少年维特的烦恼 英文版 The Sorrows of Young Werther
歌德 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
SEPTEMBER 4.
It is even so! As nature puts on her autumn tints it becomesautumn with me and around me. My leaves are sere and yellow, andthe neighbouring trees are divested of their foliage. Do youremember my writing to you about a peasant boy shortly after myarrival here? I have just made inquiries about him in Walheim.They say he has been dismissed from his service, and is now avoidedby every one. I met him yesterday on the road, going to aneighbouring village. I spoke to him, and he told me his story.It interested me exceedingly, as you will easily understand whenI repeat it to you. But why should I trouble you? Why should Inot reserve all my sorrow for myself? Why should I continue togive you occasion to pity and blame me? But no matter: this alsois part of my destiny.
At first the peasant lad answered my inquiries with a sort ofsubdued melancholy, which seemed to me the mark of a timid disposition;but, as we grew to understand each other, he spoke with less reserve,and openly confessed his faults, and lamented his misfortune. Iwish, my dear friend, I could give proper expression to hislanguage. He told me with a sort of pleasurable recollection,that, after my departure, his passion for his mistress increaseddaily, until at last he neither knew what he did nor what he said,nor what was to become of him. He could neither eat nor drink norsleep: he felt a sense of suffocation; he disobeyed all orders,and forgot all commands involuntarily; he seemed as if pursued byan evil spirit, till one day, knowing that his mistress had goneto an upper chamber, he had followed, or, rather, been drawn afterher. As she proved deaf to his entreaties, he had recourse toviolence. He knows not what happened; but he called God to witnessthat his intentions to her were honourable, and that he desirednothing more sincerely than that they should marry, and pass theirlives together. When he had come to this point, he began tohesitate, as if there was something which he had not courage toutter, till at length he acknowledged with some confusion certainlittle confidences she had encouraged, and liberties she had allowed.He broke off two or three times in his narration, and assured memost earnestly that he had no wish to make her bad, as he termedit, for he loved her still as sincerely as ever; that the talehad never before escaped his lips, and was only now told to convinceme that he was not utterly lost and abandoned. And here, my dearfriend, I must commence the old song which you know I utter eternally.If I could only represent the man as he stood, and stands nowbefore me, could I only give his true expressions, you would feelcompelled to sympathise in his fate. But enough: you, who know mymisfortune and my disposition, can easily comprehend the attractionwhich draws me toward every unfortunate being, but particularlytoward him whose story I have recounted.
On perusing this letter a second time, I find I have omitted theconclusion of my tale; but it is easily supplied. She becamereserved toward him, at the instigation of her brother who hadlong hated him, and desired his expulsion from the house, fearingthat his sister's second marriage might deprive his children ofthe handsome fortune they expected from her; as she is childless.He was dismissed at length; and the whole affair occasioned somuch scandal, that the mistress dared not take him back, even ifshe had wished it. She has since hired another servant, with whom,they say, her brother is equally displeased, and whom she is likelyto marry; but my informant assures me that he himself is determinednot to survive such a catastrophe.
This story is neither exaggerated nor embellished: indeed, I haveweakened and impaired it in the narration, by the necessity ofusing the more refined expressions of society.
This love, then, this constancy, this passion, is no poeticalfiction. It is actual, and dwells in its greatest purity amongstthat class of mankind whom we term rude, uneducated. We are theeducated, not the perverted. But read this story with attention,I implore you. I am tranquil to-day, for I have been employedupon this narration: you see by my writing that I am not so agitatedas usual. I read and re-read this tale, Wilhelm: it is the historyof your friend! My fortune has been and will be similar; and Iam neither half so brave nor half so determined as the poor wretchwith whom I hesitate to compare myself.