Werther's Suicide: Instinct, Reasons and Defense

Author(s): Ignace Feuerlicht

Source: The German Quarterly, Vol. 51, No. 4 (Nov., 1978), pp. 476-492
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Association of Teachers of German
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/405054
Accessed: 23-05-2016 16:00 UTC
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WERTHER'S SUICIDE: INSTINCT, REASONS AND DEFENSE

IGNACE FEUERLICHT

Goethe's Sufferings of Young Werther probably contains the most

famous suicide in literature. To be sure, Gundolf thinks that for the

public, for the masses, the whole novel was only the preparation and
explanation of the sensational suicide, which had aroused their interest
in the first place, while for Goethe the novel was the story of his own
sufferings and the suicide only their symbolic conclusion, more technical
than intrinsic in nature.' Korff, however, rightly maintains that it was
not through misunderstanding that the public received Goethe's novel
as a novel about suicide, for suicide is the innermost idea of the whole
work." And another critic calls Werther's suicide "the principal theme,
the most important event and climax of the whole development."3
Yet there is no agreement on the reason or reasons for the suicide
of the young man. Some, like Stuart Atkins, even find that "the question of what are the ultimate causes of Werther's suicide is left un-

answered."4 Barker Fairley equally thinks that Werther's suicide is

essentially unmotivated.' Most readers, including some scholars, blame

unrequited love for the young man's drastic step.6 Others see in
Werther's suicide his attempt to perpetuate the fulfillment of his love,
which he allegedly reached embracing Lotte for a few moments.7 Yet
others ascribe Werther's suicide to his disordered mind or to his professional disappointment, and some even consider it a consequence of
his religious feeling. Probably the oddest reason was adduced by Leslie
Fiedler, who (seriously?) stated that "the celebration of suicide" was
"the only possible consummation for the young man afraid that sex
may harden into marriage.""
Goethe enumerated in Dichtung und Wahrheit a series of general,
social and literary conditions which encouraged thoughts of suicide in

the young men of the Werther period. It can be easily demonstrated

that these factors play no part or hardly any part in Werther's case.9

Indeed, Goethe later retracted the explanation given in his autobiography. In a conversation with Eckermann he held that neither the
general conditions of the time nor certain English authors but individual unhappy experiences were the responsible agents, and that everybody has or should have such sufferings (535) .1o

It is no wonder that psychology, psychoanalysis, and social psychology have been applied or can be applied to Goethe's novel, which
has been called the forerunner of the modem psychological novel,'1 in
order to find out about Werther's innermost feelings, the nature of his
sufferings, and particularly the motives for his suicide.
476

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WERTHER'S SUICIDE 477

Ernst Feise combined Adlerian psychology and Freudian psychoanalysis. Werther's inability to compensate his inferiority complex brings

about his neurosis and, finally, his insanity. An unhappy childhood

must have wounded his "tender soul." Since his father plays no part
in Werther's thinking, Feise, obviously in order to adjust his view to
Freud's theories, explains Werther's "hate of rationalism" as his hate of

the "father image" and his alleged "disgust and irritation" with his
mother by the fact that the father has been replaced by the "masculine
mother.'"12

This explanation is quite strained. Werther's father is hardly ever

mentioned, only the fact of his death is. There is no reason to call
Werther's mother "masculine," and his relation to her may perhaps be
labelled lukewarm but certainly not disgusted. Werther's childhood was

not unhappy; on the contrary, he delights in remembering it. More

important, to explain Werther's suicide by his insanity is easy, but
wrong. Werther has never been more disciplined and logical than on
the day before his death. For Goethe to have two young men, Werther
as well as the clerk, become insane for the same reason, because of the

same woman, and in the same short novel, would have been an exercise in redundancy and improbability. Goethe perhaps anticipated and
rejected such facile explanations by Werther's sarcastic attacks against
the self-righteous burghers who dismiss extraordinary actions as insane (47).13
As to the inferiority complex, Werther feels unsure of himself and
his abilities before beginning his bureaucratic career, which is understandable because of his lack of experience and enthusiasm. However,
his important and chronic feeling of inferiority does not concern him
personally, i.e., his family, appearance, talents, influence, or financial
status, but man in general, whose achievements, thinking, and feeling

are inferior to Werther's ideals because of the limitations of the human

condition.

A recent psychoanalytic article, by M. P. Faber, is specifically

concerned with the "motivational dynamism of Werther's self-destruction." Faber endorses Freud's contention that "suicide occurs as a re-

sult of strong, aggressive urges directed against an introjected object

formerly loved but now hated."14 Faber magnifies Lotte's occasional
annoyance with Werther into "aggression, hostility, and implacable
resentment," and thinks that Werther actually has in mind to murder

her, and, since she is "inside him fused with the original maternal

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478 IGNACE FEUERLICHT

figure," he "can hurt her by hurting himself." His suicide, therefore,

is "an act of introjected murder."

