Folklore & Mythology Figure
Documented in Fuller’s letters, books, manuscripts, memoirs
This page brings together documented engagements currently identified within the Fuller Reading Worlds catalog.
“the first time was the genealogy of heaven and earth, then the will (Jupiter); the Understanding, (Mercury) Second, the celestial inspiration of genius, perception and transmission of divine law (Apol”
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]
“Henry, I adjure you, in the name of all the Genii, Muses, Pegasus, Apollo, Pollio, Apollyon, ("and must I mention"--) to send me something good for this journal before the 1st May.”
L-2 [Letter 255, 10 March 1840, To Frederic H. Hedge]
“What the ancients meant to express by Apollo's continual disappointment in his loves, is felt daily in the youth of genius [...] They would see him slaying the serpent with the divine wrath of Apollo, rather than taming it to his service, like Aesculapius.”
Inferred Identification rationale not yet recorded.
“Goethe draws, as he passes, a dart from the quiver of Phoebus, but ends as Aesculapius or Mercury.”
Inferred Identification rationale not yet recorded.
Fuller, Margaret. Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Edited by Arthur B. Fuller. Boston: Brown, Taggard and Chase, 1860.
“it lived its life of eloquence in the Apollo [...] But then I consider the Greek Apollo, as one also! [...] so does the Apollo, and a beautiful infant, and the summers earliest rose.”
Fuller, Margaret. "A Credo." Boston Public Library Archives & Special Collections; MS Am. 1450; Box: 2, Folder: 97.
Inferred Identification rationale not yet recorded.
“an Indian brave, accustomed to ramble in such paths, and be bathed by such sunbeams, might be mistaken for Apollo, as Apollo was for him by West.”
Inferred Fuller writes 'as Apollo was for him by West,' alluding to the famous story told in John Galt's biography of Benjamin West (1738–1820): when West first saw the Apollo Belvedere in Rome in 1760, he compared its pose to a young Mohawk warrior, astonishing his Italian hosts.
“Remember that I am not yet divine, / Long years of service to the fatal Nine / Are yet to make a Delphian vigor mine.”
Inferred Fuller invokes the nine Muses of Greek tradition as 'the fatal Nine' in her poem 'Ganymede to His Eagle'.The phrase 'the fatal Nine' is the traditional designation for the nine Muses of Greek mythology (Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Melpomene, Polyhymnia, Terpsichore, Thalia, Urania), presided over by Apollo at Delphi.
“I think it springs from the blood of the Indians, as the hyacinth did from that of Apollo's darling.”
Inferred Fuller alludes to the Greek myth of Hyacinthus (Hyakinthos), a young Spartan prince beloved by Apollo.
“For Henry gives the details of peculiar worship paid to the Great Turtle, and the oracles received from this extraordinary Apollo of the Indian Delphos.”
Inferred Fuller names 'Henry' as the source for details of Great Turtle worship at Mackinaw. Alexander Henry the Elder's Travels and Adventures in Canada and the Indian Territories (1809) is the canonical fur-trade memoir that covers Fort Michilimackinac (1760s) and includes accounts of Ojibway religious practices including the Great Turtle oracle.
Fuller, Margaret. Summer on the Lakes, in 1843. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1844.
“Not without deep significance was Apollo distinguished as being at once the God of poesy, of prophecy, and the medical art. Sleep-waking develops the powers of seeing, healing, and poesy.”
B-3-05 Chapter V
“Seek these mid the Tritons hoary, / Where an incalculable wave / Wrecks the warship tall and brave [...] Fit to be strung for strains of Delphian swell”
L-2 [Letter 474, July 1844, To Ralph Waldo Emerson]
“I thank the hand which gave this gift to me / The Delphian image of my destiny.”
L-2 [Letter 492, 3? November 1844, To William H. Channing]
“He performed, though in a childish way, and in no Grecian garb, the part of Apollo amid the herdsmen of Admetus.”
Fuller, Margaret. Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Edited by Arthur B. Fuller. Boston: Brown, Taggard and Chase, 1860. · p255
Inferred Identification rationale not yet recorded.
“I wish you would ask me to explain the difference, the Greeks made between the moon as Hecate and as Diana, and the allusions to the girdle of Apollo, and at the conclusion — to Tantalus; these are beautiful things in the Greek mythology, which you will appreciate.”
Fuller, Margaret. Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller, 1845-1846. With an introduction by Julia Ward Howe. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1903.
Inferred Identification rationale not yet recorded.
“In Greece, Ceres and Proserpine, significantly termed "the great goddesses," were seen seated, side by side...”
Fuller, Margaret. Woman in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Greeley & McElrath, 1845.
Inferred Identification rationale not yet recorded.