Erotica Romana, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe [smart books to read .TXT] 📗

two years in Italy (1786-88), and alienated from prim, courtly friends (especially since he had taken a girlfriend into his cottage), had no thought of publication when he indited these remembrances of Ancient Rome. But he did show them to close friends, one of whom was the wonderful dramatist Friedrich Schiller. In 1795, Schiller undertook a new periodical, Die Horen. This thoughtful and responsible man initiated the journal with an essay of his own, explaining how forms of entertainment are actually at the same time our primary modes of education. It makes for pretty difficult reading in our present, less interested epoch. But he did break the essay up with diversions solicited from the best minds of his era. For a discussion of all this, see

Professor Worthy's Page

For now, it is enough to say that among Schiller's examples for "aesthetic education," as he called it, were these Elegies by his much admired friend, Wolfgang Goethe. Editor and author made substantial changes for propriety's sake—despite Goethe's having lashed out to the contrary in the first Elegy (which he now suppressed, along with the final one). My attempt has been—for the very first time by the way, in any language—to restore Goethe's cycle to his early conception. Since I have been unwilling to intrude with learned notes, I must apologize for Goethe's many classical allusions, which were as familiar to his own readership as are, in our publications today, the dense references to media celebrities. Modern editors of what they call the "Roman Elegies" bring abundant annotation, and often detail Goethe's own emendations. What I bring here is merely translated from his manuscript in the Goethe-Schiller Archive in Weimar.

End of Project Gutenberg's Erotica Romana, by Johann Wolfgang Goethe