The major flaw of this shaky view is that Werther does not suffer

from an "early loss of his mother," as Faber contends, and that the
"separation from his mother," therefore, cannot "stand behind his
tragic behavior." Faber maintains that Werther suffers from a fixation

at the Oedipal level, and looks upon Charlotte as he looked upon his
own mother when he was a boy. He does not mention Werther's father, whom the young man would have to hate in order to fit the
Oedipal scheme. Furthermore, since Werther kills (internally) an
alleged mother figure in order to be united with his (heavenly) father

whom he greatly loves, Werther's suicide is the very opposite of the

Oedipus complex, which implies the desire to kill the hated father in
order to be united with the mother.15

It must be added that a psychological analysis of a novelistic

character may succumb to the fallacy that a fictional account can be
interpreted like a case history. This caution also applies to a novel that
is as autobiographical as Werther.

Two concepts, widely used in social psychology and in sociology,

may be summoned to elucidate Werther's suicide. One is "anomie,"
the other, related to anomie, but much more popular, is "alienation."
Emile Durkheim developed his thoughts about anomie particularly in
his seminal book on suicide (1897). Suicides are, according to Durkheim, caused by "a failure of the normative control of individuals by
society."16 As to Werther, he does not observe religious commandments, rejects, mocks or ignores social norms, and pokes fun or gets
angry at rules developed by aesthetics and grammar. He chafes at
externally imposed limits and controls and only follows the dictates or

inspirations of his "heart." But obviously lack of social and religious

norms itself does not lead to suicide; it only means the absence of an
important deterrent factor.

Alienation, the feeling of being a stranger in the world or in society, of having no friends, no joy, no satisfying work, no worthwhile
goals, may trigger or bolster taedium vitae and suicidal urges. Werther

has been repeatedly called alienated.17 He is said to be "alienated from

the surrounding life of nature and society,"18 even to feel "completely
dead inside, unable to respond to anything in life," and thus to "become a forerunner of that totally alienated man whom the modern
existentialists have rediscovered."'19

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WERTHER'S SUICIDE 479

However, "total alienation" cannot be diagnosed in Werther, unless one assumes, as some do, that he has gone mad. He suffers from a
series of attacks of self-alienation and loss of self, but is usually over-

flowing with feelings and ideas. His sensitivity and emotional power
makes everybody else look puny, pale, and self-alienated. No wonder
that Gundolf called him an emotional titan.20

He has friends and makes friends easily, even among the aristocrats (Friulein von B., the count, the prince, the cabinet minister). He

is particularly attracted to children and common people, and easily

gains their confidence and attachment. He usually loves nature in all
its manifestations and often displays an urge to coalesce with it. Even

when he speaks of nature's self-destructive tendencies, he is not estranged from it, for at that time he, too, is dominated by self-destructive drives.

The only alienation that he unequivocally reveals is that from

society. He cannot resign himself to conform to social rules and regu-

lations, which he deems superficial, and he cannot hold a job. He is

also very critical of the prevailing class prejudices and of the spirit of
careerism.21 This alienation from society, however, is not severe enough

to blunt his enjoyment of life, nature, and art and to compel him to

self-destruction.

It seems that there is a psychological or psychoanalytical concept

that is more helpful for the understanding of Werther's suicide than
inferiority complex, Oedipus complex, anomie, and alienation: death
instinct. Among critics of Werther, only Thomas Mann referred to it.
He held Werther's death instinct responsible for his hopeless and disastrous love, but he did not develop this thought.22

It may seem inappropriate to apply a concept which Freud suggested only late in his own work (1920) to a novel of the eighteenth
century, but not more than twenty-four years after the publication of
Goethe's novel, Novalis in one of his fragments spoke of the instinct of
self-destruction ("Selbstzerstiirungsinstinkt"), which is characteristic of

organic matter.23 Thomas Mann saw in another aphorism of the romantic poet-scientist a prefiguration of Freud's view that life is a collaboration and opposition of eros and death instinct.24
Whatever the origin of young Goethe's own self-destructive urges

may have been, urges perhaps exacerbated by their very opposite, a

compulsive and excessive creativity, he endowed the protagonist of his

first novel with an irrational death wish, something akin to Freud's

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480 IGNACE FEUERLICHT

death instinct. This thesis implies that Werther has no reasons that
induce him to suicide but that his suicidal drive is anxious to find such

reasons and uses them as a disguise and a pretext. Thus an irrational

urge is lurking behind its manifold rationalizations.
Werther's suicidal drive, therefore, predates even the start of the
novel. Or, in the words of a French critic, the shot that kills Werther
on the last page was fired on the first page,25 long before his love for

Lotte and his aborted career. When Goethe in Dichtung und Wahrheit mentions Nicolai's parody of his novel, he blames his rationalist
opponent for a basic lack of understanding. Nicolai had not felt that
Werther was doomed from the outset (IX, 590).
At the beginning of the novel, before he even meets Lotte, at a
time when he feels happy to be living in "paradise," Werther delights
in what he calls the "sweet feeling of freedom," the possibility of leav-

ing the "prison" of life and the limitations of human existence any
time he wants to. A month after he sees Lotte, he writes that he has
frequently felt like putting a bullet through his head (39). Less than
a month later, he puts the mouth of a pistol to his forehead above his
right eye. Werther does not give any specific reasons for this suicidal
gesture; he only speaks of "whims" (46). True, the pistol is not loaded,

but the bullet which ends his life actually enters his head above his
right eye.

