This article breaks with the critical tradition regarding Goethe’s Werther, which, by virtue of its repetition, had given credibility to a canonical version within which any interpretation had to hold itself. Was thus forgotten the fact that it cannot be supposed external circumstances which give a work (its) meaning, but the fact that the work establishes itself and transforms itself by diffusing meaning which originates in its constitutive parts, without exception. We therefore concentrate here on a passage from the novel both over-read and repressed, the insistent reference to Leonora in the incipit, in order to suggest a reading grounded on a significant number of cogent clues unanalysed until now. And yet we are not talking about another novel : the idea here is simply to bring back to the fore the fact that a text is a text only of its meaningfulness stays open, and that a reader must to qualify as a reader actively submit to this open-endedness.