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(A British lord, and subsequently a bishop, blamed Goethe for the epidemic of suicides provoked by Werther. To which Goethe replied in in strictly economic terms: “Your commercial system has claimed thousands of victims, why not grant a few to Werther?”)

whether philosophical, gnomic, lyric, or novelistic, there is always, in the discourse upon love, a person whom one addresses,

Accidentally, Werther’s finger touches Charlotte’s, their feet, under the table, happen to brush against each other. Werther might be engrossed by the meaning of these accidents; he might concentrate physically on these slight zones of contact and delight in this fragment of inert finger or foot, f…

no amorous oblation without a final theater: the sign is always victorious.

I am condemned to be a saint or a monster: unable to be the one, unwilling to be the other: hence I tergiversate: I show my passion a little.