The passionate defense of suicide in his argument with Albert betrays the fact that he speaks in his own defense and shows that he "has
already been greatly preoccupied with suicide."26 The pistol is not the

only instrument that tempts his suicidal urges. When his enemies at
court are spreading gossip about him, he feels like plunging a knife
into his heart (69). As he reveals in his letter of March 16, 1772, he
has seized a knife a hundred times to ease his oppressed heart. He often

feels like opening a vein in order to achieve "eternal freedom" (7071). Goethe tells in his autobiography that for a period of time, before

going to bed, he tried to plunge a dagger a few inches into his chest
(IX, 585).
Only ten days before he shoots himself, Werther feels the lure of
drowning. By plunging into the swollen river he could end his torment

but he feels his time has not yet come. Still he upbraids himself for
behaving like an old woman who has to beg bread going from door
to door in order to prolong a joyless existence for another moment (99).

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WERTHER'S SUICIDE 481

Freud's "death instinct" is primarily directed against the self but

also involves destructiveness and aggression against the outside world

and other beings.27 Werther's destructive tendencies are mostly suici-

dal, but occasionally also homicidal, a fact which is generally overlooked. Far from loathing murder as an abomination, this hypersensi-

tive young man, who weeps at the remembrance of a beautiful poem

and who is thrilled beyond words when he lies in the tall grass and
feels the tiny worms "nearer to his heart" (9, 27), seems utterly insensitive to the horror of killing a human being.
When he is beside himself at the news that the walnut trees had

been cut down, he cries he could "kill the dog who struck the first

blow" (81). At one time he wishes that somebody would dare to

blame him for his alleged arrogance, so that he could thrust his dagger through the body of that man; if he saw blood, he would feel
better (70). These instances of enraged homicidal fantasies are more
and deeper than mere rhetorical outbursts of an angry but powerless
young man. Werther's murderous ideas are at times quite definite.
In his farewell letter to Lotte he admits having often thought of kill-

ing Albert or her (104).

While he is distressed and outraged when he hears that the walnut trees had been cut down, he is not even interested when he hears

that a murder has been committed in the neighborhood. When he

finds out that the peasant lad whom he had admired for his strong
and loyal passion is the murderer, he still does not feel pity with the
victim, whose only fault was that the widow liked him and perhaps
planned to marry him, but sympathizes with the murderer. It is the
peasant lad, not the rival, whom he calls unfortunate and even innocent. He never expresses revulsion at the crime, tries hard to free the

murderer, and even identifies with him. "You cannot be saved, un-

happy man. I see clearly that we cannot be saved" (96-97). Previously, he identified with the peasant lad even more distinctly and
called the young man's story his own story (79).28
It is perhaps noteworthy in this connection that Goethe wrote to

Kestner during his Werther period that people said he had the curse
of Cain on him. While such a remark probably referred to his conspicuous attitude of a restless outsider, it may also have implied something else. Goethe's retort is baffling by its very simplicity: "I did not
slay my brother. These people are fools!"'29

If Goethe's novel had only been the story of a young man whose
irrational or pathological death wish finally surmounted all internal

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482 IGNACE FEUERLICHT

obstacles, it would have hardly aroused any excitement or enthusiasm.

That many readers all over the world reacted toward the protagonist
with admiration, love, and compassion, as the "editor" expected in his
introductory statement,30 was the result of the author's uncommon
narrative and verbal skill and his psychological insight. Above all, the
protagonist seemed to have many and ample reasons for ending his
life. He was also endowed with many talents and attractive traits, and
his love was of exemplary intensity.
The author's achievement was quite remarkable. He found reasons
for the irrational, lent an aura of greatness to weakness, portrayed
somebody as a great sufferer who enjoyed many things in life, aroused

sympathy for somebody who could be insensitive and even cruel (to
his mother and to his friends), defended his hero with the very weapons of religion and reason against orthodox and rationalist adversaries,

and made suicide appear to many readers, who were carried away by
Werther's seductive rhetoric, less as a separation than as a reunion,
less as a running away than as a return home, less as a sin than as a
religious climax.

Among the "reasons" or pretexts Werther's self-destructive urge

finds to deprecate and abandon life, some are ancient and general,
others are new and personal. Life, he finds, is meaningless and full of

disappointments and sufferings. After a while, nobody, not even the

closest friend, cares about the death of a person. Love and loyalty, "the

most beautiful of human emotions" (95), can turn into insanity, violence, and murder. Happiness is an illusion, based on ignorance, silliness, or philistine self-satisfaction. Only children and insane people can
feel truly happy (90).31 The innate desire to drag out even a wretched
existence is pitiful and makes no sense.

