the Tomb of Werter. Gentleman's Magazine, 1785. 55(1)¡385. [14 lines, couplets. Includes: "Rest here, poor erring child of misery" The Inscription.] —Scots Magazine, 1785. 47:456. — I n : [Edward Taylor,] Werter to Charlotte . . . [Philadelphia,] Enoch Story, 1787. pp. 29-30. Baltimore, 1787. New York, 1787. * H URDIS, JAMES, 1763-1801. Adriano; or, The First of June, A Poem. B y the Author of the Village Curate. London, 1790. [pp. 54-61, arguments against the reading of Werter's Sorrows.] " I breathe delight from Recollection's power" see " I feel, I feel, that all is over now" see

PICKERING.

BANNERMAN.

" Ί must depart.'—Ah, my prophetic friend!" see

PICKERING.

" I sing of the days that are gone." The Sorrows of Charlotte at the Tomb of Werter. Morning Chronicle, London, Feb. 14, 1785. [3 eight-line stanzas.]

234

BIBLIOGRAPHY

—In: The Sorrows of Werter. A German Story ... A new edition. 1784. [MS., clear and legible contemporary hand, 1785, in Speck Collection of Goetheana, Yale University Library.] < Composed by lohn Moulds pupil to Mr. Linley.> pp. 238-240. —Gentleman's Magazine, April, 1785. 53:307. —European Magazine, April, 1785. 7:261. [In a review of Anna Seward, Louisa.] —Composed by Mr. Percy. Sung by Miss Wheeler at Covent Garden theatre. [London,] Printed for the author by Longman and Broderip [ca. 1800]. [2] pp. [John Percy's music is reprinted in S. Baring-Gould, English Minstrelsie, Edinburgh, 1896, 5:92-94, but another text is substituted for " I sing of the days that are gone"—cf. ibid., p. xxvi.] "If chance some kindred spirit should relate" see CROFT. "In vain I seek from change of place to find" see PICKERING. INGALL, THOMAS GEORGE. "When in a Summer's eve you pensive rove." The Sorrows of Werter. [Signed:]—. Lady's Magazine, Oct., 1792. 23:550-551. [Sonnet.] "Is this sad heart, so cold and vacant, mine?" see BANNERMAN. JAMES, WILLIAM. "Go, simple verse, with Charlotte's matchless strain." In: Letters of Charlotte, during her connexion with Werter. A new edition. London, 1810. pp. 130132. [First published 1786.] [10 four-line stanzas.] "O shades of Walheim! and ye streams that give." In: Ibid., pp. 52-53. [7 four-line stanzas.] [There are many translations of this Wertheriad.] * KEATS, JOHN, 1795-1821. A Party of Lovers: "A few Nonsense Verses" sent in a Letter to George Keats. < "Pensive they sit, and roll their languid eyes."> [Sept. 17, 1819.] In: The Poetical Works. Oxford University Press, London [etc.], 1920. p. 437. [Lines 8-13: Werter rescues a fly from the milk-pot.] LADD, JOSEPH BROWN, 1764-1786. "And say, did Charlotte's hand these pistols give?" Death of Werter. American Museum, Philadelphia, May, 1787. 1:474. [4 four-line stanzas.]

ENGLISH:

POETRY

235

—In: The Literary Remains of Joseph Brown Ladd, M.D., collected by his sister . . . New York, 1832. pp. 134-135. "Here, fond, impassioned Werter lies." The Sorrows of Charlotte at the Tomb of Werter. In: The Literary Remains . . . New York, 1832. pp. 132-134. [6 four-line stanzas.] "Stranger! whoe'er thou art, that from below." Werter's Epitaph. American Museum, 1787. 1:474. [4 four-line stanzas.] —Massachusetts Magazine or Monthly Museum, 1791. 3:114. —Philadelphia Repository and Weekly Register, M a y 25, 1805. 5:164. —In: The Sorrows of Werter; a pathetic story. Translated from the German of Baron Goethe. London, 1816. London, A. K . Newman & Co., 1818. p. 141. — I n : The Literary Remains . . . New York, 1832. pp. 135-136. "Why, Werter, dost thou leave me so." Charlotte's Soliloquy—to the Manes of Werter. American Museum, 1787. 1:180. [7 four-line stanzas.] LAURA. "Mistaken youth! thy love, to frenzy wrought." On reading the Sorrows of Werter. [Signed:] " — L a u r a . " Universal Asylum and Columbian Magazine, Philadelphia, Oct., 1790. 5:269. [5 couplets and 1 triplet.] LAURA see ROBINSON. LINLEY, WILLIAM, 1771-1835. "Welcome fierce spirit of the angry skies." Werter in the Storm. [Before 1806.] In: Sonnets . . . by . . . C. Leftley; to which is added . . . Elegies, Ballads, and Sketches on various subjects, chiefly descriptive, Written in India, and during a Voyage to and from Madras by William Linley, Esq. late in the civil service of the East India Company. London, 1814. pp. 128-130. " L o ! yonder arbour, whose refreshing shade" see N., T. W. "Lost to the world, to all its pleasures lost" see

TAYLOR.

M., C. "The day was sinking in the Western sky." An Elegy upon Charlotte and Werter. Walker's Hibernian Magazine, 1787. 17:157 f. [19 elegiac stanzas. Signed:] "C. M . " "Make there my tomb; beneath the lime-trees shade" see SMITH. * MATHIAS, THOMAS JAMES, ca. 1754-1835. The Shade of Alexander Pope on the Banks of the Thames, A satirical poem. With notes . . . B y the Author of The Pursuits of

236

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Literature. Dublin, 1799. [Criticism of Goethe and of Reynolds' Werter. A Tragedy, 11. 232-240.] —Philadelphia, 1800. MERRY, ROBERT, 1755-1798. "Alas, poor Werter! to himself a prey!" Elegy, Written after having read the Sorrows of Werter. [Signed:] "Della Crusca." The World, June 26,1787. [13 elegiac stanzas.] —The Poetry of The World. London, 1788. 1:13-14. —In: The British Album. Containing The Poems of Delia Crusca, Anna Matilda, Arley, Benedict, The Bard, &c. &c. &°c. Which were originally published under the Title of The Poetry of the World. Revised and Corrected by their Respective Authors. Third Edition . . . Dublin, 1790. Second Edition. London, 1790. Third Edition. London, 1790. MEYLER, WILLIAM, d. 1821. "Ere half recover'd from my scene of madness." Epilogue [to Reynolds' Werter. A Tragedy]. < Written by Mr. Meyler of Bath. Spoken by Miss Wallis [as Charlotte],> [See Drama: REYNOLDS.] "The tragic muse, attach'd to regal shew." Prologue [to Reynolds' Werter], < Written by Mr. Meyler . . . Spoken by Mr. Holman [as Werter].> [see Drama: REYNOLDS.] "Midst a sequester'd spot, for silence made" see HUGHES. "Mistaken youth! thy love, to frenzy wrought" see LAURA. MONTOLIEU, Mrs. Charlotte at the Tomb of Werter. In: The Festival of the Rose with other Poems by Mrs. Montolieu. London, 1802. MOULDS, JOHN, composer; see "I sing of the days that are gone"; "When first the fatal news arrived." "My hour is not yet come!—these burning eyes" see SEWARD. N., T. W. "Lo! yonder arbour, whose refreshing shade." On Reading the Sorrows of Werter. An Elegy. [Signed:] "T— W N." Lady's Magazine, 1785. 16:440. [8 four-line stanzas.] * Narcissa. Columbian Magazine or Monthly Miscellany, Jan., 1787. 1:245. ["Perhaps, like * Werter, pensive in the shade,/ I mourn in vain . . ." *An unfortunate lover.] "Near yonder cypress-shaded grove" see A UBI NUS.

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237

"Ne'er do I walk beneath the Lunar ray" see

THOMSON.

"No, I am not deceiv'd—in those black eyes" see

THOMSON.

' 'No, no, my Friend, my studious days are o'er" see THOMSON. "No, no, my Friend, this splendid scheme of thine" see THOMSON. " O Charlotte! Charlotte! all-accomplish'd maid" see GRA VES. " O shades of Walheim! and ye streams that give" see " O thou, who turnest this impassioned leaf" see

JAMES.

SEWARD.

" O ! Wherefore, Werter, did thy pleasing eye" see

FRANCIS.

"Of all the passions of the breast." In: Werter and Charlotte . . . London: Printed for the Translator . . . 1786. pp. 170-172. [10 seven-line stanzas.] "Oft do I wander at approaching eve" see CHARLOTTE. "Oh! beauteous Orb of D a y " see

SERRES.

"Oh ne'er will I forget, at close of day" see "Oh, Solitude, to thy sequester'd vale" see

THOMSON. SMITH.

"Oh what a Night! and ne'er to see her more!" see "Oh, ye to Nature's dearest beauties blind" see

THOMSON.

THOMSON.

P., R. S. "As when thou wander'st through the neighbouring field." Supposed to have been written by Werter to Charlotte just before his Death. Lady's Magazine, 1793. 24:104. [29 lines, signed:] "R. S. P . " PERCY, JOHN, 1749-1797, composer; see " I sing of the days that are gone." "Perhaps the dear deceast our fortunes know" see PETER of Pontefract; see GRA VES.

THOMSON.

PHI LA DELPHIENSIS. "The happy hours glide on in bliss divine." Werter. Letter 5th. < Versified by Philadelphiensis.> Columbian Magazine, 1787. 1:668-669. PICKERING, AMELIA. The Sorrows of Werter: A Poem by Amelia Pickering. London, 1788. 69 pp. < T o the Reader [Introductory stanzas beginning:] "Should some sweet nymph, perhaps, as Charlotte f a i r " > [In the form of 13 letters in stanzaic verse:] I "Content and Peace have rear'd their quiet cell" Werter to ****** II " I breathe delight

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

from Recollection's power" To the same. I l l "How sad, alas! how cheerless is my state" Written on Werter's return from Walheim to the city. IV "Escaped from scenes where noise and folly dwell" Werter to Charlotte. V "Ah, restless mortal!—had I bid thee die" Charlotte to Werter. V I "Whilst with the fervour of a pilgrim's zeal" Werter to ****** . . . V I I "In vain I seek from Change of place to find" Werter to Charlotte. V I I I "Tortured in absence, hopeless of relief" Werter to ******. I X "The clock proclaims in slow and solemn strains" To the same. X "Hail! Albert! hail! may blessings wait my friend" Werter to Albert. On his marriage. X I " Ί must depart.' Ah, my prophetic friend" Werter to ******. X I I "Yes I must d i e yes—it is so decreed" Werter to Charlotte. X I I I "The scene is clos'd; hark! hark! yon awful bell!" Charlotte to Louisa. Reviewed: Analytical Review, 1789. 3:73-74 [quotes letter VIII]; English Review, 1789. 13:128-129; Monthly Review, 1789. 80:464-465. —London, 1812. 48 pp. "Should some sweet nymph, perhaps as Charlotte fair." [16 lines.] < T h e following lines are taken from "THE SORROWS OF WERTER," a Poem, which is printed

and

sold by the Publishers of this Book . . . > In: The Sorrows of Werter: A German Story. London, J. Bailey, 1813. p. 92. "Pierced by the rugged thorn, I burst my w a y " see MAN.

BANNER-

"Rest here, poor erring child of misery" see HUGHES. RIDDEL(L), MARIA (WOODLEY), ca. 1772-1808, editor; see " T h y soft-wrought sorrows, Werter." ROBINSON, Mrs. MARY (DERBY), 1758-1800. "WHEN, from DAY'S closing eye, the lucid tears." To the memory of Werter. [Motto:] "With female Fairies will thy tomb be haunted,/And worms will not come to thee." Shakspere. [Signed:] "Laura." The World, July 15, 1789. < Vide "The Sorrows of Werter." > —[With title:] Elegy to the Memory of Werter. Written in Germany, in the Year 1786. In: Poems by Mrs. M. Robinson. London, 1791. pp. [8o]-8i.

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239

—The Poetry of the World. London, 1791. 3:8-10. Fifth Edition. London, 1795. 2:8-10. — I n : The Poetical Works of the late Mrs. Mary Robinson. London, 1806. 1:251-253. SERRES, Mrs. OLIVIA (WILMOT), 1772-1834. "Oh! beauteous Orb of Day." Werter's last Song!! Written & Composed by Miss Olivia Wilmot Serres, Arranged for the Piano-Forte by W. H. Steil & is . . . dedicated to . . . his Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge. London, Printed for the Author by M. Kelly [1807]. 4 pp. [6 lines of recitative followed by 3 four-line stanzas.] SEWARD, ANNA, 1742-1809. "Up this bleak hill, in wintry night's dread hour"; "Yon late but gleaming moon, in hoary light"; " M y hour is not yet come!—these burning eyes." The Prospect A Flooded Vale. < T h e three following Sonnets are written in the character of Werter; the sentiments and images chiefly, but not entirely, taken from one of his letters. > Sonnet Lxxxvin-Sonnet xc. In: Original Sonnets on Various Subjects; and Odes paraphrased from Horace by Anna Seward. London, 1799. pp. 90-92. —In: The Poetical Works of Anna Seward edited by Walter Scott, Esq. Edinburgh, 1810. 3:209-211. " O thou, who turnest this impassioned leaf." Written in the Blank Page of the Sorrows of Werter. In: The Poetical Works . .. 1810. 2:130-132. [26 lines, couplets.] "Should some sweet nymph, perhaps, as Charlotte fair" see PICKERING. SMITH, Mrs. CHARLOTTE (TURNER), 1749-1806. "Go! cruel tyrant of the human breast"; "Oh, Solitude, to thy sequester'd vale"; "Make there my tomb; beneath the lime-trees shade." [Each with title:] Sonnet, supposed to be written by Werter. In: Elegiac Sonnets, And Other Essays. By Charlotte Smith, of Bignor Park, In Sussex. London, 1784. pp. 19-21. Reviewed: Neue Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften, 178s· 30:332· —In: Elegiac Sonnets. Chichester, 1784. "Towards thy bright beams I turn my swimming eyes." To the North Star, supposed to be written by Werter. Edin-

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

burgh Magazine or Literary Miscellany, May, 1786. 3:370. [No. hi of four sonnets, no. iv being:] "Make there my tomb beneath the lime-trees shade." B y the Same. "Go! cruel tyrant of the human breast" Supposed to be written by Werter; "Oh, Solitude, to thy sequester'd vale" To Solitude; "Towards thy bright beams I turn my swimming eyes" To the North Star; "Make there my tomb; beneath the lime-trees shade"; " W h y should I wish to hold in this low sphere" Just before his death. Sonnet x x i —• Sonnet x x v . In: Elegiac Sonnets. The Third Edition. London [1786]. pp. 22-26. — I n : 4th edition. London, 1786. Reviewed: Gentleman's Magazine, 1786. 56(i):333-334· [p. 334: "The wretched suicide Werter is too much flattered by her notice . . ."] 'Make there my Tomb beneath the Lime-Trees shade." Werter's Sonnet Composed and Sung by Miss Cántelo with an Accompanyment for the Forte-Piano, Harp or Harpsichord. [London,] Printed by Longman and Broderip . . . [n. d.] [10 lines. Composition attributed to Anne Cántelo, afterwards Mrs. Samuel Harrison, (d. 1831).] Reviewed: Analytical Review, July, 1788. 1:349-350. —[With title:] Wer ter's Sonnet, Sung by Miss Cántelo, with the greatest applause; the Music by the celebrated Sigr G. Haydn of Vienna. From His 2d Collection of Ballads. London: Printed & Sold by Preston . . . [n. d.] 4 pp. < F o r the German Flute. > [All five sonnets.] In: Elegiac Sonnets. 5th edition. London, 1789. 6th edition. Dublin, 1790. London, 1792. Worcester, Isaiah Thomas, 1795. 7th edition. London, 1795. pp. 21-25. [xxin begins:] " T o thy bright beams . . ." Boston, 1795. 8th edition. London, 1797. 9th edition. London, 1800. "Soll ich auf dieser unter'n Sphäre länger." Werther an Lotten. [German translation of " W h y should I wish to hold in this low sphere."] Nach Charlotte Smith. Morgenblatt für gebildete Stände, 25. Mai 18x0, Jahrg. [4], no. 125. p. 498.

