LETTERS FROM SWITZERLAND,
AND
TRAVELS IN ITALY.
By
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
TRANSLATED BY
THE REV. A. J. W. MORRISON, M.A.
Originally published as part of
THE AUTO-BIOGRAPHY OF GOETHE.
TRUTH AND POETRY: FROM MY OWN LIFE.
VOLUME II.
LONDON: GEORGE BELL & SONS, YORK STREET,
COVENT GARDEN.
1881.
Also available at Project Gutenberg: the complete Autobiographyof Goethe (Books I to XX), with 24 illustrations by EugèneDelacroix, Lovis Corinth, T. Johannot,... added especially forthis ebook: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/52654.
Frontispiece: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe par Eugène Delacroix (Source:Faust, tragédie de M. de Goethe, traduite en français par M. AlbertStapfer. C. Motte (Paris) 1828, Gallica Bnf.)
CONTENTS.
LETTERS FROM SWITZERLAND.
When, a few years ago, the copies of the following letters were firstmade known to us, it was asserted that they had been found amongWerther's papers, and it was pretended that before his acquaintancewith Charlotte, he had been in Switzerland. We have never seen theoriginals: however we would not on any account anticipate the judgmentand feelings of our readers; for whatever may be their true history, itis impossible to read them without sympathy.
PART THE FIRST.
How do all my descriptions disgust me, when I read them over. Nothingbut your advice, your command, your injunction could have induced meto attempt anything of the kind. How many descriptions, too, of thesescenes had I not read before I saw them. Did these, then, afford mean image of them,—or at best but a mere vague notion? In vain didmy imagination attempt to bring the objects before it; in vain didmy mind try to think upon them. Here I now stand contemplating thesewonders, and what are my feelings in the midst of them? I can thinkof nothing—I can feel nothing,—and how willingly would I both thinkand feel. The glorious scene before me excites my soul to its inmostdepths, and impels me to be doing; and yet what can I do—what doI? I set myself down and scribble and describe!—Away with you, yedescriptions—delude my friend—make him believe that I am doingsomething—that he sees and reads something.
Were, then, these Switzers free? Free, these opulent burghers in theirlittle pent-up towns—free, those poor devils on their rocks and crags?What is it that man cannot be made to believe, especially when hecherishes in his heart the memory of some old tale of marvel? Once,forsooth, they did break a tyrant's yoke, and might for the momentfancy themselves free; but out of the carcase of the single oppressorthe good sun, by a strange new birth, has hatched a swarm of pettytyrants. And so now they are ever telling that old tale of marvel: onehears it till one is sick of it. They formerly made themselves free,and have ever since remained free! and now they sit behind their walls,hugging themselves with their customs and laws—their philandering andphilistering. And there, too, on the rocks, it is surely fine to talkof liberty, when for six months of the year they, like the marmot, arebound hand and foot by the snow.
Alas! how wretched must any work of man look, in the midst of thisgreat and glorious Nature, but especially such