"What is the whole world to our hearts without love? It is the optic machine of the Savoyards without light." [More literal translation: "Wilhelm, what would the world mean to our hearts without love! What is a magic lantern without its lamp!"]

— Goethe, Johann Wolfgang (1749-1832)


Place of Publication
Leipzig
Publisher
Weygand'sche Buchhandlung
Date
1774, rev. 1787, 1779 in English
Metaphor
"What is the whole world to our hearts without love? It is the optic machine of the Savoyards without light." [More literal translation: "Wilhelm, what would the world mean to our hearts without love! What is a magic lantern without its lamp!"]
Metaphor in Context
July 18. What is the whole world to our hearts without love? It is the optic machine of the Savoyards without light. As soon as the little lamp appears, the figures shine on the whitened wall; and if love only shews us shadows which pass away, yet still we are happy when, like children, we are transported with the splendid phantoms. I shall not see Charlotte to-day; company, which I could not avoid, hinders me. What do you think I have done? I sent the little boy who waits upon me, that I might at least see somebody that had been near her. With what impatience I waited for his return, and with what pleasure I saw him? I should certainly have taken him in my arms if I had not been ashamed.
(Vol. I, Letter XXI [July 18] pp. 99-100)

Wilhelm, was ist unserem Herzen die Welt ohne Liebe! Was eine Zauberlaterne ist ohne Licht! Kaum bringst du das Lämpchen hinein, so scheinen dir die buntesten Bilder an deine weiße Wand! Und wenn's nichts wäre als das, als vorübergehende Phantome, so macht's doch immer unser Glück, wenn wir wie frische Jungen davor stehen und uns über die Wundererscheinungen entzücken. Heute konnte ich nicht zu Lotten, eine unvermeidliche Gesellschaft hielt mich ab. Was war zu tun? Ich schickte meinen Diener hinaus, nur um einen Menschen um mich zu haben, der ihr heute nahe gekommen wäre. Mit welcher Ungeduld ich ihn erwartete, mit welcher Freude ich ihn wiedersah! Ich hätte ihn gern beim Kopfe genommen und geküßt, wenn ich mich nicht geschämt hätte.
(Am 18. Julius, p. 45 in Reclam)
Provenance
Reading Terry Castle's "Phantasmagoria and the Metaphorics of Modern Reverie" in The Female Thermometer: Eighteenth Century Culture and the Invention of the Uncanny (New York and Oxford: OUP, 1995), p. 156.
Citation
An international bestseller with 27 entries for the uniform title "Leiden des jungen Werthers. English" in the ESTC (1779, 1780, 1781, 1782, 1783, 1784, 1785, 1786, 1787, 1788, 1789, 1790, 1791, 1793, 1794, 1795, 1796, 1799).

I consulted, concurrently, the German and eighteenth-century English translations. See Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Werter: a German Story. 2 vols (London: Printed for J. Dodsley, 1779), <Link to ECCO>. But, note, the translation is not always literal; the translator repeatedly tones down Werther's figurative language (especially, it seems, in the second volume): "A few expressions which had this appearance [of extravagance] have been omitted by the French, and a few more by the English translator, as they might possibly give offence in a work of this nature" (Preface).

Searching English text from a 1784 printing (Dodsley, "A New Edition") in Google Books <Link to volume I><Link to voume II>

Reading Die Leiden des jungen Werther (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2002). German text from http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/3636/1. Printed in 1774 in Leipzig, Weygand'sche Buchhandlung.
Theme
Mirror and Lamp
Date of Entry
09/14/2009
Date of Review
06/06/2006

The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.