241

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[All five sonnets.] In: Elegiac Sonnets. 10th edition. London, 1811. [15th printing.] Glasgow, 1827. [16th printing.] London, 1851. [Cabinet Edition of the British Poets, v. 4.] "Start not, affrighted Charlotte, at the sight" see

WALLACE.

"Stranger! whoe'er thou art, that from below" see LADD. T., A. see

THOMSON.

TAYLOR, EDWARD. "Lost to the world, to all its pleasures lost." Werter to Charlotte. London, Murray, 1784. 15 pp. [366 lines, couplets.] —London, Murray, 1784. 23 pp. Reviewed: English Review, 1784. 3:385-386; Monthly Review, 1784. 72:468. —[With title:] Werter to Charlotte. A Poem. In: Eleonora. By M. Goethe, Author of The Sorrows of Werter. To which is added . . . Dublin, 1786. pp. [i85]-i97. — I n : Werter To Charlotte. A Poem. With A Description Of The Tomb Of Werter. [Philadelphia,] Enoch Story, 1787. PP· [5]-23· Baltimore, John Hayes, 1787. New York, Samuel Campbell, 1787. —Eleonora. London, 1787. pp. 163-182. Reviewed: Neue Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften, 1786. 32:158. —[With title:] Epistle, from Werter to Charlotte. Supposed to be written at that period when he was under the most violent agitations of disappointed love and frantic despair. A Collection of Poems, Mostly Original, By several hands. Dublin, 1789. pp. 141-156. —London, Murray, 1789. [British Museum copy bears in MS. the words " B y Edward Taylor, Esq."] "Tell me, Charlotte, what is love?" To Charlotte. In: Werter And Charlotte, A German Story. Containing Many Wonderful And Pathetic Incidents. London: Printed For And Sold B y John Smith [ca. 1786]. p. 22. [Chapbook!] London: Printed and sold by T. Sabine . . . [ca. 1800]. pp. 19-20. "Terrific Monster! from whose hideous form" see HOOLE.

242

BIBLIOGRAPHY

THACKERAY, WILLIAM MAKEPEACE, 1811-1863. "Werther had a love for Charlotte." The Sorrows of Werther [A]. The Southern Literary Messenger, 1853. 19:709. [4 four-line stanzas. Line 8: "Would do nothing for to hurt her"; 1. 15: "well conducted person."] —Littell's Living Age, 1853. 39:642. —Literary World, 1853. 13:313. —[Thackeray referred to this poem as "the tartine"; cf. undated letter, in: The Letters and Private Papers . . . (ed. G. Ν. Ray). Cambridge, Mass. 1946. 3:411-412.] — I n : Ballads. Boston, 1858. pp. 90-91. [Frequently reprinted in anthologies; e.g. Poems of Places (ed. H. W. Longfellow). Boston, 1877. 2{Germany) :17o. ] —Quoted: G. Lunt, "Recollections of Thackeray," Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 1877. 54:264. [p. 256: reproduction of Thackeray's sketch "Sorrows of Werther."] — I n : John B. Grant, Five Three-Part Songs for women's voices. New York, G. Schirmer [1907]. [No. 4:] To Mrs. James Stanley. Werther Chorus for Women's Voices. 7 pp. —[B] [With title:] The Sorrows of Werther, A Comical Ballad. In: Miscellanies: Prose and Verse. London, 1855. 1:64. [Line 15: "well-conducted lady."] —[C] [With title:] Sorrows of Werther. [In autograph, facsimile:] Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 1874. 49:537. [Line 8: "Would do nothing that might hurt her"—1. 15: "well-conducted person."] = J. G. Wilson, Thackeray in the United States. New York, 1904. 1:76. —[D] [In autograph, facsimile:] Anderson Galleries, Sale number 1717. p. 113. [Line 8: "Would not think for to go to hurt her"—with a vignette by Thackeray of cupid falling on a sword.] —[A or B] [German translation:] "Werther war verliebt in Lotte." Werthers Leiden. In: Adolf Friedrich Graf von Schack, Anthologie abendländischer und morgenländischer Dichtungen in deutschen Nachbildungen. Stuttgart, 1893. 1:1.

"The clock proclaims in slow and solemn strains" see ING.

PICKER-

"The conflict's o'er—ah! lovely maid, adieu!" Werter's Farewell

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243

to Charlotte. The Dessert to the True American, Nov. 24, 1798. ι, no. 20:[4]. [64 lines, couplets.] "The conflicts o'er, my Love adieu." Werter to Charlotte From the Sorrows of Werter Composed by J. W. Callcott. London, Printed for the Author and Sold by T . Skillern. [pp. 2-3.] [2 eight-line stanzas; additional music "For the German Flute."] —[With title:] Werter to Charlotte, adapted for three voices. London, 1785. "The day was sinking in the Western sky" see M., C. "The happy hours glide on in bliss divine" see PHIENSIS.

PHILADEL-

"The red-breast oft is seen at evening hours" see HORREL. "The scene is clos'd; hark! hark! yon awful bell!" see ERING. "The tragic muse, attach'd to regal shew" see

MEYLER.

"Their branches the green willows wave" see

BURRELL.

PICK-

"They tell me, time's all-powerful hand will heal" see C., 5. THOMSON, ALEXANDER, 1763-1803. "No, no, my Friend, my studious days are o'er." Sonnet, from Werter. [Signed:] "A. T . " The Bee, Edinburgh, 1791. 2:230. "Perhaps the dear deceast our fortunes know" Stanzas from Werter. "Und ob die lieben Abgeschiedenen von uns wissen, fuhr sie fort, &c." [5 four-line stanzas, and final couplet.] "Ah, why so seldom does the stream of Song." Sonnet from Werter, Part I. Letter VIII. " O meine Freunde, warum der Strom des Genies so selten aufbricht, &c." Quoted: Monthly Review, 1794. II 15:210. [Part of review.] "Oh what a Night! and ne'er to see her more!" This and the four following Sonnets are all from Werter, Part I. Letter X X X V I I . "Das war eine Nacht, Wilhelm, nun überstehe ich alles, &c." "Ne'er do I walk beneath the Lunar ray" "Niemals geh ich im Mondenlichte Spazieren, &c." "Oh ne'er will I forget, at close of day" " O Albert, sagte sie, ich weis, du vergisst nicht die Abende, &c." "Hadst thou, dear Werter, but my Mother known" "Wenn sie sie gekannt hätten, sagte sie, &c."

BIBLIOGRAPHY

244

"When near her end my sainted Mother drew" "Wie es gegen das ende gieng, und sie zu mir sagte, &c." In: Essay on Novels, a poetical Epistle. Addressed to an Ancient and To a Modern Bishop with six Sonnets, from Werter. Edinburgh: Printed for P. Hill and J. Watson and Co., 1 7 9 3 . p. 1 9 FF. —London, Cadell. Reviewed: Monthly Review, 1 7 9 4 . I I 1 5 : 2 0 9 - 2 1 0 . * The Paradise of Taste. London, 1796. xvi, 124 pp. < Canto IV. The Vale of Pity. Scene VI. Richardson, Rousseau, and Goethe. [Lines 2 0 9 - 2 4 8 , 1 0 stanzas. Line 2 2 8 " A L B E R T ' S wife"—1. 2 3 1 " W E R T E R ' S spirit."]> [Motto, p. ii:] Der Garten ist einfach, und man fühlt gleich bey dem eintritte, dass nicht ein wissenschaftlicher Gärtner, sendern ein fühlendes Herz dens plan bezeichnet, das sein selbst hier geniessen wollte. Reviewed: Neue Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften, 1797. 6 0 : 1 3 4 - 1 3 9 .

* Richardson, Rousseau and Goethe [i.e., The Paradise of Taste. IV: 2 0 9 - 2 3 2 ] . Annual Register for 1 7 9 6 . London, 1 8 0 7 . Ρ· 5 Ι 3· * Elegy II. Written at Craibstone, near Aberdeen, May, 1786. "Ach ! was ich weis, kann jeder wissen—Mein Herz hab ich allein. Goethe." pp. 3 1 - 3 9 . * Elegy IV. To the Moon. "Niemals geh ich im Mondenlichte Spazieren, dass mir nicht der Gedanke an meine Verstorbenen begegnete. Goethe." pp. 4 7 - 5 3 . * Elegy III. Written at Mounie, in Aberdeenshire, July 1786. "Ach! dass die Freundinn meiner Jugend dahin ist.— Nie werd ich ihrer vergessen, nie ihren festen Sinn, und ihre gottliche Duldung. Goethe." pp. 4 0 - 4 6 . "Each Schoolboy now (so wise our age is grown)." Sonnet XXIII. Imitated from Werter, Part II. Letter XIII. "Das ist doch eben das gefühl der herrlichen Altväter, &c." < April, 1787. > p. 89. "No, no, my Friend, this splendid scheme of thine." Sonnet XXXVII. Translated from Werter, Part I. Letter XXIII. < Alloa, April, 1789. > p. 104. "What means, ye gracious Pow'rs, this aching void." Sonnet XXXVIII. Imitated from Werter, Part II. Letter XXV.

ENGLISH:

POETRY

"Ach diese Lükke—diese entsetzliche Lükke, &c." < April, 1789. > p. 105. "How weak, my Friend, is oft the human heart!" Sonnet X L I . From Werter, Part I. Letter I. "Wie froh bin ich, dass ich weg bin, &c." < M a y , ιη% p. 108. "With what untir'd delight I wander here!" Sonnet X L I I . From Werter, Part I, Letter I. "Uebrigens find ich mich hier gar wohl, &c." < M a y , i78().> p. 109. "No, no, my Friend, my studious days are o'er." Sonnet X L I I I . From Werter, Part I. Letter IV. " D u fragst, ob du mir meine Bücher schicken sollst, &c." < M a y , ΐ789·> p. n o . "No, I am not deceiv'd—in those black eyes." Sonnet LII. From Werter, Part I. Letter X I X . "Nein, ich betrüge mich nicht—Ich lese in ihren schwarzen äugen, &c." < M a y 21, 1790. > p. 119. "Can this the fruit of haughty temper be." Sonnet LIII. From the same Letter. "Und ob das vermessenheit ist, oder gefühl des wahren Verhältnisses, &c." < M a y 21, 1790. > p. 120. * Sonnet L X V I I . "Weh mir, ich fühle zu wahr dass an mir allein alle schuld liegt. Goethe." p· 134· "Oh, ye to Nature's dearest beauties blind." Sonnet X C V I . Imitated from Werter, Part I. Letter X I I I . "Ja, lieber Wilhelm, meinem Herzen sind die Kinder am nächsten auf der erde, &c." p. 164. " T o clamber fearless up some mountain steep." Sonnet X C V I I I . Translated from Werter, Part I. Letter X X X V . "Einen gähen berg zu klettern ist dann meine freude, &c." < J u l y 28, 1792. > p. 166. "Could Lotta now her luckless Friend behold." Sonnet X C I X . From Werter, Part II. Letter V. "Wenn sie mich sähen, meine Beste, in dem schwall von Zerstreuung, &c." < J u l y 31, 1792. > p. 167. "Ah, why so seldom does the stream of Song." Sonnet C . . . < A u g . ι , 1792. > p. 168. "God knows how oft I in my bed lie down." Sonnet CII. From Werter, Part II. Letter X X I X . "Weis Gott, ich lege mich so oft zu bette, &c." < A u g . 4, 1792. > p. 170.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

"Am I not still the same, whose ardent eye." Sonnet CIII. From the same Letter. "Bin ich nicht noch eben derselbe, &c." p. 171. "Oh what a Night! and ne'er to see her more!" Sonnet CIV . . . p. 172. "Ne'er do I walk beneath the Lunar ray." Sonnet CV . . . Ρ· I 73· "Oh, ne'er will I forget, at close of day." Sonnet C V I . . . p. 174. "Hadst thou, dear WERTER, but my Mother known." Sonnet CVII . . . p. 175. "When near her end my sainted Mother drew." Sonnet C V I I I . . . p. 176. In: Sonnets, Odes and Elegies. Edinburgh, 1801. —London, 1802. Renewed: Monthly Mirror, 1802. 13:277-279. "Though Homer fired my youthful breast." Letter LXI. of the Sorrows of Werter. Versified. < Monmouth, December 30, ΐ79θ·> Universal Asylum and Columbian Magazine, 1791. 6:50. [10 six-line stanzas.] "Thy self-wrought sorrows, Werter, when I view" see "Thy soft-wrought sorrows, Werter, while I view." "Thy soft-wrought sorrows, Werter, while I view." On Reading "The Sorrows of Werter." < B y a Lady.> The Metrical Miscellany, consisting chiefly of Poems hitherto unpublished. [Edited by Maria W. Riddell.] London, 1802. pp. 158-159. [16 lines.] —The Metrical Miscellany. 2d ed. London, 1803. p. 170. —[With first line and title:] "Thy self wrought sorrows Werter, when I view." On Reading Werter. The Monthly Anthology and Boston Review, 1808. 5:664. —[First line and title as in 1802.] Selection of Poems. London, 1808. 2:221. [Edited by Charles Snart.] [Signed:] "V." —Selection of Poems. Newark, 1808. 2:221. —Elegant Extracts, in verse. [Edited by R. Snart.] Newark, 1813. 2:221.

" 'Tis midnight now,—all silent as the tomb" see BANNERMAN. "To clamber fearless up some mountain steep" see THOMSON.

ENGLISH:

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POETRY

47

"To thy bright beams I turn my swimming eyes" see SMITE. "Tortured in absence, hopeless of relief" see

PICKERING.

"Towards thy bright beams I turn my swimming eyes" see SMITH. * TURNER, SHARON, 1768-1847. Prolusions on the Present Greatness of Britain, on Modern Poetry, and on the Present Aspect of the World. London, 1819. ["Shall we our ancient glories thus renounce ?/Let Heloise and Werter wail and bounce." p. 96.] " 'Twas dead of night;—the pale moon's transient beam." In: Werter and Charlotte, a German Story . . . London: Printed for the Translator . . . 1786. p. 160. [20 lines, couplets.]

"Up this bleak hill, in wintry night's dread hour" see SEWARD. UPTON, WILLIAM. "Complain, gentle Werter, no more." Charlotte to Werter. [8 four-line stanzas.] pp. 114-116. "Charlotte, fair maid, what means that eye!" Werter to Charlotte. [8 four-line stanzas.] pp. 119-121. "When Werter first fair Charlotte saw." Song. The Sorrows of Charlotte on the Death of Werter. [3 seven-line stanzas.] pp. 148-149. In: Poems on Several Occasions. London, 1788. The Second Edition. London, 1791. URBANI, PIETRO, 1749-1816, composer; see "With sighs let musing melancholy come." V. see "Thy soft-wrought sorrows, Werter, while I view." WALLACE, Lady EGLANTINE (MAXWELL), d. 1803. "Start not, affrighted Charlotte, at the sight." The Ghost of Werter. In: A Letter to a Friend, with a Poem, called The Ghost of Werter. By Lady — . London, T. Hookham [n.d.]. pp. 17-26. [Letter dated and signed:] "June the 21st 1787" "E. W." London, J. Debrett, 1787. pp. 21-26. [Letter undated.] Reviewed: Critical Review, 1788. 65:403; Monthly Review, 1788. 78:351; Analytical Review, 1788. 2:492-493; Neue Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften, 1788. 37:168169. [= Braun 2:41.]

248

BIBLIOGRAPHY

"Welcome fierce spirit of the angry skies" see

LINLEY.

Werter to Charlotte. A Poem, founded on The Sorrows of Werter. [By a student of Lincoln's Inn.] London, Murray, 1812. [Cf. Monthly Magazine, 1812, 33:359, which lists the work among those published in April.] —London, Sherwood, 1812. —London, Murray, 1813. [Cf. Monthly Magazine, 1813, 35:341, which lists the work among those published in April.] —London, 1815. "Werther had a love for Charlotte" see WESTMINSTER

see

THACKERAY.

GROSVENOR.

