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?