for his suicide.  “Werther untergraebt sein Dasein durch Selbstbetrachtung,” is Goethe’s own explanation of the case.[113] And it is in this light only that Werther’s malady deserves in any comprehensive sense the term Weltschmerz.  Here, then, Lenau and Werther stand on common ground.  Other traits common to most poets of Weltschmerz might here be enumerated as characteristic of both, such as extreme fickleness of purpose, supersensitiveness, lack of definite vocation, and the like; all of which goes to show that while for artistic purposes Goethe required a dramatic cause, or rather occasion, for Werther’s suicide, he nevertheless fully understood all the symptoms of the prevailing disease with which his sentimental hero was afflicted.

While the personal elements in Lenau’s Weltschmerz are much more intense in their expression than with Hoelderlin, its altruistic side is proportionately weaker.  So far as we may judge from his lyrics, very little of Lenau’s Weltschmerz was inspired by patriotic considerations.  There is opposition, it is true, to the existing order, but that opposition is directed almost solely against that which annoyed and inconvenienced him personally, for example, against the stupid as well as rigorous Austrian censorship.  Against this bugbear he never ceases to storm in verse and letters, and to it must be attributed in a large measure his literary alienation from the land of his adoption.  That we must look to his lyrics rather than to his longer epic writings, in order to discover the poet’s deepest interests, is nowhere more clearly evidenced than in the following reference to his “Savonarola,” in a letter to Emilie Reinbeck during the progress of the work:  “Savonarola wirkte zumeist als Prediger, darum muss ich in meinem Gedicht ihn vielfach predigen und dogmatisieren lassen, welches in vierfuessigen doppeltgereimten Iamben sehr schwierig ist.  Doch es freut mich, Dinge poetisch durchzusetzen, an deren poetischer Darstellbarkeit wohl die meisten Menschen verzweifeln.  Auch gereicht es mir zu besonderem Vergnuegen, mit diesem Gedicht gegen den herrschenden Geschmack unseres Tages in Opposition zu treten."[114] The inference lies very near at hand that his opposition to the prevailing taste was after all a secondary consideration, and that the poet’s first concern was to win glory by accomplishing something which others would abandon as an impossibility.  While recognizing the fact that Lenau’s “Faust” and “Don Juan” are largely autobiographical, it is, I think, obvious that an entirely adequate impression of his Weltschmerz may be gained from his letters and lyrics alone, in which the poet’s sincerest feelings need not be subordinated for a moment to artistic purposes or demands.  And nowhere, either in lyrics or letters, do we find such spontaneous outbursts of patriotic sentiment as greet us in Hoelderlin’s poems: 

    Glueckselig Suevien, meine Mutter![115]