Margaret Fuller’s Reading Worlds

Author

Bion of SmyrnaInferred

Bion of Smyrna is documented in Fuller’s letters (1842). One work is named, all in Letter to Elizabeth Hoar, and the most intensive engagement recorded is “quoted”.

Engagement
QuotedMentioned
Present in
Letters
Documented
1842
Totals count documented engagements, once at the earliest witness. How we count →

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 →

In Fuller’s words

“Richard read me something from the Greek, for he did not wish to talk about little Waldo. It was to this effect: "All things return to thee, o Prosperpine! But all things that go to the earth become beautiful. Venus poured out her tears for Adonis's wounds, yet all was turned to flowers; for each drop of blood, a rose; for each tear, an anemone.”
Epitaphios Adonidos [Lament for Adonis] · Letter to Elizabeth Hoar · 1842

When Fuller engaged with Bion of Smyrna

I. Childhood
II. Adolescence
III. Self-Directed
IV. Transcendentalist1record
V. New York
VI. Europe
✦. Memoirs (1852)
1810
1820
1832
1836
1844
1846
1850

This page brings together documented engagements currently identified within the Fuller Reading Worlds catalog.

Smyrna in Fuller’s reading world

Documentary evidence

Selected passages from Fuller’s own writings, in chronological order.

1842—

Letter to Elizabeth Hoar

p47
quoted
“Richard read me something from the Greek, for he did not wish to talk about little Waldo. It was to this effect: "All things return to thee, o Prosperpine!”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. III. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986.

Inferred A passage Richard Fuller read aloud to Margaret, combining the address to Proserpine as receiver of the dead with the myth of Adonis—roses springing from his blood, anemones from Venus's tears—closely matches the thematic elements of Bion's Lament for Adonis (c. 100 BCE), though the wording may be from a prose paraphrase rather than a direct translation.