The reading of these precious documents was part of the
entertainment of the circle in which Goethe now found himself, and he
assures us that he enjoyed it. We see, therefore, the world in which
he was now moving--a world in which those who belonged to it made it
their first concern to titillate their sensibilities, and squandered
their emotions with a profusion and abandonment in which
self-respecting reserve was forgotten. It was a world wide as the
poles apart from that of Sesenheim, where human relations were founded
on natural feeling and only the language of the heart was spoken. Once
again Goethe had taken on the hue of his surroundings. In Leipzig he
had been what we have seen him; now under the influence of Darmstadt
he appears in still another phase--to be by no means the last.
From Goethe's connection with the family of von la Roche was to come
the occasion which immediately prompted the production of _Werther_,
but more than a year was to elapse before the occasion came, and in
the interval his own mental experiences were to supply him with
further materials which were to find expression in that work. In his
correspondence of the period we have the fullest revelation of these
experiences, and they leave us with the impression that he spoke only
the literal truth when he tells us in his Autobiography that, on being
delivered of _Werther_, he felt as if he had made a general
confession.
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