[157] In the commentary which
Goethe introduces to prepare readers for Werther's suicide, he
suggests another motive for the act besides Werther's infatuation for
Charlotte, which Napoleon as well as other critics have regarded as a
mistake in art. In his state of mental and moral paralysis, we are
told, Werther recalled all the misfortunes of his past life, and
specially the mortification he had received during his brief official
experience. But on the mind of the reader this incidental suggestion
of other motives makes little impression; he feels that Werther's
helpless abandonment to his passion for Charlotte is the central
interest of the author himself, as it is a wholly adequate cause of
the final catastrophe.
[Footnote 157: "Werther," Goethe remarked to Henry Crabb Robinson,
"praised Homer while he retained his senses, and Ossian when he was
going mad."]
By the fulness of its revelation of himself and by the impression it
made on the public mind _Werther_ holds a unique place among the
longer productions of Goethe. His own testimony, both at the time when
it was written and in his later years, is conclusive proof of the
degree to which it was a "general confession," as he himself calls it.
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