EROTICA ROMANA
By Johann Wolfgang Goethe
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
ABOUT THE ELEGIES
Goethe cultivated a special, italianate hand for this portfolio of
twenty-four “elegies,” so called because he was emulating the elegiasts of
Imperial Rome, Tibullus, Propertius, Catullus. The Elegies have never
before been published as here, together in the cyclical form of their
original conception. Experts even denied that the two priapeia (I &
XXIV) were by Goethe at all, although they are in the same hand as the
rest. To be sure, these two are not numbered, so that I was long undecided
as to just what their proper position might be. At one time I imagined
they must belong at the middle of the cycle where at the end of Elegy XIII
Priapus’ mother summons her son. Obviously Goethe, just returned north
from his 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.