"What means, ye gracious Pow'rs, this aching void" see THOMSON. "When doubtful Albert saw lost Werter laid" see

FARRELL.

"When first the fatal news arrived." The Force of Love, being a Sequel to the Sorrows of Werter. In: The Sorrows of Werter. A German Story ... A new edition. 1784. [MS, clear and legible contemporary hand, 1785.] pp. 274-276. [3 stanzas.] "When from Day's closing eye the lucid tears" see

ROBINSON.

"When in a summer's eve you pensive rove" see IN G ALL. "When near her end my sainted Mother drew" see

THOMSON.

"When night her sable curtain drew" see F., J. "When sable night had darkness spread." In: Werter and Charlotte. A German Story . . . London: Printed for the TRANSLATOR . . . 1786. pp. 80-82. pp. 5-49. Goethe en France. Paris, 1904. 392 pp. BETZ, L. P. Goethes Werther in Frankreich. Eine bibliographische Studie. Zeitschrift für Bücherfreunde, 1903. 7(2): 383-388. MOREL, L. Les principales traductions de Werther et les jugements de la critique. (1776-1872.) Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen, 1907. 119:139-159. Werther au théâtre en France. Ibid., 1907. 118:352-370. Les principales imitations de "Werther" (1788-1813). Ibid., 1908. 121:368-390. L a fortune de " W e r t h e r " en France dans la poésie et le roman (1778-1816). Ibid., 1910. 125:347-372. SÜPFLE, THEODOR. Goethes literarischer Einfluss auf Frankreich. Goethe-Jahrbuch, 1887. 8:203-222. TIERSOT, JULIEN. Les adaptations scéniques de Werther. Le Livre et l'Image, 1893. 1:78-87. POETRY

A*, citoyen, see

ANDRIEUX.

* ALLARD, ROGER, b. 1885. Adélaïde. In: L'Appartement des jeunes filles. Paris, 1919. [On hearing a gunshot: "Est-ce un braconnier dans la plaine/Ou le pistolet de Werther?" (11. 21-22).] — I n : Poésies légères. Paris, 1929. p. 83. ANDRIEUX, FRANÇOIS GUILLAUME JEAN STANISLAS, 1759-1833. " C ' e s t donc ici qu'il repose." Charlotte au tombeau de Werther. Romance, avec sa musique. [1795.] La Décade philosophique, An I I I , 2ème trimestre, no. 25, 20 nivose. 4:44-45 and 1 leaf of music. < P a r le citoyen A*. > [5 eight-line stanzas.]

FRENCH:

2

POETRY

53

—[With title:] Romance de Charlotte au Tombeau de Werther avec accompt. de Guittare. A Paris chez Imbrault rue St. Honoré No. 627. 2 pp. —[With title:] Charlotte au tombeau de Werther. In: Contes et opuscules . . . suivis de poésies fugitives. Par Andrieux. Paris VIII—1800. pp. 168-169. < Cette Romance est faite d'après une gravure fort connue, où Charlotte est représentée près du tombeau de Werther, et tenant Ossian à la main. > — I n : Œuvres. Paris, 1818. 3:316-317. "Après tant de projets, tant de vœux superflus" see

LABLÊE.

ARNAULT, ANTOINE VINCENT, 1766-1834. "Ombre sensible, ombre plaintive." Charlotte au tombeau de Werther. [1785.] In: Œuvres complètes. Paris [i.e. La Haye], 1819. 4:295-296. [5 eight-line stanzas.] < Cette romance . . . fut faite en 1785. > — I n : Œuvres de Α. V. Arnault. Paris, 1826. Théâtre 3:417419. [Dated:] 1784. —[Russian translation:] "O ty, vokrug sikh miest plachevnykh." Sharlota na Verterovoï grobnitse. Moskovskií Zhurnal, 1791. 6:122-124. [Signed:] " S . " [32 lines; the editor Karamzin's note states that the author is aged fourteen.] —Ibid. Vtoroe izdanie. 6:111-113. ^ ^ —[Russian translation:] "O ten' liubeznaia! ten' gorestno stoniashcha" Stikhi na grob Verterà. Poleznoe uravnenie iunoshestva. Moskva, 1789. pp. 376-377. [40 alexandrines; attributed to Anna Ivanovna Vel'iasheva-Volyntseva.] AUTRAN, JOSEPH, 1813-1877. "Quand j'étais jouvenceau, c'est-à-dire imbécile." [Choses du passé.] VI. A Werther. In: Œuvres complètes. Paris, 1875. 4:118. Sarkophag. [Followed by:] Quantität . . . Modalität < A u f dem vierten Felde endigt ein Jüngling das Leben ;/Und die Inschrift sagt: Wahrlich der fühlet nicht mehr. > I n : MückenAlmanach für das Jahr 1797. Pest. * KLEINE, Dr. [Prologue spoken at the Goethe celebration, Wetzlar, 1849.] In: P. Wigand, Wetzlar und das Lahnthal. Wetzlar, 1862. pp. 147-148. [Lines 50-70 describe Goethe's Wetzlar, "Werthers Zeiten."] * KNAPP,

ALBERT,

1798-1864. Auf Göthes Hingang am 28.

März 1832. Als Manuscript für Freunde. Elberfeld, 1832. 23 PP· —[With title:] Auf Göthes Hingang. 28. März 1832. Christoterpe. Ein Taschenbuch für christliche Leser auf das Jahr 18jj. pp. 16-39. < V o m Herausgeber. > [p. 33: "Um Dich einst feuchteten die Jünglingswange/Mondhelle Thränen der Bewunderung."] * KORTUM, CARL ARNOLD, 1745-1824. Die Jobsiade. Ein komisches Heldengedicht in drei Theilen von D. C. Α. K . Dortmund, 1799. [3. Theil, xo. Kapitel: Ohnewitz talks of things "welche rührend schön in Werthers Leiden beschrieben stehn." Ibid., 11. Kapitel: "wie weiland Werther." Ibid., 20. Kapitel. Anweisung zum neuesten verliebten Briefstile in feinen Exempeln nach Siegwart und Werther . . .: ends with reference to "Siegwart, Werther und Konsorten."] KREBS, JOHANN REITZENSTEIN.

GOTTFRIED,

d.

1803, composer; see

L [i.e. **1*]. "Ha! ich seh Dich wie Dein Auge glühte!" An Goethen, als ich Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers zum erstenmale las. Journal aller Romane und Schauspiele, 1784. 1:57. [12 lines.]

GERMAN: POETRY

L., M. "Gräber, voll Grauen." Lotte bey Werther's Grabe < v o n M. L., einem jungen Frauenzimmer. > Schwäbisches Magazin von gelehrten Sachen, 1779. pp. 246-248. [42 lines.] [= Braun 2:viii-ix. = Jb.S.Kipp. 1:220-221.] "Land und Geschlechter habt ihr erregt: fest stehet die Brust noch" see PEREGRINOS. LAUER, JOHANN FRIEDRICH CARL, composer; see RULING. "Leb wohl, bis wir uns wiedersehn" see

SCHLEGEL.

Leben und geringe Thaten von Werther dem Sekretär, Einem gutmüthig-grausigen Liebhaber, Der sich ohne Ursache viel Ruhm erwarb, Doch endlich durch einen Pistolenschusz starb. Eine Historie, traurig und weinerlich in modischen Verselein. Geschrieben und leider auch gedruckt in Leipzig, da man zählte 1779. [Ca. 1850!] 18 pp. CVorrede, 23 Kapitel. > [ = F. W. Ebeling, Geschichte der Komischen Literatur in Deutschland, Leipzig 1869, I 1:543-551.] —[Without title]. Fragmente aus der Goethezeit. Erstes Heft. Die Werther-Periode. Cannstadt, in Commission bei Richard Tänzer. 18 pp. "Leid wär es mir, wenn jemand mehr als ich." Auf die Leiden des jungen Werthers. In: Gedichte von epigrammatischer Art. Leipzig, bey Paul Gotthelf Kummer, 1779. p. 43. [4 lines.] 1= Jb.S.Kipp. 1:2x8.] LENZ, JAKOB MICHAEL REINHOLD, 1751-1792, attributed author. "Erwach ich zum Gefühl, stöszt die beklemmte Brust." [Lottes Klagen um Werthers Tod.] In: Gesammelte Schriften. Berlin, 1828. 3:257-258. [MS, autumn 1774. 30 Alexandrines.] [Or: Gedichte von J. M . R. Lenz, herausgegeben von Carl Weinhold. Berlin, 1891. pp. 122-123 (textual criticism, pp. 276-277).] [= Jb.S.Kipp. 1:185-186.] [Another version : see ST.] * Menalk und Mopsus Eine Ekloge Nach der fünften Ekloge Virgils. Rheinischer Most. Erster Herbst. 1775. pp. 147-170. [Signed:] " Χ . Υ . Ζ . " [p. 150. "Albertiner." A footnote to this word reads: "So pflegt Goethe scherzweise alle kalte und doch dabey eifersüchtige Ehemänner zu nennen."] LEON, GOTTLIEB VON, 1757-1832. "Droben dort in Gottes Palmengärten." Lotte an Werther. In: Gedichte. Wien, 1788.

278

BIBLIOGRAPHY

pp. 13-14. [20 lines.] [ = Jb.S.Kipp. 1:235-236.] Mentioned: Joseph Franz Ratschky. An meinen kranken Freund Leon. In: Gedichte von Joseph Franz Ratschky. Wien, 1785. < Wien im M a y 1778.> [Lines 17-18: "Statt Lotten sizt mit einer Staatsperüke/Voll Gravität der Arzt dir am Genike."] LÖWENSTEIN, RUDOLF, 1819-1891. "Backfischschen M nennen mich die Leute." Werther's Leiden. In: Heinrich Zöllner, Op. 31, No. 3, Lieder und Gesänge für eine Singstimme mit Begleitung des Pianoforte. Berlin [1885-1886]. 6 pp. [The rationalistic reactions of a sixteen year old girl to Werther.] "Lotte! Lotte! welch ein Engel bist du nicht in Weibsgestalt!" Über ein Bild von Werthers Lotte. Wiener Blättchen, 13. Juni 1784. [10 lines.] [ = Jakob Zeidler, "Eine Wiener Wertherparodie," Forschungen zur neueren Litteraturgeschichte. Festgabefür Richard Heinzel. Weimar, 1898. pp. 241-242. "Lottchen will nun bald zum Altar gehen." (Mei. Ausgelitten hast du, ausgerungen.)" In: Georg Edwin Ehrenreich, Die Leiden des jungen Werther. Eine bekannte wahre Geschichte. Nebst sämmtlichen Arien, welche von Werther . . . gedichtet worden sind. Neu erzählt von . . . Ehrenreich. Kassel [n.d.]. 48 pp. p. 13. [A friend sings the first of 2 eight-line stanzas, is answered by Lotte: "Ach! mein Schicksal, lieber guter Werther."] — I n : . . . Geschichte. Hierzu sämtliche Arien, welche von Albert, Lotte, Werthern während der traurigen Begebenheit . . . Frankfurt, 1806. — I n : . . . Geschichte. Hierin sämmtliche Arien . . . Frankfurt und Berlin, Trowitzsch u. Sohn [n.d.]. 52 pp., — I n : . . . Eine wahrhafte Geschichte untermischt mit den beliebtesten auf diese traurige Begebenheit Bezug habenden Arien. Berlin, 1806. 56 pp. — I n : . . . sind. Zu bekommen bei dem Buchdrucker Littfasz in Berlin [n.d.]. 52 pp. — I n : Die Leiden Werthers. Eine wahre Geschichte. Nebst den zur Geschichte gehörigen Liedern. Berlin, in der Zürngibl'schen Buchdruckerei [n.d.]. 40 pp. " M a g jener dünkelhafte Mann" see GOETHE.

GERMAN:

POETRY

279

MANSO, JOHANN KASPAR FRIEDRICH, 1759-1826. "Werther, warum so betrübt? Ich traure, dasz Göthe zum Bruder." In: Gegengeschenke an die Sudelköche in Jena und Weimar von einigen dankbaren Gästen. 1797. p. 25. [Distich, completed by: "Einen so schändlichen Balg mir in den Xenien gab."] [= Attti-Xenien in Auswahl. . . Bonn, 1911. p. 49.] [Co-author: J. G. Dy(c)k.] * MASSMANN, HANS FERDINAND, 1797-1874. Johann Wolfgang von Göthe. Zu seiner hundertjährigen Geburtsfeier. Die Gölhefeier zu Berlin im Jahre 184p. Berlin, Hermann Schultze, 1849. PP· 36-40. [Line 80: Goethe, "proteusgestaltig," "War bald Werther Meister, bald Prometheus Faust."—Line 128: " . . . für den Werther habe Gott mit ihm Geduld."] * MEISSNER, AUGUST GOTTLIEB, 1753-1807. Epistel an Herrn R. Taschenbuch für Dichter und Dichterfreunde, 1777. p. 72. [Praise for one who recognizes "die Hoheit in Werthers Gemälden."] MERCK, JOHANN HEINRICH, 1741-1791. "In einer Stadt, wo alles frey." Pätus und Arria; eine Künstler-Romanze. Und Lotte bey Werthers Grab; eine Elegie. Leipzig und Wahlheim, 1775. 16 pp., 1 leaf music. [37 four-line stanzas.] Reviewed: Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek, 1775. 26:207209. [= Braun 1:218-219.] [Nicolai.]; Gothaische gelehrte Zeitungen, 12. Julius 1775. [= Braun 1:118.] —[With title:] Pätus und Arria eine Künstler-Romanze, Paete, non dolet. Freistadt am Bodensee, 1775. 15 pp. = Wertherschriften no. 5. [= H. Düntzer, Zu Goethe's Jubelfeier. Studien zu Goethe's Werken. 1849. Anhang 3. = Jb.S.Kipp. 1:192-197.] Reviewed: Auserlesene Bibliothek der neuesten deutschen Litteratur, 1775. 8:514-520. [= Braun 1:160-161.] —[With first line:] "Zu einer Stadt, wo alles frey." Rheinischer Most. Erster Herbst. 1775. [no. 7.] pp. [i7i]-i8o, and 1 p. music. "Mitten im Getümmel mancher Freuden." Brief an Lottchen. Fragmente aus der Goethezeit. Cannstadt. 2:33-34. [44 lines.] —In: Werther an Lotte, Brief an Lotte, Lotte bei Werther's Grab. Cannstadt [n.d.].

28ο

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Mücken-Almanach see "Ach! ich unglücklicher Vater! warum erhielt ich doch Zeugkraft"; "Kantianer haben dir dorten ein Grabmahl erbauet." N., ELISE VON. "Früh verschwanden dir des Lebens Freuden." An Werthern. [MS, 7 six-line stanzas.] [= E. Wolff, Blätter aus dem Wertherkreis. Breslau, 1893. pp. 72-73. = Jb.S.Kipp. 1:215-216.] NEEFE, CHRISTIAN GOTTLOB, 1748-1798, composer; see REITZENSTEIN. "Noch einmal wagst du, vielbeweinter Schatten" see GOETHE. NOVALIS, i.e. FRIEDRICH VON HARDENBERG. "Armer Jüngling, hast nun ausgelitten." An Werthers Grabe. [Ca. 1790.] I n : Schriften [Kluckhohn], 1:323. [8 lines.] [= Jb.S.Kipp. 1:237.] "Nun endlich seid ihr doch im Klaren" see GRILLPARZER. "O du, in der ein edler Hauch zur Tugend." An die Jugend, als Werther todt in seinem Blute lag. Berlinisches Litter arisches Wochenblatt, 3. May 1777. 1 (no. 18): 285-286. [5 eight-line stanzas.] [= Jb.S.Kipp. 5:300-301; 7=3 I 7-3 I 9-] OEHLENSCHLÄGER see Danish poetry. "O Göthe, hättest du doch Werthern nie geschrieben." Einfall, 1776. Unter drei erbärmliche Gedichte auf Werthern geschrieben. [Signed:] "**." Taschenbuch für Dichter und Dichterfreunde, 1779. 10:37. [S lines.] [= Jb.S.Kipp. 1:212.] "O Gott! so ist es wahr das schreckenvolle Bild" see ST. "O laszt es Werthers Grab, ihr weichgeschaffnen Seelen" see ALXINGER. * Parodie auf Hallers Doris see DUNKER. * Parodie auf Hölty's Landmädchen see BLU M AU ER. PEREGRINUS, pseudonym. "Land und Geschlechter habt ihr erregt: fest stehet die Brust noch." Werther's Leiden. [Signed:] "Peregrinus." In: J. B. Rousseau, Göthe's Ehrentempel [i.e. Supplemente zu Göthe's Werken 1]. Hamm, 1827. p. 65. PLATEN, AUGUST VON, 1796-1835. "Armer Jüngling! Deine Leiden schlagen." Werther. In: Sämtliche Werke [Koch & Petzet]. 5:42-43. [5 four-line stanzas.] [ = Jb.S.Kipp. 1:244-245.]

