WorkJohann Wolfgang von Goethe
Faust (Faust. Eine Tragödie, Erster Teil [Faust, Part One], 1808; preceded by 'Faust: ein Fragment,' 1790; Faust, Zweiter Teil [Faust, Part Two], published posthumously 1832)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) · Part I, 1808; Part II, 1832
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Documented 1825–1846
Additional passages preserved in the Memoirs (1852)
Letters • Books • Essays • Notebooks • Manuscripts
Selected engagements, in chronological order.
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 →
Passages where the evidence goes beyond allusion to indicate that Fuller had this work in hand — an explicit statement of reading, sustained excerpting or translation, or a specific reading episode recorded by those who knew her.
“Within the year, she had read Goethe's Faust, Tasso, Iphigenia, Hermann and Dorothea, Elective Affinities, and Memoirs”
Mem-2 Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli · within the year [1832]
Specific dated memoir claim listing exact Goethe works Fuller read 'within the year' (1832).
“I have read no German except Faust which I take every sunny noon to a wood”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · Groton 3d May 1833
"I have read no German except Faust" is an explicit reading statement.
“first part of Faust,—three weeks of thorough study this, as valuable to me as to them,—and Clavigo”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · [ca. Summer 1837]
Continuation of explicit 'I read' list, 'first part of Faust,—three weeks of thorough study.'
“Again, fair images, ye flutter near … The Past—the Past alone, seems true to me! / Goethe.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Reading Notebook 1825–1827." Houghton Library, Harvard University.
The translator is not identified.
“I have read no German except Faust which I take every sunny noon to a wood about a quarter of a mile from the house and the birds and wind rustling their long-stepping feet over the thick carpet of last year's dried oak-leaves do their best to make me feel at home...”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. VI. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.
“From Notes to Hayward's Faust.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Notebook: Bouquet, 1836–1837." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086 (43); Box 6 (43).
“first part of Faust,—three weeks of thorough study this, as valuable to me as to them”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
“Tis but a few evegs since I read the most daring passages in Faust to a coterie of Hannah Mores who dared [...]”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
“I wish to quote one little passage about Goethe's Helena which pleases me.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.
“I am much pleased by your remarks on the Helena—pray give me your impressions whenever you can, in reading these works; they are just and delicate and will revive my interest.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.
“I read the whole of the remarks on Helen, and gave them an acct of the way in which Goethe has taken up this thought in 2d Part of Faust.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Records of Conversations on Goethe and Art." Houghton Library, Harvard University.
“Gretchen in the golden cloud raised above all past delusions, worthy to redeem and upbear the wire man who stumbled into the pit of error while searching for truth.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Notes on Balzac, George Sand, De Vigny, and Béranger." Houghton Library, Harvard University.
Inferred The character 'Gretchen in the golden cloud' unambiguously refers to the apotheosis scene in Goethe's Faust, where Gretchen (Margarete) redeems Faust in the Prologue in Heaven and the conclusion of Faust Part II. Fuller is using this as an analogy for Sand's character Hélène in Les Sept Cordes de la Lyre.
“Ganymede, Mahomet's song, the Bayadere, and Faust [...] I wish, also, to consider the Faust, Elective Affinities, Apprenticeship and Pilgrimages of Wilhelm Meister, and Iphigenia, as affording indications of the progress of his genius.”
“It led Faust, the Seeker, from the heights of his own mind [...] Faust contains the great idea of his life [...] Faust, had it been completed in the spirit in which it was begun, would have been the Divina Commedia of its age.”
Fuller, Margaret. Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Edited by Arthur B. Fuller. Boston: Brown, Taggard and Chase, 1860.
“I am inclined to say with Mephistopheles, 'He is not the first!”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. III. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986.
Fuller quotes Mephistopheles from Goethe's Faust, saying "I am inclined to say with Mephistopheles, 'He is not the first!'" and attributes it explicitly.
“Yet though I answer like Mephistopheles to the desires of those sweet souls "You are not the first" -and coolly deprecate their peculiar claims to happiness.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. III. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986.
Inferred Fuller names Mephistopheles explicitly and quotes his line "You are not the first" from Goethe's Faust Part I, in which the demon dismisses Faust's anguish over Gretchen's ruin by noting that many women have suffered the same fate before her.
“Within the year, she had read Goethe's Faust, Tasso, Iphigenia, Hermann and Dorothea, Elective Affinities, and Memoirs”
This entry identifies Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's dramatic masterpiece, Faust: Eine Tragödie.
“Faust, and Tasso, and Mignon, and Makaria, and Iphigenia, became irresistible names.”
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.