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GOETHE'S RÖMISCHE ELEGIEN

Goethe’s Elegien (later termed Elegien, römische (1806) before finally receiving the
present title), were written during or shortly after the poet's second period of
residence in Italy and published by Schiller in the Horen in 1795-6 without a
declaration of their author's identity. It was in the Neue Schriften of 1800 that Goethe
officially acclaimed the Elegien as his own work. As the first formal cycle of poems
Goethe wrote, the collection of elegies poses a striking contrast to the apparently
rambling poems about "The Wanderer" written by Goethe in his pre-Weimar days.

First, and most obviously, in writing them Goethe subjected himself to the discipline
of conforming to rules laid down by ancient classical traditions, at least to the extent
that this was appropriate to poetry written in German. The Römische Elegien
themselves contain two references to the metrical pattern which Goethe followed
during their composition. The basic metric unit of the Elegien is the distich, a pair of
lines consisting of a hexameter followed by a pentameter. Goethe's commitment to
metrical regularity, which stands in complete contrast to the metrical variations in
"Wandrers Sturmlied", marks the arrival of Goethe's high classical period. This had its
beginnings in his first Weimar years and would last beyond the end of the eighteenth
century. Poems composed in his early years in Weimar still express the spirit of
restlessness so characteristic of Goethe's poems in the early 1770s. However, in
poems describing walks and journeys, such as "Harzreise" and "Ilmenau", the
Wanderer, though still betraying signs of restlessness, has become an acute observer
of his surroundings. Goethe's classicism involved more than adherence to a regular
metre. Schiller, when alluding to the Römische Elegien in his essay "Über naive und
sentimentalische Dichtung" - (contrasting the intuitive and unselfconscious Greek
poet with the sharply critical and self-conscious modern poet), referred to Goethe as
"the Roman and German Propertius" 1 Propertius had indeed served Goethe as a mode

1
Friedrich Schiller, as the editor of the Horen, however, evidently contended with the
objections and misgivings of certain readers of the Elegien. A.W. Schlegel doubted
that they could be classified as "sentimental" in the sense of bespeaking the sensibility
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and source of inspiration. Like Propertius, Goethe promoted love, erotic love in
particular, to a major theme of his poetry, and, when so doing, adopted the standpoint
of a first person speaker. His choice of traditional model brought a special advantage.
In conforming to a classical precedent, Goethe could forestall comments that the
Römische Elegien provided a record of his amorous adventures in Rome. On the other
hand, there could be very little doubt that the joie de vivre expressed in the Elegien
corresponded closely to Goethe's elevated mood at a time when he enjoyed fulfillment
in his personal relationships. Though "Faustina", the figure who represents the poet's
lover in the Elegien, is a fictional character, she incorporates characteristics and
aspects of a real woman in Goethe's life. At least Frau von Stein as one of the first
readers of the Elegien on their publication was quick to identify Faustina, mentioned
by name only once in the work (XVIII, 9) as Christiane Vulpius, Goethe's life
companion and later wife. Faustina may also incorporate traits of an Italian woman
2
with whom Goethe had a brief affair during his residence in Rome. However, the
spirit of exuberance that pervades the Elegien did not result only from personal
fulfillment in love relationships. In Rome itself Goethe discovered a spiritual and
cultural home that far surpassed any Northern city in its wealth of historical
monuments and works of art. Goethe exulted in the brightness of colour and the
clarity of form that the Italian climate bestowed on his Italian environment. For him,
Rome meant primarily an aesthetic experience as he himself observed in a letter dated
8th June 1787 to Charlotte von Stein:

Wo ich nun sitze. hier oder in Frankfurt, das ist eins und Rom ist der einzige
Ort in der Welt für den Künstler und ich bin einmal nichts anders.

