Werther's Pulse Oliver Simons After pouring himself a glass of wine, Lessing's Emilia Galotti open on his desk, Werther shoots himself above the right temple. But the most famous suicide in German literature is not nearly as successful as the book's scandalous reputation might suggest. The gunshot was not fatal; Werther continues to live for an entire night, breathing, quivering, crawling on the floor. Only with the doctor's help does he finally pass away the following day—all of which is reported by an editor who narrates Werther's final hours. The circumstances of Werther's suicide and their relation to Emilia's death have been studied extensively since the novel's first appearance in 1774. Goethe himself shared that he had received a detailed account of the suicide of Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem who had killed himself in 1772, also with an open copy of Emilia Galotti in his room.1 Since then, critics have reconstructed the history of the novel's development, commenting on the contemporaneous discourse on suicide, Werther's psychology, the intertextual constellation between Lessing and Goethe,2 and more formal aspects, such as the narrative framing that necessitates the presence of an editor to report Werther's death.3 The following reading of the novel's peculiar ending takes a different approach. I will argue that the ending of the novel is inextricably tied to various kinds of conclusions that dominate the entire length of its plot—acts of conclusions performed by Werther throughout the text. Werther's mode of reasoning, I argue, is crucial for understanding the nexus between the novel's ending and Goethe's own critical reflection on forms of reasoning. In the second part of this essay, references to Lessing and Herder will provide further evidence that Goethe's text not only reflects on the novel's form but also on modes of reasoning. Lessing's Emilia is indeed an important reference in this context, not so much due to thematic analogies but because it is another text that reflects on its own genre in relation to forms of reasoning. But whereas in Lessing's case this critical discourse on concluding can be associated with the emergence of a new kind of rationality, such hopeful prospects are forestalled for young Werther. As the final section of this essay shows, the vivid depiction of Werther's agonizing death is particularly significant in the context of Johann Gottfried Herder's critical view of Lessing's poetics; and Werther's breathing and beating heart, I argue, resonate with an emerging discourse on life. Conclusions are no longer merely forms of reasoning; as Goethe's novel shows, they become a force in their own right. [End Page 31] ________ Werther's ending begins, of course, much earlier in the book. In fact, one of the most frequently quoted passages from the novel's opening, Werther's infamous letter from May 10, already indicates why the novel can be read as a novel about conclusions. The letter deserves a longer quotation as it introduces the idea of a new subject as well as a reflection on literary forms of concluding, themes that will determine the course of the novel until its very end: Eine wunderbare Heiterkeit hat meine ganze Seele eingenommen, gleich den süßen Frühlingsmorgen, die ich mit ganzem Herzen genieße. … Wenn das liebe Tal um mich dampft, und die hohe Sonne an der Oberfläche der undurchdringlichen Finsternis meines Waldes ruht, und nur einzelne Strahlen sich in das innerer Heiligtum stehlen, ich dann im hohen Grase am fallenden Bach liege, und näher an der Erde tausend mannigfaltige Gräschen mir merkwürdig werden; wenn ich das Wimmeln der kleinen Welt zwischen Halmen, die unzähligen, unergründlichen Gestalten der Würmchen, der Mückchen näher an meinem Herzen fühle, und fühle die Gegenwart des Allmächtigen, der uns nach seinem Bilde schuf, das Wehen des Alliebenden, der uns in ewiger Wonne schwebend trägt und erhält; mein Freund! wenn's dann um meine Augen dämmert, und die Welt um mich her und der Himmel ganz in meine Seele ruhn wie die Gestalt...