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.