"That is a creation
(_Werther_)," he told Eckermann, "which I, like the pelican, fed with
the blood of my own heart. There is in it so much that was deepest in
my own experience, so much of my own thoughts and sensations, that, in
truth, a romance extending to ten such volumes might be made out of
it. Since its appearance, I have read it only once, and have refrained
from doing so again. It is nothing but a succession of rockets. I am
uneasy when I look at it, and dread the return of the psychological
condition out of which it sprang."
[Footnote 158: _Werke, Briefe_, ii. 156.]
These repeated statements of Goethe, made at wide intervals of his
life, sufficiently prove what a large part of himself went to the
making of _Werther_. Yet Werther was not Goethe. From the fate of
Werther he was saved by two characteristics of which we have seen
frequent evidence in his previous history. It was not in his nature to
be dominated for any lengthened period by a single passion to the
exclusion of every other interest. No sooner had he left Wetzlar than
his heart was open to the charms of Maxe Brentano, and, during the
months that followed, her image and that of Lotte Buff alternately
distracted his susceptibilities.
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