hed to depict in "Werther,"
and therefore Werther's hopeless love is not wholly responsible 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 whi