GERMAN: POETRY

281

* PRÄNDEL, JOHANN GEORG, 1759-1816. Auf den Unfall, als sich zu München 1785 ein junges Fräulein vom Frauenthurme gestürtzt hatte. In: Dichtungen in Nebenstunden. Amberg und München, 1802. p. 56. [9 asclepiadean stanzas, 1-4 directed against Goethe and Werther: "Hin mit Furienwuth stürmt, Maledeyungen,/Ueber Göthes Genick . . ."] [ = H. Daffner, "Eine Münchner Wertheriade. Fanni von Ickstatts Sturz vom Münchner Frauenturm im Jahre 1786." Jb.S.Kjpp. 7:266-268.] R. "Freundinn armer Liebekranker Herzen." Klagen unglücklicher Liebe, bey Werthers Grabe im Mondschein. [Signed:] " R . " Almanack der deutschen Musen, 1777. pp. 215-216. [9 four-line stanzas.] [ = Braun 1:372-373 = Jb.S.Kipp. 1:213-214.] * RATSCHKY,

JOSEPH

FRANZ,

1757-1810 see LEON.

REINHARD, KARL FRIEDRICH, Graf, 1761-1837. "Ausgelitten hast du! Den Todesstreit hast du gerungen." Lotte bey Werthers Grab (Elegie). 1778. In: Alb. Tibullus. Nebst einer Probe aus dem Properz, und den Kriegsliedern des Tyrtäus. In der Versart der Urschrift übersetzt. Mit einem Anhang von eigenen Elegien. Zürich, 1783. pp. 213-215. [23 elegiac couplets—refers to Reitzenstein's poem.] [= Jb. S.Kipp. 1:227-229.] REITZENSTEIN, CARL ERNST Freiherr VON, attributed author. "Ausgelitten hast du—ausgerungen." Lotte bey Werthers Grab. Walheim, 1775. 7 pp. = Wertherschriften no. 2. [44 lines. Music attributed to Johann André—cf. M. Friedländer, Das deutsche Lied im 18. Jahrhundert, 2:552-553, who prints the music.] [ = Appell, pp. 77-78.] —[With title:] Pätus und Arria; eine Künstler-Romanze. Und Lotte bey Werthers Grab; eine Elegie. Leipzig, Wahlheim, 1775. pp. [13]—x6 and 1 leaf music. [= H. Düntzer, Zu Goethe's Jubelfeier. Studien zu Goethe's Werken. 1849. Anhang 4. pp. 255-257.] Reviewed: Gothaische gelehrte Zeitungen, 12 Julius 1775. [ = Braun 1:118.]; Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek 1775. 26:207-209. [= Braun 1:2x8-219.] —Hamburger Adress-Comptoir-Nachrichten, 29. Mai 1775. no. 42:334·

282

BIBLIOGRAPHY

—Deutsche Chronik, i2. Junius 1775. pp. 373-375· [Schubart writes: "Recensiren? Behüte Gott, mittheilen will ich dir diesz Cypressensträuszchen auf Werthers Grab."] [= Braun 1:112-113.] —Giessner Wochenblatt, Juni, 1775. No. 24. —Der Teutsche Merkur, 1775. 2. Vierteljahr: [i93]-i94. [June, 1775.] [= Jb.S.Kipp. 1:187-188.] Mentioned: Realzeitung, Wien. —Rheinischer Most. Erster Herbst. 1775. pp. 181-183, and insert of music. —Mentioned: Magister F. Ch. Laukhards Leben und Schicksale Von ihm selbst beschrieben. Stuttgart, 1908. [1:76—The last of the songs sung on the occasion of a procession to Jerusalem's grave in 1776 was "das Liedchen : 'Ausgelitten . . . " ' ] ; see also RÜLING, "Weine nicht!—es ist der Sieg erkämpfet' [an answer to this poem] ; Laura an Adolfs Grab. Eine Nänie. < im Dez. 1780. Hin und her aus Hölty und dem ungenannten Verfasser der Lotte an Werthers Grab geraubt. > In: Johann Friedrich Ferdinand Schlez, Gedichte. Anspach Haueisen, 1784. p. 57; Johann'Jakob Nathanael Neumann, Lebenslauf meiner Tochter Therese von Silberbach. Teutschlands edelsten Töchtern gewidmet. Berlin, 1782-1783. [When Winsel, seeing an engraving of Werther and Lotte, begins to recite "Ausgelitten . . ." Therese takes it down with the words, "Was kann das helfen, Herr Winsel! dasz wir Werthern nur immer beklagen?"]; see also REINHARD; NOVALIS; Ernst Adolf Eschke, Woburg. Abgerissene Scenen der Einbildungskraft, welche sich jedoch in mancher groszen Stadt realisieren. Halle, 1791. [Woburg sings "Sind denn alle Stürme losgerüttelt?" to the melody "Ausgelitten hast du, ausgerungen usw."]; Karl Reinbrecht, eine Psychologische Romaneske. In: Ernst Adolf Eschke, Männliche Standhaftigkeit und männlicher Wankelmuth in wahren Begebenheiten. Leipzig, 1802. [In chapter 6 Karl thinks of himself as Werther: "Ausgelitten hast du, ausgerungen,/Armer Reinbrecht, deinen Todesstreit,/Abgeblutet die Beleidigungen/Und gebüszt für deine Zärtlichkeit."]; Heinrich Heine, Harzreise. In: Sämtliche Werke [Elster]. 3:24. [The journeyman tailor sings "Lottchen bei dem Grabe ihres Werthers."] —Imitated: An Wertheims Grabe. In: Gedichte von Gotthilf

GERMAN:

POETRY

283

Heinrich Schnee. Frankfurt am Mayn, 1786. p. 135.—Supposed source of poem by Baranov: see Russian poetry. —In: C. G. Neefe, Lieder mit Ciaviermelodien. Glogau, 1776. p. 50. [A specimen of the music in M. Friedlaender, Das deutsche Lied im 18. Jahrhundert. 1(1):228.] —Almanack der Grazien auf das Jahr 1776. Cythere, bey Ganymedes. pp. 104-106. —[At end of:] Berichtigung der Geschichte des jungen Werthers. Wahlheim, 1777. pp. 11-16. —In : J. H. Hesse, Acht und Dreiszig neue moralische Oden und Lieder und Lotte bey Werthers Grabe mit Melodien von Johann Heinrich Hesse Hof-Cantor und Music-Director in Eutin. Eutin, 1777. 1:54-60. [With title: "Lottes Klagegesang." < Langsam mit vielem Affekt. >] —In: J. G. Krebs, Lieder mit Melodien. Altenburg, 1777. p. 22. —In: J. A. Steffan, Sammlung Deutscher Lieder für das Klavier. Wien, 1778. i. Abth. No. V. Adagio. Lotte Auf Werthers Grabe. [8 stanzas.] —In: J. A. Sulzer, Fünf und zwanzig belustigende Lieder. Zürich, 1782. pp. 34-35· —Zürcher Blumenlese. 1782. ["Allgemeine Blumenlese."] —Oden und Elegien der Deutschen. Zürich, 1783. pp. 296-297. [Signed:] "Rath Reitzenstein." —In: M. Ruprecht, Sechs Lieder für das Pianoforte, oder Klavier. Wien, gedruckt auf Kosten des Verfassers. [No. 3.] [= M. Ansion, Das Wiener Lied von 1778-1791 (Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich, X X V I I . Jahrg., 2. T., Bd. 54) no. 61.] [One stanza with music: M. Friedlaender, Das deutsche Lied im 18. Jahrhundert. i(2):320.] —In: F. G. Fleischer, Sammlung gröszerer und kleinerer Singstücke. Braunschweig, 1788. p. 18. —In: Fünf schöne neue Lieder. Gedruckt in diesem Jahr [Ca. 1785]. < D a s Erste, Lottchen bey dem Grabe Ihres Werthers. > —In: Fünf angenehme neue Arien. 1. Ausgelitten hast du . . . [3 leaves, Breslau, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek.] —In: Vier schöne Arien. Ganz neu gedruckt. 1. Ausgelitten hast du . . . [4 leaves, Königsberg, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek.]

284

BIBLIOGRAPHY

— I n : Drey schöne neue Lieder, Lotte an Werthers Geist, uc. Wien [n.d.]· 4 leaves. — I n : Drey schöne weltliche Lieder. < D a s Erste. Lotte an Werthers Geist. > Wien, 1805. [8 pp.] —In: Die Leiden des jungen Werther. Eine bekannte wahre Geschichte. Nebst sämmtlichen Arien, welche von Werther . . . gedichtet worden sind. Kassel [n.d.] pp. 43-44. [Chapbook! < Mei. Schatten, sei zufrieden, wenn ich weine. > Four lines have been inserted after 1. 24 to make 6 eight-line stanzas. Supposedly written by Charlotte upon receiving "Weine nicht! mein Sieg ist nun erkämpfet."] [= Nicolovius, pp. 65-66. ] [Other editions of this chapbook are entered under "Lottchen will nun bald zum Altar gehen."] — I n : G. W. Fink, Musikalischer Hausschatz der Deutschen. Leipzig, 1849. p. 653. —[Broadsides are known, often with H. E. C. v. Hägen, Lotte auf Karls Grabe.] —In: Werther an Lotte, Brief an Lotte, Lotte bei Werther's Grab. Cannstadt. = Fragmente aus der Goethezeit. 2:37-38. —[Russian translation:] Sharlotta pri grobe ^Verterà. Mentioned: Neskol'ko pisem moego draga. Priiatnoe i poleznoe preprovozhdenie vremeni, 1794,^1795. 4:127-186; 5:374-385. [p. 184: The hero loves Amaliia, now another's wife; at her request he reads the German original.] —[Swedish translation:] Lotta till Werthers Skugga. In: [Lorenz Peter Bagge,] Försök Af en yngling. Götheborg, 1794. pp. 114-115· —[Mentioned: E. Engel, Was bleibt? Leipzig, 1928. p. 121: "das empfindsame Lied . . . das noch ich gehört habe."] REITZENSTEIN, JOHANN HEINRICH VON, attributed author; see C. E. VON REITZENSTEIN—cl. Katalog der Sammlung Kippenberg, 1928. No. 3219. RIBBECK, KONRAD GOTTLIEB, 1753-1826. "Abgewelkt, des langen Lebens müde." Albert nach Werthers Tode. In: C. C. Agthe, Lieder eines leichten und flieszenden Gesangs. Dessau, 1782. pp. 16-17. [— Jb.S.Kipp. 1:222-224.] RÜLING, GEORG ERNST VON, 1748-1807. "Weine nicht!— es ist der Sieg erkämpfet." Werther an Lotten. < Von einem Ungenannten.> Der Teutsche Merkur, 1775. 3. Vierteljahr:

GERMAN:

POETRY

[971-98. [36 lines—an answer to Lotte in Reitzenstein's poem.] [= Braun 1:119-120 = Appell, pp. 79-80 = Jb.S. Kipp. 1:188-189.] Mentioned: Das Lausitzische Magazin, 15. November 1775. 23. Stück. [Cf. Hünich, Aus der Wertherzeit. pp. 278-279.] — I n : Die Leiden des jungen Werther. Eine bekannte wahre Geschichte. Nebst sämmtlichen Arien, welche von Werther . . . gedichtet worden sind. Kassel [n.d.] pp. 36-37. [Chapbook! < M e l . Lottchen will nun bald zum Altar gehen. > Four lines have been inserted after 1. 36 to make 5 eight-line stanzas. Supposedly written by Werther the morning after the separation scene. First line:] "Weine nicht! mein Sieg ist nun erkämpfet." [Other editions of this chapbook are entered under "Lottchen will nun bald zum Altar gehen."] — I n : C. G. Neefe, Lieder mit Claviermelodien. Glogau, 1776. P· 5 2 · — I n : M. Ruprecht, Sechs Lieder für das Pianoforte, oder Klavier. Wien, gedruckt auf Kosten des Verfassers. [No. 4.] [= M. Ansion, Das Wiener Lied von iyy8-iyçi (Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich, X X V I I . Jahrg., 2. T., Bd. 54) no. 62.] — I n : J. F. C. Lauer, Liedersammlung in Musik gesetzt. Eisenach, in der Wittekindischen Buchhandlung, p. 31. — I n : Gedichte von . . . Ruling. Lemgo, 1787. pp. 80-81. —[With title:] Werthers Antwort an Lottchen. In: Fünf schöne neue Lieder. Gedruckt in diesem Jahr [ca. 1785]. < D a s Zweyte . . . > —[With title:] Werthers Geist an Lotte. In: Drey schöne weltliche Lieder. Wien, 1805. < D a s Zweyte . . . > —In: Werther an Lotte, Brief an Lotte, Lotte bei Werther's Grab. Cannstadt. = Fragmente aus der Goethezeit. Cannstadt. 2:31-32. RUPRECHT, MARTIN, 1758-1800, composer; see REITZENSTEIN; RÜLING. * S., AMALIE. Sympathie. [Signed:] "Amalie S." Poetereyen. Altvater Opitzen geheiligt, 1776. Breslau. 1 (no. i9):i6o. [Lines 11-12: " 0 ! Göthe, Göthe!/0! Werther und Lotte!"] [= Jb.S.Kipp. 1:199.] S., G. A. Versuch einer Poesie über einen wichtigen Brief des jungen Werthers, von einem Liebhaber der Dichtkunst. G. A. S. Schwalbach, bey Enderes, 1776. 15 pp.

z86

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Reviewed: Almanach der deutschen Musen, 1778. Leipzig, p. 88. [= Braun 1:385.] " 'S ist nicht so arg gewesen." Eine trostreiche und wunderbare Historia, betittult: Die Leiden und Freuden Werthers des Mannes, zur Erbauung der lieben Christenheit in Reime gebracht, und fast lieblich zu lesen und zu singen. Im Thon: Ich Mädchen bin aus Schwaben; oder auch in eigner Melodey. Gedruckt allhier in diesem Jahr, Da all's über'n arm'n Werther herwar. 16 pp. [42 four-line stanzas.] = Wertherschriften no. 4. [ = Jb.S.Kipp. 1:200-206.] Reviewed: Berlinisches Litterarisches Wochenblatt, 13. April 1776. [ = Braun 1:273.]; Almanach der deutschen Musen auf das Jahr 1777. Leipzig, p. 99. [= Braun 1:372.] SC HACK, ADOLF FRIEDRICH Graf VON, English Poetry: THACKERAY.

1815-1894 see

"Schatten sei zufrieden wenn ich weine." Albert bei Werthers Grab. In: Die Leiden des jungen Werther. Eine bekannte wahre Geschichte. Nebst sämmtlichen Arien, welche von Werther . . . gedichtet worden sind. Kassel [n.d.] pp. 46-47. [Chapbook! 5 eight-line stanzas. Other editions of this chapbook are entered under "Lottchen will nun bald zum Altar gehen."] —[With first line:] "Schatten, sei zufrieden, dasz ich weine." Albert an Werthers Geist. In: Drey schöne weltliche Lieder. Wien, 1805. [No. 3.] [= Jb.S.Kipp. 1:240-241.] —[Bohemian translation:] "Tes se stíne, mácej size lice." Albert u hrobu Wertra. Truchlivá pisen. Pardubich, 1807. [10 four-line stanzas.] [= B. Vaclavek, "Ohlas Goethova 'Utrpení mladého Werthera' ν kramárské písni ceské," Goethuv sborník. Praha, 1932. p. 30if.] Chrudimi, 1810. —[In a MS collection, Egerland—cf. Alois John, "Goethes Werther im Egerland," Unser Egerland. 33:50^] SCHEFER, LEOPOLD, 1784-1862. "Zweifelst du, ob es nicht heut noch spartische Jünglinge gebe?" Werther in Sparta. In: Gedichte von Leopold Schef er. Hrsg. vom Grafen Pückler von Muskau. Berlin, 1811. 1:314. [4 elegiac couplets.] [ = Nicolovius, p. 412 = Jb.S.Kipp. 1:244.]

