WorkJohann Wolfgang von Goethe

Conversations with Eckermann

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) · Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens [Conversations with Goethe in the Last Years of His Life], Vol. 1-2, 1836; Vol. 3, 1848; English translation by Margaret Fuller: Boston: Hilliard, Gray and Co., 1839, in Ripley's Specimens of Foreign Literature, Vol. 4

TranslatedExcerptedAnalyzedQuotedReadMentioned

Documented 1839–1841

Books • Manuscripts

Selected engagements, in chronological order.

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 work is selective, not exhaustive. Methodology →

When Fuller engaged with this work

I. Childhood

II. Adolescence

III. Self-Directed

IV. Transcendentalist2records

V. New York

VI. Europe

✦. Memoirs (1852)

1810

1820

1832

1836

1844

1846

1850

1839—

On Poesy, Love, and Dreams

p4, p6, p7, p8, p16

analyzed · quoted · readSearch Digital Fuller (page unverified)

“Goethe says I have learned to consider all I do as symbolic so that it now matters little to me whether I make plates or dishes.”

Fuller, Margaret. "On Poesy, Love, and Dreams." Houghton Library, Harvard University; MS Am 1450.

Inferred Fuller quotes two Goethe sayings—'I have learned to consider all I do as symbolic, so that it now matters little to me whether I make plates or dishes' and 'All tüchtige (manly) effort goes from within outwards'—along with a third, 'Why dost thou mourn, beloved, that thy beauty is transitory' (p.8). She also comments on Goethe's decision to break his engagement to Lili Schönemann in 1775 ('He was right as a genius, but wrong as a character,' pp.6–7) and alludes to his Novelle (1828), 'his tale of the child charming the lion' (p.16). Fuller had translated Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe in 1839; the exact source of the quoted maxims is not identified.

Fuller had translated Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe in 1839; the exact source of the quoted maxims is not identified.

1841—

The Dial

“Menzel's View of Goethe” · Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1841

excerpted · quoted · read2 selected passages

“Connected with this is the fact, of which he spoke with such sarcastic solemnity to Eckermann ? 'My works will never be popular.”

Margaret Fuller explicitly identifies Eckermann as transcribing these words. The conversations are Goethe's, which Eckermann transcribed and published.

“The Damonische is that which cannot be explained by reason or understanding; it lies not in my nature, but I am subject to it.”

Fuller added a footnote identifying the source of the quotation: "Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe, translated from the German by my sister, form one volume of the Specimens of Foreign Literature, edited by Rev. George Ripley, and published in 1839." The footnote contains an error: "my sister" should read "my sister Margaret." Fuller's translation of Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe (Boston, Hilliard, Gray, and Co., 1839) was published as volume 4 of George Ripley's Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature.

Fuller, Margaret. Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Edited by Arthur B. Fuller. Boston: Brown, Taggard and Chase, 1860.