Wilhelm Waiblinger

I had intended to continue posting on my reading of Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe in the Last Years of His Life, but before doing so I began some cross-checking in my copy of Die Goethe Chronik by Rose Unterberger in order to see what else Goethe was up to when he was meeting Eckermann. Poetically speaking, it appears that the most important thing in Goethe's life in the second half of 1823 was his meeting of Ulrike von Levetzow during his "Trinkkur" in Marienbad beginning in July, which produced Trilogie der Leidenschaft. Before that, however, before Goethe left for Marienbad, he received a copy from Boisserée of Wilhelm Waiblinger's epistolary novel Phaeton, accompanied by a letter from Waiblinger.

Waiblinger is not well known today, although I discovered this past summer that there are three English translations of his life of Friedrich Hölderlin: Friedrich Hölderlins Leben, Dichtung und Wahnsinn. Phaeton was written under the influence of his acquaintance with Hölderlin while Waiblinger was a student in Tübingen. Hermann Hesse wrote a lovely story about an outing of Waiblinger and Hölderlin entitled "In Pressels Gartenhaus."

This past summer I read and reviewed the latest translation of the Hölderlin biography, by Will Stone, for the Times Literary Supplement. For those who are interested, it appeared in the double issue of August 24 & 31, 2018. Like many Romantic poets, Waiblinger died young, after contracting malaria in the Pontine marshes and also undergoing bloodlettings. The Hölderlin biography was published in 1830, a year after Waiblinger's death in Rome. There is a nice precis of Waiblinger's own life and work at the Bibliotheca Augustana, from which the image above is taken.

According to Rose Unterberger's Goethe Chronik, Goethe mentions in his diary of July 16, 1826 receiving a letter from Waiblinger enclosing a copy of his Erzählungen aus der Geschichte des jetzigen Griechenlands. No further evaluation of either Phaeton or the Tales.

Goethe's shoes

As I have frequently mentioned on this blog, Goethe turns up in the darndest places. The previous post led me to a new one. Herewith a little pre-Christmas cheer. The shoes pictured above, with the iconic silhouette of Goethe in the tongue, are a product of a company called Saucony. According to Nice Kicks,  the little pieces of architecture seen in the photo below are "inspired by the Goethe Museum in Dusseldorf," of which (again according to Nice Kicks) Goethe was "the founder."

To top it off (or is it "bottom everything off"?): "Sporting a red rose and grey colorway, the sneaker has a premium suede upper and a white midsole. Making the sneakers even more unique, Goethe’s poems are printed in a variety of places like the heel panels, insole and laces." (My emphasis.)

 As always, click on photos to enlarge.

Eckermann's Goethe

Johann Peter Eckermann

Work on a novel has kept Goethe Girl very busy with little time to think about blogging. Still, there is always a hankering to look at something concerning Goethe, and recently I had Amazon send me Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens. It is the kind of book that I can pick up and read a discrete section and feel satisfied that I have learned something new about Goethe, even if filtered through the eyes of a person who seems to have given up everything, even the love of his life, to wait attendance on his hero. By the time I have written more posts on this subject, I may be able to come to my own conclusions about Eckermann, around whom the consensus seems to be mixed.

Margaret Fuller, who did much to transmit enthusiasm for Goethe and for German literature to Americans in the early 19th century, made the first English translation of the Conversations. She was self-taught in German, and, as I browsed her translation online, there were a few places where I was pulled up short and checked the German. I have a feeling it was less of failing to understand the meaning than that she was rapidly translating and did not go back to check things. There was one place, however, where I was struck by a very strange sentence. It appears during Eckermann's inaugural reception, on June 10, 1823, in the house on Frauenplan. He is escorted upstairs to meet Goethe, who soon appears. And here is the sentence in Fuller's translation:

"Goethe soon came in, dressed in a blue coat, and with shoes."

No fooling! Goethe wore shoes!

And then I checked the German. And here it is:

"Es währte nicht lange ... so kam Goethe, in einem blauen Oberrock und in Schuhen ..."

Is Goethe Girl missing something here?