GERMAN:

POETRY

287

* SCHEFFNER, JOHANN GEORG, 1736-1820. "Die Seele, die nicht bei den Leiden Werthers." In: Natürlichkeiten der sinnlichen und empfindsamen Liebe vom Freyherrn Fr. Wilh. v.d.G. 1798. 2:230-231. [= Jb.S.Kipp. 1:238-239.] "Scheint dir die letzte Hoffnung schon verschwunden" see WINKELMANN. SCHLEGEL, Hauptmann VON. "Leb wohl, bis wir uns wiedersehn." Werther an Lotten. In: C. G. Agthe, Lieder eines leichten und flieszenden Gesangs. Dessau, 1782. p. 20. [6 fourline stanzas.] [= Jb.S.Kipp. 1:224-225.] SCHLEZ, see

JOHANN FRIEDRICH REITZENSTEIN.

FERDINAND,

1752-1839

SCHLOSSER, JOHANN GEORG, 1739-1799. "Ist's Bild; so hats Urania gemahlt." Über Werthers Leiden an seine Widerleger, Berichtiger, Vertheidiger und Recensirer. [4 lines in a letter to Lenz, "Emmendingen."] [= Briefe von und an J. M. R. Lenz. Leipzig, 1918. 1:100 = Jb.S.Kipp. 5:299.] "Schlummre deinen langen Todesschlummer" see SCHNEE, GOTTHILF ZEN ST EI Ν.

HEINRICH,

SURKAU.

1761-1830 see

REIT-

*SCHNEIDER, S. RODERICH. "Bei meinem Mädchen sasz ich/ < Und las ihr den Werther vor. > " Enttäuschung. < Blätter aus meinem Tagebuche von Referendarius Jocosus.> Gunloda. Sommertaschenbuch, 1832. p. 229. [Signed:] S. R. S. SCHWAGER, JOHANN MORITZ, 1736-1804. " D u beweinst ihn noch, o dumme Seele." In: Die Leiden des jungen Franken, eines Genies. Minden, 1777. [4 lines, at end.] [ = Jb.S.Kipp. 1:217.] = [Reprint 1912,] Leipzig, bei Rohwelt. Minden, Frankfurt, 1797. "Jeder Narre sehnt sich so zu lieben." In: ibid. [4 lines, on title page.] = [Reprint 1912,] Leipzig, bei Rohwelt. [= Jb.S.Kipp. 1:217.] Minden, Frankfurt, 1797. [Parodies of Goethe's " D u beweinst, du liebst ihn, liebe Seele" and "Jeder Jüngling sehnt sich so zu lieben."] Reviewed: Berlinisches Litterarisches Wochenblatt, 4. Mai 1777. [Both stanzas quoted.] [ = Braun ι :35o-352.]; Beytrag

288

BIBLIOGRAPHY

zum Reichs-Postreuter, 6. Apr. 1778. ["Jeder N a r r e . . . " quoted.] [= Braun 1:374-376.]; Nürnbergische gelehrte Zeitung, 15. April 1777. [= Braun 1:348-350.] "Schwermuthsvoll und dumpfig hallt's Geläute." In: Die Leiden des jungen Werther. Eine bekannte wahre Geschichte. Nebst sämmtlichen Arien, welche von Werther . . . gedichtet worden sind. Kassel [n.d.] pp. 22-23. [Written by Werther upon the murder of a peasant girl by her lover—8 eight-line stanzas. Chapbook! Other editions are entered under "Lottchen will nun bald zum Altar gehen."] * SENCKENBERG, RENATUS CARL Freiherr VON, 17511800. [Introductory poem of:] Gedichte eines Christen. 1787 ["das süsze Werthers-Gift"]. [= H. Haupt, "Zu Werther." Goethe-Jahrbuch, 1901. 22:266-269.] SMITH see English poetry. "So ist dein Geist der Erde nun entflogen." An Werthers Lotte. Allgemeine Theaterzeitung, Wien, 11. März 1828. pp. [121]122. "Soll ich auf dieser unter'n Sphäre länger" see English poetry: SMITH. SPIEGEL VON PICKELSHEIM, DIETRICH ERNST Freiherr VON, 1737-1789. "Höre, Jüngling! lasz dich nicht betören." Werther an M. den jüngeren, aus dem Reiche der Todten. Poetische Blumenlese für das Jahr 177p. p. 19. [Signed:] "Frh ν Sp*l." [12 lines.] [= Jb.S.Kipp. 1:217.] ST.**, FR. V. "O Gott! so ist es wahr das schreckenvolle Bild." Lotte auf Werthers Tod von Fr. v. St.** [MS, papers of Frau von Stein. 28 alexandrines.] [= Jb.S.Kipp. 7:316-517.] [Another version: see LENZ.] STEFFAN, JOSEPH REITZENSTEIN.

ANTON,

1726-1797, composer; see

STOCKMANN, bookdealer in Leipzig, attributed author; see Leben und geringe Thaten von Werther dem Sekretär. SURKAU, DANIEL ALBRECHT, 1756-1787. "Schlummre deinen langen Todesschlummer." Am Grabe Werthers. In: Elegieen von Daniel Albrecht Surkau. Danzig, 1784. pp. 3738. [4 six-line stanzas.] [= Jb.S.Kipp. 1:229-230.]

GERMAN:

POETRY

289

TEWELES, HEINRICH, b. 1856. "An Dein Grab, umrauscht von Trauerweiden." Charlotte at the Tomb of Werter (Engraved by J. R. Smith). Goethe Festschrift zum 150. Geburtstage des Dichters. Hrsg. von der Lese- und Redehalle der deutschen Studenten in Prag. Redigiert von Aug. Ströbel. Prag, 1899. pp. 93-94. [4 four-line stanzas.] THACKERAY see English poetry. * TIECK,

LUDWIG,

1773-1853 see Italian drama:

SOGRAFI.

"Trage standhaft alle deine Leiden!" Albert an Lottchen. < M e l . Ausgelitten hast du, ausgerungen.> In: Die Leiden des jungen Werther. Eine bekannte wahre Geschichte. Nebst sämmtlichen Arien, welche von Werther . . . gedichtet worden sind. Kassel [n.d.] p. 45. [3 eight-line stanzas.] [Chapbook! Other editions are entered under "Lottchen will nun bald zum Altar gehen."] —[Slight variations:] [= Nicolovius pp. 66-67 = Appell pp. 80-81 = Jb.S.Kipp. 1:191-192.] TRAUTMANN, FRANZ (X.), 1813-1887. "Ein leises Flüstern in dem Schatten heil'ger Eichen." An Werther. In: Gedichte von Fr. X. Trautmann. München, 1830. pp. 43-44. [6 fourline stanzas.] [ = Jb.S.Kipp. 1:245-246.] "Und mein ältester Roman ist aus dem Lande verwiesen" see "Ach! ich unglücklicher Vater! warum erhielt ich doch Zeugkraft." "Vor Werthers Leiden" see GOETHE. * VULPIUS, CHRISTIAN AUGUST, 1762-1827. Himmelsgesang. In: Mein Himmel. Ein Gedicht. Berlin, 1785. [Lines 25 and 30.] * WEBER, WILHELM ERNST, 1790-1850. Göthe. In: Kleine Schwärmer über die neueste deutsche Litteratur. Eine Xeniengabe für 1827. Frankfurt a.M. pp. 38-41. [p. 41: "helle Charlotte."] [= J. B. Rousseau, Göthe's Ehrentempel (i.e. Supplemente zu Göthe's Werken 1). Hamm, 1827. pp. 67-70.] "Wehrter! o Wehrter! wer hat dich geschildert?" Wehrter. In: Gereimte Ausfälle auf Ungereimte Einfalle, von einem, aus innigster Quelle des Herzens die Wahrheit liebenden Freunde. Hadersleben, gedruckt mit Luckanderschen Schriften. 1779. p. 36f. [46 lines.] [= Jb.S.Kipp. 1:218-220.]

290

BIBLIOGRAPHY

* Weiblichkeiten ein Beitrag zur Charakteristik des neuesten Zeitalters. Kakogünäkopolis. Gedruckt im Jahre 1781. [p. 47: Werther, "Der sich, als ihn die Liebe schor,/Aus Eifersuch tsmarotte/Erschos um Alberts Lotte."] "Weine nicht!—es ist der Sieg erkämpfet" see

RULING.

"Weine nicht, ich habe Dir verziehen." < M e l . Trage standhaft alle deine Leiden.> In: Die Leiden des jungen Werther. Eine bekannte wahre Geschichte. Nebst sämmtlichen Arien, welche von Werther . . . gedichtet worden sind. Kassel [n.d.] pp. 24-26. [Written by Werther in the person of the murdered peasant girl of "Schwermuthsvoll und dumpfig hallt's Geläute."—8 eight-line stanzas.] [Chapbook! Other editions entered under "Lottchen will nun bald zum Altar gehen."] "Weine nicht! mein Sieg ist nun erkämpfet" see

RÜLING.

"Wenn ich nun tot bin, Freunde, begrabet dann." Werthers Grab. Schweitzerischer Musenalmanach auf das Jahr 1785. Basel, p. 169. [3 Alcaic strophes.] [= Jb.S.Kipp. 1:230.] ''Wenn oft, in stiller Einsamkeit" see Ζ. "Werther und Charlotte wird gespielt" see Italian drama: SOGRAFI, Tieck. "Werther war ein armer Tropf." Werther und Ich. Allerley für Allerley Leser. 1795. 1:76. [6 lines.] [= Jb.S.Kipp. 7:319.] "Werther war verliebt in Lotte" see English poetry: ERAY.

THACK-

"Werther, warum so betrübt? Ich traure, dasz Göthe zum Bruder" see MANSO. "Werthers Leiden, Werthers Freuden." Auf Werthers Leiden, und Werthers Leiden und Freuden, zwey sehr beliebte Modeschriften. In: Versuche in Sinngedichten. Büzow und Wismar, Berger und Bödner, 1777. [2 vol.] [6 lines, quoted in review.] Reviewed: Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek, Anhang 25/ 36:780. [= Braun 1:362 = Jb.S.Kipp. 1:215.] "Wie das aussieht! bringst du nicht?" see Β. "Wie ofte hab ich dich, Werther! nicht gelesen" see D., J. * WILLER, Regiments-Auditeur. [Dedicatory poem of his Werther, ein bürgerliches Trauerspiel—to Karl Georg Heinrich von Hoym. Last stanza:] " O Hoym! des Mitleids Thräne

GERMAN: DRAMA

291

versage nicht/Dem Staub des Jünglings, der seiner Liebe Schmerz/Nicht trug—Du weinst?—0! schönre Thränen/ Weinte nicht Lottens Aug am Grabe Werthers" page v.] [= Appell p. 72.] WINKELMANN, AUGUST (STEPHAN), 178^1806. "Scheint dir die letzte Hoffnung schon verschwunden." Werthers Leiden. Neue Vesta. Kleine Schriften zur Philosophie des Lebens . . . hrsg. von Fr. Boulerwek. 1803. pp. 108109. [Sonnet.] [= Jb.S.Kipp. 1:239-240.] WITTENBERG, ALBRECHT, 1718-1807. "Des Weisen Lehr', am innern Werte reich." Über die Leiden des jungen Werthers. In: Epigrammen und andere Gedichte von Albrecht Wittenberg, beyder Rechte Licentiaten. Altona, 1779. p. 26. [8 lines.] [= Jb.S.Kipp. 1:218.] "Worauf lauerst du hier?—Ich erwarte den dummen Gesellen" see GOETHE. Z. "Wenn oft, in stiller Einsamkeit." In ein Exemplar von Werthers Leiden. Almanach der deutschen Musen auf das Jahr 1776. p. 190. [3 six-line stanzas.] [= Braun 1:333 = Jb.S.Kipp. 1:198.] Ζ., X. Y. see LENZ: Menalk und Mopsus. ZÖLLNER, HEINRICH, 1854-19—, composer; see LÖWENSTEIN. "Zu einer Stadt, wo alles frey" see MERCK. "Zweifelst du, ob es nicht heut noch spartische Jünglinge gebe?" see SCHEFER. DRAMA

Afterwerther, oder Folgen jugendlicher Eifersucht see HENSELT. Albert und Lotte, oder die Tugend bey der gröszten Armuth. Ein Lustspiel, in zween Aufzügen. Prag, Leipzig, 1777. 39 PP· * Am 28. August 1823. (Drama zur Feier von Goethe's 75stem Geburtstag.) Morgenblatt für gebildete Stände, 19. Sept. 1823. No. 225. ["Dienstmädchen: Der Werther hat mir wohlgethan;/D'rauf holt' ich mir sein Leben,/Doch ach! das ist ja kein Roman—/Ich hab's zurückgegeben."] [= Nicolovius p. 372.]

292 ANDRÉ,

BIBLIOGRAPHY

H., attributed author; see ANDRÉ,

JOHANN.

ANDRÉ, JOHANN, 1741-1799, attributed author. Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, ein Trauerspiel in drey Aufzügen, fürs Deutsche Theater ganz aus dem Original gezogen. Frankfurt am Mayn, bey Joh. Gottlieb Garbe, 1776. 62 pp. Mentioned: Almanach für Dichter und schöne Geister, 1785. [p. 2: Johann André "hat verschiedenes fürs Theater, theils übersetzt, theils selbst gefertigt z.B. Der junge Werther."] Reviewed: Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek, 1776. 29:500501. [= Braun 1:343.]; Berlinisches Litterarisches Wochenblatt, 17. August 1776. [= Braun 1:291-292.] —[. : . Aufzügen,] zum Behuf des deutschen Theaters ganz aus dem Originale gezogen. Frankfurt am Mayn, 1776. Reviewed: Almanach der deutschen Musen, 1777. p. 82; Theater-Kalender, 1777. Gotha, p. 179. "von H. André." [Also attributed to H. André in Taschenbuch für die Schaubühne 1779. Gotha, p. 163.] —[. . . Aufzügen,] fürs Deutsche Theater ganz aus dem Original gezogen. Bern, bey Jeremias Waithard, 1776. 62 pp. Reviewed: Almanach der deutschen Musen 1778. Leipzig, p. 80-81. [= Braun 1:384-385.] 1776: Nürnberg, Moserische Schauspieler-Gesellschaft. Mentioned: Schreiben des Herrn von R*** über die Vorstellung des Trauerspiels: die Leiden des jungen Werthers, in Nürnberg, nebst einer kurzen Nachricht von der Moserischen Schauspieler-Gesellschaft. 1776. 1778: Erfurt, Speichsche Schauspieler-Truppe. Mentioned: [MS, "Verunglückte Werther-Aufführung"—Inserted page of Almanach der Grazien auf das Jahr 1776, in the Sammlung Kippenberg.]; Karl Philipp Moritz, Anton Reiser. Berlin, 1790. [4:189-191: The pistols miss fire.] 178-: Danzig, Schuchische Gesellschaft. Mentioned: Litteratur- und Theaterzeitung, 16. März 1782. [Blood appears before the shot is fired—cf. Hünich, Aus der Wertherzeit, pp. 276-277.] BÄUERLE, ADOLF, 1786-1859. Werthers Leiden. [Parody, ca. 1825—cf. M . Schneider, Deutsches Titelbuch. Berlin, 1927. p. 377.] See also STUWER.

