Alternate title: Good Riddance to Werther
I was supposed to read this a long time ago, when I was at that unfortunate stage of male adolescence in which one is a Romantic and compulsively rhapsodizes Nature and one's Soul, and maybe also Women.
But really, the world can do without an absurd, childish member of the gentry idolizing the peasants into pastoral totems of Simplicity and Work, or whatever the bullshit is.
Or slathering his pathetic yearnings on others' lives. God, I'd kill the fuck myself. If only they could arrange their suicides so they could fall into an open grave, or trip into the crematory—erase yourself with some self-respect, for God's sake, and don't trouble others. Make it seem an accident and spare your family the rage and betrayal, if not the presumed anguish. But above all, shut the fuck up about it—Werther is a towering, shameful monument to failing that commandment.
Меня бросила. Вертер—пошёл на хуй.
And in a breathtaking feat of projection, I can say: bullshit, that Lotte's "secret heart's desire was to keep [Werther] for herself" (118). Debase yourself so regularly, and receive your just wages: distance and contempt. Only have the decency to off yourself earlier and more discreetly.
The most perfect coda: this should have been the whole of Werther's suicide letter.
'Though sad to say, I must report that Eros was a bust.
I'll seek my peace in bleaker fields—to Thanatos, I must.'