Life in and for society is based on prejudice, hypocrisy, and vanity. It fosters malicious gossip and transforms human beings into

manipulated puppets. Originality and innovation are mocked at,

feared, prevented, or smothered by rules and conventions. People do
not act in order to achieve meaningful goals; their actions or inactions

are ruled by "cake and birch rods" (13).

Limitation is the key word of human life. In addition to personal
limitations and to the limitations imposed upon man by society, there
are the limitations inherent in human existence. Drastic restrictions

are placed on man's achievements in the outside world and on his

intellectual abilities. He does not even know where he comes from and

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WERTHER'S SUICIDE 483

where he is going to (13, 116). Even his emotional life is severely

limited. "When man soars in joy or sinks in suffering, when he longs
to lose himself in the fullness of the infinite, he is stopped and brought

back to dull, cold consciousness" (92). Thus man lives in a prison and
can only win freedom through death. Goethe's Faust actually seeks in
suicide freedom from human limitation.

The limitations of man are also directly responsible for suicide.

Human nature simply cannot endure extreme suffering, and suicide,
therefore, is as natural an end as death from sickness. This is Werther's

main argument against Albert's only argument that suicide denotes

weakness because it is easier to die than to suffer. In order to counter

the hackneyed argument of the suicide's weakness, Werther, gratuitously as it first seems, enumerates several feats of extraordinary
strength, where the everyday human limitations are transcended, pre-

sumably because in Werther's view or experience a person taking his

own life had to surmount unusually great doubts and fears and the
mighty instinct of self-preservation.

It is noteworthy and almost an indirect defense of self-annihilation that Albert is not very forceful, articulate, or imaginative in his
condemnation of suicide. It is also remarkable that he does not offer

any religious argument. This omission is in line with the fact that at
the end no religious criticism of Werther's misdeed is voiced by anybody.

The only person to take note of the believers' rejection of suicide

is Werther himself (122), but in his most provocative rationalization of

his death wish he transforms religion from a reason against committing suicide into a reason for committing it. He uses religion to support

his self-destructive urge by downgrading life, promising a glorious

afterlife, and allaying his fear of death.
Apparently as a rejoinder to Wilhelm's blaming him for his plans

to change his residence again, Werther states that indeed he is only a

wanderer, a pilgrim on earth. But so are all people (75). This thought

is a late echo of the world alienation or rather earth alienation or life

alienation of early Christianity, which saw men as mere pilgrims on

this earth, travelling toward the celestial fatherland.32 Werther resumes
this metaphor, which derogates life, in his prayer to God a few weeks

before his suicide: "I am back, my father! Don't be angry because I

am cutting short the journey [Wanderschaft] which you expected me
to endure longer" (91).

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484 IGNACE FEUERLICHT

Ingratiating himself with his "father" (and, of course, with many

a reader), Werther rejects life as dull and sees afterlife as an eternally
blissful union with God and Lotte. Some strictly religious people would

certainly call Werther's pre-suicide prayerlike argumentation and his

near-identification with Christ at best self-delusion, bristling with blas-

phemy, wrapped in sophistry. To them Werther may seem to turn

religion upside down by rewarding himself for his suicide quite handsomely with an eternal stay in heaven in the proximity of God.
Spurred and deluded by his wily death wish, Werther sees in death
the entrance to everlasting happiness. It is no coincidence but perhaps
somewhat ironical that Werther's self-delusion and trust in God come

at the end of a letter describing for the most part the encounter with

the young man who suffers from psychotic delusions. After writing
about the "happy unhappy" man, who wants to pick flowers in late
November for his sweetheart who is a queen, Werther delivers a verbal

blast at the "phrasemongers" who label "delusion" the trust that sufferers have in God's comforting and healing love. This attack almost
seems directed against the critics who could and did dismiss as insane
the soothing religious ideas which the suffering young Werther entertains before his suicide.

In his trying days religion is a source of comfort tranquillizing his

fear of death. When he discovers nature as a self-consuming monster,
he sees that everything and everybody is transitory. A few days before

his death he fearfully hesitates to end his life, "because one cannot
return" (100). He surmounts this fear of total annihilation by renewing his belief that the "All-loving One bears and sustains us, floating
in eternal bliss" (9). In his final days he expresses his confidence that
the Eternal bears the stars as well as him on his heart. Again and again

he uses the word "eternal," as a sign of having conquered the fear of

transitoriness, while he calls the word "perish" just an "empty sound"

(116).
Religion is not a primary and genuine reason for his suicide, although he occasionally insinuates that it is meant to be a quick means
of uniting with God, an acceleration of the return to his father, and
although Erich Trunz (VI, 540, 543) contends that it is caused by his
religious despair or by his yearning for religious transcendence. Religious despair does not motivate Werther's suicide while religious hope
strengthens his readiness for it. As to Werther's erstwhile yearning to
transcend human limitations or to his occasional longing to be one
with nature, they do not play any part in his final suicidal scheme.