GERMAN:

DRAMA

293

* BELLY, GEORG FRIEDRICH. Werther und Lotte, oder: Nachtwächters Erdenwallen. Posse mit Gesang in 1 A k t von G. Belly. Musik von A. Conradi. < Ed. Bloch's Dilettantenbühne no. 7 1 . > Berlin [ca. i860]. 20 pp. 18—: Berlin, Wallner's Theater. —Berlin, 1879. 34 pp. < Eduard Bloch's Theater-Correspondenz. no. 133. > BERTRAM, drama:

CHRISTIAN SINNER.

AUGUST,

BERTRAM,

FRIEDRICH

see GOUÊ.

1751-1830 see French

BONIN, CHRISTIAN FRIEDRICH FERDINAND ANSELM VON, 1755-1813 see French drama: SINNER. * BRETZNER, CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH, 1748-1807. Karl und Sophie, oder: Die Physiognomisten. Ein Lustspiel in fünf Akten von C. F. Bretzner. Leipzig, bey Friedr. Gotth. Jacobäer und Sohne, 1780. 173 pp. [p. 69: The thirteenyear-old Fritz "kann auch sterben wie Werther, kann auch leiden für Julgen."] —Zwote verbesserte Auflage. 1784. 152 pp. —In: Schauspiele von C. F. Bretzner. Neue verbesserte Auflage. Leipzig [n.d.] 3:1-152. Cleopatra see KOT ZEBU E. CONRADI,

AUGUST,

1821-1873, composer; see

BELLY.

* CONTIUS, CHRISTIAN GOTTHOLD, b. 1750. Wieland und seine Abonnenten. Ein musikalisches Drama halb in Reimverslein, halb in ungebundener Rede gestellt. Mit Erlaubnis der Obern. Weimar, Auf Kosten der Gesellschaft, 1775. 40 pp. [Evoked by Wagner's Prometheus Deukalion und seine Recensenten.—pp. 19-20: Werther and Nicolai's parody discussed by Nikolai, Wieland, Jakobi, Goethe, and others.] Reviewed: Frankfurter gelehrte Anzeigen, 1775. pp. 799800. [Wagner.]; Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek, 1775. 26(1) ¡208-209. [— Braun 1:219-220.] CREMERI, BENEDIKT DOMINIK ANTON, 1752-1795. Die Leiden des jungen Werthers. Ein Trauerspiel. [1782.] Mentioned: Taschenbuch für die Schaubühne, 1782. p. 158. 1786: Linz.

294

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lotte, oder die Folgen von Werthers Leiden. Ein Trauerspiel· [1782.] Mentioned: Theaterkalender. Gotha. DELLER see TELLER. Die Egoisten see RAHMEL. Elise see

TRÜTZSCELER.

Ernest, oder die unglücklichen Folgen der Liebe see French drama: SINNER. * Die frohe Frau. Ein Nachspiel schicklich aufzuführen nach der Leidenden Frau. Offenbach und Frankfurt, 1775. 23 pp. [Scenes ι and 3 allude to Werther.] [= Hendels Bibliothek der Gesamtliteratur no. 223 = F. M. Klinger, Dramatische Jugendwerke. Leipzig, 1912. 1:332-343.] [Attributed author: GÖNTGEN.] Reviewed: Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek, 1776. 27(2): 500. [Signed:] "Dz." [i.e. Eschenburg.] [= Braun 1:342.]; [Klinger's protest against charges made in Die frohe Frau:} Frankfurter gelehrte Anzeigen, 11. August 1775. [= F. M. Klinger, Dramatische Jugendwerke. Leipzig, 1912. 1:343347·]

See also KLINGER.

* GIESECKE, KARL LUDWIG {i.e. JOHANN GEORG KARL METZLER, Sir CHARLES GIESEKE), 1761-1833. Hamlet, Prinz von Liliput, Burleske mit Gesang und Tanz in Knittelversen. 1798. —[With title:] Der travestirte Hamlet. Eine Burleske in deutschen Knittelversen mit Arien und Chören von Karl Ludwig Giesecke. Wien, 1798. 64 pp. [p. 26: The Queen suspects Hamlet of reading "Werthers Leben und Leiden."] June 29, 1795: Pest [20 performances through Dec. 19, 1811]. GÖNTGEN, JONATHAN GOTTLIEB, author; see Die frohe Frau.

b. 1752, attributed

* GOETHE. Hanswursts Hochzeit oder Der Lauf der Welt ein mikrokosmisches Drama. [1775.] In: W.A. 38:448. [Lines 1-4: "Mir ist das liebe Wertherische Blut. . ."] Anekdote zu den Freuden des jungen Werthers. [1775.] In: W.A. 38:39-43.

295

GERMAN: DRAMA

* Der Triumph der Empfindsamkeit. [1777.] In: W.A. 1 7 : 1 - 7 3 . [p. 56: The dummy's stuffing includes Die Leiden des jungen Werthers.] GOUÉ, AUGUST FRIEDRICH VON, 1743-1789. Masuren oder der junge Werther. Ein Trauerspiel aus dem Illyrischen. Frankfurth und Leipzig, 1775. 158 pp. : D e r Müller: "Sie glauben nicht, wie viele schöne Kleye/Ich zum Exempel nur dem Berlichingen/Zu danken und dem Werther." = Schriften 10:183.] Der travestirte Hamlet see GIESECKE. Der Triumph der Empfindsamkeit see GOETHE. * TRÜTZSCHLER, FRIEDRICH KARL ' ADOLF VON, 1751-1831. Elise. Ein Schauspiel in drei Aufzügen. Altenburg, 1777. 96 pp. [Elise reads from Werther, pp. 4-5; attacks on Werther, p. i3ff., p. 96.] Reviewed: Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek, 1778. 36(1): 131; Theater-Journal, 1777. [Cf. Hünich, Aus der Wertherzeit, pp. 277-278.] * VISC HER, FRIEDRICH THEODOR VON, 1807-1887. Faust. Der Tragödie dritter Teil. Nachspiel. [1862.] In: Dichterische Werke. Leipzig, 1917. [4:266—"Vielbeweinte Dichtergestalt/Schreitet zum Tode. Aber der Dichter/Er genest. Ihn rettet die Dichtung."] WAGNER, HEINRICH LEOPOLD, 1747-1779.! Prometheus Deukalion und seine Recensenten. Voran ein Prologus und zuletzt ein Epilogus. 1775. [Goedeke, Grundrisz, 4(3)1184, states that various imprints—Berlin, Göttingen, Hamburg, Leipzig, Weymar—were added to the title page of this edition, which was printed in Frankfurt.] 28 pp. [Woodcuts, not names, designate the speakers. Prometheus is Goethe, Deukalion is Werther.] [= H. Düntzer, Zu Goethe's Jubelfeier. Studien zu Goethe's Werken. 1849. pp. 211-231. = Kürschner, Deutsche National-Litteratur, v. 80.] Renewed: Deutsche Chronik, 18. März 1775. [ = Braun 1:84-85]; Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek, 1775. 26(1):20ό-

GERMAN: DRAMA

303

207. [= Braun 1:217-218.] [Nicolai.]; Frankfurter gelehrte Anzeigen, 24. März 1775. pp. 215-216. [= Braun 1:190191.]; Beytrag zum Reichspostreuter, 12. Oct. 1775. [= Braun 1:124-126.]; Magazin der deutschen Critik, 1775. 4(1): 293. [ = Braun 1:177.] Goethe's disclaimer of authorship: Frankfurter gelehrte Anzeigen, 1775. p. 274. [ = Fränkisches Magazin, 1778. no. 18. = Braun 1:104.] Mentioned: J. Α. Schlettwein, Briefe an eine Freundinn über die Leiden des jungen Werthers. Carlsruhe, 1775. pp. 59-60 [i.e. Zwölfter Brief]. [= Werther in der Hölle. Holla, 1775. pp. 71-72.] —Freystadt, 1775. 16 pp. [Without woodcuts.] —Rheinischer Most. Erster Herbst. 1775. pp. [ii9]-i4Ó. See also CONTIUS; HOTTINGER. Werther, ein bürgerliches Trauerspiel see WILLER. Werther in Wien. Bressart-Film. Mentioned: Simplicissimus. 36(no. 5i):6o7. [20. März 1932.] Werther oder die unglückliche Liebe see French drama: SINNER. Werther und Lotte. [Farce.] May 13-18, 1878: New York, Concordia. See also BELLY; MEISL; SCHINK. Werther und Lotte im Komödiengaszl oder Die Zusammenkunft bei den sieben Schwaben. (Mit Gesang und Ballet.) Apr. 13, 1801: Pest, Kreutzer-Theater. [2 performances.] Das Wertherfieber see HOFFMANN. Werthers Leiden see BÄUERLE;

KRINGSTEINER;

MEISL.

Werthers Leiden oder Der Doppelselbstmörder aus Liebe see MEISL. Werthers Zusammenkunft mit Lottchen im Elysium see MELLI Ν Α. Wieland und seine Abonnenten see CONTIUS. WILLER. Werther. Ein Bürgerliches Trauerspiel in Prosa und drey Akten. Frankfurt und Leipzig, 1778. viii, 160 pp. [Vorrede dated 1777.] Reviewed: Almanach der deutschen Musen, 1779. pp. 7273. [= Braun 1:394.] 1778: Danzig, Schuch'sche Gesellschaft. [There also exists a playbill for a performance at Schidlitz, im weiszen Pferd;

304

BIBLIOGRAPHY

on it is printed a defence of the play taken from Willer's foreword.—A performance in a nearby Liebhabertheater has also been recorded.] Mentioned: Catalogue librorum a commissione Caes. Reg. Aulica prohibitorum. Editio nova. Vienna. [Supplementum.] See also Poetry. WITLER

see

WILLER. [ITALIAN]

POETRY

BALOCHI (.BALOCCHI or BALOCCO), LUIGI, 1766-1832. "Alla metà del tenebroso giro." Werther Cantata Per Musica. In: Il M erto Delle Donne Le Rimembranze La Malinconia E Le Pompe Funebri poemetti de G. Legouvé . . . Parigi XI—1802. pp. 139-142. < p . 137-174: Poesie Di Luigi Balochi. > [79 lines, with 2 lyric passages in rhymed verse of 10 lines each.] BENZONE, VITTORE, 1779-1822. "Astro del duolo che la notte bruna." Alla Tomba di Werther. Anno poetico, ossia Raccolta annuale di poesie inedite di autori vivienti 1798. Venezia. [= Nella, le epistole e varie rime di Vittore Benzone. Ascoli Piceno, 1893. p. 57.] [Sonnet.] " È questi il fresco abitator del colle" Alla Tomba di Werther. Ibid. 1799. [= Nella, p. 59.] [Sonnet.] "Ve'! Ve'! qual sepolcrale orror selvaggio." Alla Tomba di Werther. Ibid. 1799. [= Nella, p. 58.] [Sonnet.] BLANGINI, GIUSEPPE MARCO MARIA FELICE see French Poetry. MAN IAGO, conte PIETRO DI, 1768-1846. "Fosca è la notte: tenebrosa e fosca." Verter a Carolina. [Manuscript, Cod. Magliabechiano, II, VII, 80. R. Bibl. Naz. di Firenze. The eitle is not in the author's writing.] [Heroic epistle, 159 lines of blank verse.] [= Rivista di letteratura tedesca, 1911. 5:220-224.] PUGNANI, GAETANO, 1731-1798. Werther. Ein Roman in Musik gesetzt von Pugnani, Musikaufseher des Königs von Sardinien. [Tone-poem.] Mar. 22, 1796: Wien, Burgtheater. Mentioned: Josef Richter, Briefe eines Eipeldauers, 26. Heft vom Jahre 1796. Ca. 1796: Turino, home of Pugnani. Mentioned: F. Blan-

ITALIAN: DRAMA

305

gini, Souvenirs. Paris, 1834. p. 368. [Cf. E. Hanslick, Geschickte des Concertwesens in Wien. Wien, 1869. p. 112; Κ . F. Pohl, Joseph Haydn. Wien, 1878. 1:90, 1x5, and Leipzig, 1927. 3:101-102.] DRAU A

ASPA, MARIO, 1799-1868, composer. Carlotta e Werter. [Opera.] 1849: Napoli. BENVENUTI, NICOLO, seria. 1811: Pisa.

b. 1783. Carlotta e Werter. Opera

Carlotta e Werther. [Perhaps by Coccia.] 18jo: Paris, Théâtre Italien. COCCIA, CARLO, 1782-1873, composer. Carlotta e Werter. Opera semiseria. [Text by Gasparri.] [MS, Bibliothèque du Conservatoire, Paris.] 1814: Firenze, Teatro degli Infuocati. 1816: Roma. May, 1818: Venezia, S. Benedetto. —Mentre Francesco faceva il brodo Duetto, in the Opera of Carlotta & Werter, Composed by Signor Coccia. London . . . Birchall & Co. [about 1825.] 15 pp. [Duet of Ambrogio and Giorgio.] . . . brodo Duo Buffo, sung by Signori De Begnis & Placci, Composed by Signor Coccia, & Arranged for Piano Forte by Gaetano Pinchiori Cittadini. London, T. Boosey & Co. [about 1830.] 16 pp. See also SOGRAFI [whose Werther play influenced this libretto]; Carlotta e Werther. FARNESE, LEOPOLDO. Werther. Melodramma tragico in tre atti posto in musica dal maestro Raffaele Gentili da eseguirsi nel Regio Teatro alla Canobbiana l'autumno del 1864. Milano [n.d.] [Based on Sografi's Verter.] —Roma [n.d.] 30 pp. Nov., 1862: Roma; Firenze. Nov. 9, 1864: Milano, Teatro alla Canobbiana. FRANCHI, ARTURO. L'ombra di Werther. 1899: Trieste; Roma, Politeama Adriano.

30ö

BIBLIOGRAPHY

—[German translation Wilhelm Henzen] Werthers Schatten. Oper in ι Akt. Textbuch von Franchi. Musik von Randegger. Leipzig, 1900. —[English translation Paul England] Werther's Shadow . . . Words by Paul England. Leipzig, Bosworth & Co. [1902.] GAS ΡARRI see COCCIA. GENTILE, RAFFAELE, composer; see FARNESE. MELLIN A, GIUSEPPE see German drama. PUCITTA, VINCENZO, 1778-1861. Werter e Carlotta. Opera seria. 1804: Milano. 1805: Venezia. RANDEGGER, ALBERTO, 1880-1918, composer; see FRANCHI. SOGRAFI, SIMEONE (or SIMONE) ANTONIO, 1759-1818. Verter. Oct. 30, 1794: Venezia, Teatro San Chrisostomo. Mentioned: C. J. Stegmann, Fragmente über Italien aus dem Tagebuch eines jungen Deutschen. 1798. i:255f. [Erroneously called "Dramma tradotto dell' Inglese."] —Teatro moderno applaudito. Venezia, 1800. t. 45. Mentioned: letter of Ugo Foscolo to Spiridione Vordoni, June 5, 1803; A. v. Kotzebue, Der Freimiithige, 14. Feb. 1805. no. 32. [= Erinnerungen von einer Reise aus Liefland nach Rom und Neapel. Berlin, 1805.1:211-215]; L. Tieck. Kleines Theater in der Arena (1805). In: Gedichte. Dresden, 1823. 3:120I2 3· [75 lines; 1. 30: "Carlotta piange" cf. Verter, 1813, p. 35: "Tu piangi. . . Carlotta . . . piangi!"] [= Nicolovius pp. 218-220.] —[With title:] Verter Gommedia inedita del Signor Simon Sografi. Vienna, 1813. 78 pp. —[Spanish translation:] El Verter, ó el Abate seductor. Comedia En Cinco Actos. Personas. . . 30 pp. —[With title:] Verter Commedia di cinque atti in prosa. In: Commedie di A. S. Sografi Avvocate. Milano, 1831. p. 74ff. See also COCCIA. [Werther. Puppet play.] Ca. 1795: Naples. Mentioned: C. J. Stegmann, Fragmente (see SOGRAFI).

