[Here’s an excerpt from the entry dated “March 16,” in THE SORROWS OF YOUNG WERTHER by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; translated by Elizabeth Mayer and Louise Bogan:]
Today I have taken up a knife a dozen times, intending to relieve with it my suffocating heart. I have been told that a noble breed of horses, when overheated and hunted almost to death, will by instinct bite open a vein and so recover their breath. I often feel the same. I should like to open one of my veins and gain eternal freedom for myself.