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WERTHER'S SUICIDE 485

There is no word of a mystical union or reunion with God or nature

at the end. At this point Werther is not "longing to be free of individual existence."3'3 In his vision of the beyond he sees himself, Lotte,
and her mother as individuals.34 Only Albert, who is totally ignored iD
Werther's self-serving and triumphant prophecy, seems to be conveniently relegated to the limbo of nonindividuals, if not nonexistence.

Werther's religion does not block his death instinct but abets it.
Nature, whose "son, friend, and lover" he is (116), supports his suicidal drive even more firmly, indeed gives him the most convincing
excuse. Suicide is natural, necessary, and, therefore, unobjectionable,
as Werther demonstrates in his argument with Albert. The jilted girl
who drowns herself acts naturally. She was not corrupted by any read-

ing of Young or Ossian, a reading which the author of Dichtung und

Wahrheit holds responsible for much of the suicidal wave that engulfed

the Werther generation (IX, 581-82).

Suicide, furthermore, is not restricted to human beings, which

also shows that it is natural. Werther mentions "a noble race of horses"

that sometimes "bite into a vein to breathe more freely" (71). But his
most potent argument comes from the view he gains when the "curtain has been lifted from before his eyes" and he suddenly sees that
destruction and self-destruction are a permanent and integral part of
nature (53). That curtain did not rise accidentally, but Werther's
suicidal urge raised it in search for new rationalizations and reinforcements. One must assume that the curtain was soon lowered, because Werther does not allude again to universal self-annihilation.
Obviously this Mephistophelian vision does not agree with his belief in

the Lord and Creator who loves and sustains everything.

Goethe experienced like Werther the polarity of loving creativity
and blind destruction, or in other terms, of eros and thanatos. Sometimes the polarity seemed blurred to him. Eros is a destroyer, too,
whether in Faust, Part I, in Wahlverwandtschaften, in "Heidenr6slein," "Erlk6nig," or "Die Braut von Korinth." As for the romantic
synthesis of Liebestod, Werther's suicide does not qualify for it.35 It is
not the climax and final fulfillment of mutual love. Werther does not

die with and for Lotte, but, as it were, against her.

An evident reason or pretext for Werther's suicide is his suffering,

particularly the suffering caused by his love for Lotte. The novel is,
after all, entitled "The Sufferings of Young Werther," and Werther
sometimes thinks, in his costumary modesty, that no man has ever

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486 IGNACE FEUERLICHT

suffered as much as he (88). What the reader may forget at the end
is that a great part of the first book could be justly called, like Nicolai's
parody, "The Joys of Young Werther," for the young man feels happy
beyond description. Significantly, the first sentence of the novel reads:

"How happy I am." Again and again he feels like living in a paradise.
The "unfortunate" man has no financial worries and can even

afford being charitable. He is educated, gifted, and sensitive, and derives joy from literature, art, music, dance, and, above all, nature and

love. He makes friends easily and, on occasion, even arranges parties.

His joys are more numerous and stronger than those of most people.
At one time he feels he "has experienced the purest joys of life" and
"tasted all the happiness that is given to man" (28). But perhaps his
happy experiences, particularly those in his newly discovered "paradise," make him more vulnerable to his subsequent sufferings and thus
contribute to his self-destructive bent.

The highest-sounding claim to greater respectability that his selfdestructive urge can muster, if one excepts the fantastic expectation of a
faster return to the heavenly father, is the claim of self-sacrifice for other

people. At one point Werther writes Lotte that he sacrifices himself for
her and wishes that his death would make her and Albert happy (104,
121). But a short while later he reverses himself and only wishes he
could have "partaken of the joy of sacrificing himself for her" (123).

Critics who see in Werther a Christ figure stress, of course, the

aspect of self-sacrifice. Actually, this alleged self-sacrifice has a devastating effect on the young couple. At the news of the suicide, Lotte

sinks unconscious at Albert's feet, and at the end her life is feared to
be in danger. Albert is unable, for reasons not given, to be present at
the funeral. That the death instinct aims at both self-destruction and

thb destruction of others is clearly visible here.

The destructive blow has been well prepared by Werther, who

leaves Albert and Lotte a legacy of grief and excruciating guilt feelings. He borrows the pistols from Albert, and Lotte wipes the dust
from them. So he writes her he "receives death from her hands"; it is

she who hands him the "cold, terrible cup" from which he is going to
drink "the intoxication of death" (121, 123). Werther seems to make
sure that Lotte enjoys to the fullest his almost devilish Christmas present, the superlatively timed suicide.3" It is self-sacrifice with a vengeance.