POLISH: DRAMA [latin] POETRY

* VILLOISON, GASPARD D'ANS(S)E DE, 1750-1805. Pour celui [le buste] de M. Göthe conseiller privé de S.A.S. [monseigneur le duc regnant de Saxe-Weimar.] In: Epistolae vinarienses, in quibus multa grœcorum scriptorum loca etnendantur . . . Turici, 1783. p. 71. ["Augusto & Musis charus, tractavit amores/Lethiferos iuvenum . . ."] —[With title:] Vers pour M. Göthe. [Letter of June 18, 1782. "juvenis" for "iuvenum."—Cf. H. Diintzer, Zur deutschen Litteratur 1:97.] —[With title:] Pour le buste de M. Göthe. In: J. Β. Rousseau, Göthe's Ehrentempel [i.e. Supplemente zu Göthe's Werken /]. Hamm, 1827. p. 77. [polish]] GENERAL

STUDIES

CIECHANOWSKA, ZOFJA. Anfänge der Goethe-Kenntnisse in Polen. Germanoslavica. 1:387-407; 2:14-43. Mickiewicz e Goethe. Pamiçtnik literacki, 1923. 20:92-125. WOJCIECHOWSKI, KONSTANTY. [etc.], 1925. 189 pp.

Werter w Polsce. Lwów

POETRY

* GAS ZYΝ SKI, KONSTANTY, 1809-1866. Sielance mlodoêci. Paryz, 1855. 16 pp. [p. 8: "To znów mysl mu straszniejsza do mózgu sig wdziera,/A wlasnie miai pistolet i czytal Wertem!" Cf. Wojciechowski, p. 179.] * SLOWIKOWSKI, A. Do Goethego. Rozmaitosci, 1898. Lwów. Ρ· 395· ["Czucia, gdys rajskie piesni zadzwonil,/Twemu posluszne glosowi—/Któz nad 'Werterem' lez nie uronil,/ Kto sig nie dziwil 'Faustowi.' " Cf. Wojciechowski, p. 134.] DRAMA

FORSTER, KARÓL. Werther, czyli oblakanie serca mlodega see French drama: G. DUVAL. * MICKIEWICZ, ADAM, 1798-1855. Dziady. Poema. Czgsc IV. In: Pisma Adama Mickiewicza na nowo przejrzane. Paryz, 1844. Tom II. [p. 49: "Xigze, a znasz ty zywot Heloisy? /Znasz ogien i Izy Wertera?"]

3O8

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Nieszczçsliwy Werter. 77S5: Human [i.e. Uman in the Ukraine], u ksigzy bazyljanów. [Probably Sinner's Les Malheurs de Vamour, from the German version, which is called Werther, oder Die unglückliche Liebe.] *WITWICKI, STEFAN, 1802-1847. Edmund. Warszawa, 1829. [Parody of Wertherism—cf. Wojciechowski, pp. 135144.] [RUMANIAN] SPECIAL

STUDY

GHERGEL, ION. Goethe in literatura Románá. Academia Românâ. Memoriile secfiunii literare. Bucuresti, 1931. I l l 5:243-424. POETRY

DUMITRESCU, GEORGE. "Prin goluri înghefate §i fàrà de sfârjit." Dupä moartea lui Werther Werther catre Lotta. Convorbiri literare, 1922. 54:846-848. [62 lines, rhymed.] GRANDEA, GREGORIO HARALAMB, 1843-1897. "Verter, Verter, tot pe tine." Pe Verter de Goethe. Kalendaru pentru totj,, III. Bucure§ti, 1864. [12 lines.] [= Ghergel, pp. 53-54.] PAJURA, I. "Citesc in cartea dragostei eterne." Werther. Convorbiri literare, 1921. 53:363. [10 lines.] [= Ghergel, p. 161.] [RUSSIAN] SPECIAL

STUDIES

GORLIN, M. Goethe in Russland. Zeitschrift für slavische Philologie, 1932/1933. 9:335-357; 10:310-334. ZHIRM UNSKIÏ, VIKTOR. Gete ν russkoï poèzii. Literaturnoe Nasledstvo, 1932. 4/6:505-650. Gete ν russkoi literature. Leningrad, 1937. 674 pp. ZUBOV, V. Russkaia literatura o Gete. Bibliograficheskiï ukazatel'. Literaturnoe Nasledstvo, 1932. 4/6:994-1032. POETRY

BARANOV, DMITRI, 1773-1833/4. "Vnemli moim slovam, o prakh, o prakh neshchastnyï." Sharlotta pri grobe Verterà. Zerkalo svela, 1787. 2:768-773. [74 alexandrines; 40 lines quoted: Zhirmunskil, Gete ν russ. lit. pp. 52-53.] "Est' mesto: bliz tropy glukhol" see * GOGOL', NIKOLAI VASWEVICH, Poetry: COUPIGNY.

LERMONTOV. 1809-1852 see French

RUSSIAN: POETRY

309

* KARAMZIN, ΝI KOLA ï MIKHAÏLOVICH, 1766-1826. Poslanie k zhenshchinam [1795]. Aonidy, 1796. 1:219-249. ["Zloshchastnyï Verter ne zakon"—cf. In: Sochineniia. S.-Peterburg, 1917. 1:144.] LERMONTOV, MIKHAIL IUR'EVICH, 1814-1841. "Est' mesto: bliz tropy glukhoï." Zaveshchanie. Iz Gete. (Srednikovo; noch'iu u okna.) [1831.] In: Polnoe sobrante sochineniï. S.-Peterburg, 1891. 1:209-210. [15 lines; a free versification of part of Werther's last letter—cf. I. Eiges, "Perevod M. IU. Lermontova iz 'Verterà' Gete." Zven'ia 1933. 2:72-74.] * Neskol'ko pisem moego druga see German poetry: REI Τ ZENSTEIN. "0

ten' liubeznaia! o ten' gorestno stoniashcha" see French poetry: ARNAULT.

" O ty, vokrug sikh miest plachevnykh" see French poetry: ARNAULT. * PUSHKIN,

ALEKSANDR

SERGÍEVICH,

1799-1837. Ev-

geniï Oniegin (Roman ν stikhakh). < G l a v a tretiia. I X . > [1824.] In: Sochineniia. S.-Peterburg, 1887. 3:284. [Tat'iana imagines Wolmar, de Linar, and "Verter, muchenik miatezhnoï," to be like Onegin.] REITZENSTEIN

see German poetry.

S. see French poetry:

ARNAULT.

"Sred' mladosti moeï sud'boiu ugnetennyl." Pis'mo Verterà k Sharlotte. [MS, ca. 400 lines; found among papers of V. A. Zhukovskiï (1783-1852).—115 lines quoted: Zhirmunskiï, Gete ν russ. lit. pp. 55-59.] "Svetil'nik dneï moikh pechal'nykh ugasaet" see French poetry: COUPIGNY. "Svobodnym Geniem natury vdokhnovennyî" see

TURGE-

NÍEV. * TRILUNNYÏ,

STRUÏSKIÏ.

Gete. Odesskil vestnik, 1834.

No. 6-7. p. 55. [Lines 17-18: "Tvoï Verter i Rytsar' s zheleznol rukoiu . . . na bitvu s Sud'boiu."]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

TUMANSKIÏ, VASILIÌIVANOVICH, poetry: COUPIGNY.

1800-1860 see French

TURGENÍEV, ANDREI IVANOVICH, 1781-1803. "Svobodnym Geniem natury vdokhnovennyi." [MS. 4 lines in a copy of Werther given to Zhukovski!—quoted: Zhirmunskii, Gele ν russ. poèzii. p. 513.] VEL'ÍASHEVA-VOLYNTSEVA, 1770-1818 see French poetry:

ANNA IVANOVNA, ARNAULT.

ca.

"Vnemli moim slovam, o prakh, o prakh neshchastnyï" see BARANOV. ZHUKOVSKII, VASI LIf ANDREEVICH, 1783-1852 see "Sred' mladosti moeï sud'boiu ugnetennyl." DRAMA

ARAPOV, PIMEN NIKOLA E VICH, 1799-1861 see French drama: G. DUVAL; Werther. TITOV, A LEK SEI NIKOLA E VIC H, 1769-1827. Novyï Verter. Le nouveau Werther. Ballet pantomime en ι acte de M-r Walberg mis en musique par Titofï. Muzyka k baletu ν ι d. soch. I. I. Val'berga. 1799. [MS. Tsentralnaia muzikalnaia biblioteka Gosudarstvennykh Akademicheskikh Teatrov, Leningrad.] Jan. 30, 179g: S.-Peterburg, Kamennyï teatr. Feb. il, 1808: Moskva, Pashkov's private theater. TUREK, FRA NTS see French drama: G. DUVAL; Werther. VAL'BERG [i.e. LESOGOROV], IVAN 1819 see TITOV.

IVANOVICH,

1763-

[SPANISH] POETRY

* SILVA, JOSÉ ASUNCION, 1865-1896. El mal del siglo. < Gotas amargas. > In : Poesías edición definitiva. Santiago de Chile, Editorial condor [n.d.] pp. 163-164. ["el mismo mal de Werther,/de Rolla, de Manfredo y de Leopardi."] * Zoospermos. In: ibid. pp. 183-186. ["hubiera sido un Werther/y tras de mil angustias/y gestas y pasiones/se hubiera suicidado/con un Smith y Wesson/ ese espermatozoide."]

SWEDISH:

POETRY

* SOTELA, ROGELIO, 1894-19-. Goethe o la apologia del hombre perfecto. In: Rimas serenas içi4-1934. [San José,] Imprenta española, Soley & Valverde [1935]. pp. [so]-53. [Lines 75-78: " 'Werther' es la pagina más sincera."] ΤΑΜ AYO, FRANZ. b. 1879. " D i misteriosa/Rebelde esclava o enemiga diosa." Habla Werther. [No. 91 of the ioth "Scherzo sinfonico."] In: Scherzos. La Paz, 1932. p. 312. [9 lines.] DRAMA

DICENTA (F BENEDICTO), JOAQUIN, b. 1863. El suicidio de Werther drama en quatro actos y en verso original de De.—. Madrid, 1888. n i pp. Feb. 23, 1888: Madrid, Teatro de la Princesa [première]. El Verter, ó El Abate seductor see Italian Drama:

SOGRAFI.

[SWEDISH] SPECIAL

STUDIES

LJUNGGREN, G. H. J. Svenska vitterhetens häfder efter Gustaf III:s död. Lund, 1877, 1881. 2:425-503;3:333-336. WRANGEL, E. Werther und das Wertherfieber in Schweden. Goethe-Jahrbuch, 1908. 29:128-146. POETRY

ADLERSPARRE, GEORG, 1760-1835. "Til dig min Ömma Wän mit hjerta tilflygt tar." WERTHERS Bref til sin Wän. < A f Georg Adlersparre, Lieutenant. > Werthers Första och sista Stunder för Lotta. Lund, 1786. pp. 13-23. [266 alexandrines.] Lund, 1791. pp. 21-30. Lund, 1796. pp. 27-40. ALF,

ERIK PETER, 1765-1793. "Om ej det ljusa snillets dag." Werthers Lidande. —Werthers Första och sista Stunder för Lotta. Lund, 1786. pp. 24-26. [42 lines.] Lund, 1791. pp. 31-32. Lund, 1796. pp. 41-43. —[With title:] I anledning af Werthers Lidande. In: Strödda Skalde-Stycken. Lund, Tryckt hos Prof. Joh. Lundblad, 1795. pp. 90-92.

312

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BAGGE, LORENZ PETER, REITZENSTEIN.

1775-1840 see German poetry:

" D i t hopp, min Wän, fullbordat är" see " D u ! af Lottas täcka kön" see

LUNDBLAD.

LTJNDBLAD.

" D u Gudaskänck, som gafs at mildra wâra öden" see MARK. " D u som detta bröst uptänder" see

WALL-

LUNDBLAD.

EKELUND, PETRUS PETRI, 1756-1818. "Werther! Werther! dina öden." Stockholms-Posten, 5 Mai 1784. No. 102. [6 eight-line stanzas. Signed:] " P . P . E . " —Werthers Första och sista Stunder für Lotta. Lund, 1786. pp. 26-28. Lund, 1791. pp. 33-34. Lund, 1796. pp. 46-48. *KELLGREN JOHAN HENRIK, 1751-1793. N y t t Försök til Orimad Vers. Stockholms-Posten, 20 okt. 1783. No. 241. [Four lines on Thorild referring to "Göthens convulsioner" (1. 26).] [= Samlade Skrifter. Stockholm, 1800. 2:125-128.] LIDNER, BENGT, 1757-1793. "Pa. en af stormar härjad tall." In: Samlade Arbeten. Νy Upplaga. Stockholm, 1814. pp. 68-69. [Prose, and 12 lines of verse.] * Yttersta domen. Skaldestycke. In: Ibid. pp. 81-118. [p. 114: " O ângerns kala hem! skall här jag Werther finna?/Naturens ömme son!"] LUNDBLAD, JOHAN, 1753-1820. "När wil du höra up et slitit hjerta naga." Werther til Lotta. Elegie. Göteborg, 1783. [22 four-line stanzas.] •—Werthers Första och sista Stunder för Lotta. Lund, 1786. pp. 10-13. Lund, 1791. pp. 17-20. Lund, 1796. pp. 21-26. " D u som detta bröst uptänder." Werthers frieri. Werthers Första och sista Stunder för Lotta. Lund, 1786. pp. 6-9. [11 eight-line stanzas.] Lund, 1791, pp. 5-8. Lund, 1796. pp. 5-10.

SWEDISH: POETRY

3X3

"Du! af Lottas täcka kön." Werthers Första och sista Stunder för Lotta. Lund, 1786. [12 lines on reverse of title page, i.e. p. 2.] Lund, 1791. Lund, 1796. "Dit hopp, min Wän, fullbordat är." Til Albert pâ dess Bröllopsfäst. Werthers Första och sista Stunder för Lotta. Lund, 1791. pp. 13-16. [102 lines.] Lund, 1796. pp. 16-20. "Salla strand jag til dig hastar." Werthers sista Suckar. Werthers Första och sista Stunder för Lotta. Lund, 1791. ΡΡ· 35-3 6 · [88 lines.] "När wil du höra up et slitit hjerta naga" see LUNDBLAD. OEHLENSCHLÄGER see Danish poetry. "Om ej det ljusa snillets dag" see ALF. "Pa en af stormar härjad tall" see LIDNER. "Sälla strand jag til dig hastar" see LUNDBLAD. "Til dig min Ömma Wän mit hjerta tilflygt tar" see ADLERSPARRE. * THORILD [THORÉN], THOMAS, 1759-1808. Till * *. In: Samlade skrifter. Upsala, 1819. 1:114. [To a certain Charlotte Göthe : "Jag skall en liflig sâng-gudinna/Uti en annan Lotta finna,/Och af en Werthers lâga brinna."] WALLMARK, PEHR ADAM, 1777-1858. "Du Gudaskänck, som gafs at mildra wâra öden" Ode. I anledning af Werthers Lidande. Werthers Första och sista Stunder för Lotta. Lund, 1796. [3 eleven-line stanzas. Signed:] "P.A.W." "Werther! Werther! dina öden" see EKELUND. [Werther poem in free verse, whose author prefers Goethe's novel to Horace—cf. Wrangel, p. 138.]

