Folklore & Mythology Figure
Documented in Fuller’s letters, books, journals, memoirs
This page brings together documented engagements currently identified within the Fuller Reading Worlds catalog.
“you shall see with your eyes Venus, sea born, of whom before you have only dreamed and love ever after foam and sea weed better than the reddest roses—which celebrate the loss of Adonis.”
L-2 [Letter 227, 17 August 1839, To Elizabeth Hoar]
“we came to the wave, and the seashell it moulds; to Beauty, and Love, her parent her child”
L-2 [Letter 239, 25 November 1839, To unknown]
“I took up the Grecian mythology as a good means of opening a vista to the plain I sought and the topics were pursued thus. Jupiter — Creative Energy, Will. Apollo — Genius.”
L-2 [Letter 250, 21 January 1840, To Sarah Helen Whitman]
“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.
“This Venus is not as fresh, as moving and breathing as Shakspeare's, yet lovelier to the mind if not to the sense.”
Fuller, Margaret. Summer on the Lakes, in 1843. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1844.
“_J_. From water Venus was born, what more would you have? It is the mother of Beauty, the girdle of earth, and the marriage of nations.”
B-3-02 Chapter II
“Of such a color were the first red ones the world ever saw, when, says the legend, Venus flying to the assistance of Adonis, the rosebushes kept catching her to make her stay, and the drops of blood t”
“I will here insert, though with no excuse, except that it came to memory at the time, this description of Titian's Venus and Adonis.”
B-3-05 Chapter V
“Miss Fuller had proposed the Grecian Mythology as the subject of the first conversations [...] He saw the oreads, naiads, nereids [...] Prometheus was made the type of Pure Reason; Jupiter, of Will; Juno, the passive side of the same, or Obstinacy; Minerva, Intellectual Power, Practical Reason; Mercury, Executive Power, Understanding; Apollo was Genius, the Sun; Bacchus was Geniality, the Earth's answer.”
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.
Inferred Identification rationale not yet recorded.
Undated
Pieces with no legible date. They are part of the record but cannot be placed on the lifeline.
“Since that conversation I have met with the following passages in Wordsworth which confirm me in my thought.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Journal Fragments." Houghton Library, Harvard University.
Fuller explicitly attributes the following verses to ‘Wordsworth’ (margin note ‘Of Wordsworth’ on p. 20).