Of course after Werther's death Lotte can also reproach herself

with having encouraged his feelings, and Albert can upbraid himself

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WERTHER'S SUICIDE 487

with having dismissed Werther's intentions to commit suicide. To top it

off, the "editor" almost accuses the young couple of a conspiracy of

silence. These "good people began to observe a silence toward each
other." Had they "reestablished their former closeness sooner . .. perhaps there might still have been help for our friend" (119).
Not only do Werther and the editor attempt to take away some
blame for the self-destruction and to put it on the young couple, but
there is also an effort by the author to diminish the blame by having
the reader compare Werther's "solution" of his problem with the way
two other young men solved their problems of unrequited love. The
peasant lad kills his rival, and the clerk, who was madly in love with

Lotte, becomes mentally deranged. These two young men do not

"serve chiefly for contrast," as has been asserted,"7 for Werther has
homicidal urges, too, and often teeters on the brink of insanity. He
even admits that he has never been far from madness, and he is not
sorry about that (47). Furthermore, he admires and envies the peasant lad and identifies with him, and he envies the insane clerk. Compared to these two alternatives Werther's suicide looks more forgivable.

At any rate, Goethe may have thought so when he interpolated the

peasant lad in the second version of the novel.

In addition to the "reasons" for the suicide, the intimation of

self-sacrifice, and comparisons with murder and insanity, other factors

also help to improve the image of Werther's self-destruction. The

many events at the end that happen at precisely eleven or twelve
o'clock,"3 the open copy of Emilia Galotti on Werther's desk when he
shoots himself, the frequent use of biblical language before the suicide, the comparisons with Christ's crucifixion, the fact that Werther

ends his life on the eve of Christmas Eve, and that his last supper
consists of bread and wine, lend to the pathetic suicide of a loafing
young man an air of fate, and raise it to the spheres of tragedy, myth,
or religion.
The author also tries to soften the impact of suicide on the reader

(said to have been close to shattering during the Werther period) by

almost inundating the last days with the soft and misty sadness of
Ossian and its many mentions of death.39 In this funereal symphony

Werther's self-destruction does not strike a discordant note. Further-

more, the reaction of the survivors is apt to guide the reaction of the

readers. The old bailiff and his sons weep and kiss Werther's body.
Not a single adverse criticism of the suicide or of suicide in general is

heard.

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488 IGNACE FEUERLICHT

Werther's calm, disciplined, resolute, orderly, and practical behavior on his last day is probably bound to disarm a large body of
readers, the rationalist and moralizing critics of his excessive emotionalism and lack of self-control. The short and matter-of-fact sentences

at the very end, contrasting both with Werther's exuberant and subjective style and with the preceding tearful events, impart to the epistolary story of a suicide the austere and pithy ending of a tragic drama.

Even more than his narration, the "editor's" feelings are likely
to vindicate Werther against some animadversions. This "editor's"
role is not just to gather, evaluate, and arrange documents. He is a
skillful author and an omniscient and emotionally involved narrator.
He is, above all, full of compassion for "our friend," who in his view
is worthy of the reader's love and admiration.
Of course it is Goethe who "edited" the documents about the

suicide he was tempted to commit. It has almost become a truism that

by writing Werther he conquered his self-destructive urge,"4 or, in

other words, that by sacrificing Werther he saved his own life. But a
few years after the publication of his novel, Goethe wrote to Frau von
Stein that the author of Werther should have killed himself after the

publication (530). The suicidal urge was not eliminated by the writing
of Werther, it was only suppressed with great difficulty and tranquil-

lized. It was lying low but could at any time spring up again and
renew the sufferings of young Werther. Indeed Goethe once speaks of
the periodic returns of taedium vitae (X, 583).

It is well known that in his later years Goethe did not want to
read again his first and very successful novel. The reason for this aver-

sion was certainly not that he thought the novel was a dud or a potboiler or that he was afraid his love of Lotte Buff would bleed again
or that he feared he would sympathize too much with Werther's professional failure. Because throughout his life he "created worlds around

himself" (85), to use Werther's grandiloquent language, and also was

continuously creative in the "world" within himself, to use another of

Werther's metaphors (13), he was afraid of that cosmic monster or

monstrous cosmos of destruction and self-destruction which Werther

had glimpsed in a dejected mood. Mephisto is the mouthpiece of that

dreaded monster when he defiantly proclaims that "everything that
comes into existence deserves to be destroyed." Goethe was repelled
and attracted by the lure of nothingness. The ballad "Der Fischer" can
be viewed as a brief tale of destruction and of the magic spell of self-

destruction.