Jndex Index of persons and works associated with Werther mentioned in the text. (Quotations from an identified author, and allusions to a work by him or to a character in such a work, are treated as author references. When two page numbers are given without a separating comma, the reference not in parentheses is the key to locating the other reference.) Α., C., (32)6in Addison, J., 164 Adlersparre, G., 214 Alissan de Chazet, R. A. P., 133 Allard, R., 153-154 Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek, 87, 172, 206 Almanack der deutschen Musen, (160)203 Almanach des Muses, 129 Almanack Littéraire, 118 Alves, R., (48)62 Alxinger, J. v., 80, 83, (102)115, 112-113 Am 28. August 1823, (99)115 Ampère, J. J., 9 André, J. (Leiden d. j. W. ganz aus dem Original), 160, 1 7 1 172, 203, 205 Andrieux, F., 128-129 Angelus Silesius, see Scheffler Amalia, Anna, duchess, 93 Annales romantiques, 158 Anna Matilda, see Cowley, Mrs. H. Anti-Jacobin, or Weekly Examiner, 46, 55 Ariosto, L., 115 Arnault, A . V., 126-128, 133, 155 Arne, T., 22 Arvelius, M. H., 79-80 Athenaeum (A. W . & F. Schlegel), 162

Athenaeum français, (152)158 Atkinson, 33-34 Augier, E., 206 August, E. F., (105-) 106 Autran, J., (150)158, 152-153, 158 Backer, J. Α., 163-167, 170, 185, 20 3

Baculard d'Arnaud, 204-205 Baeuerle, Α., (189)208 Balochi, L., (132)156 Balzac, H. de, 150 Bancroft, G., 57 Bannerman, Anne, (48)62, 55, 60 Beer, M., 115 Belly, G. F., (189)208 Benzone, V., 214, 219 Bergh, R., 107, (197)208: Huch Berichtigung der Geschichte des jungen Werthers, 64 Berlinisches Litterarisches Wochenblatt, (160)203 Bernhardi, A . F., 110 Bernhardt, Sarah, 160 Bertram, C. A. F., 113 Bible, quoted 68 Blau, E., see Massenet Blumauer, Α., 8ο-8ι, (95)114 Bodenstedt, F. Μ. v., 106-107 Bodmer, J. J., 204 Boeme, L., 103, 115 Boettiger, C. (Κ.) Α., ii2, 115 Bonaparte, L., 135

316

INDEX

Bonaparte, N., 2, 136, 210 Bonin, C. F. F. A. v., (160)203 Boulay-Paty, E., 145-148, 157 Bourgeois, E., see Souvestre, E. Bourne, J. G. H., 60 Bouterwek, F., 97 Brentano, C., 97 Bretschneider, H. G. v., 92-93 Bretzner, C. F., (189)208 Bridel, J. L., 155 Bridel, P. S., 122 Bridel, S. E., 122-124, I25> 156, 213-214 Brunton, E. (Mrs. R. Merry), 61 Buechner, G., 209 Buerger, G. Α., 88, 94-95 Buff, Charlotte, see Kestners Bunbury, H . W., 3, 8, (186)207 Burney, Fanny, 14, 39, 50 Burns, R., 15, 48, 62 Burrell, Sophia R., 60 Byron, G. G., Lord, 56, 138, 145, 147, 157, 210, 218, 219 Camoëns, L. de, 49, 205 Campbell, G., 62 Canning, G., see Gifford, W . Carter, Mrs. E., (45)62 Cato, M. P., "Uticensis," 43 Cervantes Saavedra, M. de, Don Quixote, 49 Charlotte, Queen, of England, 23, 39 Chateaubriand, F. René de, 136, 142, 146, 147, 150, 217 Chatterton, T., 14-16, 18, 148 Chénier, Α., ιι8 Chénier, M. J., 61 Chicago Sonntags-Zeitung, (5859)63 Christoterpe, 103 Cicero, M. T., 16, 171 Claudius, M., 67, 74, 90 Coccia, C., 176, 206 Cockburn, Mrs. A. Rutherford, 39 Colardeau, C. P., 119 Colet-Révoil, Louise, 194-196 Collins, William, 14, 28

Constant, B., 135 Contius, C. G., (90)114 Coupigny, A. F. de, 129 Cournand, A. de, (ii9-)i20 Cowley, Mrs. Hannah, "Anna Matilda," 36 Cowper, W., 14, 15, 43 Crabbe, G., 8, 15, 55 Craik, Helen, (48)62 Cranz, A. F., (211)218 Cremeri, B. D. Α., (160)203 Croft, Sir H., 17-20, 41, 62, 213, 218 D., J. ("Wie ofte hab' ich dich, o Werther!"), 81 Dante Alighieri, 82 d'Arblay, Fanny, see Burney, F. Dècade philosophique, 128, 129, 156 Decourcelle, P., (160)202-203 Dejaure, J. E. Bedeno, 128, 160, 197, 209 Delavigne, C., 158 Delille, J., 121, 122 Denell, J. H., (3)8 Deutsche Chronik, 75, n o Deyverdun, G., 12, 122 Dicenta y Benedicto, J., 198-200, 216 Diderot, D., 117, 119, 171, 176, 179, 206 "Die Leidenschaft bezwingen, bringt Gewinn," 86 Dodsley, J., 31 Doumic, R., 202-203 Dumas, Α., the elder, 158 Duval, Α. V. Pineux, 161, 203 Duval, G., 142, 157, (189)208, 192-193, 202 Dyck, J. G., 102 Edinburgh Review, (212)219 Eleonora, From the Sorrows of Werter, 40 Ellis, G., see Gifford, W . Emerson, R. W., 57 Enault, L., 152 Engel, J. J., i n , 113

INDEX English Review, 25, (34)61, 44 Esprit des Journaux, (160-161) 203

Ethelston, C. W . , 42, 56-57 Etrennes helvêtiennes, 122 Euripides, 50 European Magazine, (55)63 Evangelische Kirchen-Zeitung, 103

"Farewell, dear Charlotte! — take this last adieu," (32)61 Farnese, L., 196-197, 209 Farrell, Mrs. S., 44 Fielding, H . ( T o m Jones), 14, 50, 205

Flaubert, G., 150, 158 Fleuriot de Langle, J. M., 206 Foscolo, Ν . U., 5Ó, 135, '75, 205-206

Foucher, P. Η., 158 Fouqué, F . Η . Κ. de la Motte, no Fraenkel, M., (198)209 Frage, Die, (94)114 Franchi, Α., (197), 2o8 Francis, Mrs. A. G., 3, 34 Frankfurter gelehrte Anzeigen, (90)114,

170

Frere, J. H., see Gifïord, W . Freywillige Beytraege, see Hamburgische Nachrichten Fulda, F. C., 100 Garve, C., 67 Gautier, T., 146, 150, 157 Gentleman's Magazine, 25, 40-41 Gervinus, G. G., 115 Gessner, S., 12, 48, 62, 118, 119, !3o, '55 Gibbon, E., 122 Giesecke, K. L., 191, 208, (215) ,2'9

Gieseke, Sir C., see Giesecke Gifford, W . ( T h e Rovers), 4648, 191

Girardin, R. L . de, 61, (120)155, 121-122, 128

Gleim, J. W . L., 87, 92, 93, 112

317

Glover, Miss, 40, 41 Goeckingk, L . F. G. v., 88 Goethe, J. W . v., Clavigo, 45, 112; Dichtung und Wahrheit, 10-11,

70, 152, 193,

196, 210;

"Du beweinst, du liebst ihn, liebe Seele" (1774), 214; Egmont, 148, 201; Elegien, Römische, (2)8; Epigramme. Venedig, 2-3, 11, 100, 115; Faust, 99, 148, 194, 196-197, 203, 208, 219; Freuden des jungen Werthers, 69; Götter, Helden und Wieland, 65; Götz von Berlichingen, 1, 45, 65, 82, 99, 112, 148; Hermann und Dorothea, 95; Iphigenie auf Tauris, 99; "Je me suis tant acharné," 139; "Mag jener dünkelhafte Mann," 70; Nähe des Geliebten ("Ich denke dein"), 70; Neueste von Plundersweilern, Das, 93-94; "Nicht ich sondern . . . Wagner," 90; poems, French translation, 193; Stella, 45-47, 84; Stosgebet, 69; Torquato Tasso, 7, 9, 106, 113, 144; Trilogie der Leidenschaft. An Werther, 109-110; Veilchen, Das, 112, 137; Werther, banned, 89-90, quotations, 5, 27, 36, 49, 53, 82, 120-121, 190, 214, translations, Danish, 89-90, 215, English, h , 20, 42, 66, 143, 145, 188 (see also Gotzberg; Malthus; Pratt), French, 12, 18, 66, 116, 129, 152 (see also Deyverdun), Italian, 66, 215, Polish, 140; West-östlicher Divan ("In tausend Formen"), 77; Wilhelm Meister, 96, 99, 101-103, 147, 161, 162; "Worauf lauerst du hier?" 70; Xenien, 100-102,

I i 2-113,

115

(see

also "Worauf lauerst"); Ζ um Schäkespears Tag, 82 Goeze, J. M., 68, 70, 85, 89, 90 Gogol', Ν . V., 129 Goldoni, C., 172

3I8

INDEX

Goldsmith, O., 10, 12, 14, 119, 130 Góngora y Argote, L . de., 92 Gotter, F. W . , 205 Gottsched, J. C., 62, 119 Gottsched, Luise Α . V . Kulmus, 62 Gotzberg, F., 60 Goué, Α . F. v., 64, 160, 205 Gournay, Β. C., 202, 203, 209 Grabbe, C. D., 200 Grant, Mrs. A . M., (48)62 Graves, R., 14, 31-32, 41-42 Gray, T . , 10, 14, 20, 29, 37, 44, ir8, 130 Grelinger, C., (197)208 Gresset, J. B., 205 Grillparzer, F., 11 y, 200 Grosvenor, R., 28 Gutzkow, Κ . F., 115 Hackmann, J., 16-20 Haller, A . v., 63, 75, 123 Hamburgische Nachrichten, 68 Hancock, J., 204 Hardenberg, G . F. P. v., see Novalis Hartig, F. d. P. A . v., 124-125, 128, 214 Hasse, J. Α., 190, 2o8 "Having promised to call," (58) 63 Hayley, W . , 44 Heine, H., 74, 104-105, 115, 151Hemelvaart van Sebaldus, De, (189)208, 204 Henselt, Α., (189)208 Hensler, P. W . , (189)208 Herder, J. G . v., 67, 82, 92, 103 "Herrlich feierlich ist es umher," (66)110 Hoelty, L. H . C., 74-75, 80, 114 Hoffmann, L. Α., (189)208, (215) 2I 9 Homer, 12, 49, 50, 82, 114-115; lliad, 131 Hoole, Mrs. Β. Η., 55 Hören, Die, 99, 102

Horrel, Mrs., 30 Hottinger, J. J., (90)114 Huch, Ricarda Ο., 107-110, 208, 217 Hugo, V . , 145, 157, 158 Hurdis, J., 43-44 Hymmen, J. W . B. v., 88 Ickstatt, Fanni v., 84-85 Ingall, T . , 29-30 "I sing of the days that are gone," (24)60-61 Jacobi, J. G., 90 James, W . (Letters of Charlotte), 22-24, 128 Jeffrey, F., (212)218 Jerusalem, K . W . , 11, 64 Johnson, S., 18 Jonas, a murderer, 95, 114 Journal de politique et de littérature, (118)154 J - s , (77)112 Karamzin, Ν . M., 127-128, 155 Keats, J., 56 Kellgren, J. H., 113 Kennedy, Mrs. T . (Holme), 22 Kestner, Charlotte B., 64, 98-99, 195-196 Kestner, J. C., 64, 106, 115, 195196 Kestner, G., 99 Kladderadatsch, 107 Kleist, E. v., 75 Klinger, M., 84 Klopstock, F. G., 12, 62, 66, 73-75, 77. 8 ° . 8î > 94. 95. " 3 . I22. 148 Knapp, Α., 103 Kotzebue, A . v., 45-46, 175, 191 Kraus, G . M., 93 Kreutzer, R., 128, 160 Kringsteiner, J. F., 191-193 Kroegen, C. H., (211)218 Kruedener, Barbara J. v. (Valérie), 135, 140, 142, 148, 149 Kukuk an meinen lieben Müller in Mannheim, (90)114

INDEX L., M., (77-78)112 Labiée, J., 132—134 Ladd, J. B., (28)61, 32-34, 60 La Harpe, J. F. de, 118, 120, 127, 151. 1.54 Lamartine, A . de, 142-143, 144, 158 Lamontagne, P. de, 131 La Rivière de Bains, de, 176-180, 206, 218 Laukhard, F. C., 75-76 Laura, see Robinson, Mrs. M. Laura ("Mistaken youth! thy love"), (33)61 Lavater, J. C., 194 Laveaux, C. de, 214, 219 Laya, J. L., 133 Legouvé, G., 131-13 3, 136 Leibnitz, G . W . v., 171 "Leid war es mir, wenn jemand mehr als ich," 86 Lenz, J. M. R., 67-68, 72-73, 83, 103-104, 111-112, 114, 206, 207 Léonard, Ν . G., ¿18-119 Lermontov, M. IU., 217 Lessing, G . E., 12, 156; AntiGoeze, 68 Lessing, K., 113 Letters of Charlotte, The, see James, W . Lewes, G . H., 57 Lichtenberg, G . C., 68-69 Lidner, B., 82, 113 Lillo, G., 176, 184, 206 Lipmann, H., 200, 209 Locke, J., 171 Loewenstein, R., 107 Longfellow, H . W . , 57, 58-59 "Lotte! Lotte! welch' ein Engel," (89)114 Love and Madness, see Croft, H . Lucretius Carus, T . , 171 Lycée des Étrangers, 130-131, 133, 156 M., C. ( " T h e day was sinking in the Western s k y " ) , 28-29 Mackenzie, H., 47, jo

319

Macpherson, J., see Ossian Malthus, D., 12-13, ró» (26)61, 31. 47. i " Man denkt verschieden bey Werthers Leiden, 189-190 Maniago, P. di, 214 Manso, J. Κ . F., 102 Marguerite of Navarre, 151, 158 Massenet, J., 153, 197, 208, 219 Mathias, T . G., 45-46 Matthisson, F. v., (211)218 Meisl, Κ . (C.), (189)208, (215) 219 Meissner, A . G., 88, (211)218 Mellina, J., (160)203, l9l Menzel, W . , 103, 104 Mercier, S., 50, 180, 206 Merck, J. H., 90-91, 205 Mercure de France, 136 Merry, R., "Della Crusca," 3637. i 8 7 Smith, H. (and J.), 56 Smollett, T. G., 14, 50 Sografi, S. Α., 1591 ΐ7°> 172 - 1 7^ "So ist dein Geist der Erde nun entflogen," 98-99 Southey, R., 56 Souvestre, E., 195-196 Spectateur du Nord, 131-132, 132-133

208

also

Upton, W., 60

Steffan, J. Α., 75 Stegmann, C. J., 175, 176 Stein, Charlotte E. B. v. S. v., 71-

Valabrègue, de, 157 Varnhagen v. Ense, Κ. Α., no Veillées des Muses, 130-131, 156 Vergil, P. (Maro), 155, 176 Vigée, L. J. Β. E., 133 Vigny, A. de, 148-149 Villers, C. de, 134 Vischer, F. T. v., 106, 115 Voltaire, F. M. A. de, 49, 119,

Stendhal (Henri Beyle), 200 Stuwer, J. G., (160)203 Sullivan, J., 204

Voss, J. Η., 110; see also Musenalmanach Vreuls, V., (197)208

Taine, H., 219 Tamayo, F., 217 Tasso, T. (Gerusalemme liberata), 143 Taylor, E., 24-25, 213 Teller, J. F., 61

Wagner, H. L., 90, 206 Wallace, Eglantine M., 35-36 Waithard, Β. L., 204 Wandsbecker Bothe, (67)111 Warton, J., 44, 49, 62 Warton, T., 11, 44

Spiegel von Pickelsheim, D. E. v., 87 St., Fr. v., 72-73,

m

Staël-Holstein, A. L. Germaine Ν. de (Delphine), 133-136, 142, 144, 193, 210

73, 1 1 1 - 1 1 2

121, 163

322

INDEX

Washington, G., 204 "Wenn ich nun tot bin, Freunde," 112 Werther [film, 1938], 197 Werthern, Amalie (Emilie) v., 71 "Werthers Leiden, Werthers Freuden," 88-89 Werther und Lotte im Komödiengaszl, 191 West, Jane, 58 Weygand(t), C. F., 90 "When Werter fair Charlotte beheld," 21-22, 24 Wieland, C. M., 12, 65-67, 90, 119 Wienbarg, L., 115

Willer, Regim. Audit., (160)203, 205 Williams, J. (Anthony Pasquín), 22 Winkelmann, Α., 97 Wittenberg, Α., 85, 87, 90 Witwicki, S., (189)208 Wordsworth, W., 54-55, 58 World, 36-38 Young, E., 10, 13, 18, 82, 113, 118, 119, 219 Zibulka, Μ. Α., 114