Margaret Fuller’s Reading Worlds

Author

Karl August Varnhagen von Ense; Rahel primary: Levin-Varnhagen(1771–1833)

Karl August Varnhagen von Ense; Rahel primary: Levin-Varnhagen is documented in Fuller’s letters (1839). One work is named, all in Letter to Caroline Sturgis, and the most intensive engagement recorded is “excerpted”.

Engagement
ExcerptedAnalyzedMentioned
Present in
Letters
Documented
1839
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

“In Rahel I think you may recognize well known lineaments.- Observe what she says (quoted by Goethe) about being born only to live; and what the Reviewer says of 'feeling about feeling.”
Rahel: Ein Buch des Andenkens für ihre Freunde [Rahel: A Book of Remembrance for Her Friends] · Letter to Caroline Sturgis · 1839

When Fuller engaged with Karl August Varnhagen von Ense; Rahel primary: Levin-Varnhagen

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.

Ense in Fuller’s reading world

Documentary evidence

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

1839—

Letter to Caroline Sturgis

p47
excerpted · analyzed
“In Rahel I think you may recognize well known lineaments.- Observe what she says (quoted by Goethe) about being born only to live; and what the Reviewer says of 'feeling about feeling.”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.

Inferred Fuller encounters Rahel Levin Varnhagen through the Westminster Review's 1839 article reviewing posthumous volumes of her correspondence and writings, edited by her husband Karl August Varnhagen von Ense; as Hudspeth identified. She identifies with Rahel's famous maxim about being born only to live, and quotes the Westminster reviewer's characterization of Rahel's introspective mode as "feeling about feeling," recognizing in her a kindred intellectual spirit.