Where I am now located, here or in Frankfurt, makes no difference, and Rome

is the only place in the world for artists, and I am no different from others.

of medieval or modern poets. Despite, the appeal of the Elegien to tradition, their
impact was revolutionary, even shocking. The theme of erotic love itself had many
precedents in Roman classical poetry, but the very suggestion that this had some
connection with a modern poet's life was evidently disturbing, for Frau von Stein
among a good number of other people. .
.
.
2
Goethe’s amorous relationship with an Italian woman seems to have been of short
duration, lasting from January to April 1787.
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In the Römische Elegien Goethe presents love as a power not only manifested in a
personal relationship but in Rome, its history and present life. In mythological terms
the god of Love exerted an influence on Rome no less great than that of Mars. Indeed,
Rome, as the offspring of Mars and Rhea Silvia, is revealed in the Elegien as a city
owing its existence to an amorous impulse. Feeling himself to be in direct spiritual
communion with the spirit of Rome, the poet perceives no division between the
classical past and the immediate present. The poet sees more than the material record
of a past age; he senses here the creative energy that found expression in it. In
Goethe’s view the products of artistic creation, such as paintings or sculptures, though
static in one sense, are both the product of and the producers of dynamic and creative
mental and emotional powers, whether acting on the artist or the beholder of artistic
creation.
It may seem on the surface that the Römische Elegien have little in common with
"Wandrers Sturmlied". However, there is evidence (shortly to be considered) that
Goethe had the latter in mind during the composition of the Elegies. The word
"Wandrer" appears only twice in the Römische Elegien, which in such a long work
hardly seems noteworthy on the basis of a statistical word count. However, the
contextual setting of the word in the second and seventh elegies is significant in the
following respect: only in the case of these elegies are there significant variations
between the published version in the Horen and one appearing in an unpublished
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manuscript. In the case of the second elegy these divergences are particularly
marked .The speaker complains that the "Wanderer" is dogged wherever he goes by
politically motivated and arbitrary tittle-tattle in much the same way that
contemporary British tourists excited by their presence a then popular ditty entitled
"Marlborough”. This reference corresponds to lines in the unpublished manuscript in
which Goethe expresses relief that he was shielded from the celebrity of Werther and

3
Apart from the elegies which never appeared in the Horen, for being considered too
explicit for public taste (see: Weimar Ausgabe von Goethes Werken, 143 volumes,
1887-1919, vol. 53, p.3-7), the second elegy as rendered in a manuscript entitled
Erotica Romana, explicitly attributes the poet's unwanted celebrity to the fame of his
novelle Die Lieden des Jungen Werther, adding that if the hero in this work, had been
his own brother, he would have readily beaten this brother to death.
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Lotte, characters in his sensationally popular novel Die Leiden des jungen Werthers
(The Sorrows of young Werther), simply because he was not recognized as the author
of that work.
A question arises. Why did Goethe expunge any reference to Werther in the published
version of the Römische Elegien? Most probably because he wished to divest the
lyrical "I" of any explicit reference to himself after he had come to realize that his
very choice of poetic genre precluded an explicit identification of the speaker with
himself as a private individual. Any desire to avoid personal embarrassment could
hardly have been a decisive factor, as there was no disguising the fact that the events
and experiences described in the Elegies were drawn from real occurrences in
Goethe's life before and during his residence in Italy. By inserting the word
"Wandrer" in the second elegy Goethe could both allude to his own person and cast
the speaker as a universal traveller and poet. Set in the context of the second elegy the
"Wanderer" is in the first place a traveller, tourist or ex-patriot. In that of the seventh
elegy the Wanderer is to be identified with the poet and artist in a mythological
setting, as the following lines make clear:

Wie ich hereingekommen, ich kann's nicht sagen; es faßte

Hebe den Wandrer und zog mich in die Hallen heran.
VII, 15, 1

How it came about that I entered I cannot tell. Hebe

clasped the Wanderer and drew me into the halls.