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WERTHER'S SUICIDE 489

Goethe never became immune to the "Werther fever." Eight

years before his death, he told Eckermann that Werther contained
nothing but firebombs and that he was still afraid to relive the patho-

logical condition from which it had sprung (534-35). The firebombs,

Goethe must have felt, could set ablaze and wreck his established phi-

losphy and way of life, if not his very life. In 1812 he told Zelter he
could write a second Werther that would terrify people even more
than the first one (534). With advancing years, the perilous spell of
self-destruction was probably still growing and the death instinct could

perhaps find even more and better "reasons" than in the Werther period to embellish and pursue its ultimate goal.
State University College
New Paltz, N.Y.
1 Friedrich Gundolf, Goethe (Berlin, 1916), pp. 164, 174-75.
2 H. A. Korff, Geist der Goethezeit, 1 (Leipzig, 1923), 305-6.
3 M. Diez, "The Principle of the Dominant Metaphor in Goethe's
Werther," PMLA, 51 (1936), 830.
4 Stuart Atkins, "J. C. Lavater and Goethe: Problems of Psychology

and Theology in Die Leiden des jungen Werthers," PMLA, 63

(1948), 570.

Barker Fairley, Goethe as Revealed in His Poetry (New York,

1963), p. 45.

6 Herbert Sch6ffler, Die Leiden des jungen Werther: Ihr geistesgeschichtlicher Hintergrund (Frankfurt, 1938), p. 27; Ernst Beutler,
ed., Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Die Leiden des jungen Werthers
(Stuttgart, 1969), p. 148; Herbert Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension (Boston, 1978), p. 26.

7 Peter Miiller, Zeitkritik und Utopie in Goethes "Werther" (Berlin, 1969), pp. 186-87; Anthony Thorlby, "From What Did Goethe

Save Himself in Werther?", Versuche zu Goethe: Festschrift filr

Erich Heller, ed. Volker Diirr and Geza von Molnar (Heidelberg,

1976), p. 157.

8 Leslie Fiedler, An End to Innocence (Boston, 1955), p. 183.

9 Wolfgang Kayser, "Die Entstehung von Goethes 'Werther,"'
DVLG, 19 (1941), 433.

10 Goethes Werke, Hamburger Ausgabe (Hamburg, 1949 ff.). VI, 535).

Subsequent references are to this edition. Page references to

Werther imply Vol. VI.

11 Robert T. Clark, Jr., "The Psychological Framework of Goethe's

Werther," JEGP, 46 (1947), 273.

12 Ernst Feise, "Goethes Werther als nerviser Charakter," GR, 1

(1926), 188, 194, 195, 202, 220, 228.

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490 IGNACE FEUERLICHT

13 It is equally wrong to assume, as Ernst Beutler does in the Reclam

editon (p. 152), that the peasant lad is insane when he kills his
rival. The lad is very calm, collected, and rational after the murder. Cf. Melitta Gerhard, "Die Bauernburschenepisode in 'Werther,' " Zeitschrift fiir Asthetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft,
11 (1916), 69.
14 International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 15 (1968), 391.

15 M. D. Faber, "The Suicide of Young Werther," Psychoanalytic Review, 60 (1973), 240, 244, 252, 261, 265, 268, 270, 271. In addition to
Werther's alleged "early loss of his mother" (p. 271), there is another error, though less glaring. According to the article, the peasant
lad murders not his rival but the widow with whom he is in love (p.

267). Incidentally, Georg Lukacs assumes that "the infatuated young

servant" kills both his rival and his "beloved," Goethe and His Age
(New York, 1969), p. 42.

" Jack O. Douglas in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 15 (1968), 376.
17 E. L. Stahl and W. E. Yuill, German Literature of the Eighteenth
and Nineteenth Centuries (New York, 1970), p. 79; Robert Ellis
Dye, "Man and God in Goethe's Werther," Symposium, 29 (1975),
321; Ilse Graham, Goethe: Portrait of the Artist (Berlin, 1977),
p. 28.

I Peter Salm, "Werther and the Sensibility of Estrangement," GQ,

46 (1973), 50-51.

19 Harry Steinhauer, ed., J. W. Goethe, The Sufferings of Young

Werther (New York, 1962), p. 20.
20 Gundolf, p. 169.

21 For a historical and critical analysis of alienation see Ignace Feuerlicht, Alienation: From the Past to the Future (Westport, Conn.,
1978).
22 Thomas Mann, "Goethes 'Werther,'" Gesammelte Werke (Frankfurt, 1960), IX, 650.

23 Novalis, Schriften, ed. Richard Samuel, II (Stuttgart, 1960), 644.

The assumption that Kierkegaard's "sickness unto death" is also a

forerunner of Freud's "death instinct" (Robert Bretall, ed. A

Kierkegaard Anthology, New York, 1946, p. 341) is debatable. As
to the relation between Kierkegaard's Sickness unto Death (1849)
and Werther, Ernst Beutler contends that Kierkegaard took the
title of his book from Goethe's novel ("Wertherfragen," Goethe
5 [1940], p. 139). However, in the beginning of his book Kierkegaard refers to John 11:4 as his source of the expression. In
both the gospel and Werther (48) the phrase means a terminal
disease while in Kierkegaard's book it is applied to a syndrome of
despair, disconsolateness of not being able to die, and sin, a syndrome which was discovered and discussed by Kierkegaard but
which was not experienced by Goethe or Werther. It may be added
in this connection that Kierkegaard, unlike Werther, considers sui-

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WERTHER'S SUICIDE 491

cide to be a crime against God (Soren Kierkegaard, Gesammelte

Werke [Diisseldorf, 1954], XXIV, 5, 8, 14, 44, 75).

