Author
Pythagoras is documented in Fuller’s books, published essays, and journals (1846). 2 distinct works are named, most often in Journal April 1839, and the most intensive engagement recorded is “quoted”.
Reprints, Memoirs passages, and repeat notes within a single manuscript are shown but never counted twice. Evidence for this author is selective, not exhaustive. Methodology →
Passages where the evidence goes beyond allusion to indicate that Fuller had Pythagoras’s work in hand — an explicit statement of reading, sustained excerpting or translation, or a specific reading episode recorded by those who knew her.
“Golden verses of Pythagoras, rather a pretty version thereof. "Let not soft slumbers close thine Eyes,”
Manuscripts (Houghton Library, Margaret Fuller Family Papers)
Substantial quoted passage of verse from Pythagoras's Golden Verses.
“What hast thou done that's worth the doing? / And what pursued that's worth pursuing? / What sought thou knewest thou shouldst shun? / What done thou shouldst have left undone?”
Life Without and Life Within (essays)
Quoted engagement reproduces a full four-line stanza of the Pythagorean verses, a sustained passage implying the text was in hand.
“The ancients held that the spheres made music tc those who had risen into a state which enabled them to hear it. Pythagoras, who prepared different kinds of melody to guide and expand the differing natures of his pupils, needed himself to hear none on instruments made by human art, for the universal harmony which comprehends all these was audible to him.”
This page brings together documented engagements currently identified within the Fuller Reading Worlds catalog.
Selected passages from Fuller’s own writings, in chronological order.
“If it be appropriate to a reflective habit of mind to ask with each night-fall the Pythagorean questions, how much more so at the close of the year!”
Fuller, Margaret. "1st January, 1846." New-York Daily Tribune, 1 January 1846. · 1 January 1846
“The ancients held that the spheres made music tc those who had risen into a state which enabled them to hear it.”
Fuller, Margaret. Papers on Literature and Art. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846. · p44
Also printed in Art, Literature, and the Drama (1869), p44; page given is to the 1869 reprint.
Undated
Pieces with no legible date. They are part of the record but cannot be placed on the lifeline.
“Golden verses of Pythagoras, rather a pretty version thereof. "Let not soft slumbers close thine Eyes,”
Fuller, Margaret. "Journal April 1839." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086 (Box A); Box 5 (99).
“What hast thou done that's worth the doing? / And what pursued that's worth pursuing? / What sought thou knewest thou shouldst shun? / What done thou shouldst have left undone?”
Fuller, Margaret. Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Edited by Arthur B. Fuller. Boston: Brown, Taggard and Chase, 1860.
Inferred Fuller explicitly names 'the Pythagorean questions' then quotes the four-line self-examination verse traditionally rendered from the Golden Verses of Pythagoras Quoted engagement reproduces a full four-line stanza of the Pythagorean verses, a sustained passage implying the text was in hand.