An explicit association of the "Wanderer" with "the poet" follows a few lines further
on: addressing Jupiter Xenius, the protector of travellers, the speaker pleads:

Bist du der wirtliche Gott? O dann so verstoße den Gastfreund

Nicht von deinem Olymp wieder zur Erde hinab!

Art thou the hospitable god. O do not therefore cast thy guest
down from Olympus to earth again/

These words call forth the reprimand:

"Dichter" wohin versteigest du dich?

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"Poet", whither dost thou raise thyself high?

The speaker makes an important discovery: to enjoy the presence and companionship
of Jupiter, he need not attempt a hazardous mountain climb. Having asked Jupiter's
forgiveness for such a foolish assumption, he avers:

der hohe / Kapitolinische Berg ist dir ein zweiter Olymp.

the high Capitoline hill is a second Olympus"

It is almost as if the Wanderer is still smarting from the memory of an earlier

traumatic attempt to scale the abode of the gods before plunging into rivers of mud. In
the light of the feelings expressed in the opening lines of the seventh elegy we are
probably justified in assuming that Goethe did have "Wandrers Sturmlied" in mind
when treating the theme of encountering Jupiter, for they recall his earlier days of
wandering under a grey northern sky. However, even if we concede that Goethe here
mockingly belittles all that he once associated with the Wanderer as a figure in his
early poetry, the very use of the word "Wandrer" implies that a continuous
development embraces the contradictions that emerge from a comparison of
"Wandrers Sturmlied” and the Römische Elegien. The poet’s original attempt to reach
Zeus finds its inverted corollary in the removal from Olympus to the Capitoline Hill.
Far from being a remote and unapproachable deity, Jupiter Xenius seeks and finds the
poet in his earthy urban environs.

In his classical period Goethe discarded his earlier notion that his ruling deity,
whatever called, could be approached directly, without the help of a mediating power
or influence. This Goethe found in art. The image of Jupiter Xenius, the god who
condescends to move among mortals as an unrecognized stranger, was greatly
favoured by the Augustan poets of Rome, and of these, by Ovid in particular. His
Metamorphoses contains the story of Philemon and Baucis, who entertained Jove and
Mercury unawares. Faust and Jupiter merge into the figure of the Wanderer, who
enters the cottage of Philemon and Baucis shortly before Faust's apotheosis. In the
Römische Elegien Jupiter is closely associated with artistic creativity, either as a
figure represented by sculptors and other artists, or as the power of art itself. Plotinus,
we recall, identified Zeus as the source of artistic creativity (cf. Hölderlin; "Jupiter
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und Saturn"). In the Römische Elegien a similar connection between the ancient gods
of Rome and artistic creativity is implied rather than directly stated. According to the
fifteenth and sixteenth lines of the seventh elegy, Hebe takes the Wanderer to an inner
space or room ("Raum" connotes both). In later elegies the word "Raum" is closely
associated with the artist's "Werkstatt", his studio or atelier. The close juxtaposition of
the words in the following lines and the parallelism they imply are hardly
coincidental:

Du betrachtest mit Staunen die Trümmern alter Gebäude

Und durchwandelst mit Sinn diesen heiligen Raum.
Du verehrst noch mehr die werten Reste des Bildens
Einziger Künstler, die stets ich in der Werkstatt besucht.
(XIII, 9-12)

Thou contemplatest amazed the ruins of ancient buildings

and wander about this holy place with purpose.
Thou admirest still more the noble remains of the creations of particular
artists whom I constantly visit in their studios.

Words in the final strophe of the poem associate the poet's pen, and by implication the
written poem, with "the reed" and by extension with the pastoral music often
associated with the pipes of Pan. Goethe did not develop so deep an appreciation of
music - the music of Beethoven at least - as he evinced in the sphere of the visual and
plastic arts, yet few poets have succeeded in achieving the quality and diversity of the
sonorous or "musical” effects of which poetry is capable. The analogy between his
songs and he reeds or rushes swaying in the wind further imply an affinity between
the processes of artistic creation and the growth of plants.