24 Thomas Mann, "Die Stellung Freuds in der modernen Geistesgeschichte," Gesammelte Werke (Frankfurt, 1960), X, 278. "The instinct of our elements aims at deoxidization, while life is enforced
oxidization," Novalis, Schriften, III, 687.
25 Frangois Jost, "Litterature et suicide," Revue de Littirature Comparee, 42 (1968), 179.
26 Korff, Geist der Goethezeit, 1: 316.

27 Sigmund Freud, Gesammelte Werke, 13 (London, 1940), 269; Gesammelte Werke, 14 (London, 1948), 478, 481. The connection between suicide and aggression has been seen by many psychologists.
Wilhelm St3kel, one of the first psychoanalysts, stated in 1910 that

"no one kills himself who has never wanted to kill another or at

least wished the death of another": "Symposium on Suicide," in

On Suicide, ed. Paul Friedman (New York, 1967), p. 87. Friedrich

Hacker, the noted contemporary psychoanalyst, holds that the aggressive character of suicide does not reveal itself only in selfdestruction, Aggression: Die Brutalisierung der modernen Welt

(Reinbeck, 1973), p. 159. Manes Sperber, who was an early cham-

pion of Adlerian psychology, declared in a recent lecture that very

frequently suicides are marked by vindictiveness. See Siiddeutsche
Zeitung, June 19, 1978, p. 15.
28 Although this identification is very clear, Robert C. Clark finds that
Werther "resents the implication of a similarity" between his case

and that of the peasant lad ("The Psychological Framework," p.

277).

29 Letter of June 12, 1773, J. W. Goethe, Gedenkausgabe der Werke,

Briefe und Gesprdiche, ed. Ernst Beutler, 18 (Zurich, 1965), 199.
30 Werther was not conceived as a "warning rather than a model," as

has been asserted by Curt Hermann, Erlduterungen zu G oethes

Die Leiden des jungen Werther (Hohlfeld, n.d.), p. 64, and by

Harry Steinhauer, The Suferings of Young Werther, p. 12. Otherwise it would have been a dismal failure, since Werther became a

world-wide model.

:n According to some unorthodox modern psychiatrists (R. D. Laing,

for instance), only children and schizophrenics are not self-

alienated.

32 Gebhart B. Ladner, "Homo Viator: Medieval Ideas on Alienation

and Order," Speculum, 42 (1967), 236.

33 Eric A. Blackall, Goethe and the Novel (Ithaca, 1976), p. 35.

34 Peter Miiller even thinks that for Werther his suicide is the only

means to assert his individual dignity and independence (Zeit-

kritik und Utopie, pp. 183-84).

35 Contrary to an assertion by Dye, "Man and God," p. 323.

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492 IGNACE FEUERLICHT

36 In Werther und Wertherwirkung (Bad Homburg, 1970), p. 70,

Klaus R. Scherpe contends that Werther's last utterances are close
to using the metaphors of a letter of condolence. Werther is no

longer writing for himself, Scherpe thinks, but is consoling the

mourners. However, one must be skeptical about the consoling nature and intent of a letter where some passages reveal a "diabolical cruelty," to use Gustav Hans Graber's phrase in "Goethes Werther: Versuch einer tiefenpsychologischen Pathographie," Acta

Psychotherapeutica Psychosomatica et Orthopaedagogica, 6 (1958),

135. "We cannot read [Werther's] last letter ... without resenting
his display of callous, almost vindictive, torturing," E. L. Stahl
remarks in his edition of Werther (Oxford, 1942), pp. xviii-xix.
37 Fairley, Goethe as Revealed in His Poetry, p. 47.

38 Frank G. Ryder speaks in his article, "Season, Day, and Hour-

Time as Metaphor in Goethe's Werther," JEGP, 63 (1964), 405, of

an "eschatological metaphor," which "adds to the feeling of sus-

pense and inevitability."

39 The contention that Werther's enthusiasm for Ossian is a symptom

of his sickness (Emil Staiger, Goethe, 1, Zurich, 1952, p. 172) or of

his incipient madness, as Goethe allegedly stated in his old age

(VI, 536), has to be qualified. Ossian became a fad in those times

and it cannot be said that all the participants in that literary

vogue were sick or mad. After Werther's reading of his (i.e.,
Goethe's) translation of Ossian, Lotte bursts into tears; she does

not reject Ossian as morbid nor does she censure Werther for his
poor literary taste.

40 Erna Merker in Goethe-Handbuch, 2 (Stuttgart, 1917), 427; Ernst

Feise, ed., Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (New York, 1946), p.
292; Thomas Mann, "Goethes 'Werther,' " p. 642.

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